Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What Are The Weirdest Stars?

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What Are The Weirdest Stars? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:07
Speaker 1: So I wonder sometimes, why isn't the universe you know,
0:10
Speaker 1: more boring? You know, what, what do you mean more boring? Well,
0:14
Speaker 1: not only is so much of our universe beautiful from
0:17
Speaker 1: you know, like features on Earth too, incredible things in space,
0:21
Speaker 1: but it's also just seems to be filled with like
0:23
Speaker 1: really weird stuff, you know. Yeah, the universe always seems
0:27
Speaker 1: to top itself with more intense or more crazy stuff.
0:31
Speaker 1: I know. But I wonder is that a property of
0:33
Speaker 1: the universe or is that something about us? Like if
0:35
Speaker 1: we meet aliens and their physicists, would they be like, yawn,
0:39
Speaker 1: the universe is so simple and boring and we're the
0:42
Speaker 1: only ones who think is fascinating. Or they also just
0:44
Speaker 1: like stand a gape at the incredible features we see
0:47
Speaker 1: in the universe. Oh, I see you're asking a philosophical question,
0:50
Speaker 1: like is it not boring objectively or just subjectively as
0:55
Speaker 1: for humans given our experience? Yeah, is the universe not
0:58
Speaker 1: boring because of who we are? Because of what the
1:00
Speaker 1: universe is? Like? If we lived in a crazier part
1:03
Speaker 1: of the universe, maybe would be we would be more
1:05
Speaker 1: used to crazy things exactly if we had seen all
1:09
Speaker 1: the fascinating stuff early on, then all these discoveries would
1:12
Speaker 1: be ho hum, Right, But we grew up in a
1:15
Speaker 1: kind of a boring corner of the universe, and so
1:16
Speaker 1: we're blown away when we go to like the Manhattan
1:18
Speaker 1: part of the university, see all the crazy stuff that happens,
1:21
Speaker 1: all the extremes. Yeah, yeah, we're like the uh, the
1:25
Speaker 1: provincial ignor a miss of the universe. Y'all, y'all got
1:30
Speaker 1: a nice universe here. Now let's insult the United States.
1:36
Speaker 1: I mean we should come definitely, let's cut that. And
1:58
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. Welcome to our podcast Annual and Jorge Explained
2:01
Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in which
2:04
Speaker 1: we take a tour of the universe and find weird,
2:07
Speaker 1: interesting stuff that's hard to understand and try to explain
2:10
Speaker 1: it to you. They ever going to take a topic
2:12
Speaker 1: and we're going to examine some of the weirdest examples
2:15
Speaker 1: of them, So the most intense and extreme examples of
2:19
Speaker 1: this very common thing you see every night. That's right,
2:27
Speaker 1: And this episode is dedicated to a listener who wrote
2:30
Speaker 1: in and asked us to do an episode about all
2:33
Speaker 1: the weirdest stars in the universe. This was requested by
2:37
Speaker 1: Callie Smith, who also in her email described yourself as
2:40
Speaker 1: a physics ninja or hey, what do you think that means?
2:44
Speaker 1: She must have gone to like a combination school where
2:46
Speaker 1: they teach physics and ninja skills. I imagine that a
2:51
Speaker 1: physics ninja is somebody who breaks into your office late
2:54
Speaker 1: at night, totally silently and solves all the problems you
2:57
Speaker 1: have on the chalkboard and escapes without leaving a tri wow.
3:01
Speaker 1: I would love to see a duel between her and
3:03
Speaker 1: like a physics samurai. What would happen a physics samurai
3:07
Speaker 1: comes in and chops your chalkboard in half? I think
3:10
Speaker 1: less subtle, less subtle problem solved. Isn't that what you
3:14
Speaker 1: do to your students? You like walking? This is not good? Yeah. No,
3:19
Speaker 1: I'm definitely not like a physics gladiator, and that's what
3:22
Speaker 1: you mean. I think I meself more as a physics architect,
3:25
Speaker 1: trying to build interesting stuff in physics and find interesting puzzles. Cool. Well,
3:30
Speaker 1: thank you Kelly Smith for submitting this idea, and it's
3:33
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting one. Just the idea that there are
3:35
Speaker 1: things out there that you might somebody might call weird stars. Yeah,
3:39
Speaker 1: and you know, you know that our sun is a star,
3:41
Speaker 1: and lots of other stars out there, and a lot
3:43
Speaker 1: of them are sort of vanilla. You know, they're out there,
3:45
Speaker 1: they're fusing hydrogen, they're enormous burning balls of gas. We
3:49
Speaker 1: can see them from billions of miles away, you know.
3:51
Speaker 1: But there's so many of them that becomes a little plain, right,
3:54
Speaker 1: like you're bored by that. Um. But it turns out
3:56
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stars out there that are weird,
3:58
Speaker 1: that are strained, that do incredible stuff that blows your mind.
4:03
Speaker 1: And so this episode is dedicated to talking all about
4:06
Speaker 1: those kinds of stars. Yeah, because it's it's funny to
4:08
Speaker 1: think that our star, our sun, is this giant, enormous,
4:12
Speaker 1: continual in men's atomic bomb. That's just that it's exploding
4:17
Speaker 1: all the time, and it's but it's it's weird. I
4:20
Speaker 1: think that that's the vanilla version. That there are versions
4:24
Speaker 1: of stars out there that would make art Star look boring. Yeah,
4:28
Speaker 1: you've gotta be pretty jaded to think an enormous, constantly
4:31
Speaker 1: exploding fugion bomb is the size of yesterday's news. Yeah,
4:36
Speaker 1: the size of the sun is yesterday's news, right that, um,
4:40
Speaker 1: But that's the world we live in, you know, you
4:42
Speaker 1: always need something more exciting, something as you're scrolling down
4:45
Speaker 1: your Internet feed, right, you need something to catch your eye.
