Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / News from the Solar System

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News from the Solar System · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Crystal, I have a question for you. Do you
0:11
Speaker 1: believe in planet number nine? Do you mean the planet
0:14
Speaker 1: that rob Pluto of its real planetary designation? That's right, exactly,
0:20
Speaker 1: Pluto is outseas, But I'm talking about another planet, a
0:24
Speaker 1: planet that might be hiding behind Neptune and Uranus. So
0:29
Speaker 1: just like the hottest new planet on the block. That's right.
0:33
Speaker 1: Every ten years there's something new, something sexy that astronomers
0:36
Speaker 1: want to talk about, something hidden out there. So you
0:38
Speaker 1: can always be replaced by a better idea or a
0:41
Speaker 1: better planet. That's right. No planet is safe. That's cold, man,
0:45
Speaker 1: that's right. But you know there's no room for sentiment
0:47
Speaker 1: out there in the far reaches of the Solar System.
0:49
Speaker 1: It is a cold, cold place out there. Hi. I'm Daniel.
1:10
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist and the co author of the
1:13
Speaker 1: book We Have No Idea, A Guide to the Unknown Universe,
1:16
Speaker 1: with my friend and frequent collaborator, Jorge cham And you're
1:21
Speaker 1: listening to the podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
1:25
Speaker 1: brought to you by I Heart Radio. Jorge is still
1:28
Speaker 1: away for a little while, but don't worry, folks, he'll
1:30
Speaker 1: be back soon. And until then, we have our wonderful
1:34
Speaker 1: guest host, Crystal here with us today. I'm Crystal Dilworth.
1:37
Speaker 1: I'm a neuroscientist by training and a triple A s
1:41
Speaker 1: IF then STEM ambassador, and I'm super excited to do
1:45
Speaker 1: my best to do what Jorge does and help explain
1:48
Speaker 1: the universe. Are you going to be a Jorge simulator?
1:51
Speaker 1: I could try, but I don't have any bananas with me.
1:57
Speaker 1: Maybe offline. I want to hear your best Jorge impression.
2:00
Speaker 1: I could probably do most of his talk. That's hilarious,
2:06
Speaker 1: but a dangerous road, so let's not go down there.
2:08
Speaker 1: But thanks for tuning in, folks. Our podcast is all
2:11
Speaker 1: about the amazing things about the universe, the crazy bonker
2:15
Speaker 1: stuff that we discover when we are trying to understand
2:17
Speaker 1: this universe that we find ourselves in. And often we
2:20
Speaker 1: talk about things super far away, but sometimes we like
2:23
Speaker 1: to talk about things that are happening right in our backyard,
2:26
Speaker 1: things that are happening recently, things that are happening right
2:29
Speaker 1: here at home. Because it turns out there are lots
2:32
Speaker 1: of discoveries to be made and stuff is happening all
2:35
Speaker 1: the time. So if you haven't been keeping up with
2:38
Speaker 1: the latest greatest scientific news stuff that's happening in our
2:42
Speaker 1: Solar system. We're here to break it down for you,
2:45
Speaker 1: breaking science, Well, I don't know. We want to break
2:48
Speaker 1: science or just break the news or maybe break people's minds.
2:52
Speaker 1: I'm on board with that. Sounds good. So today on
2:54
Speaker 1: the episode, folks, we're going to be talking about scientific
3:03
Speaker 1: news of the Solar system? What is out there? Do
3:06
Speaker 1: we really understand what the Solar system is made out of?
3:09
Speaker 1: How can it be possible that we still haven't figured
3:11
Speaker 1: out what's in our own backyard? What's in your backyard? Crystal?
3:15
Speaker 1: There are lots of mysteries hiding out there. There's like
3:18
Speaker 1: a lot of potted plants and bugs, but nothing like
3:23
Speaker 1: new astrological or astronomical phenomenon. Are you sure there are
3:29
Speaker 1: no aliens in your backyard? Can we ever be sure
3:33
Speaker 1: that there are not aliens in our backyard? Crystal admits
3:36
Speaker 1: there might be aliens in her backyard by some definition
3:39
Speaker 1: of alien, by some definition of might. All right, But
3:44
Speaker 1: specifically today we want to dig into some news you
3:47
Speaker 1: might have heard about about a potential extra planet out
3:50
Speaker 1: there at a visitor from another solar system, and new
3:54
Speaker 1: discoveries about one of the familiar planets, Saturn. So before
3:59
Speaker 1: we dig into that, is wondering if people around town
4:02
Speaker 1: had heard about the news of the Solar system, if
4:04
Speaker 1: they were keeping up with the latest breaking information. So
4:07
Speaker 1: I walked around you see, Irvine, and I asked folks
4:10
Speaker 1: if they had heard of some of the latest discoveries.
4:13
Speaker 1: Here's what people that you see Irvine had to say.
4:16
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of planet nine, but I've heard of
4:18
Speaker 1: planet X, which might be the same thing, which is
4:21
Speaker 1: a theoretical planet which nobody has seen, but they've seen
4:27
Speaker 1: potential effects from it, sort of the gravitational disruption on
4:32
Speaker 1: other bodies. I think they believe it has a very
4:36
Speaker 1: large orbit beyond the other eight planets, and probably very
4:40
Speaker 1: elliptical and even possibly on a completely different plane. No,
4:44
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of that. I just know that, like
4:47
Speaker 1: we discovered it, and that there could be potential to
4:50
Speaker 1: be life. So I don't know. That's why we're interested
4:52
Speaker 1: in it. And what about the comment from another Solar
4:54
Speaker 1: system we heard about that guy? I don't think so. No,
4:57
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of that. No, is that Pluto? No
5:01
Speaker 1: that I haven't I don't think I have. No. I
5:04
Speaker 1: think I just read a headline and then that was it. No,
5:07
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of Yes, I'm not aware of what
5:09
Speaker 1: it is, all right, So what do you think of
5:10
Speaker 1: those responses, Crystal, Well, it's kind of shocking that people
5:14
Speaker 1: are still associating with Pluto, although I do get it.
5:17
Speaker 1: Pluto was charismatic, was it? Though? I mean, it's just
5:22
Speaker 1: a cold spec out there. I never really understood why
5:25
Speaker 1: Pluto struck so many heartstrings with people because it was
5:29
Speaker 1: tiny and cute and adorable and lonely. Or is it
5:33
Speaker 1: like the baby planet or is it like the underdog planet,
5:36
Speaker 1: the scrappy little rascal. I think both right, like, depending
5:40
Speaker 1: on which you more identified with. But now we know
5:43
Speaker 1: that Pluto is like not even by itself. But I'm
5:45
Speaker 1: sure we'll get into that. Yes, So you think Pluto
5:47
Speaker 1: has lost some sort of special place in our hearts
5:50
Speaker 1: now that we discovered there's a whole lot of cosmic
5:53
Speaker 1: junk out there in Pluto's orbit. I think that scientists
5:56
Speaker 1: would want us to open our hearts to all of
5:58
Speaker 1: the cosmics junk. That's right. It's all part of our family, right,
6:04
Speaker 1: and we really need to put labels on it. Every
6:06
Speaker 1: rock is just you know, it self identifies as a rock.
