Latest / Made of Stars / When You See the Southern Cross for the First Time

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When You See the Southern Cross for the First Time · Made of Stars

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Speaker 1: Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
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Speaker 1: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
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Speaker 1: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
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Speaker 1: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
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Speaker 1: that's your own risk.
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Speaker 2: Go ahead.
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Speaker 3: When made of stars, made them stars, madies. When made
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Speaker 3: of stars, you could be from high they would New Mexicomus.
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Speaker 3: Where are stars?
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Speaker 2: When we are made of stars?
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Speaker 4: I'm West Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean,
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Speaker 4: cruising from Columbus State Universe These Coca Cola Space Science Center.
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Speaker 4: Hey Sean, Hey Wes, good to see you. It's good
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Speaker 4: to be back stateside doing this. We did the last
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Speaker 4: one across the planet, which is kind of appropriate every
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Speaker 4: now and then. You know, it's a technology has made
1:17
Speaker 4: the world a much smaller place, and we talk about
1:20
Speaker 4: that from time to time on the show. But it
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Speaker 4: was really good to be able to do at least
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Speaker 4: one show while I was in Australia, and the other
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Speaker 4: shows we had recorded ahead of time, as is necessary
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Speaker 4: sometimes when we're doing this so we can keep the
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Speaker 4: content coming. But I got a few little experiences to
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Speaker 4: share as we start, because for folks that haven't followed
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Speaker 4: the Great Adventures of the Carroll family trip to Australia,
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Speaker 4: part of which, by the way, was to do some
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Speaker 4: exploratory work on a possible made of Stars broadcast and
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Speaker 4: some other fun stuff in twenty twenty nine when there
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Speaker 4: is going to be totality of an eclipse up in
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Speaker 4: the Kimberly region in the northwestern part of Australia, which
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Speaker 4: happens to be very close to where Jill was born,
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Speaker 4: which is really cool, So some exploratory work on that.
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Speaker 4: So if the taxman's listening, at least part of the
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Speaker 4: trip was for that. The flight parts of it were
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Speaker 4: definitely for that. And then while I was there on
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Speaker 4: our vacation as a family were there for four weeks
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Speaker 4: and some of the really cool things that I can
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Speaker 4: share that I got to experience there with my in
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Speaker 4: laws and family, one dragging them all outside to watch
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Speaker 4: the International Space Station go overhead a couple of times.
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Speaker 4: They were like one of them, at least I think
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Speaker 4: my sister in law was like, I've seen it go
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Speaker 4: by before, but I didn't really know what it was,
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Speaker 4: and she's like, I thought maybe it was a satellite
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Speaker 4: and that's what it was. That's the exact thing that
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Speaker 4: I've seen go overhead before. And I was like, well,
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Speaker 4: there you go, now you know what it is. We
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Speaker 4: did that twice. The third night when we're gonna get
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Speaker 4: the best chance to see it. There were a lot
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Speaker 4: of clouds. I think I saw it for like maybe
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Speaker 4: like a second, just between a little gap in the clouds.
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Speaker 4: But I will not forget being able to introduce that
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Speaker 4: to them and to our listeners that have heard us
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Speaker 4: talk about that experience. There's apps that'll tell you where
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Speaker 4: you can when you can see it. It knows you
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Speaker 4: know geographically where you are. It'll tell you the best
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Speaker 4: times to see it, the best days to see it,
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Speaker 4: where in the sky to look for it, and you
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Speaker 4: can just watch it go overhead. If it's a clear
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Speaker 4: sky that night, you get a great chance to see it.
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Speaker 4: I've had some nights where it was making a perfect
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Speaker 4: pass and I got to watch it like horizon to horizon,
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Speaker 4: and it's just fun to see.
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Speaker 5: And fun to experience. And being able to do that.
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Speaker 4: So in introducing that to them and watching them all
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Speaker 4: download the apps right there in front of me, so
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Speaker 4: they could do it later. And then there was a
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Speaker 4: night I sent you a photo Shan, because we were
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Speaker 4: the boys and I were on this little playground that
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Speaker 4: was a little park near where my father and mother
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Speaker 4: in law live, and this playground had like a sort
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Speaker 4: of a net type thing made for kids to climb
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Speaker 4: on it, and the boys and I just got on
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Speaker 4: that and we were just lying down in this giant
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Speaker 4: net thing and just looking at the sky, looking at
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Speaker 4: you know, constellations that you can't see in the Northern hemisphere,
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Speaker 4: being able to introduce them to things, and of course
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Speaker 4: most notably the Southern Cross which is on the Australian flag,
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Speaker 4: and being able to go there it is, guys, And
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Speaker 4: we've been other times but never really had the opportunity
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Speaker 4: to have a really good sky to see it in.
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Speaker 4: And I sent you a photo of it, and I
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Speaker 4: was like, man, this is a night I will not forget,
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Speaker 4: just having this moment with them, just in a cool
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Speaker 4: evening because it's winter there, but it's not especially cold.
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Speaker 4: It was a good cool evening to lie outside and
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Speaker 4: stare at the sky and just you know, chat and
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Speaker 4: make observations about life and all the things that you
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Speaker 4: do when you stare at this guy and we were
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Speaker 4: doing all those things. So I had to share that
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Speaker 4: photo with you and that experience with you when I
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Speaker 4: did it, and again, not a moment that I will
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Speaker 4: ever forget in my life.
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Speaker 6: Yeah, those are great experiences to inspire, you know, either
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Speaker 6: your kids to want to learn more about science or
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Speaker 6: you know, actually for somebody to go into astronomy or astrophysics.
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Speaker 5: Those were the kinds of.
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Speaker 6: Experiences that I had as a younger person that really
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Speaker 6: inspired me to pursue astronomy as a career. And and
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Speaker 6: you know, I love sharing those kinds of things with
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Speaker 6: that next generation. So it's it's one of the things
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Speaker 6: that we do a lot here at Space Science Center.