4:48
Speaker 1: And so yesterday's ball of enormous plasma is boring, and
4:52
Speaker 1: you need something news, something exciting, and so that's what
4:54
Speaker 1: we're providing to you today. Yeah, so let's break it down.
4:57
Speaker 1: What do you what do you mean by weird stars
4:59
Speaker 1: or stars that are not like the typical star that
5:01
Speaker 1: you see out in the universe. Yeah, you know, astronomers
5:04
Speaker 1: like to look out in the sky and see what
5:06
Speaker 1: they look at and try to understand it. And they
5:08
Speaker 1: look at the population they see. Do the stars have
5:11
Speaker 1: the distribution of brightness that we expect, We see the
5:13
Speaker 1: sizes that we expect, the distances we expect, and they
5:16
Speaker 1: start to ask questions, you know, and when they do so,
5:19
Speaker 1: they find some odd balls. They find some stars out
5:21
Speaker 1: there that don't quite um act the way they might
5:24
Speaker 1: have expected, and it gives some clues that there's different
5:26
Speaker 1: stuff going on in the universe that's producing these weird stars.
5:30
Speaker 1: And so specifically today we're interested in things like neutron
5:33
Speaker 1: stars and pulsars and weird things called magnetars. Magnetars sounds
5:39
Speaker 1: like a Greek mythology monster. Yeah, I wonder what a
5:43
Speaker 1: magnetar would do against the physics ninja. Who do you
5:45
Speaker 1: think they like? Epic battle? That would be an epic battle.
5:48
Speaker 1: Would love to see some fan art if anyone's listening,
5:51
Speaker 1: who knows it draw magnetars, I'd I'd love to see
5:56
Speaker 1: that done. That would be awesome. Yes, so we are
5:58
Speaker 1: going to dig into what's weird and fascinating and interesting
6:01
Speaker 1: about all these kinds of stars. But of course, before
6:03
Speaker 1: we do so, I went around and I asked people
6:05
Speaker 1: what they knew about these weird categories of stars. Yeah,
6:09
Speaker 1: we ask people what they thought was a neutron star
6:13
Speaker 1: or a pulsar or a magnetar. That's right. So before
6:17
Speaker 1: you listen to these answers, think to yourself, do you
6:19
Speaker 1: know what a neutron star is? How's it made? Why
6:21
Speaker 1: is it weird? Do you know what a magnetari is
6:23
Speaker 1: other than a comic book villain in Jorge's imagination? Think
6:26
Speaker 1: about it for yourself, then listen to these answers. Here's
6:29
Speaker 1: what people have to say. Kind of, I don't know
6:31
Speaker 1: so much about it. I don't know big stars I've
6:37
Speaker 1: heard days before, but nothing about like amation, and I
6:42
Speaker 1: feel like I've heard about a neutron stars but not
6:45
Speaker 1: the other two. Make a guess what a neutron star is? Um.
6:50
Speaker 1: Neutrons are like um, it's like the atom, right, like
6:54
Speaker 1: the protons, electrons and neutrons. So I would assume it
6:59
Speaker 1: has to do something that that I know. Well, if
7:05
Speaker 1: you have to guess what a quasar was, what would
7:07
Speaker 1: you guess? It is like a type of star or
7:10
Speaker 1: something something like that, a fireball for the fun there.
7:15
Speaker 1: A pulsar, to my understanding, would be like a black hole.
7:19
Speaker 1: When a black hole is and I could be very wrong,
7:22
Speaker 1: but a black hole is like eating or you know,
7:25
Speaker 1: or just breaking apart like a planet, and as it's
7:28
Speaker 1: doing that, it's spewing you know, stuff out, And as
7:32
Speaker 1: the black hole spins, it kind of emits um like
7:36
Speaker 1: what it is like radiation or you know, frequencies that
7:40
Speaker 1: when we see it here on Earth, it seems like
7:42
Speaker 1: it pulses or flashes something that's like given emitting like
7:48
Speaker 1: a energy. I'm not sure al R p U L
7:53
Speaker 1: S A R I have, but as wach, I can't
7:55
Speaker 1: remember what it is, all right, how about a neutron star,
7:57
Speaker 1: I'm sure just like a at this star so far
8:00
Speaker 1: of energy that now he emits a sense of light
8:04
Speaker 1: as far as neutron I mean, that's that's actually my
8:07
Speaker 1: best guess. I mean they're from the newtron star because
8:09
Speaker 1: it's probably more neutrons than like what positrons and those
8:13
Speaker 1: other things. So what do you think of those answers for? Yeah? No,
8:16
Speaker 1: I think they demonstrated as much knowledge as me about
8:20
Speaker 1: these topics. I see, so like them, you're fascinated to
8:24
Speaker 1: learn more about neutron stars and pulstars and that. Like them,
8:27
Speaker 1: I would have just said, yeah, it's like a fireball,
8:29
Speaker 1: right or a big ball of energy. Yeah. So a
8:32
Speaker 1: lot of people seem to have heard the term, right
8:34
Speaker 1: neutron star is um not unfamiliar people. I think one
8:39
Speaker 1: reason is that Thor's hammer is supposed to be made
8:42
Speaker 1: out of neutron star material. Isn't that right? Oh? Is
8:44
Speaker 1: that true? I think so. I'm not an expert on
8:46
Speaker 1: the Marvel universe. I'm sure somebody's gonna write in and
8:48
Speaker 1: correct me, but please do um. I think it was
8:52
Speaker 1: forged by the energy of a neutron star ran according
8:57
Speaker 1: to the movie, but I'm not sure if it's comic booklore.