6:09
Speaker 1: We don't really care if it's a rock or a
6:10
Speaker 1: dwarf planet or a real planet or an asteroid or whatever.
6:14
Speaker 1: It all deserves love and investigation. That's right. Every object
6:20
Speaker 1: in the Solar System is worthy of our curiosity, perfect right.
6:24
Speaker 1: And on that note, let's dig into some of this news.
6:27
Speaker 1: I was surprised that people hadn't heard more about this
6:29
Speaker 1: interstellar comment, because that blows my mind. That kind of
6:32
Speaker 1: thing really gets me interested in potential news from other
6:36
Speaker 1: parts of the universe and sort of messages from other
6:39
Speaker 1: places that we can't normally access. It's like a special
6:42
Speaker 1: opportunity to learn something. A comma is a messenger from
6:45
Speaker 1: the great beyond. Yeah, sort of, it's coming from a
6:48
Speaker 1: place that we can't normally get to, and so it
6:50
Speaker 1: carries with it some information maybe about where it came from.
6:54
Speaker 1: And so, because we're trapped on this little tiny rock
6:58
Speaker 1: and we can't see most of the univer is very easily,
7:00
Speaker 1: we have to develop every kind of eyeball we can,
7:03
Speaker 1: and mostly we're just looking. So when something actually comes
7:06
Speaker 1: from somewhere else, carrying with it like samples and bits,
7:10
Speaker 1: then wow, that's an incredible opportunity to really see something
7:13
Speaker 1: that otherwise would be totally invisible to us. Okay, I'm
7:15
Speaker 1: way more excited about comments now alright, where you're gonna
7:18
Speaker 1: have to hold your horses because we'll be talking about
7:20
Speaker 1: that at the end of the episode. First, let's dig
7:23
Speaker 1: into planet nine and is most of you know, we
7:26
Speaker 1: have eight planets in our Solar system since Pluto was demoted.
7:31
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've always found amazing is
7:33
Speaker 1: that modern science is only responsible before discovering two of those,
7:37
Speaker 1: Neptune and Uranus. All the planets before that we're basically
7:40
Speaker 1: discovered by ancient civilizations. So from that I must infer
7:44
Speaker 1: it is easy to find a planet. While you're really
7:47
Speaker 1: throwing some shade on those ancient civilizations, you know, no,
7:50
Speaker 1: it is not that hard to find nearby planets. And
7:53
Speaker 1: remember the way that we spot planets is only in
7:55
Speaker 1: their reflected light, because planets don't actually glow. If you're
7:58
Speaker 1: seeing Jupiter or more Us in the sky, you're seeing
8:01
Speaker 1: the reflected sunlight off of those planets. They don't actually
8:04
Speaker 1: emit any light. And so for us to see a
8:07
Speaker 1: planet has to be close enough that that reflected light
8:10
Speaker 1: get to Earth and if it's far enough away from
8:12
Speaker 1: the Sun it doesn't even get much light, not to
8:14
Speaker 1: mention reflected all the way back to Earth. So as
8:17
Speaker 1: the planets get further and further from the Sun, they
8:19
Speaker 1: are harder and harder to spot. So yeah, the ancient
8:22
Speaker 1: civilization sort of found all the easy ones. So which
8:25
Speaker 1: ones did we find? We discovered Neptune and Uranus. And
8:29
Speaker 1: there's a really interesting story there which is sort of
8:31
Speaker 1: going to lead into Planet nine, which is that people
8:34
Speaker 1: found Uranus and you know, they saw it by actually
8:37
Speaker 1: seeing it in the sky, by finding this little dot
8:40
Speaker 1: and tracking its orbit and discovering where it was. But
8:43
Speaker 1: urine is is what gave us a clue that Neptune
8:46
Speaker 1: even existed, because when they found Uranus, when they saw
8:49
Speaker 1: its orbit, it didn't quite make sense. They're like, huh,
8:52
Speaker 1: this doesn't move like a gravitational object. This doesn't move
8:55
Speaker 1: the way you would expect just a rock out there
8:58
Speaker 1: to move. So those ancient scientists that I threw shade
9:02
Speaker 1: on a little bit earlier, we're actually amazing because they
9:06
Speaker 1: were able to predict how those objects should be moving,
9:10
Speaker 1: so we know when we see something abnormal, is that right? Well,
9:12
Speaker 1: the ancient scientists. They could see things moving in the sky,
9:15
Speaker 1: and they deduced that Mars, for example, in Venus were
9:18
Speaker 1: not stars. There were other planets, but it wasn't kntild
9:21
Speaker 1: about the eighteen hundreds that we found Uranus and that
9:24
Speaker 1: we deduced from Uranus is orbit. At that point we
9:27
Speaker 1: had like a solid theory of gravitation, and we could
9:30
Speaker 1: calculate the predictions for how these planets should move. And
9:33
Speaker 1: when we did that, we found that our predictions for
9:36
Speaker 1: Uranus weren't right, Like they just didn't add up. Urinus
9:39
Speaker 1: wasn't moving the way we expected to, and things made
9:43
Speaker 1: a lot more sense if you sort of added one
9:45
Speaker 1: more element, like there's some chaos and Uranus is orbited.
9:48
Speaker 1: It wasn't as simple as they expected, and that's what
9:50
Speaker 1: suggested that there might be something else out there, something
9:53
Speaker 1: tugging on it, something tweaking it, something making it. So
9:56
Speaker 1: it wasn't just moving smoothly and simply so we knew
9:59
Speaker 1: the math was right. So something about the way that
10:02
Speaker 1: we described what we were seeing had to be wrong. Yeah, well,
10:06
Speaker 1: that's a great point. You know, whenever we have a
10:08
Speaker 1: theory and then the data disagrees with the theory, you
10:11
Speaker 1: have two questions. You're like, well, is the theory wrong?
10:14
Speaker 1: And we were pretty sure about the theory of gravitation,
10:17
Speaker 1: so that's not the first thing we're going to go to.
10:19
Speaker 1: But the other option is, well, maybe we're missing some data,
10:22
Speaker 1: Maybe there's some missing element in our theory, maybe there's
10:26
Speaker 1: something asked out that it's not in our model. And
10:28
Speaker 1: when they added the concept of another planet, like, well,
10:31
Speaker 1: what if there's another planet out there, then it made
10:33
Speaker 1: a lot more sense. If they put another planet, Neptune
10:36
Speaker 1: into the model, then the orbit of uriness makes perfect sense.