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Speaker 6: We encourage people to have those kinds of experiences and
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Speaker 6: help try to provide them. I'm glad you got to
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Speaker 6: share those memories with your own boys, because that's just
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Speaker 6: great stuff and great memories to latch onto. And you know, say, hey,
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Speaker 6: remember that time we were with dad out there looking
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Speaker 6: at the old Southern Cross, Right, that's a cool shared experience.
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Speaker 4: And you know it's the uh, just that moment of
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Speaker 4: being able to point it out to him, to explain
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Speaker 4: some of the things about it that I've learned over
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Speaker 4: the years. And obviously you're looking at a different sky.
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Speaker 4: Some things or universal, but some things are very different
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Speaker 4: in the Southern Hemisphere, so kind of running through constellations
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Speaker 4: and things with them, and it was like, all right,
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Speaker 4: so this is me pretending to being the poor man
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Speaker 4: Sean for my in laws and my kids while we
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Speaker 4: were down there, but being able to share that with
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Speaker 4: them was just great.
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Speaker 6: Well, that's cool. I'm glad that you and I share
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Speaker 6: this common enthusiasm for space, and it's one of the
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Speaker 6: reasons for this podcast and probably anybody who's listening to
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Speaker 6: it knows exactly what we mean.
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Speaker 4: I think, so yep, and I don't think that's an
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Speaker 4: absurd thing, and we probably have a lot of new
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Speaker 4: Australian listeners, even some airline staff and things. I always
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Speaker 4: like when I'm on those really long flights to point
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Speaker 4: out to the people that are doing the really long
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Speaker 4: flights and I'm like, hell, how long have you been
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Speaker 4: doing this long fight?
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Speaker 5: And they're like, oh, you know, I've been doing it
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Speaker 5: for like five years.
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Speaker 4: And it's like, so you do this, you know, fifteen
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Speaker 4: hour flight a couple of times a week for all
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Speaker 4: these years and they're like yes, and I'm like, you know,
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Speaker 4: technically you're aging more slowly than everybody down on the planet.
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Speaker 4: Just it's very subtle, but you're you're you're earning some
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Speaker 4: extra time. And they're like what, and I start explaining
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Speaker 4: and they're like, oh wow, and I'm like, no, no, don't.
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Speaker 2: It's not much, but it's just a little bit.
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Speaker 4: And they're like really, and I'm like yeah, and I'm
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Speaker 4: like and if you listen to Nata Stars you can
7:29
Speaker 4: learn all these fun things. So you know, they're like, oh,
7:34
Speaker 4: I never really thought about that, and it's like, yeah,
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Speaker 4: you're also going to expose to more radiation, so congratulations.
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Speaker 6: Yeah you're gonna you know, your time's running more slowly,
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Speaker 6: but you're gonna have less of it.
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Speaker 2: So that's right.
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Speaker 6: So just keep all that in mind, so you know,
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Speaker 6: you win some, you lose some. It's it's all. What's
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Speaker 6: remarkable about that. We actually have a story about that
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Speaker 6: later on in the show today that actually relates to
7:59
Speaker 6: a story we have.
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Speaker 4: To well, well we will get to that coming up
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Speaker 4: in just a little bit.
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Speaker 2: Let's first of all, start.
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Speaker 4: The AX four crew has now returned to Earth, so's
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Speaker 4: that's a good place to start.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it is.
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Speaker 6: And you know, if you're gonna go all the way
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Speaker 6: to the space station, you're probably gonna get even just
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Speaker 6: a little bit more of that radiation than you would
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Speaker 6: catch on a flight to Australia or something. But true,
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Speaker 6: it probably is worth it to the people who go, right,
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Speaker 6: I mean, I would think it would be worth it
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Speaker 6: to pick up a little extra space radiation to see
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Speaker 6: the Earth from orbit. So that's certainly what the AX
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Speaker 6: four crew just got to be experiencing. If you don't
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Speaker 6: know what AX four is, that's the Axiom Space their
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Speaker 6: fourth commercial crew flight, all commercial crew, and they went
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Speaker 6: to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX capsule. They returned.
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Speaker 6: That's the big headline right now is they returned just
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Speaker 6: a few days ago, July the fifteenth, and they were
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Speaker 6: wrapping up nearly three weeks. So they had a pretty
9:01
Speaker 6: good trip for a private astronaut crew, pretty good service
9:05
Speaker 6: time up on the International Space Station. While they were
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Speaker 6: up there, they did all manner of experiments, everything from
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Speaker 6: Earth observation to biology and just life sciences and how
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Speaker 6: our bodies accommodate to that space environment. Lots of really
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Speaker 6: cool things. They did over sixty studies in total that
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Speaker 6: AX four crew. So that's a really amazing feat right there,
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Speaker 6: is that they had sixty scientific studies that they carried
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Speaker 6: out in that three weeks of time up there. The
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Speaker 6: commander of that mission, now not the commander of the
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Speaker 6: actual space station, but the commander of the AX four
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Speaker 6: mission was Peggy Whitson, legend of the American space program,
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Speaker 6: former NASA astronaut, currently Axiom's director of Human Spaceflight, and
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Speaker 6: she extended her cumulative days in space record for American
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Speaker 6: astronauts to six one hundred and ninety five. She is
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Speaker 6: the American astronaut with the most most cumulative time and
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Speaker 6: space six hundred and ninety five days, which is substantial, right. So,
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Speaker 6: so talk about you know, being up there where you
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Speaker 6: might be experiencing a little extra radiation. Peggy might be
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Speaker 6: glowing in the dark just a little bit. But other
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Speaker 6: than that, she's a really cool person and she has
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Speaker 6: six almost seven hundred days in space.
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Speaker 4: It's one of those things, like you said, it's worth
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Speaker 4: it because of the experience with it. Obviously, she wouldn't
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Speaker 4: continue to go back if she was too concerned about
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Speaker 4: the radiation, but I mean, you know, almost seven hundred
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Speaker 4: days in space age and more slowly, so that's good too.
