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An Updated Reason Why Mars Is Red · 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. When made of stars, made them stars, made sizes?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: When made us stars, you could be from high they
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  Speaker 2: would New Mexicomus. Where are.
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  Speaker 3: Stars? 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 University's Coca Cola Space Signed Center.
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  Speaker 2: Hey Sean, Hey, we's good to be here today. All right,
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: we got a couple of follow up stories. We will
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  Speaker 2: get to the latest on this. You know asteroid that's
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  Speaker 2: that's on its way and still has a chance of
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  Speaker 2: hitting Earth. I mean, we got to We talked about
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  Speaker 2: it last week. We didn't want to get too many
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  Speaker 2: people too scared. We didn't want to get too.
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  Speaker 4: Clickbaity about all of it, even though I did title
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  Speaker 4: last week's episode something very click baity, but it was
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  Speaker 4: kind of to be ironic.
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  Speaker 3: But we'll follow up on that one coming up in.
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  Speaker 4: Just a little bit. We got to start, first of
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  Speaker 4: all with some Moonlander updates.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we did talk this is one of our
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  Speaker 2: updates from last week. We did talk about two new
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  Speaker 2: Moonlanders heading for the Moon, both US based missions. One
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  Speaker 2: of them was Firefly's Blue Ghost Lander, and again if
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  Speaker 2: you want to hear a summary of that, we talked
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  Speaker 2: about that on last week's show, But that one's scheduled
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  Speaker 2: for March second, landing near the south pole of the Moon,
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  Speaker 2: and it's already in lunar orbit. The second one, though,
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  Speaker 2: was Intuitive Machines, and what we said last week is
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  Speaker 2: if it can get off by a certain date and time,
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  Speaker 2: they have a shot of hitting a landing in the
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  Speaker 2: same week as the Blue Ghost. Well they made that launch,
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  Speaker 2: and so the Intuitives Machine what they call im two
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  Speaker 2: mission I am dash too. I AM standing for Intuitive Machines.
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  Speaker 2: It's the Nova Sea Lander. If that sounds familiar to
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  Speaker 2: you at all, and you're a listener of this show,
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  Speaker 2: you might remember last year when we were talking about
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  Speaker 2: a Nova Sa lander, because that was the Intuitive Machine's
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  Speaker 2: one mission I AM one, which did actually technically soft
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  Speaker 2: land on the surface of the Moon before falling over
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  Speaker 2: and then having some other issues. But anyway, so the
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  Speaker 2: IM two Nova Sea lander named Athena is now on
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  Speaker 2: its way to the Moon and it's taking a quick route,
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  Speaker 2: a three day quick trip to the Lunar Service or
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  Speaker 2: lunar orbit rather, where it can possibly land as early
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  Speaker 2: as March sixth. So once again Firefly's Blue Ghost mission,
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  Speaker 2: she has already launched and entered lunar orbit, will lend
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  Speaker 2: anticipated to land, scheduled to land on March the second.
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  Speaker 2: And now the Intuitive Machines, which is a Houston based company,
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  Speaker 2: their second Nova sea lander has launched again. The second
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  Speaker 2: one is named Athena, but they call it Addie for short.
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  Speaker 2: I like that because that's my granddaughter's name, and she's
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  Speaker 2: Houston based too, by the way. Anyway, so the Addi
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  Speaker 2: lander from Intuitive Machines scheduled to launch, I'm sorry, scheduled
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  Speaker 2: to land as early as March sixth. So one lander
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  Speaker 2: on March second, another lander on March sixth. We could
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  Speaker 2: have two successful robotic landings, both from US space companies
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  Speaker 2: in the same week that first week of March, and
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  Speaker 2: so now it's just a matter of waiting and seeing
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  Speaker 2: what that is all happening. Is and are they able
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  Speaker 2: to successfully navigate their intended or landing dates.