10:40
Speaker 1: And then they went and looked for Neptune and actually
10:42
Speaker 1: found it. So the cool thing about Neptune is that
10:45
Speaker 1: we suspected it was there from the gravitational hints before
10:49
Speaker 1: we found it. How long between the time when scientists
10:53
Speaker 1: are able to predict that there should be a gravitational
10:56
Speaker 1: mass in an area and the actual concrete servation of
11:01
Speaker 1: that planet or mass, Like, what should we expect that
11:04
Speaker 1: timeline to be? That's a great question. I wish I knew.
11:08
Speaker 1: It depends on a lot of things. That it depends
11:10
Speaker 1: on the size of the planet, the distance from the Sun,
11:13
Speaker 1: and its shining nous. Because the only way to really
11:16
Speaker 1: see it is to see it reflecting life from the Sun,
11:18
Speaker 1: and the further they are from the Sun, the less
11:20
Speaker 1: light they reflect. And it also depends, you know, on
11:23
Speaker 1: the color of the planet and its shining nous. Some
11:25
Speaker 1: planets absorb more light than they reflecting, so they are
11:28
Speaker 1: just harder to spot. I think scientists call this the albedo,
11:31
Speaker 1: which always makes me think of the libido. You know,
11:36
Speaker 1: it's not that exciting, but scientists get excited about different
11:39
Speaker 1: things for different reasons. That's right. You gotta get interested
11:43
Speaker 1: in something about science. And the cool thing is that
11:46
Speaker 1: now we're in the same situation with Urinus and Neptune
11:49
Speaker 1: and also all these little objects he's called sort of
11:52
Speaker 1: trans Neptune objects, a bunch of dwarf planets and weird
11:56
Speaker 1: rocks floating out there in the Solar System, deep deep
11:58
Speaker 1: in the Solar System. Those orbits don't make sense, sort
12:02
Speaker 1: of in the same way that Urin is used to
12:04
Speaker 1: not make sense, and then we found Neptune. Now we're
12:06
Speaker 1: looking at Uranus and Neptune and all these trans Neptune
12:09
Speaker 1: objects and we're thinking, these don't make sense. These are
12:12
Speaker 1: weird orbits for them to have so a piecing the
12:15
Speaker 1: puzzle together. As we go further and further away from
12:18
Speaker 1: the Sun, it gets harder and harder for us to
12:21
Speaker 1: see what we're looking for. Yeah, but the story is
12:23
Speaker 1: the same. We ask, can we explain everything we're seeing
12:27
Speaker 1: in terms of the objects we have? We say, well,
12:29
Speaker 1: would it makes sense if we added another object? And
12:32
Speaker 1: this is really fun because that's a clue. If you
12:36
Speaker 1: build a model and then you're like, Okay, this makes
12:38
Speaker 1: much more sense, and we add this new planet, then
12:41
Speaker 1: you can go look for It gives you something sort
12:42
Speaker 1: of specific to look for, rather than just scanning the
12:45
Speaker 1: sky and wondering if you're going to see something. If
12:48
Speaker 1: you know where to look, you have a much better
12:50
Speaker 1: chance of actually finding it. So what do we know
12:52
Speaker 1: about Planet nine. We don't even know if it exists, right.
12:55
Speaker 1: We know that these trans Neptune objects have weird orbits,
12:59
Speaker 1: like they've clustered around a common plane that's tilted with
13:03
Speaker 1: respect to the Solar System. You know, there's a bunch
13:05
Speaker 1: of these guys with really long orbits and they're all tilted,
13:08
Speaker 1: and that's not the kind of thing you expect, like
13:10
Speaker 1: it can happen. But in order to get a tilt
13:13
Speaker 1: relative to sort the sort of Solar System plane you
13:16
Speaker 1: have to have a collision or be tugged by something else.
13:19
Speaker 1: And they did all these calculations and they found this,
13:21
Speaker 1: like a one in five of our Solar System ending
13:25
Speaker 1: up in this sort of situation without a planet nine.
13:28
Speaker 1: So I wouldn't say they're pretty sure that there's a
13:30
Speaker 1: planet nine, but it seems unlikely that there isn't a
13:33
Speaker 1: planet nine. How do you like that sort of scientific
13:37
Speaker 1: word word jumble there? That was a good hedge. I
13:40
Speaker 1: like that. But before before these calculations for planet nine
13:45
Speaker 1: were made, and before the erratic behavior of these other
13:49
Speaker 1: bodies became so obvious that we couldn't ignore them, the
13:54
Speaker 1: existence of a ninth planet was kind of like relegated
13:59
Speaker 1: to the crazies that wear tin hats and jump around
14:01
Speaker 1: in lightning storms, wasn't it. I'm not a member of
14:05
Speaker 1: that community, so I'm not sure. But you know, people
14:08
Speaker 1: have been wondering about a planet none for a long time,
14:10
Speaker 1: and when Pluto is discovered, some people thought, ah, there
14:13
Speaker 1: it is. This answers the question about Uranus and Neptune's
14:16
Speaker 1: weird orbits and this other stuff. But of course Pluto
14:19
Speaker 1: can't actually explain that because it's too tiny. Pluto is
14:23
Speaker 1: really small. That's why it got downgraded from planet to
14:26
Speaker 1: dwarf planet, so it doesn't actually answer this question. So yeah,
14:29
Speaker 1: I think that this idea of a of another planet
14:32
Speaker 1: out there was a bit of a bit of a
14:33
Speaker 1: crazy theory. But now that we get more information, we
14:36
Speaker 1: have better telescopes to see more of these trans neptune objects,
14:40
Speaker 1: and people have done more careful calculations that I think
14:43
Speaker 1: they're better received. But you tell me, you know some
14:45
Speaker 1: of these researchers, don't you. I do. Yeah. Mike Brown,
14:49
Speaker 1: who was one of the researchers that actually worked to
14:52
Speaker 1: demote Pluto because he found other objects that were just
14:55
Speaker 1: as big or bigger, so Pluto wasn't as exciting anymore.
14:58
Speaker 1: And Constantine Patigue in who the theorists who helped do
15:01
Speaker 1: those calculations, are both from my institution, Caltech, So I
15:06
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to talk to them when they had
15:09
Speaker 1: first made this prediction, and they kind of knew people
15:13
Speaker 1: were going to think they were crazy, but they are crazy,
15:16
Speaker 1: just not in a scientific way. So they were very
15:19
Speaker 1: happy to be making this outrageous statement knowing that they
15:22
Speaker 1: could back it up with math Um, and they are
15:26
Speaker 1: very excited about the idea of observing what they've predicted.