9:00
Speaker 1: Isn't it super heavy? Though? It's super heavy? Right, it's
9:02
Speaker 1: as dense as a neutron star. Right, I don't know
9:06
Speaker 1: if it's super heavy. I know that only four can
9:09
Speaker 1: pick it up. Yeah, there's some complicated physics rules and
9:11
Speaker 1: the Marvel universe there. Well, this is not Dale and
9:14
Speaker 1: Jorge explain the Marvel universe. So let's get back to
9:16
Speaker 1: our universe. Although that sounds like a great podcast, that's
9:20
Speaker 1: our spinoff podcast. Yeah, um exactly. Um yeah, I thought
9:24
Speaker 1: people you know, mostly had heard of this stuff, but
9:26
Speaker 1: they didn't really know a lot of details about what
9:28
Speaker 1: pulsars were, and nobody had any idea what a magnetard was.
9:33
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds like it's magnetic. Yes, that's a
9:36
Speaker 1: good clue. Magnets oars are super magnetic, like a star
9:39
Speaker 1: that will stick to your fridge, or it's a star
9:44
Speaker 1: that will erase your credit cards. So the idea is
9:46
Speaker 1: that when you look out into the sky at night,
9:48
Speaker 1: you see a whole bunch of stars, but some of
9:50
Speaker 1: the ones that you're looking at are not like the others.
9:53
Speaker 1: That's right, Some of them are pretty weird and they're
9:56
Speaker 1: not always easy to spot. So let's dig into it.
9:58
Speaker 1: The first category of weird stars we want to talk
10:01
Speaker 1: about is neutron stars. Yeah, so what's a neutron star
10:06
Speaker 1: besides you know, a plot element in the in the
10:09
Speaker 1: Avengers movie. Um, well, I don't think they were created
10:13
Speaker 1: just for that purpose. Neutron star is some what happens
10:16
Speaker 1: after some stars go super nova. Right, So, the typical
10:20
Speaker 1: life cycle of a star is gas and dust come together,
10:23
Speaker 1: they're compressed by gravity. It starts to ignite in the center.
10:27
Speaker 1: It burns for billions of years. Right. Eventually it runs
10:30
Speaker 1: out of that fuel and and and the and the
10:33
Speaker 1: burning slows down and it can't any longer prevent itself
10:37
Speaker 1: from collapsing gravitationally, right, all this stuff gravity is trying
10:41
Speaker 1: to pull the star into as small adut as possible.
10:44
Speaker 1: But during its whole life, it's burning, and that's causing
10:46
Speaker 1: this outward pressure. Eventually that burning fades and fades and fades,
10:49
Speaker 1: and the star gives way to the inevitable forces of
10:52
Speaker 1: gravity and collapses like it's nuts out and and all
10:55
Speaker 1: that stuff to suddenly crunches down in the into the center. Yeah. Well,
10:59
Speaker 1: usually you get an implosion followed by an explosion which
11:02
Speaker 1: is a supernova, so a huge amount of light is
11:04
Speaker 1: emitted and then you have what's left over is a
11:07
Speaker 1: very very very dense, very small core. And if it's
11:11
Speaker 1: big enough, if it's like massive enough, then it can
11:13
Speaker 1: form a black hole, right, and and that's how a
11:15
Speaker 1: lot of black holes are made. But it's not quite
11:17
Speaker 1: massive enough. Sometimes it doesn't form a black hole. It
11:20
Speaker 1: just forms a super dense blob of stuff. So a
11:24
Speaker 1: neutron star is like a failed black hole. I don't
11:28
Speaker 1: want to pass any value judgments on neutron stars. I
11:31
Speaker 1: think neutron stars should be happy with how they look,
11:33
Speaker 1: you know, and not be aspiring to anything else. Um.
11:36
Speaker 1: But yeah, neutron stars are black holes that didn't go black.
11:39
Speaker 1: This is a stellar positive podcast. That's right. That's sorry.
11:43
Speaker 1: I love your body, stars, love who you are, But
11:46
Speaker 1: yeah they are. There are blobs of matter that weren't
11:49
Speaker 1: big enough, weren't dense enough to turn into black holes.
11:51
Speaker 1: What are you left with? This huge blob of matter
11:53
Speaker 1: and it's amazing amount of gravitational pressure and it's squeezes,
11:57
Speaker 1: squeezes down and in the end, you know, you start
12:00
Speaker 1: it out with this thing. It's millions of kilometers wide.