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  Speaker 4: So, and of course, just to make it complicated, as
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  Speaker 4: is always the case, we typically record on Thursdays. That
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  Speaker 4: second one would be next Thursday, so you know, we'll
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  Speaker 4: make things maybe difficult for us unless it's in the
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  Speaker 4: early morning hours.
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  Speaker 2: And I don't know a time yeah, right, so at
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  Speaker 2: this time they're not talking about like they said, roughly,
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  Speaker 2: actually they did, they said roughly midday. I don't know
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  Speaker 2: what time zone that is, hopefully a US time zone.
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  Speaker 2: Maybe maybe we'll figure it out, maybe the land just
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  Speaker 2: before we record or something.
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  Speaker 4: So that that could that could be the case. So
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  Speaker 4: we'll see if all that plays out for us.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. By the way, the place there's scheduled to land
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  Speaker 2: on the Moon is an interesting place because there's a
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  Speaker 2: great big mountain near the south pole of the Moon,
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  Speaker 2: and it's the size of Dnulli in Alaska or we
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  Speaker 2: some people know that as Mount McKinley, right, so we
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  Speaker 2: grew up with it being Mount McKinley anyway, so to Naully.
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  Speaker 2: So that's a very very large mountain, right, the biggest
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  Speaker 2: mountain in North America, and this mountain on the moon
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  Speaker 2: is the same size as that mountain. Do we all
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  Speaker 2: know by the way quick side route, there are actually
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  Speaker 2: mountains on the Moon larger than Mount Everest in terms
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  Speaker 2: of elevation of elevation above their mean terrain, which is
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  Speaker 2: you know, there's some big mountains. And the reason is
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  Speaker 2: because mountains can stand on the Moon a little bit
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  Speaker 2: more efficiently because there's not as much gravity on the
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  Speaker 2: surface of the Moon, right, so they don't it doesn't
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  Speaker 2: pull them down. So there's some very large, large mountains. Well,
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  Speaker 2: this mission, the IM two mission called the Landers called
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  Speaker 2: Abdi nicknamed that is going to land near this mountain
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  Speaker 2: called Mount Mouton. Mouton spelled MoU t n. Mountain Mouton
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  Speaker 2: is actually named after Melba roy Muten, one of the
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  Speaker 2: human computers who helped calculate NASA trajectories back in the
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  Speaker 2: early nineteen sixties. We know the movie Hidden Figures. Melbournemuten
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  Speaker 2: was on that team of mathematicians calculating a variety of
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  Speaker 2: aspects of spaceflight by hand back in that day. So
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  Speaker 2: a really cool thing that that person, Melbournemutin was honored
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  Speaker 2: with a mountain on the Moon. It's a really big mountain.
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  Speaker 2: And now a lander in a tricky maneuver is going
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  Speaker 2: to fly to the south pole of the moon and
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  Speaker 2: land very near that giant mountain on the south pole
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  Speaker 2: of the moon.
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  Speaker 4: I'm glad you clarified on the naming part because and
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  Speaker 4: I know the name because I have seen hit figures.
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  Speaker 4: But anytime I heard anything about this particular mountain, I
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  Speaker 4: just assumed it was a typo and I thought, man,
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  Speaker 4: people leaving that inn out of Mons Mountain over and
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  Speaker 4: over again and then But now, as far as we know,
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  Speaker 4: the name of that Mon's moutin hasn't that hasn't been changed.
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  Speaker 4: I'm not aware of it, making just making sure because
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  Speaker 4: we know what everybody changed it.
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  Speaker 2: Now they're in big trouble. Let me just tell you we've.
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  Speaker 4: Had McKinley, Denali McKinley again, and then we know what's
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  Speaker 4: going on in the Gulf. But anyway, I'm just just
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  Speaker 4: getting a clarification on that. And Fort Bragg in North
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  Speaker 4: Carolina is now named after a different guy named Bragg.
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  Speaker 4: That's how they got away with changing that name back,
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  Speaker 4: so anyway, you know, and a clever way to do
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  Speaker 4: it without having to go back and honor the other guy.