15:30
Speaker 1: But in Constantine's predictions, the mass is like five thousand
15:36
Speaker 1: times the size of Pluto, So they're looking for something
15:38
Speaker 1: that's really significantly large. That's right, Pluto cannot explain this
15:43
Speaker 1: weird stuff they're seeing out there. And let me just
15:46
Speaker 1: say that I'm so jealous of those guys because it's
15:48
Speaker 1: sort of a scientific fantasy to find evidence for something
15:52
Speaker 1: that seems bonkers. Because you know, we know the universe
15:55
Speaker 1: is bonkers, we know it has surprises waiting for us.
15:58
Speaker 1: But you can't just make stuff up. You have to
16:01
Speaker 1: discover it. And so to be in that situation where
16:03
Speaker 1: you the data are telling you something fascinating and new
16:06
Speaker 1: that you know most of the community is gonna have
16:08
Speaker 1: a hard time accepting that, honestly seems like a lot
16:11
Speaker 1: of fun to me. Yeah, these two guys, they really
16:13
Speaker 1: enjoy shaking things up. Yeah, but you asked earlier, like,
16:18
Speaker 1: what do we know about planet nine? Well, again, we
16:20
Speaker 1: don't know that it exists. But the hypothesis, like sort
16:23
Speaker 1: of the theory that would explain these orbits more simply
16:27
Speaker 1: is that it's orbiting really far out there. It's like
16:30
Speaker 1: four hundred to eight hundred times the radius of Earth's orbit,
16:34
Speaker 1: so really deep in space, and that far out in space,
16:37
Speaker 1: it would take like ten thousand or twenty thousand years
16:41
Speaker 1: just to go around the Sun one time. That is
16:43
Speaker 1: a really really long time to wait to get data
16:45
Speaker 1: for your PhD. I'm just saying, it's also a really
16:48
Speaker 1: long time to have a birthday. I mean, you're born
16:50
Speaker 1: on planet nine and like your ten Earth years have
16:54
Speaker 1: passed before your first birthday. Wow. And then also it's
16:56
Speaker 1: going to make it really hard for us to see right,
16:58
Speaker 1: and like coming from like the people's perspective, the neuroscience perspective,
17:02
Speaker 1: like the visual system is our primary system. That's how
17:06
Speaker 1: we feel that we really know what's going on. So
17:09
Speaker 1: until scientists can really put eyes on this planet, is
17:13
Speaker 1: it going to be something that's accepted by the community.
17:16
Speaker 1: Do you think No? I think you're totally right. It's
17:18
Speaker 1: like a murder, you need a body, you know it's Uh,
17:21
Speaker 1: until you've seen it directly, you're not sure that it exists.
17:24
Speaker 1: I totally agree. Otherwise it's sort of circumstantial or indirect
17:27
Speaker 1: evidence it's the same deal. In particle physics, we suspected
17:31
Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson was there. We had a lot of
17:33
Speaker 1: clues about where it might be and how it might work.
17:36
Speaker 1: All the other information pointed to it, but until we
17:39
Speaker 1: actually saw it, until we created it and and saw
17:41
Speaker 1: it in the lab, we didn't even believe it existed.
17:44
Speaker 1: And I think in the same way, this is a
17:46
Speaker 1: great idea. But until they actually spotted, they see light
17:49
Speaker 1: reflected off of it, they see its motion and complaud
17:52
Speaker 1: its orbit, I don't think it would be accepted as
17:54
Speaker 1: a real thing. So I understand the thrill of discovery.
17:59
Speaker 1: I understand how addictive and amazing it can be when
18:03
Speaker 1: you make a prediction based on the things that you
18:06
Speaker 1: think you know about the universe, and that prediction is true.
18:10
Speaker 1: But once we and I'm going to be optimistic, care
18:12
Speaker 1: once we see evidence of planet nine, what is that
18:18
Speaker 1: going to tell us other than it's there. Well, your
18:21
Speaker 1: friends are gonna throw a big party and say we
18:23
Speaker 1: told you so, we told you so, which is probably
18:26
Speaker 1: gonna be really satisfying. But it also it's every piece
18:29
Speaker 1: of information we get about the nature of the Solar
18:31
Speaker 1: System gives us a clue about how it formed because
18:34
Speaker 1: it rules out a bunch of stories. You know, scientists
18:37
Speaker 1: work in the framework of stories. I think a lot
18:39
Speaker 1: of people think of science is like super objective, But
18:41
Speaker 1: in the end, we're telling a story. We're trying to
18:43
Speaker 1: explain the universe. We're trying to say, this is what
18:45
Speaker 1: happened this and then that and the other thing. And
18:48
Speaker 1: right now we have lots of different ideas about how
18:50
Speaker 1: the Solar system might have formed, and the more data
18:53
Speaker 1: we get, the more we can rule some of those
18:54
Speaker 1: out because they're inconsistent with that data. So the more
18:58
Speaker 1: we know about the Solar System, especially out in the
19:00
Speaker 1: far reaches, the more we can get a sense for
19:02
Speaker 1: how things came together. And that's of course important and interesting,
19:06
Speaker 1: not just because we want to know, like what is
19:08
Speaker 1: the context of our existence? How is our solar system formed?
19:11
Speaker 1: But we want to know if our solar solar system
19:13
Speaker 1: is unusual, if other solar systems might have formed this way,
19:16
Speaker 1: if there are other planets like this out there. And
19:19
Speaker 1: so I think this touches on a lot of really
19:22
Speaker 1: deep and broad scientific questions. So does planet nine have
19:27
Speaker 1: to be a planet or could it be something else?
19:30
Speaker 1: With like a huge mass. You put your finger right
19:32
Speaker 1: on the question there, because what we know about Planet nine,
19:36
Speaker 1: if it exists, comes just from its gravitational interactions. We
19:39
Speaker 1: can speculate about how much mass it has and how
19:41
Speaker 1: it's moving and how that is tugging on those other objects,
19:45
Speaker 1: but you're right, that doesn't tell us what its nature is.
19:47
Speaker 1: Is it a ball of rock. A ball of rock
19:49
Speaker 1: or a ball of ice, for example, that have the
19:51
Speaker 1: same mass would have the same exact gravitational effects, and
19:56
Speaker 1: even something crazy like a black hole. We talked down
20:00
Speaker 1: on the podcast once about what would happen if the
20:02
Speaker 1: Sun became a black hole. I think a lot of
20:04
Speaker 1: people were surprised to learn that a black hole has
20:07
Speaker 1: the same gravitational force as a star of the same mass,
20:11
Speaker 1: And so if you've fixed the mass of the object,
20:13
Speaker 1: it really could be anything um and have the same
20:16
Speaker 1: gravitational effects. So we won't know until we see it.
