Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What was the brightest explosion ever seen?

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What was the brightest explosion ever seen? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Hey, Orge, you work with a lot of scientists. Who
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: is the brightest one you've ever interviewed?
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Well, I have made a lot of Nobel Prize winners.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: They're all pretty humble, but yeah, generally they're pretty sharp
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: at that level, you know, beams of light or shooting
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: out of their eyes. They have an ore of genius.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: So do you think when you're talking to a scientists
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: you can predict if they're going to be a future
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Nobel Prize winner?
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: If I could, that would be awesome. I could probably
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: make a lot of money that way. Aren't there betting
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: pools for Nobel Prize winners?
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: If there are, you probably qualify as insider information.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Well, good thing, I'm not a betting person. Hi am
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Jorhem Makartudas and the author of All of Great Big Universe.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, a professor at
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: U c Irvine, and I actually do have a tiny
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: slice of a Nobel Prize.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Ooh, what does that mean, Like they shaved off a
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: piece of the metal or something.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: No, I'm one of a large group of collective winners
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: of the Nobel Prize. Oh. Several years ago they gave
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union, and that's
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: back when Britain was a member, and I'm a citizen
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: of the UK, so I'm not sure if I lost
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: it during Brexit, but I was briefly one five hundred
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: millionth of a Nobel Prize winner.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, I see you and all Europeans have won the
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Nobel Prize. Well technically you're not part of Europe, so yeah,
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: I think you did lose it.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I used to round that up to one Nobel Prize.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Now I guess I got to round it down to
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: zero to zero.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: I think you could have rounded it down to zero
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: before you know, one fortieth million probably maybe count to zero.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Well to me, one five hundred billion was pretty different
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: from zero, but I take your point.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: But anyways, Welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jora Explain
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: In which we think everybody deserves a prize for their
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: curiosity about the universe. We're here to stimulate that curiosity,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: to encourage it, and to go with you on the
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: journey of exploration of understanding the universe. We think, we hope,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: we believe that the universe out there can be understood
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: and deserves to be understood, and that everything that scientists
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: have figured out so far and that they're puzzling over
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: currently deserves to be explained to you.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: That's right. We're here to illuminate the darkest corners of
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: science and take you on a trip to the bright
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: future of our understanding of how things work and why
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: things are the way they are.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: We want to understand everything here on Earth, how water flows,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: how mountains form the history of life, but we also
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: want to understand our vast cosmos, what's happening in the
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: dark deep reaches of space. How did the universe get
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: to look the way that it does. One of the
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: most powerful forces operating on galaxies and stars and galactic
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: clusters out there, shaping the entire structure of space, time
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: and the universe. And to do that we have to
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: look out into the night sky and gather messages that
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: are coming here from the rest of the universe.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because the cosmos is vast and mostly dark, with
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: lots of empty space, but there are some bright spots
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: out there making the universe visible to us and giving
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: us information about what's out there in the farthest reaches
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: of existence.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Though very few humans have actually left the surface of
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: the Earth for significant periods of time and entered even
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: our space neighborhood. We have a pretty good understanding of
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: what's going on in the rest of our galaxy, the
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: structure of galaxies beyond that, and all of that comes
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: from gathering that information that's beamed to us from the
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: rest of the universe. Imagine if instead the universe was
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: totally dark, we would have no idea what was out there.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: We're grateful that at least some little fraction of it
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: is shown brightly and letting us know what it's up to.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there are things happening all over the universe creating light,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: blasting it out into the universe, but some of them
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: are maybe a little bit stronger than others.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: That's right. We have a whole series of episodes about
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: the darkest things in the universe, dark matter, and the
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: mysteries of the missing gravity. But today in the podcast,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: we're going to go in exactly the opposite direction.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: So to On the podcast, we'll be tackling the question
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: what was the brightest explosion ever seen?
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: And was it that moment when Jorge finally understood particle physics?
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Boom mind a blown as it happened. I'm anticipating it. Man,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: we're building up to it.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Has that even happened for you?
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: You know, there's that old quote, if you think you
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: understand quantum field theory, then you don't understand quantum field theory.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: So it's a matter of degrees.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: I think, yeah, yeah, it's a dimmer setting the light
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: bulb of quantum physics. But yeah, there are explosions happening
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: all over the universe, and some of them are incredibly bright,
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: and some of them are less bright. But maybe we
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: haven't seen all of them. Maybe there are some that
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: we have managed to see out there.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Something that's wonderful about exploring the universe is being shocked
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: by the scale of it. Learning how deep the history
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: of time is, not thousands of years, not millions of years,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: but billions of years, Learning how large the universe is,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: how many billions of light years across stuff has spread out.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: These enormous scales that shock our understanding also serve to
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: give us a better context for our existence. Turns out,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: the Earth and the Milky Way are a tiny little
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: speck of dust in the vast cosmos, But there are
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: other dimensions to be shocked in the sun you think
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: is quite bright, it turns out the universe gets much
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: much much brighter than that.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the universe never sees us to make us all
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: feel tiny and insignificant and short lived compared to the
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: scale of the cost and its existence. But as you said,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: there are things that maybe would even shock of physicists
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: about how bright they are.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, and today we're going to be learning about the
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: brightest of all time what physicists called the boat the
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: boat boat.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: The biggest of all time, the brightest of all time.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Not the banana East of all time, the amazing.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Of all time. So, as usual, we were wondering how
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: many people out there had thought about this question about
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: what is the brightest explosion ever seen in the universe.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: So Daniel went out there as usual to ask people
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: this question.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Thanks very much to everybody who plays for this segment
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: of the podcast, and if you'd like to hear your
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: voice for future episodes, please don't be shy. We would
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: love to add you to our group. Write to me
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com to volunteer,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: or send me questions or send me ideas or pictures
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: of your cats, whatever, we love to hear from listeners.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: And today, Daniel, what are our players playing for?