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  Speaker 4: But anyway, I was just looking for clarification on that.
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  Speaker 2: You know, I try to stick to astronomical naming, and
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  Speaker 2: astronomical naming is notoriously uncreative. Like we see a hole
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  Speaker 2: in space and it's black, so we call it a
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  Speaker 2: black hole.
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  Speaker 3: Well that's why I thought it was Mon's Mountain. I'm
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  Speaker 3: gonna be honest with you. That's why I kind of
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  Speaker 3: thought maybe that's that's why they named it that at first.
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  Speaker 4: So, uh, let's talk about I we like talking about
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  Speaker 4: a rocket lab. That's a fun wef we've covered them
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  Speaker 4: over the over the years that we've been doing radio
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  Speaker 4: and podcast to this show. They're all electron rocket Let's
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  Speaker 4: let's talk about the rocket lab in their latest accomplishment.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, they are the SpaceX of New Zealand. There you go, Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: how about that. It's probably hyperbole, but anyway, so they
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  Speaker 2: are a New Zealand but a New Zealand based rocket company.
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  Speaker 2: It's probably fair.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, the key weezer in the game, let's give
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  Speaker 3: them credit.
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  Speaker 2: So the game. So rocket Lab again, New Zealand company.
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  Speaker 2: They have been doing commercial rocket launches for a number
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  Speaker 2: of years now and they're going to use their their
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  Speaker 2: Electron Rocket to launch a very important payload to space,
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  Speaker 2: which is an Earth monitoring payload and it's called Gen
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  Speaker 2: three from a company called Black Sky. So Black Sky's
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  Speaker 2: Gen three. It's an Earth imaging and analytics satellite is
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  Speaker 2: going to be launched. But it's uh, it's the Gent
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  Speaker 2: three flight is going to be on the sixtieth Electron
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  Speaker 2: rocket flight. So they're marking a historic moment for rocket
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  Speaker 2: Lab themselves, sixtieth rocket launch to date. So that's good.
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  Speaker 2: You know, it's not quite at SpaceX pace, but it's
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  Speaker 2: a good pace. It's a good steady pace for that
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  Speaker 2: successful New Zealand rocket company. They have dubbed the mission.
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  Speaker 2: They name their missions funny things in New Zealand. They
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  Speaker 2: dubbed this mission fasten your seat belts. So that's the
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  Speaker 2: name of the mission. Quote fasten your seat belts unquote,
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  Speaker 2: but in this case it's your space belts though, right,
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  Speaker 2: I would guess, so it's fastened your space belts. Yes,
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  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, yep, fasten your space belts. Anyway. So this
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  Speaker 2: is the Black Sky Gen three. It's the second Gen
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  Speaker 2: three satellite and it will be offering data and views
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  Speaker 2: of the Earth as we help to monitor our environment
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  Speaker 2: here on the planet. This is two hundred and ten
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  Speaker 2: satellites launched to date by rocket Lab. Remember that some
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  Speaker 2: of these flights can have multiple satellites on board. That's
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  Speaker 2: how they get the disparity in numbers there. So this
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  Speaker 2: is a quote from the founder and CEO of rocket Lab.
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  Speaker 2: His name is Sir Peter Beck, and Sir Peter Beck
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  Speaker 2: says this, Electron is a trusted and reliable constellation builder
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  Speaker 2: for companies like Black Sky. Let me pause in the quote
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  Speaker 2: right there for a moment. So a constellation you notice
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  Speaker 2: a group of stars perhaps, but that's also a large
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  Speaker 2: number of satellites all working together to perform one job.