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Speaker 6: Indeed, little general relativity on her side, that's probably you know,
10:48
Speaker 6: extending her somewhat. So the other three astronauts aboard the
10:52
Speaker 6: AX four mission were all from countries who've never sent
10:57
Speaker 6: anyone to the International Space Station before. These were all
11:00
Speaker 6: first time ISS flyers from their respective countries. And by
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Speaker 6: the way, these were the first first time space flyers
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Speaker 6: as well, right, so they themselves had never been to
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Speaker 6: space before. So Schubhan Shu Shukla from the Indian Space
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Speaker 6: Research Organization was the pilot of the vehicle, and that's
11:21
Speaker 6: a designated position. It's kind of like copilot on an aircraft.
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Speaker 6: So the commander is really the pilot and the pilot's
11:27
Speaker 6: really the co pilot. It kind of works that way.
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Speaker 6: So that is an important person on that flight. First
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Speaker 6: Indian space astronaut spaceflight participant to go up to the
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Speaker 6: International Space Station, Slaslow Uznanski was now ski you could
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Speaker 6: say that again, I'm just I can't. I'm just glad
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Speaker 6: I got by at the one time. It's from the
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Speaker 6: European Space Agency, but Slaslow is from Poland, the first
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Speaker 6: person from Poland to go up to the International Space Station.
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Speaker 6: He's a European space agent astronaut. And then t Bor
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Speaker 6: Capou from the Hungarian Space Office, So Tibor Capoo from Hungary,
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Speaker 6: an astronaut from Poland astronaut from India. All three first
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Speaker 6: time the countries just listed were represented at the International
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Speaker 6: Space Station, all thanks to Axiom and the ax four crew.
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Speaker 5: Good stuff.
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Speaker 4: Let's talk about the fiftieth anniversary. We just had this
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Speaker 4: of or it's today as we're recording, right, Today's the
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Speaker 4: anniversary fifty years of the Apollo Soyu's mission. I was
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Speaker 4: reading in the other story, I saw the date of
12:40
Speaker 4: them starting to come home on July fifteenth, and I
12:42
Speaker 4: mixed the two stories up. So today is the actual
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Speaker 4: fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo Soyu's test project.
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Speaker 6: An extremely important project. We kind of think of the
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Speaker 6: Apollo missions as ending at the Moon, right, the last
12:58
Speaker 6: Apollo flight Apollo seventeen to go to the Moon. But
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Speaker 6: that for that, you know, that ignores the Apollo Soyuz program.
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Speaker 6: So we used some of our same Moon hardware to
13:10
Speaker 6: actually perform joint space projects in low Earth orbit with
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Speaker 6: the Russians. So think about that, we had just had
13:19
Speaker 6: the Moon Race, you know, less than five years since
13:23
Speaker 6: the Moon Race was completed, where we were racing the
13:26
Speaker 6: Russians to the Moon, and there's a lot of you know,
13:30
Speaker 6: it sounds friendly now, but it was anything but friendly
13:33
Speaker 6: at the time. There was a lot of international intrigue,
13:36
Speaker 6: a lot of overtones from the Cold War, a lot
13:39
Speaker 6: of undertones of nuclear missiles being aimed at one another.
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Speaker 6: And during the midst of all of that, the two
13:48
Speaker 6: countries scientists and space explorers actually had a cooperation in
13:52
Speaker 6: space where they had what was called the Apollo Soyuzed
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Speaker 6: Test Project or ASTP, and that that project was being
14:02
Speaker 6: able to construct the spacecraft and common docking components where
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Speaker 6: you could actually link up a Russian spaceship, a soy Use,
14:11
Speaker 6: with an Apollo spacecraft in orbit. And so that first
14:17
Speaker 6: ever mission in the Apollo Soyused Test Project occurred on
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Speaker 6: July seventeenth, nineteen seventy five, as Wes mentioned, fifty years
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Speaker 6: ago today as we're recording this podcast. And the thing
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Speaker 6: is that was the very first moment of a cooperation
14:35
Speaker 6: and collaboration that has now led to the International Space Station.
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Speaker 6: So the fact that those astronauts from all those other
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Speaker 6: nations just mentioned in the previous story got to go
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Speaker 6: up to something called the International Space Station.
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Speaker 2: And hang out.
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Speaker 6: All began with a handshake between two spacecraft from politically
14:55
Speaker 6: very opposed countries back at nineteen seventy five. So on
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Speaker 6: the Russian side, the guy that actually opened the hatch
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Speaker 6: once the two spacecraft were docked is a very famous person.
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Speaker 6: His name is Alexei Leonov, and Alexei Leonov was the
15:12
Speaker 6: first human being to ever perform a spacewalk from the
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Speaker 6: Russian Space Agency. And he said very good to see
15:19
Speaker 6: you in English through the hatchway. And then on the
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Speaker 6: American side, US Commander Tom Stafford spoke in Russian and
15:31
Speaker 6: said very happy, my friend, which sounds just mildly grammatically incorrect,
15:38
Speaker 6: but that's what he said. And you know, the legend
15:41
Speaker 6: is that what Tom Stafford spoke was not exactly Russian.
15:46
Speaker 6: It's what he referred to as oklahom Ski, a special
15:50
Speaker 6: language for those people from Oklahoma who have learned to
15:54
Speaker 6: speak Russian so that they can participate in joint space flights.
15:58
Speaker 6: Oklahom Ski. In his unique version of oklahoma Ski, Tom
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Speaker 6: Stafford who's a Paulo aspronaut himself. He's actually been on
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Speaker 6: trips to the a trip to the moon himself. With
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Speaker 6: a heavy Oklahoma drawl in Russian, said very happy, my friend,
16:14
Speaker 6: and that began the collaboration, which then led to a handshake,
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Speaker 6: starting the collaboration between the American space program the Russian
16:22
Speaker 6: space program that have led to many important joint ventures,
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Speaker 6: including and especially the International Space Station.
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Speaker 4: A huge anniversary and a big step. For any anniversary
16:36
Speaker 4: that ends with a zero or five is usually of
16:39
Speaker 4: some significance. Fifty is a big one. It's always a
16:42
Speaker 4: big one. When it's fifty, it's an important one. You know,
16:44
Speaker 4: it's an important can't forget it.