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: They're playing for the recognition of having their voice on
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: the podcast. Their friends and relatives will all be jealous.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: They'll be brightly jealous.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: They're playing for the biggest banana of all time.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: So think about it for a second. What do you
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: think is the brightest explosion ever seen? Here's what people
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: had to say.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: I am going to say that is a supernova explosion,
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: either that or the source of whatever gamma ray bursts are.
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: The biggest explosion ever seen would have to be the
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: Big Bang, although there was nobody around to see it.
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: We can still see the cosmic microwave background radiation, so
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: we still can see it. But that's not.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Really bright anymore. So I don't know.
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: This is You got me in a quandary here, So
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: it's probably a supernova.
• 7:58
  Speaker 5: I would imagine the Big Bang was pretty bright, and
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: then maybe gamma ray burse but maybe something to do
• 8:05
  Speaker 5: with merging black holes or merging neutron stars. I guess
• 8:11
  Speaker 5: bright doesn't necessarily have to be in our visible spectrum.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: All right. A couple of answers, kind of a trick
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: answers here the Big Bang was maybe the biggest explosion.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: You can't argue with that.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: You can't actually argue with that. I don't think of
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: the Big Bang as an explosion. I think of it
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: as an expansion.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, I see, you're gonna use grammar to disqualify their answer.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: I know, words meanings, words having meanings are so annoying.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: I know it did just all be bath right, But
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, you do call it the Big Bang? I mean,
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: yourself are saying it's a bang.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, there's that famous story about how the
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Big Bang was not named by anybody who actually believed
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: in the Big Bang, but by proponents of the steady
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: state theory.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Physicistal call it the Big Bang?
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Right, who still call it the Big Bang? Yes?
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, they don't call it the Big Stretch or the
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Big Expansion.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: I think we should call it the Big Stretch. I
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: think that's a much better name. Absolutely.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Maybe we should amend the title of this episode to
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: what was the biggest explosion besides the Big Bang?
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: The brightest explosion? Though? Yeah, good question. I'm not sure
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: how you measure the brightness of the Big Bang.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Now, the way we phrased this question, what was the
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: brightest explosion ever seen. Are we only counting the ones
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: that we've seen or that we think happened, or is
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: that the same, Well, we're.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Only going to talk about the ones that we've seen.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: But as soon as you've seen something extraordinarily bright, it
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: means that there's something out there capable of making very
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: very bright explosions, and it's very unlikely you've seen the
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: brightest one. So it's like discovering a unicorn. You figure, ooh,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: there are probably other unicorns in the forest, maybe even
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: with longer horns. So we could only talk about the brightest.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: That suggests that there are very likely even brighter explosions
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: out there we haven't seen.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: But that's an assumption, right, I mean, there could just
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: be one unicorn out there in the universe.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, it's a statistical statement. But yes, as soon
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: as you discover one unicorn, you figure, like, well, probably
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: had parents, maybe it had siblings. You know, there are
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: probably other unicorns out there, but it could be the
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: sole unicorn, you know, created by a random collection of
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: quantum fluctuations. That's also a possibility, even.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: If it's unlikely, it could be the unicorn of unicorn spottings.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we could sell it for a billion dollars. That
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: should be our startup. My startup idea is give me
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: a billion dollars. I will make you a unicorn, and
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: then it'll be a unicorn startup.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: You would only make one unicorn, otherwise it's not worth much.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but if you only have one, you can set
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: the price, right. I mean, I'm not an economist, but.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: I think that's how economy worries. Sure, well that's our problem.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: We're selling shares in our unicorns, folks, unicorns singular.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: But anyways, it's an interesting question. The brightest explosion ever seen?
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: And so Daniel steps through, what are some things that
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: can cause explosions in the universe?
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Well, first, I think it's useful to think about brightness,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Like what do we mean by brightness? Obviously you're very bright,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: All of our listeners are very bright, our children are
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: very bright. But when we talk about brightness in an
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: astronomical setting, what we mean is like how many photons
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: are arriving from it to Earth. And it used to
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: be that astronomy only really dealt with photons. We had
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: telescopes that could see photons. We used our eyeballs. These days, though,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: we have other devices like particle detectors and gravitational wave
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: detectors that can see other kinds of messengers from astronomical events.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: Now, would brightness and photons be the best way to
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: measure the energy of an explosion? Like, could there be
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: an explosion that maybe you know, throws up part other
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: kinds of particles more than photons or neutrinos or something
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: like that that might have more energy but be less
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: bright or there's like a pretty good indication of the energy.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: No, different astronomical events have a different fraction. They are
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: energy produced in photons, in neutrinos, or in gravitational waves.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: So the best way to do astronomy they call these
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: days multi messenger astronomy, where you're looking for photons and
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: you're looking for particles, and you're looking for gravitational waves.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: It's the best way to get a handle on what happened.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: For example, when we look at neutrons star collisions, you
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: can sometimes see a gravitational wave and also see light
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: from the collision. But sometimes like supernova, can release huge
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: amounts of energy just in neutrinos, because when the neutrinos
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: are produced in the supernova, they're not reabsorbed, they just
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: fly right out because the supernova itself, though it's super dense,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: is also transparent to those neutrinos, whereas photons get reabsorbed.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: So definitely there are things that are brighter in neutrinos
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: than in photons. So that makes it very, very complicated.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I think today, let's just focus on the photons.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's just focus on the photons, because my eyeballs
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: can neutrinos.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Yet, you'd have to have eyeballs the size of swimming pools.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, Daniel, that's very flattering. Thank you you saying my
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: eyes are endless pools of.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Of chlorinated water.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of physics detection technology.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Yes, you're like an anime character with big eyes.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there you go.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: And the other issue with brightness is that it depends
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: a little bit on where you are, Like you could
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: have a really bright source, but it's really really far
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: away and so its appears quite dim. Like when quasars
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: were first discovered, they were quite bright in the sky,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: and then we discovered, oh my gosh, they're also super
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: dup far away, which means at their source they're extraordinarily bright.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: So what astronomers typically do is define brightness by how
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: bright something would seem if you were one AU away
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: from it. If you were, like the distance the Earth
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: is from the Sun away from that object, how bright
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: would it be.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: That's what an AU is, right, It's like an earth
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: distance from the Sun.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, all right.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: So step us through, like how bright are things in
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: the night sky?