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  Speaker 2: All right, So sorry for interrupting Sir Peter Beck's quote there,
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  Speaker 2: but I wanted to just define what a constellation was
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  Speaker 2: for our audience. So let me read it again. Electron
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  Speaker 2: is a trusted and reliable constellation builder for companies like
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  Speaker 2: Black Sky, allowing them to be in control of how,
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  Speaker 2: when and where to deploy their constellation. Black Sky is
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  Speaker 2: one of our earliest and longest standing commercial satellite customers,
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  Speaker 2: and it's great to be heading back to the pad
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  Speaker 2: with them once again to continue to advance and expand
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: their constellation in space. So there you go. Quote from
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  Speaker 2: Sir Peter Beck, founder and CEO of Rocket Lab. Great
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  Speaker 2: stuff happening down under in their rocket industry on the
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  Speaker 2: island in the Southern Hemisphere.
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  Speaker 4: Just a side note, you know the New Zealand footy team,
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  Speaker 4: the All Blacks, that would be a great sponsorship opportunity
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  Speaker 4: for this Black Sky mission. I'm just saying they could
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  Speaker 4: jump in there, you know, with some kind of sponsorship
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  Speaker 4: for the rugby squad. And it's just there. I'm just
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  Speaker 4: offering this for free. I don't want any kind of
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  Speaker 4: you know, compensation for my ideas. I'm just throwing it
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  Speaker 4: out there for you. Seems like that would be a
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  Speaker 4: way to compensate a little bit for the costs for
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  Speaker 4: the mission.
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  Speaker 3: I don't know, I'm.
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  Speaker 2: I'm not entirely sure that the company's not named after
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  Speaker 2: the rugby team.
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  Speaker 3: In fact, could be. There you go.
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  Speaker 4: We're going to take a quick break now. When we
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  Speaker 4: come back, we're going to talk about why Mars is red.
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  Speaker 4: There's a new explanation for it. We'll talk about that
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  Speaker 4: next ye all right, I want to talk about the
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  Speaker 4: redness of Mars. But before we do that, quickly because
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  Speaker 4: this has come back up again and it's about to
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  Speaker 4: happen soon. But if you take your telescope and you
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: point it at Saturn and you want to go, hey,
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  Speaker 4: look they're Saturn. It's the one with the rings around it.
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  Speaker 4: We've discussed this a couple of times, but we're getting
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  Speaker 4: closer to the day it's about to not we're not
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  Speaker 4: going to be able to see the rings of Saturn.
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  Speaker 4: They're going to disappear for a little bit, actually for
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  Speaker 4: kind of a long time. I know it's relative, but
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  Speaker 4: if you want to actually use your telescope to look
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  Speaker 4: at those rings anytime in the neck for a while,
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  Speaker 4: like you're running out of time, you got like weeks
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  Speaker 4: left to do it.
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  Speaker 2: So you know, every thirteen to sixteen years. There's some
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  Speaker 2: variability in the period of disc of this event. But
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  Speaker 2: basically we pass through the ring plane. So if you
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  Speaker 2: imagine the rings of Saturn, you just kind of extend
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  Speaker 2: that off into space as a single plane, two dimensional plane.
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  Speaker 2: Sometimes the Earth and Saturn are in relative positions to
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  Speaker 2: each other where the Earth is lined up with that plane.
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  Speaker 2: So when that happens, the rings look like they disappear,
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  Speaker 2: and so that's going to happen on March twenty third,
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  Speaker 2: and it's going to be like that for several months.
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  Speaker 2: So Saturn's going to look as if it has virtually
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  Speaker 2: no rings at all. You might see them as a
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  Speaker 2: little white line for a few weeks on either side
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  Speaker 2: of that date. But we're passing through the ring plane
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  Speaker 2: on March the twenty third of twenty twenty five, and
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  Speaker 2: so if you're an avid viewer of Saturn, you will see, Okay, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: I've seen this happen before. But if you just bought
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  Speaker 2: a new backyard telescope and you're like, oh, my phone
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: says that that star over there is Saturn, not a
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  Speaker 2: star at all. Let me point my telescope at it,
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: and suddenly it has no rings, you might think that
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  Speaker 2: kar and San Diego came in stole the rings. I
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  Speaker 2: don't know something like that. That is not the case, friends,
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  Speaker 2: The rings are still there. We're just looking at them
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  Speaker 2: edge on. If you imagine looking like a CD rom
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  Speaker 2: if you remember what one of those is, Yes, a
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  Speaker 2: cd rom is a thing we used to store photos
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  Speaker 2: of our cat on or whatever anyway. So it's a
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  Speaker 2: data storage device from maybe a couple of decades ago.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know anyway. So if you imagine a CD ROM,
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: turn it edge on like a Blu ray player, you know,
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  Speaker 2: like your Blu Ray DVD player or whatever. Take one
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  Speaker 2: of those discs, turn it edge on. That kind of
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  Speaker 2: gives you some perspective of the relative aspect ratios of
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  Speaker 2: the width to depth of the rings of Saturn. And
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: when you see them edge on, they're very very narrow.