16:46
Speaker 6: And then also it's really important to not underestimate how
16:51
Speaker 6: much the space program may have tamped down certain aspects
16:57
Speaker 6: of the Cold War that could have been catastrophic. Right,
17:00
Speaker 6: So it's you really can't underestimate this or understate this
17:05
Speaker 6: in terms of its importance in global geopolitical history. And
17:10
Speaker 6: you know why we didn't have a hot war with
17:12
Speaker 6: the Russians, that it stayed cold and didn't advance, might
17:17
Speaker 6: in part have been because of these kinds of collaborations.
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Speaker 4: Coming up after a quick break, we'll talk about a
17:25
Speaker 4: different anniversary because it's a twenty five, not a fifty.
17:30
Speaker 4: We'll get to that right after this. So when we
17:55
Speaker 4: talk about potential solar activity and possible effects of solar
18:02
Speaker 4: activity on communications on Earth and things that could happen.
18:05
Speaker 4: Whenever there's a very severe, very powerful storm that takes place,
18:09
Speaker 4: sometimes we talk about it and just say, hey, this
18:12
Speaker 4: is possibly happening. There need to be some precautions or
18:15
Speaker 4: be aware of it. We've had times where we've talked
18:17
Speaker 4: about them, and there have been some issues with outages
18:21
Speaker 4: with things. Sometimes it's really just a caution and nothing
18:24
Speaker 4: really happens and we can be thankful for it. We're
18:26
Speaker 4: not quite predicting severe weather and then the kids go
18:29
Speaker 4: home from school and everybody gets mad when there's no
18:31
Speaker 4: severe weather. It's not that, but it is one of
18:34
Speaker 4: those things where we have to remind people from time
18:36
Speaker 4: to time there have been severe events because of solar storms,
18:41
Speaker 4: and twenty five years ago, on July fourteenth, there was
18:45
Speaker 4: a very significant one.
18:47
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is a significant storm for a variety of reasons.
18:51
Speaker 6: So back in the year two thousand, we were approaching
18:55
Speaker 6: a solar maximum at that time twenty five years ago
18:58
Speaker 6: on July fourteenth. You might know, July fourteenth is an
19:02
Speaker 6: important date in history of the country of France because
19:05
Speaker 6: that's what they refer to as Best Steal Day, and
19:08
Speaker 6: it's nothing to lose your head about, but it's something
19:10
Speaker 6: that you want to just keep in mind. Anyway, that's
19:12
Speaker 6: a terrible joke. So the notion is that on that
19:15
Speaker 6: very famous day in history in the year two thousand,
19:19
Speaker 6: the Sun contributed something that was well worth noting anyway,
19:23
Speaker 6: which is an extremely powerful solar flare. So this extremely
19:28
Speaker 6: powerful solar flare happened to occur from a sunspot group
19:32
Speaker 6: that was directly facing the Earth. It was not a
19:36
Speaker 6: glancing blow, it was not a side shot. It was
19:39
Speaker 6: directly at planet Earth. And okay, so that's bad. The
19:45
Speaker 6: we measure the intensity of these solar outbursts by a
19:51
Speaker 6: scale that we have for the intensity of X rays
19:55
Speaker 6: that come from them, and so we have a class B,
19:59
Speaker 6: class C CL class. All of those are a logarithmic
20:03
Speaker 6: scale and X ray intensity. Then it jumps to M
20:06
Speaker 6: class because apparently somebody forgot the alphabet, and then it
20:09
Speaker 6: jumps to X class, which means really bad. So a
20:14
Speaker 6: class B, class C, class M, class X class. So
20:20
Speaker 6: on this show you've probably heard us talk about a
20:22
Speaker 6: variety of X class solar flares. We get them from
20:25
Speaker 6: time to time during times like now, which is in
20:28
Speaker 6: the midst of solar maximum. On the scale of X
20:31
Speaker 6: class solar flares, the Bastile event back in two thousand
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Speaker 6: was only an X five point seven, And I say only,
20:40
Speaker 6: that's an incredibly powerful solar flare. But I say only
20:45
Speaker 6: because there's a lot more powerful solar of flares that
20:50
Speaker 6: can occur around solar max in terms of the X
20:53
Speaker 6: ray output. Right, So X five point seven, yes, powerful.
20:58
Speaker 6: But we we have discussed the Carrington event on this show,
21:02
Speaker 6: which would have been in the twenties within the X class.
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Speaker 6: And remember that's a logarithmic scale, so those are powers
21:09
Speaker 6: of ten as it goes up. So compared to that flare,
21:13
Speaker 6: this particular flare on Bastiele day of the year two
21:15
Speaker 6: thousand was not that strong. Well wait a minute, though,
21:19
Speaker 6: There's another effect that can happen, friends, and that's just
21:23
Speaker 6: how much particle radiation a storm like this can throw
21:27
Speaker 6: out into space. So there's the X rays, which are
21:30
Speaker 6: a form of light and that's how we rate these
21:33
Speaker 6: flares on that scale I was just describing. But then
21:36
Speaker 6: there's also the particles, the amount and speed at which
21:41
Speaker 6: these particles are tossed off. And there was a gigantic
21:47
Speaker 6: amount of particle radiation associated with the Bastiel Day flare
21:51
Speaker 6: of the year two thousand. It left the Sun and
21:57
Speaker 6: was traveling at something like six one hundred kilometers per
22:01
Speaker 6: second by the time it reached the edge of the
22:06
Speaker 6: Solar System. Now that's not at the Sun at the Earth. Rather,
22:11
Speaker 6: that's at the edge of the Solar System where the
22:14
Speaker 6: Voyager one and Voyager two spacecraft that were launched in
22:19
Speaker 6: the seventies. Remember we're talking about an event in the
22:21
Speaker 6: year two thousand. The shockwave finally caught up with those
22:25
Speaker 6: Voyager vehicles. One hundred and eighty days after the explosion,
22:31
Speaker 6: it caught up with Voyager two, and then two hundred
22:34
Speaker 6: and forty five days after the original explosion it caught
22:38
Speaker 6: up with Voyager one, and even that long after the
22:43
Speaker 6: event actually took place. The debris fields, the scattering coronal
22:49
Speaker 6: mass ejection from this gigantic flare, we're still traveling at
22:53
Speaker 6: six hundred kilometers per second. Nine billion kilometers away from
22:58
Speaker 6: the Sun, they were still so powerful that those waves
23:01
Speaker 6: of particles cleared out all of the intergalactic cosmic ray particles.