20:20
Speaker 1: We won't know until we see it. And there's been
20:22
Speaker 1: some press recently about the possibility that planet nine might
20:25
Speaker 1: be a black hole, which is exciting because it seems
20:28
Speaker 1: cool and wow, it would be kind of awesome now
20:30
Speaker 1: have a black hole so nearby that we could study Um,
20:33
Speaker 1: there's not a whole lot of specific evidence pointing in
20:36
Speaker 1: that direction. Um. But the cool thing is that if
20:39
Speaker 1: it is a black hole, there are some things we
20:41
Speaker 1: can look for if a black hole. If it was there,
20:44
Speaker 1: would probably have a big blob of dark matter surrounding it,
20:48
Speaker 1: and we could look for dark matter smashing into itself
20:50
Speaker 1: and giving us gamma rays, and a black hole if
20:54
Speaker 1: it's there again, because it's denser than a planet or
20:57
Speaker 1: something else, might give us some gravitational lensing. And actually,
21:01
Speaker 1: in some data there are a few signs of sort
21:04
Speaker 1: of unexpected micro lensing, like weird distortions of the background
21:08
Speaker 1: galaxies that would be consistent with the passing of black hole.
21:11
Speaker 1: But they're not really conclusive, so it's more than like
21:15
Speaker 1: fun speculation at this point. But yeah, it's totally possible
21:18
Speaker 1: that planet nine is not a ball of rock with
21:20
Speaker 1: water on it, but a tiny black hole left over
21:23
Speaker 1: from the creation of the universe. I feel a little
21:26
Speaker 1: uneasy about like a casual black hole in the backyard
21:30
Speaker 1: of our Solar system. For all you know, you have
21:34
Speaker 1: a black hole in your backyard. It doesn't sound like
21:36
Speaker 1: you have a really good inventory what's out there. Yeah,
21:39
Speaker 1: I'm not a big gardener. No, you're right, a black
21:42
Speaker 1: hole does us. It sounds awesome. It also sounds a
21:44
Speaker 1: little scary. But this black hole, if it exists, is
21:48
Speaker 1: orbiting really far out there and probably very stable, and
21:51
Speaker 1: so it's unlikely to come anywhere near the Earth. But yeah,
21:54
Speaker 1: it's if it's there, it would certainly be the closest
21:57
Speaker 1: black hole to the Earth. And then you have to
21:59
Speaker 1: one or like, what if he got tweaked out of
22:02
Speaker 1: its orbit and plunged in towards the Sun. Actually, just
22:05
Speaker 1: read an amazing science fiction novel just that topic. Yeah,
22:09
Speaker 1: I was gonna say that sounds like a movie that
22:11
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I want to see. No, it's
22:14
Speaker 1: a great science fiction novel by one of my favorite authors,
22:16
Speaker 1: Greg Egan, and he talks about what would happen if
22:18
Speaker 1: a black hole passed near the Earth but didn't gobble it,
22:22
Speaker 1: and it has crazy effects on the tides and all
22:24
Speaker 1: sorts of other cool stuff. Anyway, we don't know if
22:27
Speaker 1: Planet Night is there. If it's there, we don't know
22:29
Speaker 1: if it's the black hole or another planet. We don't
22:32
Speaker 1: even know what we would call it. Right if we
22:34
Speaker 1: actually discover it, we can't call it planet nine. What
22:37
Speaker 1: do you think we should call it Crystal? I don't.
22:40
Speaker 1: All I know is that scientists are historically, I'm gonna say,
22:44
Speaker 1: bad at naming things. I mean, there's like a ligand
22:48
Speaker 1: pro to mic receptor pair in my field, which is
22:51
Speaker 1: like sonic and hedgehog. Clearly, these people were Saga fans
22:56
Speaker 1: and they couldn't think of anything on their own. So
22:58
Speaker 1: I'm saying, let's not let them name this planet. If
23:01
Speaker 1: it's Discovery, we should get all of our listeners to
23:03
Speaker 1: come together and come up with a good name. I
23:05
Speaker 1: do a little survey, and I think people are calling
23:07
Speaker 1: it planet nine. Some scientists call it planet X, some
23:11
Speaker 1: scientists are calling it George, and other ones are even
23:14
Speaker 1: calling it Fatty. So I think you're right. The scientists
23:17
Speaker 1: need a lot of help in its regard George George.
23:21
Speaker 1: It's like I know, I think that shows some people
23:24
Speaker 1: sort of generic bias for objects. They need Jrees help on,
23:28
Speaker 1: like something that's really catchy and informative. We have a
23:31
Speaker 1: long list of things to talk to Core about when
23:33
Speaker 1: he returns, but I'll put that on the top of
23:35
Speaker 1: the list. So do we have to look that far
23:37
Speaker 1: out for things that we don't know about our Solar system,
23:40
Speaker 1: or are we still learning about stuff that's closer to us.
23:43
Speaker 1: There's a huge amount to learn about stuff that's even
23:45
Speaker 1: closer than the far far depths of the Solar System.
23:49
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that, but first let's take a short break.
24:05
Speaker 1: All right, we're back and we're talking about news of
24:08
Speaker 1: the Solar system, crazy discoveries, things that we're learning just
24:11
Speaker 1: recently in the last weeks and months about our own
24:14
Speaker 1: cosmic backyard, and Krystal, you were saying, are there things
24:17
Speaker 1: we're learning that are closer to home than the far
24:20
Speaker 1: reaches a space past Pluto, And in fact there are
24:23
Speaker 1: people have probably learned recently in the Science news that
24:26
Speaker 1: Saturn has been upgraded. It is now the moon king
24:30
Speaker 1: of the Solar system because it now has eighty two moons,
24:33
Speaker 1: so it's beating Jupiter Stuper that are the second place
24:37
Speaker 1: moon owner. That's right, as far as we know. You know,
24:40
Speaker 1: we can't say we know all the moons that are
24:42
Speaker 1: out there, because we keep finding more as we look
24:44
Speaker 1: more carefully and build new instruments. But so far Saturn
24:48
Speaker 1: has the most moons of the Solar System, and I
24:50
Speaker 1: don't know if that's a point of pride among planets,
24:52
Speaker 1: or they just don't care how many moons the Saturn have.
24:55
Speaker 1: Saturn now has eighty two moons. That's a lot. It's
24:59
Speaker 1: a lot of things. It is the name. Also, I
25:00
Speaker 1: don't even know the names of all these objects. But
25:02
Speaker 1: you know scientists are gonna be arguing about things the
25:04
Speaker 1: way scientists usually argue about things. Then this is gonna
25:07
Speaker 1: be a long conversation about how to name all these moons.
25:10
Speaker 1: Are just gonna have a lot of moons named after
25:12
Speaker 1: scientists or scientists dogs or family members or stuff like that.