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  Speaker 2: Width causes them to basically disappear in backyard telescopes. So
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  Speaker 2: that's what's going to be happening.
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  Speaker 3: A couple of things.
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  Speaker 4: First of all, I love how nerdy we are that
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: you don't go to just CD you have to specifically
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: say CD ROM as if it's not basically the same thing.
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  Speaker 4: Second note, you start talking about extending the plane of
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  Speaker 4: the rings of Saturn and being completely in that plane,
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: Josh Allen's football definitely broke that plane and got that
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: first down unless you're playing the Chiefs. I'm just gonna
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: leave that out there for anybody that has any confusion
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  Speaker 4: about that.
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  Speaker 3: I think the building.
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  Speaker 2: I believe that NASA satellites have shown that to be true.
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  Speaker 2: I think everybody should as observed from space. I think
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  Speaker 2: perhaps as observed by everybody except that officiating crew and
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: the replay crew. I don't think anybody else on the
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: planet thinks it should have gone the other way. But hey,
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: maybe they could have given the Eagles a game. I
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: don't know any I happened to think that that's probably
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: the case. Honestly, I think they might have been a
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: bit more competitive, And I just don't understand why they
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: continue to fall short. Ringplane crossings might be part of
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  Speaker 2: the explanation. I don't really know, but there it is.
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  Speaker 3: There you go.
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: All right, Now, let's go back to Mars, because that's
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: where we're really going to go a new explanation for
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  Speaker 4: the redness of Mars. So for my entire professional astronomy career,
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: it's possible that I have taught students something that's incorrect.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: I mean, for a good number of years, I taught
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: them that Pluto was a planet. How wrong I was
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  Speaker 4: about that?
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Friend?
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: Your rate my professor's score is plummeting right now, folks
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: are but.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: They're just saying, man, this guy's wrong. He's just wrong.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: You know, he was wrong for all the years. He
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: never taught us anything about dark energy, you know, So
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: that was the thing who knew what did you teach before?
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  Speaker 3: And then what is the explanation?
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  Speaker 2: Now?
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  Speaker 3: I guess that's what is.
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  Speaker 2: Any one of my former students could tell you the
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  Speaker 2: reason that Mars soil is reddish in color is because
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  Speaker 2: it's rusty. And rusty is something we know well here
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  Speaker 2: in in in Georgia, because we have red clay and
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  Speaker 2: it's a rusty soil. The red clay of Georgia is
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  Speaker 2: tainted red because it has this stuff called iron oxide
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  Speaker 2: in it, which is think about iron broken down into
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  Speaker 2: grains of sand sized particles, and then that iron gets rusty.
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  Speaker 2: In other words, it oxidizes, and so you have this
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  Speaker 2: compound called iron oxide, and that iron oxide when it
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: gets inside the clay like it does here in Georgia
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: and you fall on it with your knee, you'll never
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: get that stain out of your pants ever. It's just there.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: For like white baseball pants playing on red clay that
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: slide into third man, It's just going to be on
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: your pants for all time. Anyway. There's no laundry detergent
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: known to humanity that can never get that out. But anyway,
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  Speaker 2: all right, So having said that we thought the same
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  Speaker 2: stuff was true about the soils of Mars. We knew
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  Speaker 2: from various landers that there was iron content in the
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: soil of Mars. And then when you see it all
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  Speaker 2: rusty in color, you say, okay, well that's just oxidation.