12:03
Speaker 1: All that stuff gets compressed into a little blob that's
12:05
Speaker 1: like ten kilometers in radius, which is pretty small. It's
12:09
Speaker 1: it's like the size of Manhattan. Yeah, exactly. And these
12:12
Speaker 1: things start out often much bigger than our son. Remember,
12:15
Speaker 1: our son is fairly small compared to a lot of
12:17
Speaker 1: suns out there. So this thing comes out to be
12:19
Speaker 1: like ten kilometers wide, but still have like one or
12:22
Speaker 1: two times the mass of our sun. So imagine taking
12:25
Speaker 1: our son and squeezing it down to like the size
12:29
Speaker 1: of Manhattan. And and what's holding it together is the gravity, right,
12:33
Speaker 1: that's right. Gravity is pulling this thing together, and nothing
12:36
Speaker 1: else is capable of sustaining it anymore. There's no pressure
12:40
Speaker 1: left to to keep it larger. So what's keeping it
12:43
Speaker 1: from becoming a black hole? We're din't it just keep
12:45
Speaker 1: compressing because of gravity? Yeah, well there's not enough gravity, right,
12:48
Speaker 1: There is some pressure there, and so the news what happens.
12:51
Speaker 1: The reason it's called the neutron star is that gravity
12:54
Speaker 1: is compressed it. And you know mostly these atoms have
12:56
Speaker 1: neutrons and protons and electrons, right, Well, it's so compressed
13:01
Speaker 1: that the protons and the electrons they have this interaction,
13:04
Speaker 1: and they turn into neutrons. Right, so you turn all
13:07
Speaker 1: the protons and electrons into neutrons. Member protons or plus
13:11
Speaker 1: one electrons are minus one. Wait waits there? Usually there
13:15
Speaker 1: one is plus and one is negative. So they attract
13:18
Speaker 1: each other. But you're saying, what if they get close
13:20
Speaker 1: enough they become a neutron, they turn into a neutron. Yeah,
13:23
Speaker 1: and it's not like, don't be confused, and neutron is
13:26
Speaker 1: not just a proton and electron stuck together, right, is
13:29
Speaker 1: the transformation of the quirks that are inside the proton.
13:32
Speaker 1: One of the corks inside the protons gets flipped from
13:35
Speaker 1: being like a down cork to an up cork, and
13:37
Speaker 1: that turns the proton into a neutron. And also it
13:39
Speaker 1: emits a neutrino. And so you turn all the protons
13:43
Speaker 1: and electrons inside these atoms into neutrons, so that all
13:46
Speaker 1: you're left with is neutrons. Why doesn't that collact into
13:50
Speaker 1: a black hole. Well, neutrons don't like to be on
13:53
Speaker 1: top of each other, right, And there's still gluons and things.
13:56
Speaker 1: The neutrons don't want to be like literally on top
13:58
Speaker 1: of each other, so there's still enough pressure there to
14:00
Speaker 1: prevent it from collapsing into a black hole. If there
14:03
Speaker 1: was more push each other out to you, don't they
14:06
Speaker 1: crowd each other out. Yeah, you know, it's like a
14:08
Speaker 1: bag of pink pong balls, right. You squeeze it and
14:10
Speaker 1: squeeze and squeeze it, and eventually they pack so tightly
14:13
Speaker 1: that they can't get any closer. And if you had
14:15
Speaker 1: enough neutrons you added another you know, if you double
14:18
Speaker 1: the mass or something, there'd be enough gravitational pressure it
14:21
Speaker 1: would form a black hole. But these are ones where
14:23
Speaker 1: there isn't enough gravitational pressure to overcome the neutrons pushing
14:27
Speaker 1: against each other. It's just stuck in this really dense state. Yeah,
14:31
Speaker 1: super dense. You know, if you had like a spoonful
14:34
Speaker 1: of this stuff, it would weigh three billion tons. It's
14:38
Speaker 1: hard to even really fathom, like how heavy this stuff is.
14:42
Speaker 1: A spoonful wigs three billion tons? Yeah, I mean you've
14:47
Speaker 1: taken something twice the size of the sun and compressed
14:50
Speaker 1: it to a sphere ten kilometers wide. Like it adds
14:53
Speaker 1: really dense stuff. Wow. So that's why it's called a neutron.
14:56
Speaker 1: Start said, it's mostly made out of neutrons. Yeah, it's
14:59
Speaker 1: a base eically just neutrons. Like you know, what is
15:02
Speaker 1: a neutron star? It's a star of neutrons. Right. For once,
15:05
Speaker 1: we have a great name in science that's compact, it's crisp,
15:08
Speaker 1: and it's totally accurate. Right, So kudos to the anonymous
15:11
Speaker 1: Physics naming Committee that we are often um crapping on
15:15
Speaker 1: their work, but today they did a great job. But
15:17
Speaker 1: why is it still called the star? Wouldn't it just
15:19
Speaker 1: be like a a neutron ball, wouldn't Why wouldn't you
15:22
Speaker 1: just call it a neutron ball. You don't even give it,
15:26
Speaker 1: You don't even want to give them this one. Huh?