23:08
Speaker 6: It just just swept the entire Solar System of those
23:12
Speaker 6: kinds of particles. And it turns out those two Voyager
23:15
Speaker 6: spacecraft both had sensors which measured the cosmic ray particle interactions,
23:21
Speaker 6: and so these two spacecraft just said, oh wow, we
23:25
Speaker 6: had a giant dip in cosmic radiation almost almost a year,
23:30
Speaker 6: you know, the better part of a year after the
23:32
Speaker 6: actual event took place. It's crazy to think. So what
23:38
Speaker 6: happened on If it was that intense at the outer
23:42
Speaker 6: reaches of the Solar System, what happened here on Earth, Well,
23:46
Speaker 6: we had a geomagnetic storm, and we have another scale.
23:50
Speaker 6: It goes from one to nine, one being very mild
23:54
Speaker 6: geomagnetic storm, nine being the most intense geomagnetic storm that
23:59
Speaker 6: you can have. And on July fifteenth and sixteenth, the
24:03
Speaker 6: coronal mass ejection that was led off by the Bastile
24:06
Speaker 6: Day event on the Sun, gigantic solar flare that by
24:10
Speaker 6: the time it reached the Earth, traveling at fifteen hundred
24:13
Speaker 6: kilometers per second, those solar wind particles were so strong
24:18
Speaker 6: that it caused a nine on what we call the
24:21
Speaker 6: KP scale, or the intensity of the Earth's geomagnetic storm,
24:26
Speaker 6: was a nine out of nine. Bright auroras were visible
24:31
Speaker 6: as far south as Texas, Florida, and even down into Mexico,
24:35
Speaker 6: even lasting into July sixteenth, which is two days after
24:39
Speaker 6: the original explosion took place. The intensity of that flare,
24:45
Speaker 6: in terms of the energy of those particles it ejected,
24:48
Speaker 6: was equivalent to one thousand billion World War II era
24:53
Speaker 6: atomic bombs. So you think, you know Hirotia Nagasaki, that
24:58
Speaker 6: level of atomic weapon, you would have to have one
25:02
Speaker 6: thousand billion, not one hundred billion, a thousand billion of
25:07
Speaker 6: those bombs to equate to the energy of the beast
25:11
Speaker 6: deal of Bestial Day event, which is why we are
25:14
Speaker 6: still talking about it twenty five years later.
25:19
Speaker 4: And if you were on a plane at that time,
25:22
Speaker 4: you would have been definitely, even though aging more slowly,
25:25
Speaker 4: exposed to.
25:28
Speaker 5: What double the radiation.
25:30
Speaker 6: Yeah, so every time you're on a high altitude flight, friends,
25:33
Speaker 6: you're exposed to some level of radiation from the Sun.
25:38
Speaker 6: You would have doubled your dose had you been on
25:42
Speaker 6: a high altitude aircraft on July fifteenth, twenty or I
25:48
Speaker 6: should say two thousand of the year two thousand, so
25:51
Speaker 6: so and maybe you were sorry. That's just just the
25:55
Speaker 6: way nature works sometimes. I mean, in that flow you
25:59
Speaker 6: were in path. Had you been airborne on July fifteenth
26:02
Speaker 6: in the year two.
26:03
Speaker 4: Thousand, yeah, and if you were on a really long flight,
26:06
Speaker 4: it would have been a lot of it for that
26:08
Speaker 4: whole time that you were in the air. So I
26:10
Speaker 4: can comfortably say at that point, looking back, I was not.
26:14
Speaker 4: I was not personally and Jill was already here as
26:18
Speaker 4: of earlier in that year, so we weren't on any
26:21
Speaker 4: planes at that point.
26:22
Speaker 5: So that's good, good.
26:24
Speaker 6: Well, one last thing about the Bastilla Day event. It's
26:27
Speaker 6: important to know that we had not had a solar
26:29
Speaker 6: flare this strong in the space age, and so the
26:34
Speaker 6: interesting thing about that Bastilla Day event, it's one of
26:37
Speaker 6: the best. It's one of the first best studied major
26:42
Speaker 6: interactions between the coronal mass ejection from a solar storm
26:46
Speaker 6: and the Earth. And that's because we had instruments in
26:50
Speaker 6: orbit like the Solar and hel helio Spheric Observatory Solar
26:55
Speaker 6: and Helospheric Observatory, we know it better as SOHO. So
26:58
Speaker 6: that SOHO was in orbit. We had spacecraft up there
27:01
Speaker 6: that could monitor the intensity and level of the charge
27:05
Speaker 6: particles coming in from the Sun, and it was the
27:06
Speaker 6: first time any kind of really intense solar flare was
27:11
Speaker 6: well studied from orbit, from space rather than just from
27:15
Speaker 6: the ground. So that's another really important thing about the
27:17
Speaker 6: Bastie Day event of the year two thousand.
27:20
Speaker 4: Let's take one more quick break when we come back,
27:22
Speaker 4: a new surprise compliments of NASA's Dart mission. It keeps
27:26
Speaker 4: on given. We'll talk next, all right, we love the
27:46
Speaker 4: Dart mission. We're big fans of the Dart mission. We've
27:49
Speaker 4: talked many times about our experiences while the Dart mission
27:52
Speaker 4: was taking place and watching it live, and we've got
27:58
Speaker 4: some new information. This is a about the third or
28:00
Speaker 4: fourth time we've had new information complements of the Dart mission.
28:06
Speaker 6: So the Dart Mission, as you say, just keeps on giving.