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  Speaker 2: So therefore we are pretty sure that Mars is red
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: because it has iron oxide. All right, Well, incomes a
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: team from Brown University by doctor Adamis Valentinas and Adamis
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: Valentinas from Brown University has published a new study in
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: a paper in a publication called Nature Communications. And what
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: that research team did is they simulated the actual early
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: conditions of Mars. Not Mars like it is today, but
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: what was Mars like in its infancy or in its
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: younger days, a primordial Mars. And see, we know a
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: lot more about that in twenty twenty five because we've
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: all we've got all kinds of data from lots of
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: imagers and landers that have visited up there on Mars.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: So think about the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, the Curiosity
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: and Perseverance rovers, the reconnaissance orbiter from NASA, European Space Agencies,
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Mars Express and Exo Mars. These are all either orbiters
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: or landers that have studied the service of Mars carefully.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: The atmosphere of Mars carefully given us a whole lot
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: more data. Well, now that we have all that data,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: we can extrapolate more accurately what Mars was like in
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: its infancy. And based on that information, the team from
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Brown University rand simulations and they said, yeah, we don't
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: think that iron oxide is the chemical that would be
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: produced in abundance in the early Mars, because you see,
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: the early Mars was actually covered with oceans. Water was
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: a huge factor. It's not as big of a factor
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: in the conditions of Mars today, but back in the
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: primordial Mars, when Mars actually had oceans, it turns out
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: that instead of iron oxide, a different kind of chemical
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: called a faery hydrite would be produced. And a fairy
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: hydrite is kind of like iron oxide, except that also
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: has in its compound actual water. So actual water molecules
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: are contained in a compound with the oxide or this
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: rust kind of molecule, and then that makes a more
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: complicated molecule, which now these researchers say, that's really what
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: is pervasive in the soil of Mars today. We have
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: these faery hydrites. That's a much more likely explanation for
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: why Mars has that kind of rusty red color. By
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: the way, a great article on the story Universe today
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: dot com. What difference does that make? Why does that
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: make a difference to me? Well, two reasons. Number one,
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: it's a more accurate view of not only the conditions
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: of Mars today, but a way to verify that about
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: the conditions of Mars in yesteryear. Right. So if we
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: send up again another mission and finds signs of these
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: fairy hydrites, is one more affirming confirmation that water was
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: prevalent in that primordial Martian environment. The second thing is
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: it's got a water molecule in it. You might be
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: able to separate water molecules out of the dust on
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: the surface of Mars, and then once you have water molecules,
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: you can turn that into either drinking water if you
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: collect enough of them, or you can separate out oxygen
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: and hydrogen and use the oxygen for breathing hydrogen for
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: fuel right there out of the Martian surface, rather than
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: having to try to dig for aquifers. So this is
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: a very interesting paper not only about Mars past, but
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: how about our future probabilities or options at least for
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: colonizing the surface of Mars.
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: Pretty exciting discovery. Coming up after another quick break, we're
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: gonna talk about asteroids. That one asteroid and then a
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: bunch of other asteroids. Size. Still think asteroid would have
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: been a better name for hemorrhoids. That's just my thoughts
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: on the side object while we're going to talk about asteroids. Okay,
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: first follow up from last week's story, this big scary one,
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: the one that's coming in twenty thirty two, and people said, ah,
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: and as predicted, Luke came home from school and asked
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: about the this was an asteroid coming. He knew the stats,
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: and he actually gave me the the updated stats I
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: think this morning. So I thought, wow, all right, he's
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: on top of it. He's he's tracking it. My future
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: meteorologist may have a future in space weather after all.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: But let's give the latest on.
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: The impending doom that is this is coming?