15:28
Speaker 1: Why is it called the star? Yeah? Well, okay, that's
15:30
Speaker 1: a good question. I mean, let's talk about how you
15:32
Speaker 1: see them, right, A neutron star isn't actively fusing anymore,
15:35
Speaker 1: so it's not giving off a lot of lights. You
15:37
Speaker 1: can't see neutron stars in the sky the way you
15:39
Speaker 1: see other stars, right, just by seeing the light that
15:41
Speaker 1: comes off them. They're more like black holes, um in
15:44
Speaker 1: that they're intense sources of gravity and the stuff around
15:47
Speaker 1: them is getting sort of rubbed and compressed. They have
15:51
Speaker 1: an accretion disc, right, it's the stuff that's about to
15:54
Speaker 1: fall into the black hole of the neutron star, and
15:56
Speaker 1: that's giving off a lot of radiation. So you see
15:58
Speaker 1: the neutron stars not to but if they happen to
16:01
Speaker 1: have an accretion disc, it gives off a lot of
16:03
Speaker 1: ratian your radiation. So yeah, that's a fair point. That's
16:06
Speaker 1: a fair point. Maybe they shouldn't be called star that
16:07
Speaker 1: should be called like neutron rocks or scoops, oh neutron
16:10
Speaker 1: or something neutron balls. I feel like I should just
16:13
Speaker 1: get a Nobel price just for figuring out the Nobel
16:18
Speaker 1: Prize for star naming. Yeah. Nice, Maybe you can get
16:21
Speaker 1: a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for naming stars.
16:25
Speaker 1: At least a sticker, you know, like a little gold star.
16:27
Speaker 1: That would be nice. I'll make you a gold neutron
16:30
Speaker 1: star or a ball technically, Okay, so I see what
16:38
Speaker 1: you're saying. So it's not like the thing itself, that
16:41
Speaker 1: super dense core is glowing itself. It's just that it's
16:44
Speaker 1: it's almost acting like a black hole that it's so
16:47
Speaker 1: heavy and stuff that's surrounded. It's such an intense gravitational
16:52
Speaker 1: field that the stuff around it kind of burns and
16:54
Speaker 1: and and gets shredded, and that's what gives us the
16:57
Speaker 1: light that we see. Yeah, exactly, it's a lot like
16:59
Speaker 1: a baby cole, Right, but it's cool because it's a black,
17:02
Speaker 1: baby black hole you can see into, right, the stuff
17:05
Speaker 1: is not hidden behind the gravitational event horizon. You can
17:08
Speaker 1: see it. You can study, you can ask questions like
17:10
Speaker 1: how fast it's spinning. You know, what is it like
17:12
Speaker 1: to be on the surface, And uh, it's pretty crazy
17:15
Speaker 1: because these neutron stars, you know, they contain the all
17:17
Speaker 1: the angular momentum of the original star. Right, So imagine,
17:21
Speaker 1: for example, think about like being a figure skater or
17:23
Speaker 1: being on the ice. If you're spinning any of your
17:25
Speaker 1: arms out wide, and then you bring your arms in
17:28
Speaker 1: closer and closer together, you go faster and faster. Right.
17:30
Speaker 1: The reason is angular momentum. You have to have the
17:33
Speaker 1: same amount of spinning momentum when your arms are out
17:36
Speaker 1: wide as when you're they're close in, Right, But having
17:39
Speaker 1: things close in means they have to go faster to
17:42
Speaker 1: have the same amount of angler momentum because it depends
17:44
Speaker 1: on the radius. So like it shrinks, like as a shrinks,
17:47
Speaker 1: it goes faster and it spins faster and faster until
17:50
Speaker 1: exactly it gets so small that it's it's probably spinning,
17:52
Speaker 1: spinning at a crazy speed. Yeah exactly. Some neutron stars
17:56
Speaker 1: we found spin like they rotate. The entire star takes
18:00
Speaker 1: like five or six hundred times per second. Five times
18:04
Speaker 1: per second per second, yeah, which means if you're like
18:09
Speaker 1: standing on the surface of the star, the surface is
18:11
Speaker 1: moving it like a quarter of the speed of light. Wow.
18:14
Speaker 1: But technically you could sort of like land on it, right,
18:17
Speaker 1: like if you maybe, right, if you match the speed maybe,
18:20
Speaker 1: And I don't know what would be like to be
18:22
Speaker 1: on the surface of a neutron star. I think it
18:23
Speaker 1: would be pretty hot and unpleasant. There's definitely a huge
18:26
Speaker 1: amount of radiation from all the stuff nearby. But yeah,
18:30
Speaker 1: technically you could. I mean, it's a thing, right, you
18:32
Speaker 1: could land on it, you could touch it would just
18:35
Speaker 1: send you a robotic probe first, but yeah, go for it. Well,
18:39
Speaker 1: I mean I think if you were spinning that fast,
18:40
Speaker 1: you would probably just get squitched against your chair, right,
18:44
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. I mean imagine landing on something that's spinning
18:47
Speaker 1: really really fast, right, You'd have to catch up to
18:49
Speaker 1: it in order to land on it, so you'd have
18:51
Speaker 1: to be orbiting it at a quarter of the speed
18:53
Speaker 1: of light. It would be pretty tricky maneuver. Okay, So,
18:56
Speaker 1: so how rare are these neutron stars? How many are
18:58
Speaker 1: there in the in the universe or in our galaxy? Yeah, well,
19:01
Speaker 1: we've identified a bunch of them, you know, we've seen
19:03
Speaker 1: We've identified pretty confidently, like thousands of them in our neighborhood,
19:08
Speaker 1: and the closest one we've ever seen is like four
19:10
Speaker 1: hundred light years away. And then we can extrapolate, We say, well,
19:13
Speaker 1: if there's a certain density of neutron stars around here
19:16
Speaker 1: that we've seen, you know, how many do we expect
19:18
Speaker 1: to see? And we can have models of stars and
19:20
Speaker 1: supernova collapses and and their's and their masses, and the
19:23
Speaker 1: estimates are that there are tens of millions of these
19:26
Speaker 1: things in the galaxy. Um. But and you know, that's
19:29
Speaker 1: a tiny fraction of the hundreds billions of stars that
19:32
Speaker 1: are in our galaxy. But it's not a small number.