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah? So if you define the Sun as brightness of one,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: then you can look at things like some of the
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: biggest stars that are out there, Like the biggest brightest
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: star ever discovered. It's three hundred and fifteen solar masses.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: It's got the amazing name of R one three six
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: a one, and it's eight point three million times brighter
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: than the Sun. Like, if you took that star. What, Yeah,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: you took that star and put it in our solar
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: system and looked up at the sky, it would be
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: eight point three million times as intense as the Sun.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Wow, you would need eight point three layers of sunblock
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: just to walk out into the Sun.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Eight point three million, Yes, it's million, yes, exactly. So
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: that's the brightest star in the universe. And already that
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: gives you a sense of like, wow, this stuff in
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: our neighborhood not really that bright when we're talking about
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: like Hall of Fame brightness.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Wouldn't this star be huge or is it still a
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: small star?
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: So it's very large. It's right up on the edge
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: of the biggest star you can have around three hundred
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: and fifteen solar masses. Because bigger stars have a higher
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: temperature at their core, so they burn hotter and faster.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: They don't last very long typically, and they also produce
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: an enormous amount of radiation which pulls the star apart.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Stars are actually a delicate balance between the radiation pressure
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: from fusion and the gravitational pressure inwards from all of
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: that mass. So it's sort of incredible that so many
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: stars are stable for millions and billions of years. These
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: guys essentially tear themselves apart. Anything bigger than that can't
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: really last very long. So this is the brightest star
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: I ever seen.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Could you even stand at one AU away from the star,
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: would you be inside the star?
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: You wouldn't be inside the actual edge of the star.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Its radius is like forty three times the radius of
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: the Sun, so it's much much denser than our Sun.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: But it's nowhere near an AU for example.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: And why is it brighter. Is it just the more
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: dense so there's more fusion going on.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, fusion is very nonlinear, and so because you have
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: so much more mass and it's more dense, then it's
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: much hotter. The pressure and temperature at the core is
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: much greater. And remember that while there's fusion happening at
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: the core of our star, it's still pretty inefficient, Like
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: most of the hydrogen in the star is not fusing,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: because fusion is a hard thing to make happen. You
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: got these two protons, you're trying to squeeze them together.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: There are electromagnetic forces are trying to push them apart.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Most of the time in the Sun, protons don't fuse.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: But the higher the temperature and the higher the pressure,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: the more often you do get fusion happening. And so
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: the fusion is just much more efficient at the heart
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: of this star, which keats the whole thing up and
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: makes it brighter.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: WHOA, but you said they don't last pretty long.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, these stars last for like millions of years, whereas
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: smaller stars like hours less billions and red dwarfs can
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: last even longer, maybe even up to trillions of years.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: We're not sure because the universe is kind of young
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: compared to the expected lifetime of some of these stars.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: Now, is that as bridess it gets out there in space.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: That's not even close to how bright things get. That's
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: the brightest star we've seen. But stars are not bright
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: compared to like the radiation emission at the hearts of galaxies.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Big galaxies have big black holes at their centers, and
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: their enormous gravity creates a lot of high temperature and
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: high pressure in the accretion disk around the black hole.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: So the black hole, of course is black. Maybe this
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: hawking radiation, but that would be very, very dim. But
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: because it has so much gravitational energy, there's a big
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: swirling mass of stuff around the black hole, and that
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: is so hot it's emitting a lot of radiation. That
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: radiation then gets guided by the magnetic field of the
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: black hole up and down the poles, sort of the
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: same way that like the Aurora Borealis guides charged particles
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: to the north pole and the south pole. Here, the
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: magnetic field of the quasar creates two beams of particles
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: when shooting up the north pole and when shooting down
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: the south pole, and that's what a quasar is that's
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: also called an active galactic nucleus WHOA.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: So it creates a jet of particles or light for both.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: If you look at pictures of galaxies with jets, these
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: jets can be enormous. They can be even much longer
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: than the galaxy itself. The power of the hearts of
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: these galaxies is really incredible. And there's an enormous amount
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: of photons also emitted here because this is just like
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: hot particles, and hot particles emit photons.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Because I guess it can't guide the photons to the
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: North pole and South poles, but it guides other particles
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: and in those particles are what emit the brightness the light.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And anytime you have charge particles changing direction,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: like an electron flies to a magnetic field and bends,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: how does it bend. It has to bend by emitting
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: a photon. So you have accelerating charged particles, you're going
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: to get lots and lots of photons, like in the
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: particle colliders like the Large Hadron Collider or the Large
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Electron positron Collider. One of the biggest challenges is that
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: these particles are bending with magnets and constantly losing energy
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: to radiation, and so that's why you get so many photons.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: H all right, I have more questions about this quasar
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: and about maybe what could be even brighter than a quasar.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: So let's set the dimmer too high on those questions.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: But first let's take a quick break. All Right, we're
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: talking about the brightest explosion ever seen, and Daniel, you
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: were saying, a quasar has many times more brightness than
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: the brightest star that we know about.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, quasars in the sky are like bafflingly bright. It
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: was a huge mystery for a long time before we
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: even knew that there were black holes in the hearts
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: of galaxies. People saw these sources in the sky and
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: they calculated the distance and then they were like, oh
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: my gosh, it's already brightened the sky and it's super
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: duper far away. Because quasars tend to be formed in
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: the early universe and not recently, so all the quasars
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: we see are like really far across the universe. And
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: so you do that calculation, you discover that like, wow,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: quasars are trillions of times brighter than the sun. Trillions trillions. Yeah,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: there's one called three C two seven three is the
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: brightest quasar we know officially, and it's four trillion times
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: brighter than the sun. Like, if you were one AU
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: away from it, it would be equivalent to having four trillion suns.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: But only if you're one AU at the north or
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: south poles.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Right, Yes, exactly, if you're at the horizontal or you're
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: a little bit tilted away from it, then it's less bright.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: Now does that technically count as an explosion?