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, is it though? This is what we're trying
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: to figure out, right, So this is as we're recording
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: the show here. It's February twenty seventh. Both of the
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: next two stories are on spaceweather dot com today February
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: twenty seven, twenty five. If you want to go back
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: if you if you miss this you're not listening live
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: to the pot cast, you can go back on their archive.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: It's in the upper right hand corner of space weather
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: dot com. Spaceweather dot com is one of our favorite
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: news sites on this show, as we've talked about. In fact,
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: we were quoting them profusely last week as we were
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: talking about the asteroid called twenty twenty four y R four,
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: which was almost certainly going to hit Earth. No, that's
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: not exactly what we said, Oh not exactly, But what
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: we really said was, well, the numbers seemed to be
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: going up for probability to hit the Earth, but they
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: went up from the one percents to the two percents
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: and then to the you know, higher to mid two percents,
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: And we said, wow, that's interesting. Typically when observations like
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: this come in, the probability of impact goes down. Well,
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: that's exactly what happened almost the moment we were recorded
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: the show last week. So the next day on spaceweather
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: dot com they ran an article that said, oh, yeah,
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: more data is coming in, maybe not so much, right,
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: So the probability seems to be dropping. I will tell you, friends,
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: the City Killer asteroid, which is scheduled to arrive on
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: December twenty second, twenty thirty two, ruining Christmas for everyone
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: that year. It looks like that. Probably not. It looks
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: as if according to the latest odds from JPL, they've
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: plummeted down to point zero zero two percent. So point
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: zero zero two percent again, according to our friends at space,
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: weather is about the odds of you having an accident
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: while crossing the street or driving a car. But you're
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: saying that's the way you're driving the car. Now, by
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: the way, if you're driving Atlanta, it might be a
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: little higher than that. But but you're saying there's a chance,
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: I'm saying there's not much of a chance, is what
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: you're saying.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: There is a chance.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: I'm saying that there's a remote and minuscule chance.
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: And just a reminder, when you start, you do the
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: point zero zero two percent, Okay, that means it's highly unlikely.
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: And then if somehow those odds are beaten, you still
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: got to beat that. Like seventy thirty odds on it
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: not landing in the water somewhere, which is favorable most
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: likely landing in the water.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: You just don't want to be that guy in that boat.
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: And there's a point zero zero two percent chance of
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: hitting the guy in the boat, right, I.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Mean, I don't think I'm going to go deep sea
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: fishing on December twenty second. Yeah, I'm just.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: Say those odds go up and it looks like it's coming.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm not going to be reeling in my
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: first marlin and then you know, have an asteroid strike
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: me from space. So I'm just gonna avoid that day altogether.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: Maybe don't plan to fish.
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe don't plan to you know, be on a cruise,
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: you know, exactly for the holidays.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: Why cruise that day? I mean, you know, maybe December
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: twenty third, I don't know. Yeah, I think I'm gonna
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: be in Carlsbad Caverns that day in Axaico, because that's
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: a good plan. Yeah, Or head up led up to
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: Kentucky those cays and if you go and then the
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: skipper is the captain and you know the howls are there,
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: don't get on that boat again. You just don't want
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: to take any chances of you know, it's three hours
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: three hour window on all right, So chances are pretty
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: good for us in that one. For you know, seven
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: seven years from now. Now, let's talk about there's a
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: lot of asteroids we got to talk about next. Now,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: how many of these do we need to worry about?
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: We need to what are the percentages on all of these?
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: We got thousands of these suckers, millions of them? No, millions, Yeah,
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: it's millions.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: So are we tracking all these?
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: How many start millions? Anyway?
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: How many darts do we have that can go after
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: this million? Do we have plenty of dart missions?