19:34
Speaker 1: And right there's a lot of these crazy dense, super
19:37
Speaker 1: spinning um little tiny what do you call them, neutron balls?
19:41
Speaker 1: Neutron balls. Yeah, that sounds like something you'd order for dessert.
19:44
Speaker 1: You know, I'd like two neutron balls with chocolate syrup. Please,
19:47
Speaker 1: Can I get our ninja physics physics ninja to cook
19:50
Speaker 1: up the balls? Said, oh, no, you should have a
19:54
Speaker 1: dessert that's not quite so dense. Yeah. So they're they're
20:00
Speaker 1: a lot of them, and they spend really fast. They're
20:02
Speaker 1: super dance. They can't actually see them. Can you actually
20:05
Speaker 1: see them in the night scout? You can, right, because
20:07
Speaker 1: I heard they don't give a visible light. Yeah, exactly.
20:10
Speaker 1: They're like anything else that doesn't glow, you know, just
20:12
Speaker 1: like an asteroid. Right, You can't see an asteroid unless
20:15
Speaker 1: the sun shines on it. These things are too far
20:18
Speaker 1: away from any start to shine on them. We have to.
20:20
Speaker 1: We can only see them from the radiation that comes
20:22
Speaker 1: from nearby them because the gravitational pressure they exert on
20:25
Speaker 1: like gas and dust that's orbiting them. So you can't
20:28
Speaker 1: see them directly. You can't point your telescope and a
20:30
Speaker 1: neutron star and expect to see it. Just be like
20:32
Speaker 1: a black rock, but not a black hole, you see,
20:35
Speaker 1: like the chaos it's that it's causing around itself. Yeah, exactly,
20:39
Speaker 1: just the way if you see a star walk, you know,
20:41
Speaker 1: through the through the crowd of photographers at the oscars, right,
20:46
Speaker 1: you probably don't see the star directly. You just see
20:48
Speaker 1: like all the flashes of light from the cameras and
20:50
Speaker 1: all the whispering and all the people jockeying to get
20:52
Speaker 1: a quote right, and so often it's the secondary stuff
20:55
Speaker 1: that you see more directly. Yeah, and probably if you
20:58
Speaker 1: try to reach you and go into and touch touch them,
21:00
Speaker 1: probably also die, right. Probably. Yes, some of the stars
21:04
Speaker 1: are spinning at a quarter of this peaceful like burned myself.
21:11
Speaker 1: All right, cool, So those are neutron stars or neutron balls.
21:15
Speaker 1: So let's get into the other kinds of weird stars
21:17
Speaker 1: that we're gonna talked about today. But first let's take
21:19
Speaker 1: a quick break, all right. So let's keep going down
21:35
Speaker 1: our list of weird stars in the universe. And we
21:38
Speaker 1: already talked about neutron stars. Now, what's Daniel, what's our
21:41
Speaker 1: second kind of weird star in the universe. The second
21:44
Speaker 1: kind of weird star is one of my favorites. And
21:46
Speaker 1: this is something called a pulsar. That's that that sounds
21:50
Speaker 1: like a like a like a watch. They're very expensive.
21:53
Speaker 1: They're only made in Geneva and they cost like fifty
21:56
Speaker 1: dollars each because they're made by like tiny little dwarfs
21:58
Speaker 1: that are kept underground, never see the Sun or anything. Right,
22:03
Speaker 1: there's my strange watch fantasy pulsars. Pul Stars are actually
22:08
Speaker 1: a type of neutron star. Right, So neutron stars we
22:11
Speaker 1: just talked about, and neutron stars have strong magnetic fields,
22:14
Speaker 1: like really really powerful magnetic field because, as we talked
22:17
Speaker 1: about in our episode about why the Earth has a
22:20
Speaker 1: magnetic field, anything that has like a fluid inside of
22:23
Speaker 1: it that can conduct the electricity and is active is
22:26
Speaker 1: going to have a magnetic field. And neutron stars already
22:29
Speaker 1: have magnetic fields that are like billions of times as
22:33
Speaker 1: strong as the Earth's magnetic field. Because it's spinning. Is
22:35
Speaker 1: that why yet spinning? And because it has activity inside
22:39
Speaker 1: of it, So you know there must be stuff going
22:41
Speaker 1: on inside the neutron star. It's not just neutrons like
22:44
Speaker 1: crammed in and then and quiet right there moving around.
22:47
Speaker 1: There's like some fluid and some flow in order to
22:49
Speaker 1: get the magnetic field. So inside of this ten kilometer
22:53
Speaker 1: to Sun's mass, super dense thing, there's actually stuff going
22:58
Speaker 1: on inside of it, that's creating a magnetic field. Yeah,
23:01
Speaker 1: but we don't understand that very well. Like we even
23:03
Speaker 1: don't understand the magnetic field of our sun very well.
23:06
Speaker 1: You know, our son has this very strong magnetic field
23:08
Speaker 1: and it flips every eleven years, which is really weird,
23:11
Speaker 1: and we don't understand very well. So we have a
23:13
Speaker 1: very tentative understanding of the magnetic fields inside neutron stars.