28:09
Speaker 6: And remember right now, there are two very small European
28:13
Speaker 6: spacecraft on their way out from the European Space Agency,
28:17
Speaker 6: on their way out to these asteroids to revisit them
28:20
Speaker 6: to get an even better look at the havoc and
28:24
Speaker 6: debris caused by slamming a spacecraft into an asteroid. So
28:29
Speaker 6: we're really trying to study these effects on this asteroid
28:32
Speaker 6: for the purpose of planetary defense. So it's actually a
28:35
Speaker 6: very important set of studies. We need to know all
28:39
Speaker 6: the ins and outs about what would happen if we
28:42
Speaker 6: try to deflect an incoming asteroid with various means, including
28:47
Speaker 6: a space collision. So this is a collision of a
28:50
Speaker 6: spaceship with an asteroid, all right. So that was the
28:53
Speaker 6: NASA DART mission, or we we shorten that to DART.
28:56
Speaker 6: It's the double Asteroid Redirect Redirection test. That's how you
29:00
Speaker 6: get the strained acronym of dark, all right. So the
29:03
Speaker 6: DART mission, launched in November twenty twenty one, slammed into
29:09
Speaker 6: this little tiny asteroid named Dimorphous, which was actually a
29:12
Speaker 6: moon asteroid of another asteroid known as Didymus. It slammed
29:18
Speaker 6: into Dimorphous on September twenty sixth, in the year twenty
29:22
Speaker 6: twenty two. Dimorphous, Well, the effects on that little asteroid
29:28
Speaker 6: from the collision have been surprising, and it was even
29:31
Speaker 6: surprising from you know, sort of the day of collision,
29:35
Speaker 6: because the very earliest observations showed a massive debris field
29:41
Speaker 6: that was ejected off of that asteroid. And so even
29:45
Speaker 6: just say the day later, the participating scientists and science
29:49
Speaker 6: teams knew they had caused far more of an effect
29:52
Speaker 6: on that asteroid than we thought. It turns out the
29:55
Speaker 6: asteroids structure was a little bit different than what we thought.
29:58
Speaker 6: We learned that from the collision from the after debris
30:01
Speaker 6: in the sense that it was kind of a rubble
30:03
Speaker 6: pile and less like a one single big rock and
30:07
Speaker 6: more like a collection of small rocks held together by gravity,
30:11
Speaker 6: kind of like a ballpit. Think of it that way, right,
30:14
Speaker 6: And so you jump in the ballpit and you just
30:15
Speaker 6: knock all the balls out. And so the interesting thing though,
30:19
Speaker 6: is in the latest study, in a new analysis by
30:23
Speaker 6: a team from the University of Maryland, they have found
30:27
Speaker 6: that there was some strange components to the debris field.
30:32
Speaker 6: So they're studying these huge boulders that flew off that
30:35
Speaker 6: asteroid during the collision. And I say huge anywhere from
30:39
Speaker 6: three feet to twenty three feet in diameter. So twenty
30:43
Speaker 6: three foot boulder is a big, heavy rock, right. They
30:47
Speaker 6: have found that at least a few of these rocks
30:51
Speaker 6: are flying off of the asteroid dimorphous with more momentous
31:01
Speaker 6: then the spaceship had when it hit the asteroid in
31:04
Speaker 6: the first place. Now, we have this thing in physics
31:09
Speaker 6: called the conservation of momentum, and so if it's just
31:13
Speaker 6: a if it's just one rock running into another rock,
31:17
Speaker 6: the second rock can't leave with more momentum than the
31:21
Speaker 6: first rock had when it hit it. That violates the
31:24
Speaker 6: conservation of momentum. So how do we get around the
31:28
Speaker 6: conservation of momentum being violated in this collision. Well it's
31:34
Speaker 6: not easy. But what happened was that the entire asteroid
31:39
Speaker 6: dimorphous changed its orbit in such a way that it
31:44
Speaker 6: actually has less orbital momentum, and that momentum was transferred
31:51
Speaker 6: to some of the very large boulders that were ejected
31:55
Speaker 6: off the asteroid. So already that's weird, right. You have
32:00
Speaker 6: particles after the collision flying away with more momentum than
32:05
Speaker 6: the impactor had on its way in in the first place.
32:08
Speaker 6: Yet to have some strange physics, I mean, it's possible,
32:11
Speaker 6: but it's some unlikely physics to get that to happen. Now,
32:15
Speaker 6: let me tell you an experience I had on the
32:16
Speaker 6: golf course once Wes. I was hitting a T shot.
32:20
Speaker 6: I had just walked across a bridge to go to
32:24
Speaker 6: the tea box. The bridge led to the cart path.
32:27
Speaker 6: That bridge was at a perfect ninety degree angle from
32:31
Speaker 6: the direction of the fairway. I wind up, I swing
32:36
Speaker 6: my driver and the golf ball comes off at an angle.
32:42
Speaker 6: That rolled that golf ball over the bridge that I
32:46
Speaker 6: walked over on, which was a perfect ninety degree angle
32:50
Speaker 6: from the fairway. And my friend who I was golfing
32:53
Speaker 6: with that day said these words to me, I think
32:55
Speaker 6: you just violated physics, which you know, there's another story
33:02
Speaker 6: in there altogether. But the reason I'm telling you that
33:05
Speaker 6: with the Dart mission is because the boulders that were
33:08
Speaker 6: flying away with more momentum than the spacecraft had in
33:11
Speaker 6: the first place, were also flying off at a ninety
33:15
Speaker 6: degree angle from the direction of the impact, which is weird, Right,
33:23
Speaker 6: How does that happen? You could see them flying off
33:27
Speaker 6: in the same line that the spacecraft hit the asteroid with, right,
33:31
Speaker 6: But why would they fly off at ninety degrees? The
33:36
Speaker 6: answer is it's complicated, and so you have to consider
33:41
Speaker 6: the spin rotation of the asteroid, the deflection direction of
33:45
Speaker 6: the asteroid, the angle in which the spacecraft hit the
33:49
Speaker 6: larger asteroid and then all of those momentum transfers happened.