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: So again, spaceweather dot com today, fire up the darts
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: just in case you have them. About twenty eight thousand
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: years from now, that's right, I said twenty eight thousand years,
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: not hours, minutes, seconds, years. Twenty thousand years from now,
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: the star Alpha Centauri, and of course our Sun and
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Solar system, they're going to come nearer to each other
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: than they typically do, and when they move around in
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: their orbit around the Milky Way galaxy in a way
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: that the distance varies over a long period of time.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: So this close encounter, it's not really all that close,
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: but it gets a little bit closer, can actually shed
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: asteroids from the Alpha Centauri star system into our own
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: solar system, and so we can have an influx of
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: all of these shall we call them extra solar asteroids
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: exo asteroids. They're coming from another solar system into ours.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: We can have as many as a million asteroid side
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: object sized objects coming from Alpha Centauri. This is according
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: to a study from the University of West Ontario and
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: a PhD student from that university called Cole greg And.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Cole Greg, lead author on the study, says this quote.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: We estimate that a million asteroid sized objects from the
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: Alpha Centauri system could be in the Solar system right now.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: And so the interesting thing is that the Earth and
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: Alpha Centauri have been having these kind of close calls
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: with each other for a long time, and so the
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: asteroids in our own solar system maybe had this underlying
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: population of asteroids that didn't grow up here, They grew
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: up in the Alpha Centauri system. Now here's the problem.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: The problem is we didn't know that until recently. We
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: didn't know that was a possibility till recently. Sometimes we
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: base our science on the planets in our solar system,
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: or how the Solar system evolved. We base that on
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: the fact that we have pieces of asteroids that fall
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: on the Earth. We call those meteorites. Then we study
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: the chemistry of the meteorite, and then we extrapolate things
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: about our own solar system how it evolved. Well, about
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: ten medi eaters per year that come into the Earth's
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: atmosphere might not actually be from our solar system at all.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: They might be from the Alpha Centauri system, says Cole
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: greg pH student from the University of Ontario. So the
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: notion is that our solar system, even though it's really big,
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: it has literally millions and billions of meteorite sized particles
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: in there. About a million of those might actually be
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: contaminants from another solar system. And that's pretty interesting. So,
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: as spaceweather dot com says, it's something to think about
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: the next time you see a shooting star, that shooting
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: star may not have grown up in our solar system.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: It might be an extra Solar system object or an
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: exo object, an exo meteorite coming from the Alpha Centauri system.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: So there you go, friends, pretty cool thought.
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: We are just days away now from the next Music
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: under the Dome concert for this concert series, as it
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: makes its return after a little break for the holidays.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we had you know, we took a good long
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: time off, you know, all the way to March. But
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: as we says, on March the fourth, Tuesday evening, we
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: have our first Music under the Dome concert for twenty
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: twenty five. These concerts are great events. We have musicians
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: and both professors and students from our Shrub School of
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Music that come into our planetarium and perform live music.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: And the great part is that it's all accompanied by
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: original visual graphics up on our dome by a variety
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: of space artists, including our own Lance Tankers Lee, who
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: is the director of our planetarium here at Space Science Center.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: And so check out all the information on these upcoming
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: concerts there. We also have another very special event that's
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: going to take place at the Space Science Center on
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: March the eighth. It's called the Georgia Stem Day. It's
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: sponsored by the Georgia Department of Education and it's a
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: time where middle school and high school students are encouraged
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: to come to the Space Science Center and explore career
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. That's a Saturday,
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: March the eighth. It's free all day long. We're going
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: to have many departments from Columba State University and the
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: professors in those departments who are going to be represented.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: We also have some members of the local technology community
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: from industry come down and meet and greet those professors
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: and those other industry folks our industry partners at Georgia
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: stem Day March the eighth here at Coca Cola Space
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Science Center. Find out more information, visit our website www
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: dot cc SSC dot org find out about the concerts
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: and Georgia Stemday. There.
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: Sean and I thank you for listening, and we'll do
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: this again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbumbus has
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: all of your garage door needs covered. Residential and commercial
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: service and repairs. If you need a new garage door,
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: or you're just looking to upgrade or repair your current door,
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: Overhead Door Company of Columbus has you covered. Plus they've
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