25:18
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Sounds reasonable. But actually you can contribute. You
25:22
Speaker 1: listener can participate because there's a contest out there to
25:25
Speaker 1: name these moons. So if you have an idea for
25:28
Speaker 1: how to name the new moons of Saturn, you should
25:31
Speaker 1: throw your ideas into the hat. Save the scientists from
25:34
Speaker 1: themselves come up with a good name. That's right. We
25:38
Speaker 1: are crowdsourcing the hardest part of solar system science, which
25:41
Speaker 1: is naming all the new stuff they find. So usually
25:43
Speaker 1: when scientists are finding something new, that means there's been
25:46
Speaker 1: some type of technological advance that's allowing them to see
25:50
Speaker 1: things that they couldn't see before, or detect things that
25:53
Speaker 1: they previously couldn't detect. Is that true here? Yeah, And
25:55
Speaker 1: it's also sometimes just a question of scientific resources. Sometimes
25:59
Speaker 1: we have the divice is it's just been sort of
26:01
Speaker 1: pointed somewhere else, and so here people were interested in
26:04
Speaker 1: questions about the formation of the Solar System, so they
26:07
Speaker 1: wrote these proposals to dedicate telescope time to look specifically
26:11
Speaker 1: for these for moons around Saturn. Moons are sort of
26:14
Speaker 1: further out than the other moons. These moons are really
26:17
Speaker 1: far away from Saturn. They're like in very distant orbits.
26:21
Speaker 1: So the scientific machine finally got around to thinking this
26:25
Speaker 1: was important. That's right exactly, or the scientists who think
26:29
Speaker 1: this is important finally got the attention they deserve. And
26:33
Speaker 1: you know, all these moons they're not like really big objects.
26:36
Speaker 1: If you're looking up in the night sky and you
26:37
Speaker 1: see our moon and you think that that's typical, remember
26:40
Speaker 1: that our moon is huge compared to most of the
26:42
Speaker 1: moons in the Solar System. These moons are like rocks
26:46
Speaker 1: three miles wide, and some of them take like three
26:49
Speaker 1: years to go around Saturn. So it really is just
26:51
Speaker 1: more like a careful catalog of all the stuff around Saturn,
26:55
Speaker 1: whether you call it a moon, whether you call it
26:57
Speaker 1: a rock. Like we were saying before, we love it all.
27:00
Speaker 1: So where do these smaller moons come from? Like how
27:02
Speaker 1: do they end up orbiting these these larger planets. Yeah,
27:06
Speaker 1: that's a great question you might wonder, like why are
27:09
Speaker 1: their moons at all? Why don't objects just coalesce into planets?
27:13
Speaker 1: And one reason is that these planets have very strong
27:17
Speaker 1: gravitational fields, and those gravitational fields provide tidal forces. If
27:21
Speaker 1: you're big enough, then there's a difference between the gravitational
27:24
Speaker 1: tug on the side of you that's close to the planet,
27:27
Speaker 1: then the gravitational tug that's on the side of you
27:30
Speaker 1: that's far from the planet. If you're large enough for
27:32
Speaker 1: that to have a big effect, that means because there's
27:35
Speaker 1: a difference in the gravitational force from one side to
27:37
Speaker 1: the other side, that essentially the planet is pulling you
27:40
Speaker 1: apart because it's tugging on one part more than the
27:42
Speaker 1: other part. And so if you're around a big enough
27:45
Speaker 1: planet and you're in sort of the right gravitational zone,
27:48
Speaker 1: the planet will tear you up. It will shred you
27:51
Speaker 1: and so that's why you don't have all the stuff
27:54
Speaker 1: around Saturn just coalesced into one big moon. That's why,
27:58
Speaker 1: for example, Saturn has rings, we think because is the
28:00
Speaker 1: tidal forces are too great for those rings to coalesce
28:04
Speaker 1: into moons. So Saturn's so big that it's gravitational force
28:09
Speaker 1: is doing crazy things to what's around it. Basically, this
28:13
Speaker 1: is my technical interpretation. I heard shredding, I heard a
28:16
Speaker 1: lot of other things like so crazy things. No, you're
28:18
Speaker 1: totally right. And it also gives us a bit of
28:20
Speaker 1: a window into the timeline of Saturn because some of
28:24
Speaker 1: this stuff, if he had been around since the beginning
28:26
Speaker 1: of the Solar system, probably would have found a way
28:29
Speaker 1: to get into a stable place that it might have
28:31
Speaker 1: been able to coalesce into a moon. Like for example,
28:34
Speaker 1: we don't know how long Saturn's rings have been around,
28:37
Speaker 1: and we don't know how long they will be around.
28:40
Speaker 1: It might be that another hundred million years or billion
28:42
Speaker 1: years they will eventually coalesced into an object um that
28:46
Speaker 1: Saturn's tidal forces won't pull apart. And so if we
28:49
Speaker 1: look at where these moons are, we don't think these
28:52
Speaker 1: moons could have been around for very long because if so,
28:56
Speaker 1: they would have been slowed by all sorts of gas
28:58
Speaker 1: and dust that surrounds Saturn, and they would have slowed
29:01
Speaker 1: them down and they would have been sort of dragged
29:03
Speaker 1: down into lower orbits. So by understanding sort of where
29:07
Speaker 1: the moons are, the close by ones and the far
29:08
Speaker 1: away ones, it gives us a window into the time frame,
29:12
Speaker 1: like how long this happening and what's the sort of
29:14
Speaker 1: dynamics Saturn looked the same way since the beginning of
29:17
Speaker 1: the Solar system, or the new features that aliens from
29:21
Speaker 1: a billion years ago wouldn't recognize if they came and
29:23
Speaker 1: visited today. Yeah, So I learned a long time ago
29:26
Speaker 1: that when different types of scientists used time to always
29:30
Speaker 1: ask what scale we're talking about. So when an astrophysicist
29:34
Speaker 1: says these moons haven't been around for very long weeks,
29:40
Speaker 1: they don't mean months, they mean hundreds of millions of years.
29:44
Speaker 1: They mean the time scale of the Solar System, which is,
29:47
Speaker 1: you know, four and a half billion years. So they're
29:49
Speaker 1: way old, but yet young for the universe. Yeah, exactly.
29:53
Speaker 1: They are probably hundreds of millions of years old, which
29:57
Speaker 1: is pretty young compared to Saturday itself and other things.
30:00
Speaker 1: In the Solar system, So why does it matter to
30:02
Speaker 1: us how many moons Saturn has? No? I think, um,
30:06
Speaker 1: some people out there might be excited every time we
30:08
Speaker 1: discover a moon because it's sort of a new element
30:11
Speaker 1: in the Solar system. People like like discovery, like finding
30:15
Speaker 1: things in their backyard. Um, that never really gets it
30:18
Speaker 1: for me, because I feel like, you know, we know
30:19
Speaker 1: there's rocks out there. Doesn't really matter how many rocks
30:22
Speaker 1: there are, but it does help us scientifically, it doesn't
30:25
Speaker 1: really give us a clue as to how things happened.