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: Though?
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: I don't think it counts as an explosion because it's constant,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: but it is super duper bright, and.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: It's super directed too, right, Like you said, it's not
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: like it's not an explosion going in all directions. It's
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: more like a laser.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's more like a laser like a pencil beam,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: which is actually really useful, and we can use these
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: quasars not just to understand the early universe, but also
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: to understand what's between us and the quasars. There's lots
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: of studies where people examine the light from quasars and
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: they use it as a probe of all the the
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: material between us and the quasar, for example, the dark
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: matter density and the gravitational lensing that happens along the way.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: They're really useful. Sometimes a quasar can get even brighter
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: due to relativistic effects. These quasars are called blazars. If
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the quasar is moving towards us, then its light is
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: enhanced by relativistic effects and it can seem even brighter
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: than a quasar.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Wait, a blazar is a quasar that's moving towards us.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: It's not just a quasar with a nice jacket on.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Is that what you mean, Like, it's a quasar moving
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: towards us.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Well, a blazar is a quasar. It's not. It doesn't
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: have to be just moving towards us, but it's pointed
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: like directly at the Earth. We can see these quasars
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: even if they're not directly at us, because we can
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: see their jets and the light emitted. But if they
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: are actually pointed directly at us, then we call them
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: a blazar.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Wait, that's the only difference is that it's pointing at us.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, blazars are quasars that are basically pointing right at
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: the Earth.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: And you need a whole new name for that.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's historical. People see the things in
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: the sky. They don't always understand the connections between them.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: It's like, why do we even have constellations? You could say, hey,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: now we know that like stars and constellations, some of
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: them are super close and some of them are across
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: the galaxy. Why do we group them together? It's historical?
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: You know, people have called that ursa minor for a
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: long time, so we're gonna keep doing it.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: M So, blazar, then, is a quasar that's pointing at us? Now,
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: is it brighter than four trillion times brighter than the sun.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the brightest blazar is three hundred trillion times brighter
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: than the sun. So we're talking about a factor of
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: one hundred boost when a quasar is pointed right at us.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: So this is if we're one au at the north
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: and south pole of a quasar, Yeah, three hundred trillion
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: times more than brighter than the sun. But if we're
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: not in the north and south pole, you're saying it's
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: more like four trillion times.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And so not recommended to do any sunbathing
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: on the north or south pole of a blazar.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: Well, as you have three hundred trillion layers of some.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Block also known as like three light years of lead
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: still might not be enough.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Now, that sounds pretty intense. But if we're counting beams,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: I wonder like, is it brighter than the brightest laser
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: we've made here on Earth.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: It's much brighter than the brightest laser. Yes, I mean,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: if you were one AU from the brightest laser, you
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: would not think it's very bright. Even a laser is
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: pretty colimated. It's going to spread out, and an AU
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: is a large distance.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: But in terms of intensity per you know, area, is
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: it as intense or more intense?
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: These blazers are much more intense than any source on
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Earth at one au. Yes, but these are constant things, right.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Blazer is key pumping out, so I don't know if
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: it really counts as explosions. And the brightest thing in
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: the universe is actually not something that's constant.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: So then we are disqualifying quasars and blazers from being
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: the boats.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: We don't even need to disqualify them. They don't even qualify.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: We're seeking their chances of being the boat.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to torpedo them, but even if we didn't,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: they still wouldn't qualify because the brightest thing in the
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: universe isn't explo and it's also much brighter than the
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: most constant thing in the universe, which are blazers.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: WHOA all right, what are these things that are brighter
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: than a blazer? Is it a dinner jacket?
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Are I don't know if it's white tie or black time?