23:17
Speaker 1: And even weirder is that some neutron stars have even
23:20
Speaker 1: stronger magnetic fields. Like alright, neutron stars already crazy hot,
23:25
Speaker 1: crazy dense, crazy fast, crazy, small, crazy, spinning, crazy magnetic fields.
23:29
Speaker 1: And in this category of them called pulsars, have extra
23:32
Speaker 1: powerful magnetic fields like a thousand or a million times
23:35
Speaker 1: more powerful, and and so. But other some stars don't
23:39
Speaker 1: have this magnetic field. Yes, some neutron stars have weaker
23:42
Speaker 1: magnetic fields. All neutron stars, we think, have magnetic fields,
23:45
Speaker 1: but some of them have such a strong magnetic field
23:48
Speaker 1: that something really weird happens. And remember that magnetic fields
23:51
Speaker 1: interact with charge particles, so a charge particle gets bent
23:54
Speaker 1: by magnetic field. And you know on Earth we see
23:56
Speaker 1: this all the time in the northern lights. Northern lights
23:59
Speaker 1: are just charge particles from the Sun or from some
24:02
Speaker 1: from somewhere else that got carried up to the north
24:05
Speaker 1: part of the Earth by the magnetic field. Right, we
24:08
Speaker 1: have these lines and the magnetic then the charge particles
24:10
Speaker 1: get bent by them and sent to the north or
24:12
Speaker 1: to the south. So something weird happens on a pulsar.
24:15
Speaker 1: That's sort of the inverse, which is that a lot
24:18
Speaker 1: of charge particles get shot out from the pulsar around
24:22
Speaker 1: the north pole and the south pole of the pulsar.
24:25
Speaker 1: It becomes like a like a death ray, yes, exactly
24:28
Speaker 1: two death rays, right, one from the north and one
24:30
Speaker 1: from the top of the south. And you know, there's
24:32
Speaker 1: all this radiation produced and it gets funneled up to
24:35
Speaker 1: the north and the south magnetic poles and then shot
24:37
Speaker 1: out into space. So it's not just like um sent
24:40
Speaker 1: everywhere like a glowing sun. It's like you take all
24:42
Speaker 1: this crazy radiation and you focus it into just two beams,
24:45
Speaker 1: one from the top and one from the bottom. Right.
24:48
Speaker 1: And the crazy thing is that this magnetic field is
24:50
Speaker 1: moving right relative to the star. Well sometimes, like on Earth,
24:54
Speaker 1: the magnetic field is not pointing the same direction as
24:56
Speaker 1: the rotation axis, right, So the Earth for example, right
25:00
Speaker 1: spins around one axis, and the north pole, as we
25:02
Speaker 1: talked about in that other episode, is not aligned right,
25:05
Speaker 1: So the direction of the north pole doesn't always point
25:08
Speaker 1: the same way as the direction of the magnetic north pole.
25:11
Speaker 1: So there's a it drifts in like an Earth. The
25:14
Speaker 1: magnetic are north poll is drifting into Russia right now,
25:17
Speaker 1: that's right, And as long as they're not aligned, then
25:20
Speaker 1: the magnetic north pole sort of like sweeping out a
25:22
Speaker 1: circle in space, right, like a cone in space. Now,
25:25
Speaker 1: imagine if you're blasting a hugely powerful laser, and that's
25:28
Speaker 1: basically what pulsars are doing. A hugely powerful laser out
25:31
Speaker 1: into space from your magnetic north pole. But the spinning
25:35
Speaker 1: north pole is in another direction. So the magnetic north
25:37
Speaker 1: pole is going to sweep through space, um, sending this
25:40
Speaker 1: huge blast of radiation in different places. And that's why
25:44
Speaker 1: it's called a pulse are because um it doesn't always
25:48
Speaker 1: point towards Earth. For example, sometimes that radiation sweeps across
25:51
Speaker 1: Earth and we're like, whoa, what was that? And then
25:53
Speaker 1: it turns black again, and it waits for the pulse
25:55
Speaker 1: are to spin around and then it covers us again.
25:58
Speaker 1: It's like a like a lighthouse, right, this spinning around
26:00
Speaker 1: you only see it sometimes it's always shining, but you
26:03
Speaker 1: don't always see it. It's kind of like the Death
26:05
Speaker 1: Star in Star Wars, right, like, um, how is it
26:09
Speaker 1: like the Death Star? Exactly? Yeah, No, follow me on
26:11
Speaker 1: this one, Daniel. You know the little circle that shoots
26:15
Speaker 1: the beam out of the death Star, that's kind of
26:17
Speaker 1: like the north pole of the pulsar, and so you
26:21
Speaker 1: can imagine the death Star kind of spinning along its access.
26:24
Speaker 1: Then that that that laser beam is going to be
26:27
Speaker 1: also rotating around kind of like a yeah yeah, Like
26:31
Speaker 1: like if you can shine a flash light out into
26:32
Speaker 1: the sky and you move your hand, it's going to
26:34
Speaker 1: be sweeping around, right, yeah, exactly. You know, I think
26:37
Speaker 1: a better name for pulsars would have been death stars,
26:39
Speaker 1: because they really are death stars. There are these big blobs,
26:43
Speaker 1: right fully operational battle stations, capable of delivering incredible amounts
26:47
Speaker 1: of radiation. Well, you know, this is our podcast, Daniel,
26:50
Speaker 1: we can name things whatever we want. Neutron balls, death
26:53
Speaker 1: stars exactly. In our little universe, we are in charge.