33:53
Speaker 6: It's not an easy thing to account for. And the
33:56
Speaker 6: most important message from this team at the Universe to
34:00
Speaker 6: Maryland is, Hey, if we're going to hit asteroids the
34:05
Speaker 6: size of the Great Pyramid in Giza with spacecraft trying
34:09
Speaker 6: to deflect them, the physics might be a little bit
34:13
Speaker 6: more complicated than we think, because the momentum that was
34:18
Speaker 6: transferred from the spacecraft to the asteroid and the deflection
34:23
Speaker 6: that the asteroid encountered could potentially bend enough to send
34:29
Speaker 6: that entire asteroid tumbling out of its orbit around another
34:33
Speaker 6: asteroid and off in some random direction in space. Now,
34:37
Speaker 6: that did not happen, but this team is saying it
34:40
Speaker 6: could have happened. And so what the team is cautioning
34:45
Speaker 6: is the effects when you hit an asteroid in the
34:49
Speaker 6: eye with a spacecraft might be more complicated than you think,
34:54
Speaker 6: and you could potentially make the situation worse. To quote
34:59
Speaker 6: their paper, they say this, there is yet to be
35:01
Speaker 6: a full accounting of the total momentum in all directions,
35:04
Speaker 6: but the ejecticone spreads out sideways as well as in
35:08
Speaker 6: the direction of the incoming spacecraft. There is a significant
35:11
Speaker 6: component of momentum that was carried out perpendicular to Dimorphos's
35:16
Speaker 6: velocity vector, which means, Wow, we saw some really strange
35:21
Speaker 6: dynamic effects, and we need to be really careful that
35:25
Speaker 6: we're accounting for all of the things that could happen
35:29
Speaker 6: when we try to divert an asteroid in the future
35:32
Speaker 6: that has a chance of actually coming to hit Earth,
35:34
Speaker 6: that we don't make things worse. So there's the interesting
35:40
Speaker 6: latest result from the Dart mission from NASA.
35:43
Speaker 4: Sounds like a really elaborate way for you to brag
35:45
Speaker 4: about a golf shot. That's what it sounded like to me.
35:48
Speaker 4: I don't know what else you said. I just heard
35:49
Speaker 4: you bragging about a good golf shot.
35:51
Speaker 6: If it sounded like golf bragging, understand that it was
35:54
Speaker 6: possibly the worst golf shot I've ever hit. In mind
35:58
Speaker 6: would go backwards, which is close to going backwards, as
36:02
Speaker 6: you know with a forward swing, a golf ball actually
36:04
Speaker 6: going backwards. This is as close as I think you
36:06
Speaker 6: can achieve with physics.
36:08
Speaker 4: And someone says you defied physics with your golf shot.
36:11
Speaker 4: I think that's an impressive golf shot. That's all I
36:13
Speaker 4: was getting at. I once played golf at Callaway Gardens,
36:17
Speaker 4: which was the former home of the PGA Buick Challenge,
36:21
Speaker 4: and someone said to me, Wow, you may be the
36:24
Speaker 4: worst golfer that's ever played on this course.
36:27
Speaker 2: And I played that.
36:28
Speaker 6: One too, so I don't know. I think you run
36:30
Speaker 6: for your money. Maybe.
36:32
Speaker 4: Well the person who made that observation was me, so
36:34
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure it was that anyway. All right, I
36:39
Speaker 4: just wanted to brag about playing on that course because
36:41
Speaker 4: I was excited to be invited to play there. Let's
36:44
Speaker 4: talk about Australian moths. This is a great story to
36:46
Speaker 4: wrap things up with now that I'm back Stateside.
36:49
Speaker 5: But these.
36:51
Speaker 4: Particular moths, which apparently people like to eat. They're a
36:56
Speaker 4: delicacy for some, with like a nutty flavor. I know
37:00
Speaker 4: I haven't tasted them, but that's what I've heard. But
37:03
Speaker 4: this is a cool story about how they actually use
37:05
Speaker 4: the sky to navigate as they do their migration patterns.
37:09
Speaker 6: And before I butcher it, what's the official Australian pronunciation
37:13
Speaker 6: for the name of this.
37:15
Speaker 2: I've heard bogong. That's what I would say.
37:17
Speaker 6: That's how I would have said it.
37:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, and let's just stick with that one and
37:20
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure this would be an Aboriginal word, so
37:24
Speaker 4: there may be a slight variation on it, but I
37:26
Speaker 4: would have heard, yeah, bogong and that some people. I
37:28
Speaker 4: guess when you're out bush you can eat these things
37:31
Speaker 4: and they do have like a supposedly like a nutty
37:35
Speaker 4: flavor to them or whatever.
37:36
Speaker 5: But anyway, I've never eaten one.
37:39
Speaker 6: Well neither of I, and I'm not going to probably
37:43
Speaker 6: seek that out anytime soon.
37:45
Speaker 4: However, if you're out bush and you get hungry enough,
37:47
Speaker 4: you probably would.
37:48
Speaker 5: But yeah, I haven't tasted one.