30:28
Speaker 1: Like we were saying before, there's a story by the
30:30
Speaker 1: formation of Saturn, and now some of those stories don't
30:33
Speaker 1: make sense anymore because they're inconsistent with finding these moons
30:37
Speaker 1: out there this far away. And so the more data
30:40
Speaker 1: we get, the more we can narrow it down and
30:41
Speaker 1: find the one true story of our solar system. And hey,
30:44
Speaker 1: who doesn't want to know the story of the origin
30:47
Speaker 1: of our solar system? Right? I think all of us
30:49
Speaker 1: are interested in where we came from and how we
30:52
Speaker 1: came to be, and the beginning of the Solar system
30:55
Speaker 1: is like going as far back as we could possibly
31:00
Speaker 1: we could possibly think. But you said that like everybody
31:02
Speaker 1: knows there's rocks out there, Like, yeah, planets are just rocks,
31:05
Speaker 1: are not They're not that interesting. But I heard some
31:07
Speaker 1: deep passionate excitement about comments. So tell me why comments,
31:13
Speaker 1: and about this one in particular. Yeah, let's do that.
31:15
Speaker 1: Let's talk about comments and comments from other solar systems.
31:18
Speaker 1: But first let's take another break. So we're back, and
31:34
Speaker 1: we're talking about exciting stuff that's been discovered in our
31:37
Speaker 1: solar system pretty recently. So we are updating you on
31:40
Speaker 1: news of our solar system. And one of the most
31:43
Speaker 1: interesting things to happen in our solar system in the
31:45
Speaker 1: last few years was that we got a visitor. Our
31:48
Speaker 1: solar system is a little island in the middle of
31:51
Speaker 1: an enormous empty ocean of space. The next solar system
31:54
Speaker 1: over is light years and light years away. What that
31:58
Speaker 1: means is that we don't expect a lot of messages
32:00
Speaker 1: is from all our solar system to the other, or
32:02
Speaker 1: from other solar systems to us. We expect to basically
32:05
Speaker 1: be isolated. It should it should be very very rarely
32:08
Speaker 1: that something gets tossed out of our solar system and
32:11
Speaker 1: actually happens to land in another one. It's like if
32:14
Speaker 1: there are two basketball hoops on the Earth, one here
32:17
Speaker 1: and one on the other side of the Earth, and
32:19
Speaker 1: you lost your basketball and ended up somehow drifting all
32:22
Speaker 1: the way around the Earth and making a slam dunk
32:25
Speaker 1: in the other basketball highly improbable. But those of you
32:30
Speaker 1: who have listened to our podcasts know that in we
32:34
Speaker 1: did get a visitor from another solar system. It's called Omuamua,
32:38
Speaker 1: and it was really weird. It was long, it was thin,
32:41
Speaker 1: it was shiny. It seemed to accelerate as it left
32:45
Speaker 1: the Solar system. Those you interested in that, go check
32:48
Speaker 1: out our whole podcast on it. But these days most
32:51
Speaker 1: people think it probably was a comet, a comet from
32:54
Speaker 1: another solar system, so that when we say interstellar, that's
32:58
Speaker 1: what we mean. Yeah, into selling means from another star.
33:02
Speaker 1: Because stars are big and they're exciting and they're bright,
33:04
Speaker 1: but they are not very dense. You can fly through
33:07
Speaker 1: a whole galaxy and not encounter any stars because they
33:10
Speaker 1: are light years and light years apart. And that's why
33:13
Speaker 1: we thought it was very unusual for things from one
33:16
Speaker 1: solar system to end up in another one. And we
33:19
Speaker 1: talked about the Solar system in terms of the planets,
33:21
Speaker 1: and these objects that are sort of in the far
33:23
Speaker 1: reaches of the solar system. But there's stuff in our
33:26
Speaker 1: solar system that's even further away. This is thing we
33:29
Speaker 1: call the art cloud, which is basically a huge collection
33:33
Speaker 1: of balls of ice, and that's where comments in our
33:36
Speaker 1: solar system come from. They get nudged and they fall
33:39
Speaker 1: in towards the star, and they accelerate on their journey
33:42
Speaker 1: towards the center of the solar system, whizz around and
33:44
Speaker 1: go all the way back those where our comments come from.
33:47
Speaker 1: The ideas maybe sometimes one of those objects in the
33:50
Speaker 1: war cloud gets nudged. Instead of falling in, it sort
33:52
Speaker 1: of falls out. And so that would be like us
33:54
Speaker 1: sending a message. That would be us sending a message.
33:57
Speaker 1: And it's a message in the sense that it tells
33:59
Speaker 1: you some thing about our solar system. That Commet has
34:02
Speaker 1: in it a particular mix of ice and rocks and
34:06
Speaker 1: and other trace elements to tell you about the blob
34:09
Speaker 1: that formed our solar system, that huge you know, nebula
34:13
Speaker 1: of gas and dust and stuff that made our solar system.
34:16
Speaker 1: But because we're trapped on this one island, we never
34:19
Speaker 1: know is what we're looking at. Typical or unusual. That's
34:23
Speaker 1: the frustration with having an equals one, with only having
34:26
Speaker 1: a single example and trying to generalize to the whole universe,
34:29
Speaker 1: because of course, what we want to do is understand
34:32
Speaker 1: the whole universe. So if we can get comments from
34:35
Speaker 1: other solar systems and study them, then we can figure out, like, hey,
34:39
Speaker 1: does that commet look like ours or is it totally
34:42
Speaker 1: weird in comparison? So how often do we have the
34:45
Speaker 1: privilege of encountering an interstellar object. It's super duper rare. Oh,
34:51
Speaker 1: Mua Mua was the first one ever found, and they
34:55
Speaker 1: found it, as you said, because they turned on a
34:57
Speaker 1: new kind of telescope, a telescope that could see this
34:59
Speaker 1: kind that thing. Now, the amazing thing about that was
35:02
Speaker 1: when they turned it on, they really had no idea
35:04
Speaker 1: how often they would expect to see things, but they
35:07
Speaker 1: expected it would be really rare. And then just days
35:10
Speaker 1: or weeks after they turned it on, they saw Omama.
35:13
Speaker 1: In fact, they saw it as it was leaving the
35:15
Speaker 1: solar system, so we only got this sort of trailing
35:18
Speaker 1: glimpse as it accelerated out of our field of view,
35:21
Speaker 1: and we got less and less information. Now they've been
35:24
Speaker 1: watching the skies and they found a second one, So
35:26
Speaker 1: not as rare as we thought, then, yes, and that's exciting.