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Which is brighter? It's a glittery on the disco jacket.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, sparkle tie. Yeah. The brightest explosion in the universe,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: and also the brightest thing we've ever seen, is a
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: gamma ray burst. These are sort of mysterious and enormous
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: bursts of gamma rays. Gamma rays are just very high
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: energy photons that we see sometimes in the night sky.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Well, meaning like we have gamma ray antenna and gamma
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: rays are just a kind of light, right, like it's
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: a high frequency light.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Gamma rays are very very high energy.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Photons exist all across the electromagnetic spectrum. Some of them
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: we call in the visible range. Some are very long
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: wavelength and infrared or radio waves. But these are just
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: artificial divisions above the visible We have ultraviolet and then
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: X rays and the gamma rays. But again these are
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: just like historic dotted lines we've put on the electromagnetic spectrum.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: There's nothing above gamma rays. So gamma rays include everything
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: above X rays and then out to infinite energy.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: Whoa, So we have these antennas out there on Earth
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: like in the tech gamma rays, and sometimes we get
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: these burds coming from space, like these huge kind of
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: waves of gamma rays.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And it's fascinating history because this is something
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: that really benefits from the Cold War. Like in the
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: second half of last century, the United States military was
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: really curious whether the Soviet Union was doing atmospheric nuclear
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: testings before it was ruled out. So they built satellites
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: and all sorts of technologies to try to detect nuclear testing.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: And sure they found some, I guess, but they also
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: spotted these weird bursts in the sky of gamma rays
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: that they didn't understand that were not coming from below,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: they were coming from above. That's how gamma ray bursts
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: were first discovered. I love when we spend money on
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: the military, we accidentally end up doing science.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Are you making a case for more military spending.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: I don't think military spending is a very efficient way
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: to do science. I'm just grateful when sometimes that money
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: turns out to be useful for science as well.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: Hey, I see, it's a win. It's a win for everyone.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll take it. I mean, the military budget totally
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: dwarfs the science budget. But anyway, that's a topic for
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: another time.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: How bright are these gammay bursts?
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Some of them are crazy, crazy bright. Like we've seen
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: gamma ray bursts that are a million trillion times brighter
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: than the sun, like a quadrillion times brighter than the sun.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: So yeah, in terms of how bright we think they
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: are at the source, you're on Earth. We don't get
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: a million trillion times more gamma rays than the sun.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's right. We were all killed several years ago
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: due to the gamma ray burst. We're just now catching up. No,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: this is at the source absolutely. Fortunately for us, they're
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: quite distant, so when they get here on Earth, there's
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: a few very high energy gamma rays, but we're not
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: all fried.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: But so, how do we know how far they are?
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: Like we're just getting a blip on our antennas, Like,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: how do we know like how far away they came from?
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question. We're not exactly sure because
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: for many of them, you look in the night sky
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: where they came from and there's like nothing there. It's
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: not like you can point to and say, oh, it
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: came from this star that went supernova, or it came
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: from that galaxy. Like you look at the sky, you're like, oh,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: here's a huge source of gamma rays. There's nothing in
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: the night sky there that we can see. It must
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: mean that there's something extraordinarily distant. So there's a lot
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: of uncertainty on the inherent brightness of these things.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: A huge amount of uncertainty, right, Like, it could be
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: something closed that's dim, or it could be something really
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: far that's super duper bright. How do you tell the difference, Well.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: It's definitely not something close and dim. Right. If it
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: was something close, we would see it, because these things
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: are very very bright. It could be something close that's
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: dim most of the time and occasionally bright. But yet
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: there is uncertainty on the distance to these.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Things, meaning like the range goes from sixty what to
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: a million trillion times brighter than the sun.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't know exactly how far they are. All
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: of the gamma ray bursts we've seen have originated from
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: outside the Milky Way galaxy, which means that they're very
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: far away, but there's a huge range there, right, they
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: could be a neighboring galaxy, that could be a very
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: very distant galaxy at the edge of the universe.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: And we think they came from outside the Milky Way
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: because when we pinpoint where they came from, we don't
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: see anything that we think is in the Milky Way.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And we think these things are extraordinarily bright.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: And any gamma ray burst in the Milky Way that's
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: actually pointed towards Earth would probably fry the Earth. And
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: there are some theories about how, like some mass extinctions
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: might have occurred due to gamma ray bursts in the
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Milky Way, for example. But yeah, these things we think
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: are extraordinarily bright. I mean, it's hard to get your
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: mind around these numbers. It's easier if you express it,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: like in terms of how much energy the Sun puts out.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: So for example, our Sun in its entire lifetime will
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: put out as much energy as is in one of
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: these gamma ray bursts for one second, So like a
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: second of gamma ray bursts is ten billion years of
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: the Sun. WHOA, we think, Yeah, we think there is
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: definitely a lot of uncertainty here.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, it sounds like a huge amount of absurdity, right,
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: How do we know how far away it is?