37:50
Speaker 6: It's important to know what you can and can't, you
37:52
Speaker 6: know what I'm saying. That's right, that's very true. I
37:55
Speaker 6: learned about these things from a great website called spaceweather
37:58
Speaker 6: dot com. And by the way, before I get too
38:00
Speaker 6: far afield the story we ran on the Bastille Day
38:03
Speaker 6: a little earlier in the show that came from spaceweather
38:05
Speaker 6: dot com. Two stories from spaceweather dot com, just because
38:08
Speaker 6: it's one of our favorite websites of all time. Doctor
38:11
Speaker 6: Tony Phillips running the spaceweather dot com website, has a
38:15
Speaker 6: great story about moths and this This is actually a
38:20
Speaker 6: story about a piece of research that was published in
38:23
Speaker 6: the journal Nature, and I'm gonna give you the short
38:26
Speaker 6: version of the story. But the short version of the
38:28
Speaker 6: story is that moths, it has been found, navigate by
38:33
Speaker 6: the stars. Now, it's long suspected that insects could it
38:39
Speaker 6: possibly had the ability to navigate by the stars. But
38:43
Speaker 6: I believe this is the first piece of verifiable research
38:47
Speaker 6: that insinuates by its data that these moths can actually
38:53
Speaker 6: they can actually navigate according to the position of bright
38:56
Speaker 6: objects in the sky, including the Milky Way. Gallon friends,
39:01
Speaker 6: And they have to navigate very well because they have
39:04
Speaker 6: a migration that goes one thousand kilometers six hundred miles
39:06
Speaker 6: something on that order, and they have to nail a
39:10
Speaker 6: really small little cluster of caves in the Australian Alps,
39:16
Speaker 6: and they have to do it with such precision that
39:18
Speaker 6: they really have to know exactly where they're going. And
39:21
Speaker 6: scientists have long thought, how do they do this? Are
39:24
Speaker 6: they using the magnetic field of the Earth. Well it
39:26
Speaker 6: turns out that yes, they might actually be using that
39:29
Speaker 6: too on cloudy days, but their navigation had to be
39:32
Speaker 6: more precise than would be facilitated simply by the magnetic field.
39:37
Speaker 6: It looks like these moths actually use the stars. How
39:40
Speaker 6: do we know. Here's how the story goes, because they
39:44
Speaker 6: took some of these little moths and put them in
39:46
Speaker 6: a planetarium, a special moth planetarium, and they tethered them.
39:51
Speaker 6: They tied them with little strings, and then they put
39:54
Speaker 6: the stars off there, and all the little moths flew
39:57
Speaker 6: off in the same direction. They were flying off in
40:01
Speaker 6: a direction that was being guided by their perception of
40:07
Speaker 6: the objects in the sky on this virtual sky of
40:11
Speaker 6: a moth planetarium. And it turns out when they showed
40:14
Speaker 6: them randomized stars and different star fields that are simulated
40:20
Speaker 6: but not actual, then they couldn't find their way around anymore.
40:24
Speaker 6: Then they were not flying off all in the same
40:25
Speaker 6: direction anymore. So it's pretty clear by this new study
40:31
Speaker 6: that moths actually look at the sky know instinctively at
40:37
Speaker 6: least what the Milky Way galaxy is, or another bright
40:40
Speaker 6: object called the Karina nebula, which is the Southern Hemisphere object,
40:44
Speaker 6: and from their recognition of these objects in the sky
40:48
Speaker 6: can actually guide themselves where they need to go on
40:51
Speaker 6: their migratory patterns. This is a fantastic story. If you're
40:55
Speaker 6: listening to this in the future. Future future look for
40:57
Speaker 6: the July seventh, twenty twenty five edition of spaceweather dot com.
41:03
Speaker 6: They have an archive, go back and check it out.
41:05
Speaker 6: Australian ball is navigating to where they need to go
41:10
Speaker 6: via the Milky Way actually looking at the sky.
41:13
Speaker 5: I double checked it.
41:14
Speaker 4: Bogong is a derivative, I guess from the Aboriginal tom
41:18
Speaker 4: term boogong bugun g, which means brown. So that's the
41:24
Speaker 4: since it's a brown moth, so yes, bogong the common
41:29
Speaker 4: pronunciation for it. All right, So let's talk about Kalm
41:33
Speaker 4: State University's co Co Space Science Center, and let's talk
41:36
Speaker 4: about Dave Scott again.
41:38
Speaker 6: Yeah, we have our full summer programs in swing. We've
41:41
Speaker 6: been doing summer camps. We've been showing all kinds of
41:43
Speaker 6: kids and their grandparents that their parents who are all
41:46
Speaker 6: you know, the kids are out of school right now
41:48
Speaker 6: and the parents and grandparents are trying to figure out
41:50
Speaker 6: what to do with them, and they're bringing them to us,
41:51
Speaker 6: which is the right thing to do. Friends, bring them
41:53
Speaker 6: on down and let them see the Space Science Center.
41:55
Speaker 6: But as Wes just mentioned, we also have a very
41:58
Speaker 6: special exhibit from astronaut David Scott of Apollo fifteen, and
42:02
Speaker 6: it's up not at the Coca Cola Space Science Center,
42:06
Speaker 6: but just down the street at the Bow Bartlett Center,
42:09
Speaker 6: which is an art gallery here at Columbus State University.
42:12
Speaker 6: It's one of our sister organizations here at the university,
42:15
Speaker 6: and they are exhibiting a collection from astronaut David Scott
42:20
Speaker 6: that was facilitated as a donation by his brother Tom
42:23
Speaker 6: Scott to the Coca Cola Space Science Center, but they
42:26
Speaker 6: just have more pieces than we have walls, and so
42:30
Speaker 6: we're showing it off at the art gallery for a
42:32
Speaker 6: period of time. And you can still go down and
42:34
Speaker 6: see that collection for the rest of the month of July,
42:37
Speaker 6: and you can check out the hours at the bo
42:41
Speaker 6: Bartlett Center, but they're basically from eleven am to four
42:44
Speaker 6: pm Tuesday through Saturday. Check it out at our website
42:48
Speaker 6: or at the bo Bartlett Center's website. Go down and
42:51
Speaker 6: see the David Scott collection. He was the first person
42:54
Speaker 6: to ever drive a car on the surface of the Moon.
42:57
Speaker 6: Very famous astronaut, very famous collection. Check it out on
43:00
Speaker 6: display now at the Bowl Bartlett Center here at Columbus
43:03
Speaker 6: State University, a partner institution of CSU's Coca Cola Space
43:08
Speaker 6: Science Center.
43:09
Speaker 4: And Sean and I thank you for listening, and we
43:11
Speaker 4: will do this again next week. Plus, Overhead Door Company
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Speaker 4: covered as well. Seven oh six three five eight forty
43:42
Speaker 4: five hundred seven oh six three five eight forty five
43:44
Speaker 4: hundred Odccolumbus dot com