35:29
Speaker 1: It's also sort of surprising. If we're getting comments from
35:33
Speaker 1: other solar systems fairly regularly, like every couple of years,
35:37
Speaker 1: that means that it can't be very unusual for these
35:39
Speaker 1: rocks to get knocked out of solar systems and end
35:42
Speaker 1: up in other solar systems. Because you know they're so
35:44
Speaker 1: far apart, it seems really unlikely. So for a couple
35:47
Speaker 1: to end up here means it must be happening all
35:50
Speaker 1: the time. So this interstellar object, this comment that we
35:54
Speaker 1: saw coming in, do we know where it came from?
35:58
Speaker 1: So this one we don't yet know where it came from,
36:01
Speaker 1: but this is very recent. We've only got a few
36:03
Speaker 1: snapshots of it, and to figure out where it came
36:05
Speaker 1: from we need to sort of track it and understand
36:08
Speaker 1: the direction it's moving in. But this one is a
36:11
Speaker 1: very clearly an icy blob, and it has a tail.
36:14
Speaker 1: It's got this sort of halo as as stuff melts
36:17
Speaker 1: off of it, and that makes it harder to know
36:19
Speaker 1: its exact location, and that makes it hard to pinpoint
36:22
Speaker 1: its exact trajectory. Um So We don't know exactly where
36:25
Speaker 1: it came from, but we can see very clearly that
36:27
Speaker 1: its trajectory is not consistent with anything that's orbiting the Sun. Right.
36:31
Speaker 1: That's how we know that something is an interstellar object,
36:34
Speaker 1: that it just doesn't look like it's moving in an
36:37
Speaker 1: orbit around the Sun. And this one, in particular, if
36:39
Speaker 1: you if you take the plane of the Solar system
36:42
Speaker 1: sort of the palm of your hand, this one is
36:43
Speaker 1: shooting like straight down into the palm of your hand.
36:47
Speaker 1: It's very clearly coming from somewhere else. We don't know
36:49
Speaker 1: exactly where yet. We love to like point back to
36:52
Speaker 1: the Solar System it came from, but there's a lot
36:54
Speaker 1: of uncertainty still. Yeah, you know, it's like sort of
36:57
Speaker 1: conjures up these images of being able to chip and
37:00
Speaker 1: ask it all the scientific questions do you want to ask,
37:03
Speaker 1: like what's in your ice? And what are your rocks
37:06
Speaker 1: made out of? Yes, and we're already doing that. The
37:08
Speaker 1: lucky thing about this one is that we're catching it
37:10
Speaker 1: on the way in which means it's getting closer and closer,
37:13
Speaker 1: and we can prepare and we can prepare for that
37:16
Speaker 1: moment when it comes closest to Earth. Just gives us
37:19
Speaker 1: our best chance to understand it. And we can't like
37:22
Speaker 1: launch a spaceship and go visit it. We don't have
37:24
Speaker 1: the time or the expertise to do that. But we
37:26
Speaker 1: can study it just by looking at the light that
37:28
Speaker 1: reflects off of it. That tells us about you know,
37:31
Speaker 1: what is the atomic makeup? Does it have this kind
37:33
Speaker 1: of gas and that kind of gas. We talked on
37:35
Speaker 1: this podcast a few weeks ago about how different kinds
37:38
Speaker 1: of gas shine different kinds of lights. Just like if
37:41
Speaker 1: you put weird stuff in a Bunsen burner will turn
37:43
Speaker 1: green or purple. We can look at the colors of
37:46
Speaker 1: lights coming from this thing and get a sense for
37:48
Speaker 1: what's in it, and as he gets closer and closer,
37:50
Speaker 1: we get better and better measurements. So yeah, it's gonna
37:53
Speaker 1: be visiting and we're gonna be asking it a lot
37:54
Speaker 1: of questions. So we're not just figuring out things that
37:57
Speaker 1: are happening in our own solar system, but like the
38:00
Speaker 1: our reaches of what we have known about before, but
38:02
Speaker 1: we're also learning new things that are coming to us
38:05
Speaker 1: from other stars, other solar systems. Yeah, of course, and
38:09
Speaker 1: my fantasy is that one day one of these things
38:11
Speaker 1: will not just be a comment. It will be some
38:14
Speaker 1: alienship and the physicists from that solar system will have
38:16
Speaker 1: arrived to solve all these problems and answer all of
38:20
Speaker 1: our deep questions about the nature of the universe. I've
38:23
Speaker 1: seen that movie. It doesn't end well, I know, but
38:27
Speaker 1: there's always a moment of satisfaction when they have learned
38:30
Speaker 1: some deep secrets about the universe before the aliens eat everybody.
38:33
Speaker 1: And that's the moment. I'm living for, the moment of
38:36
Speaker 1: discovery before complete and utter destruction. That's right. I will
38:41
Speaker 1: sacrifice the future of humanity just for a fleeting glimpse
38:44
Speaker 1: at the secrets of the universe. Do you think that
38:46
Speaker 1: when the aliens that are going to come and share
38:49
Speaker 1: their physics with us before eventually just showing us all,
38:52
Speaker 1: do you think they'll have that moment of looking down
38:55
Speaker 1: on us the way that we look up at comments
38:58
Speaker 1: and thinking, wow, the versus pretty amazing and pretty beautiful.
39:02
Speaker 1: I hope so. I hope that being a super intelligent
39:05
Speaker 1: alien that travels the universe comes with moments of grandiose
39:09
Speaker 1: wonder at the at all, at this beautiful universe that
39:12
Speaker 1: we find ourselves in. I certainly hope so. Well. I
39:15
Speaker 1: will continue to read the news looking for well evidence
39:19
Speaker 1: of planet nine and also contact with an alien species. Well,
39:23
Speaker 1: I think that's a good idea, and keep your ears
39:26
Speaker 1: tuned from more Solar System news because that interstellar comment
39:29
Speaker 1: is coming and it will be here. The closest approach
39:32
Speaker 1: to the Earth will be on December seven, So we
39:35
Speaker 1: hope to learn something. Maybe it's a comment, maybe it's
39:38
Speaker 1: hiding an alien spaceship. We don't know. You know, listeners know,
39:41
Speaker 1: of course, the solution we're hoping for. So until we
39:45
Speaker 1: learn more secrets about the nature of our Solar system
39:48
Speaker 1: or get clues from other Solar systems, we're here to
39:51
Speaker 1: break down today's news for you. Thanks everybody for tuning in,
39:54
Speaker 1: and thank you Crystal for joining us again on the podcast.
39:57
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me tune in next time for more
39:59
Speaker 1: crazy the amazing, mind blowing facts about our universe. Thanks
40:03
Speaker 1: for listening. Before you still have a question after listening
40:14
Speaker 1: to all these explanations, please to drop us the line.
40:16
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
40:19
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's
40:22
Speaker 1: one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
40:26
Speaker 1: Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel
40:29
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explaining the Universe is a production of I
40:32
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