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't know. We can say sort of like
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: lower limits because we know the nearest neighborhood and we
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: can tell that there's nothing there that's generating these things.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of fuzziness in some general
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: arguments there. But yet take these numbers definitely with a
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: big grain of salt.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: And you said it was a mystery for a long time,
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: meaning that we still don't know what makes these bursts.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: We still don't really understand it. Yeah, we have some theories.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: It turns out the gamma ray bursts come in two categories,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: is like shorter ones and longer ones. The shorter ones
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: last for like seconds or tens of seconds, and the
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: longer ones last for like minutes. So that seems like
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: probably there are two different things going on there, and
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: there are theories. The leading theory is that short gamma
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: ray bursts might come from merging neutron stars like we
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: talked about. You know, neutron stars are these very dense
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: objects that the end of life of large stars not
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: so big that they become a black hole and not
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: so small they become a white dwarf, but having enough
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: mass to become very dense neutron stars, and often these
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: stars are in binary systems and then at the end
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: of their life they're orbiting and eventually they collapse and
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: fall into each other. And these are incredibly powerful events.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: They generate gravitational waves, they generate the conditions needed to
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: make like gold and platinum and all the heavy nuclei
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: in the universe, just like supernova, and also generate very
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: high energy gamma rays.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Would they also generate regular light like visible light or
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: would they maybe only generate gamma rays, and that's why
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: we don't see them with the naked eye.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we definitely see neutron star collisions, and we've seen some.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: We've also correlated some with gravitational waves. But you know,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: there's lots of different varieties of these things, different masses
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: of neutron stars, and the collision themselves can happen in
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: lots of different ways. So we've seen neutron star collisions
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: that haven't caused huge gamma ray bursts, but there's a
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: speculation that sometimes neutrons our collisions might cause these incredibly
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: bright gamma ray bursts. But it's not something we understand
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: very well. Even the heart of a single neutron star
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: is not something we understand. Like, what is the state
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: of matter under these incredible densities? Is it a quark,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: gluon plasma? Is it some other state of matter? Is
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: it nuclear pasta? We have a whole episode about this question.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: We're really just the very beginning of the ability to
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: think about these things coherently. And then take two neutron
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: stars that are swirling around each other, and the dynamics
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: of that and the relativity. It's really just sort of
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: beyond our ability to calculate in a robust manner. And
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: so there's a lot of sort of theoretical questions about
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: whether those even could cause gamma.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Ray bursts, meaning they might not even be bright enough,
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: or they might not be enough to generate the kinds
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: of bursts we think we're seeing.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the leading theory, but it's definitely far from proven.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: All right, let's begin more into what could be causing
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: these gamma ray bursts, and then we'll get to the
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: boat the brightest of all time. But first let's take
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: another quick break. All right, we're hopping on a boat here,
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Daniel trying to find the brightest of all time, the
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: brightest explosion of.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: All time, right, yes, exactly.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: It's the biggest exploding boat.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's really wonderful. I love the experience of
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: just being overwhelmed by stuff that happens in the universe.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Really stretches your mind to even try to conceive of
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: these incredible events. You know, it makes everything that happens
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: here on Earth just seem inconsequential. Yeah.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: I mean for it to have been so bright that
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: even though it's super duper duper far away, we're still
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: seeing it here on Earth. It's pretty amazing, right, I mean,
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: I'm sure the rest of the universe is also seen it.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And unless this is the unicorn of unicorns,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: it means that's probably even brighter stuff out there that
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: we're missing.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, maybe it is the unicorn making this.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Maybe it's the collision of two unicorns when they
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: cross their horns. Maybe that's what happens.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Or it's a unicorn farting.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Let's keep it clean for the families out there.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: It's something wrong with farts. Everybody farts, even unicorns.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: This is not a fart podcast. Folks, we're talking about
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: bright explosions, not stinky ones.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: But you did say these things are really fart away.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: They are. They are mind blowingly far away exactly. So
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: we have the short gamma ray bursts that are probably
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: emerging neutron stars, and then we have these longer gamma
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: ray bursts, which just means that we see photons for longer,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: like a last four minutes instead of seconds. And the
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: leading theory here is supernova collapse. That when supernova's collapse
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: sometimes they create these very bright bursts of photons. Not
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: always like we see supernovas that don't cause gamma ray bursts,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: but sometimes we think like there's a jet of matter
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: ejected from the supernova, Like the collapse isn't completely symmetric,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: and this jet of matter sort of like a blazar
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: or a quasar, can accelerate particles and generate enormous bursts
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: of very very intense light.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: Hm.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: Does that mean we have to disqualify supernova from our
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: category here because a burst is not sort of going
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: in all directions.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: No, I think it's fine. I don't think there's a
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: reason to disqualify it just because it's focused, you know,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: I think it's still it's bright and it's an explosion,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: so yeah, I think it qualifies as one of the
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: brightest explosions.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: M it's more of a float, like the focused, focusedly
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: bright of all time. All right, So those are leading theories,
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: but we're not sure. It seems you're saying maybe even
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: a supernova emerging neutron stars might not be powerful enough
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: to generate the kinds of gamma ray burst we're seeing.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And you know, this is the exciting edge
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: of astronomy when we see stuff in the night sky
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: we can't quite explain. We're not sure if it's like
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: a weird, extreme version of something we've already seen, or
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: if it's something totally new kind of thing out there
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: in the universe we've never considered. And that's definitely happened, right.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: I think about the first time we discovered supernova or
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: black holes or quasars. All these things were discoveries of
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: something new out there in the universe, a whole new
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: category of things the universe can do. So we don't
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: really know if gamma ray bursts represent that, or if
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: they represent like the extreme edge of some kind of
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: thing we're familiar with.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty exciting. So is that then the brightest
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: thing we've seen explode out there in the universe.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: So the brightest thing we've ever seen in the universe
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: is a gamma ray burst, and it's one that just
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: happened last year. Like the record was set in October
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty three.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Ooh, was there a celebration, was Thinkinness World Record official
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: there at the telescope.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: I think that everybody was too stunned, Like this is
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: something just crazy bright, brighter than anything we've ever seen
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: by like a big factor. This is one hundred times
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: brighter than any other gamma ray burst we've ever seen,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: which remember is already like quadrillions of times brighter than
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: the sun.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's incredible. But then do we know how far
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: away this one was? Like maybe it was dimmer than
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: the ones before, it was just closer.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: They think this one might just be closer. They actually
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: have a candidate to where it might have come from,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: which is a galaxy only two and a half billion
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: light years from Earth, and so it might be why
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: it seemed brighter here and it seemed like the jet
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: might be like pointed right at us. That's sort of
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: one theory for why this one was so bright. But
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: you know, we have this telescope orbiting Earth. It's called
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: the Fermi LAT and it's excellent finding gamma rays, really
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: high energy photons. It's kind of like a particle detector
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: in space. So I think it's pretty cool. Like photons
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: enter the telescope and it's not like a telescope like
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Hubble where you have lenses and optics. Instead, it converts
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: the photon into electron and positron then attract those particles,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: so it's sort of like a very high energy particle detector.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: And this thing was totally overwhelmed, Like it was just
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: flooded with higher energy photons than it had ever seen before.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: Wow, Like it maxed out the sensor.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, it saturated that eyeball in space. It was
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: totally overwhelmed, and not just our sensors, like the ionosphere,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: this part of the atmosphere of the Earth. The whole
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: thing swelled up for several hours. This is the kind
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: of thing that happens when like we got a big
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: solar flare, like when the Sun burps out an enormous
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: number of particles towards the Earth at the ionosphere response,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: but this is something that happened like billions of light
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: years away and it still made the Earth like a
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: little swollen and inflamed.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: WHOA, Now, how do we know where it came from?
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: We don't know exactly, but there's sort of a candidate
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: galaxy in that direction to people think maybe it came
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: from there. But you know, this is all very speculative.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: You can't really tell me, like.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: How do we triangulate where it came from?
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, we can measure the direction of these photons, Like
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: for me, lat is a detector, and so we can
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: see the trajectory of the particles that come from the photon.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: So we can reconstruct the direction of these photons.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: What do you mean we can see the direction? How
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: do we do that?
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Well, the photon turns into an electron and positron pair,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: and those carry the momentum of the original photon. And
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: then we have layers of detector. So we have like
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: ten or one hundred layers that detect the motion of
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: the particles that come from the photon, and then we
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: can reconstruct that track and it points back to where
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: it came from.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, I see, it's like a sort of like a cake,
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: you know, like if you stick your finger in a cake,
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: you can sort of trace which direction the finger was poking.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine like a hundred layer cake and you like
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: shoot a bullet through it, and then you'll take slices
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: of that cake and you traced where that bullet hole was.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: You could figure out what direction the bullet came from.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. Just don't eat the bullet.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: I was going to go with a JFK analogy, but
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: I decided to go with cakes.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: GOTFK, We got the boat.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: The mystery gamma ray burst came from the direction of
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: the Texas school Book Depository. It's all a big conspiracy theory.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a cosmic conspiracy theory. All right. So
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: this was detected just last year and who detected it?
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: So it was detected all over the Earth. It was
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: seen by Fermi Laugh which is a big collaboration of
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: scientists from across the world. It was also seen by
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory in China, and
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: then there was a Russian facility that saw it also.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: And this observatory in China is only for very very
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: high energy photons and they only ever seen a few
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: photons very high energy, and this time they saw five
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: thousand photons just from this one gamma ray burst. It's
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: like ten times as many as they've ever seen in
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: the entire history of the entire detector. They saw in
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: this one day. This one period lasted about seven minutes long.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: Wait weaning that it was visible to the naked eye,
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: or you could only see it in gammorrays.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: You could only see it in gammorys. You cannot see
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: gamma rays with the naked eye. They're way too high energy.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: And one of the most interesting and weird things about
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: this gamma raburse if not just the intensity, like the
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: number of photons, but the energy of each individual photon.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: So this thing also set a record as sending the
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: highest energy photon ever seen. This one photon had eighteen
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: terra electron bolts, which is like much more energy than
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: protons have the Large Hadron collider. And yes, it means
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: it's a very very high frequency, very short wavelength. This
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: is the highest energy photon ever seen by a factor
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: of four. So like, this thing is really far out
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: there on the tails.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: We wouldn't it mean that it's really close, right, because
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: then don't photons kind of get stretched out as they
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: go further out in space.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's very weird for a super high energy photon
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: to come from really far away for two reasons. One
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: is you're right, if it's coming from really far away,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: then as the universe expands, those photons get stretched out,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: they get red shifted right, so they get lower energy,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: which means originally had even more energy. The other reason
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: is that the universe is actually not very transparent to
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: super high energy photons. As particles get really really high energy,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: they start to interact with the cosmic microwave background radiation
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: like protons and other cosmic ray particles. If they're super
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: high energy, they'll collide with the photons from the cosmic
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: microwave background the remnants of the Big Bang, and interact
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: and disappear. The same thing is true with super duper
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: high energy photons interact with those photons from the CMB.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: So we shouldn't be able to see photons from really
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: really far away because they should get absorbed by the universe.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: So here we're seeing a super high energy photon from
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: what seems like really really far away. It's very weird.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: So we can trace where the burths came from and
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: when we look in that direction, we see some galaxy
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: where maybe it came from. That's why you think it
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: came from that gux.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: But that's very speculative. It's like, yeah, it's in the
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: same direction in the sky, right, and that's the first
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: thing we see there. That doesn't mean it came from that.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: I could have come from behind that. There could be
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: something else between us and there. All right, we're really
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: limited by our vantage point.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: Like it could be an alien in between us and
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: this galaxy with like a laser pointer that shoots lighting
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: the gama right direction and they're just messing with us.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, it could be or you know, it could
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: be that it just came from something else and it
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: happened to land here on Earth. This one special photon
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: happened to land here on Earth at the same time
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: as this gamma ray burst, right.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: That could have been random, or maybe it's not random.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: What if it's like a phone.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Call, it's like a voicemail. It's like in your hotel
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: room when you ignore that blipp you're like, it's an emoji.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: It's a text message that says you up.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Wow, It's a late night booty call from aliens.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: Hopefully not a booty call ye, hopefully to science call
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: family friendly.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: But you know, there's a lot of really interesting science
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: that could be done with this, because again, people don't
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: understand how a photon with that much energy could travel
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: that far across space. One fun paper I read suggests
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: that maybe it wasn't a photon the whole time. Maybe
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: it converted to this weird theoretical particle called an axion.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: There's this idea that maybe axion particles are the dark matter,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: and they couple a little bit to photons, and so
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: photons can sometimes turn into axions. There's a set of
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: experiments called light shining through walls where people look for
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: photons penetrating stuff that photons shouldn't be able to penetrate
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: by turning briefly or for a while into axions and
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: then converting back into photons when they come near the Earth,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: for example, and hit our magnetic field. So some people
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: argue that this might be evidence that this photon turned
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: into an axion, flew across the universe, and then came
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: back into photon modes so we could see it.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: WHOA, that's a little too convenient, though, isn't it.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: It's just hard to explain that we have no actual
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: explanation for this photon. There is no way we should see.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: It's like an impossible photon. I mean, the most boring
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: explanation for the crazy photon is that it's a mistake
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: that we don't know how to measure the energy of
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: particles with super duper high energy, because remember, we're always
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: reconstructing these things. This is an air shower observatory, which
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: means you're not seeing the original photon. You're seeing the
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: particles that turned into when it's slammed into the atmosphere
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: and created this cascade of particles that are shining and
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: flashing light.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: Meaning it could have been something else, not a photon.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: It could have been something else not a photon, or
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: it could have been something with lower energy. You know,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: the uncertainty on this resolution is significant. We should also
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: say the Russian observatory reported an even higher energy photon
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty terra electron bolts, like more than
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: ten times the energy of this one scene in China.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: But the truth is nobody believes them. They're like, yeah, no,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: you guys messed up.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: Let me get this straight. We don't know what cost
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: this burst. We don't know where it is exactly. We
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: don't even know if it is a burst.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: We know it's a gamma y burst. It was very,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: very intense, but it has a special photons in it
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: that really raise some questions. Maybe we've mismeasured them, or
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: maybe they're evidence of axion, dark matter, or something else happening.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: But there's a lot of uncertainty in these things, and
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: you know, the frustrating thing in astronomy is you can't
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: control these experiments, Like if this was something you were
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: doing in your lab, in your basement, or even if
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: a large hadron collider, so you could say, let's do
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: it again and check. But these are just things we're
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: lucky or unlucky enough to see in the sky and
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: have to wait for it to happen again before we
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: can convince ourselves it's real.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: I wonder then we should maybe retitle the episode, because
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: really we're just talking about the brightest flash we've ever seen.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: We don't even know if it came from an explosion
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: or an alien laser or an alien phone call.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, or space unicorn farts.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, a very focused space unicorn part.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: Maybe they are the aliens woo, I'm unifying the theories.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: That's how they make phone calls to their fart network,
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: in which case it is sort of technically a booty call.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: People are doing a lot of work to try to
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: understand this better. They're trying to see, like was there
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: a jet of material that was emitted. By looking at
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: the spectrum of light that comes in the gamma ray burst,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: they can try to get a sense for like what
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: was in that jet? Was it wide, was it narrow?
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Did they have the kind of material we expect from
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: a collapsing star? What can we learn about the origin star?
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: Maybe there was something weird about the star that collapsed
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: that generated this incredibly bright source of light. And so
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of sort of conflicting studies still about this.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Some people say the jet was really really narrow, that's
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: why I was bright. Another study said no, actually the
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: jet looks like it was wider. But you know, there's
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of questions. This is early days in understanding this.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: But unless we're lucky enough to see a brighter one,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: this is going to be a boat for a while.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: Is it possible also that maybe it was like focus
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: somehow right, because isn't there a sort of lensing out
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: there by dark matter or maybe other things? Could something
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: have lensed this light to make it seem more intense.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: Mm hm, that's certainly a possibility. There's some really cool
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: studies to try to understand how much dark matter there
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: is between us and any point in the sky by
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: looking for evidence of lensing. We don't see lensing evidence
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: in this distribution, but it's certainly possible. We don't have
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: a great map of where the dark matter is in
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: the universe, and you know, that's a fundamental limitation to
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: looking at the universe only from the surface of one planet.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Anytime you get a photon, you don't exactly know where
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: it came from, what happened to it along the way.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: You have to try to untangle all of these mysteries simultaneously, right,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: how much dust is there between us and there? How
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: much dark matter is there? How much is the universe stretching?
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: Is that even? Is that isotropic? Because there are other
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: weird stuff going on simultaneously. We have to try to
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: unravel these mysteries to explain this incredible mosaic we see
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: in the night sky.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: Amazing, but I guess maybe the overall message is that
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: we've seen something that is brighter than what we thought
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: was possible, and it's pretty incredible that we're still doing that, right,
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: We're seeing things we didn't think could exist before.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's stunned astronomers. I mean, astronomers are used
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: to big numbers about the universe, but even this one
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: sort of like you can tell, it rocked them back
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: on their heels. Well.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: Wait, it is shocked, even the bright ones exactly.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: Eric Urns is an astronomer who studies this kind of stuff, said, quote,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: the energy of this thing is so extreme that if
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: you took the entire Sun and you converted all of
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: it into pure energy, it still wouldn't match this event.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: There's just nothing comparable.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, unless you consider farting unicorns in
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: this case, anything's possible. All right. Well, it's an interesting
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: exploration of a new universal or at least local world
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: record of the brightest flash we've seen and its mysteries.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: And one thing we do know is that the universe
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: contains enduring mysteries. And the more we look out there
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: in the universe, the more we understand and the more
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: we are shocked by what's out there?
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the more that we need bright people like
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: maybe you out there to figure out.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Mister he's talking to you, folks, guys, not to me.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: We hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, See
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: you next time.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: For more science and curiosity, come find us on social
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: media where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discorg, Insta,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.