27:02
Speaker 1: The first pulsar ever discovered actually has a pretty cool name.
27:05
Speaker 1: It's called l G M. It stands for Little Green Men.
27:12
Speaker 1: That's because it was an exciting discovery, the first pulsar
27:15
Speaker 1: ever seen. You know, they saw it in their data
27:18
Speaker 1: and they saw it was bright and then dark and
27:20
Speaker 1: then bright and then dark and then bright and then dark,
27:21
Speaker 1: and it was regular. Right, It's not random. It's not
27:24
Speaker 1: like the pulse are just shines on you sometimes and
27:26
Speaker 1: sometimes it doesn't. It follows a very specific pattern, so
27:29
Speaker 1: like somebody was trying to um send us a signal, yes, exactly.
27:33
Speaker 1: So the first time they saw this, they thought, what
27:35
Speaker 1: are we getting a message from aliens? I mean, it's
27:38
Speaker 1: like Morse code or something, right, And so that's why
27:41
Speaker 1: they called it l g M one because they thought, well,
27:44
Speaker 1: maybe this is the first time we're hearing from aliens.
27:46
Speaker 1: And for the real little hesitant to publish, that's the
27:49
Speaker 1: real name, it's the l l g M. Yeah, the
27:53
Speaker 1: real scientific name of the first pulsar ever discovered was
27:56
Speaker 1: called l g M one. And they thought for a while, Wow,
27:59
Speaker 1: maybe the of sa this aliens. I mean, I love
28:01
Speaker 1: reading about those moments in science when people thought they
28:03
Speaker 1: discovered aliens, right, because maybe there are aliens out there,
28:07
Speaker 1: and usually aliens like in science are relegated to like
28:11
Speaker 1: the fringe of you know, the extremes, the crazy people, etcetera.
28:15
Speaker 1: But one day we might actually find aliens, and some
28:19
Speaker 1: like actual scientists doing careful work is going to stumble
28:22
Speaker 1: across evidence of it or hear a message from space
28:24
Speaker 1: or something. So I love hearing about those moments when
28:27
Speaker 1: a scientist is like, am I that person? Am I?
28:30
Speaker 1: The person is going to call it my colleagues and
28:31
Speaker 1: be like, no, I know this sounds crazy, but I
28:33
Speaker 1: think I found aliens. Well, they must have felt pretty
28:36
Speaker 1: confident if they named it LGM. I think that was
28:40
Speaker 1: mostly a joke between them. But then they found a
28:43
Speaker 1: second one coming from a totally different direction in the sky,
28:46
Speaker 1: and so they were like, oh, let's call this one
28:48
Speaker 1: little Blue Men, Big Green Men or something. Um, So
28:53
Speaker 1: they find a second one, so they thought, oh, there
28:55
Speaker 1: must be It can just be. There can be two
28:59
Speaker 1: civilizations of little green men sending us signals. It must
29:02
Speaker 1: be some natural phenomenon. Yeah, exactly. And the thing that
29:05
Speaker 1: made it seem like maybe it was aliens was just
29:07
Speaker 1: the fact that it was regular. And that's not that
29:10
Speaker 1: hard to explain, right, There's not that much information content
29:13
Speaker 1: in a regular message. If somebody wants to send you
29:15
Speaker 1: a message saying, hi, we're here, we're alive, come talk
29:18
Speaker 1: to us. You don't just send regular beeps, right, you
29:20
Speaker 1: want to send some information and uh. And so that's
29:23
Speaker 1: it wasn't very convincing as an alien message anyway. Yeah,
29:26
Speaker 1: So then they found the second one and uh. And
29:28
Speaker 1: then they found a bunch And so now we found
29:30
Speaker 1: lots of these things. So if we were to look
29:32
Speaker 1: at these out into you wouldn't see them in the
29:34
Speaker 1: night sky, right, You only see them in X ray
29:36
Speaker 1: the X ray spectrum. Right, that's right. I think they're
29:38
Speaker 1: mostly an X ray and you would see them as
29:40
Speaker 1: as kind of these blinking lights. Mhmm exactly. And some
29:44
Speaker 1: of them blink slow because they rotate slowly, and some
29:46
Speaker 1: of them blink really fast because they rotate like crazy fast.
29:50
Speaker 1: Like some of them blink on and off every millisecond. Wow.
29:55
Speaker 1: So it's like there's something ten kilometer is big with
30:00
Speaker 1: the massive two sons spinning once every millisecond. Yes, exactly.
30:05
Speaker 1: I mean, this is an enormous cosmic object doing these
30:08
Speaker 1: really extreme maneuvers um just to send us this blinking radiation.
30:12
Speaker 1: It's really crazy. And there's a mystery to them, right,
30:16
Speaker 1: like we don't really know why they're sending this how
30:19
Speaker 1: or how they're sending these beams of radiation. Yeah, you know,
30:22
Speaker 1: the how the magnetic field is generated and how the
30:24
Speaker 1: magnetic field turns into this beam of radiation is not
30:27
Speaker 1: something that's well understood. It's an area of active research.
30:29
Speaker 1: And you know, there's some models here and there, but
30:31
Speaker 1: nobody is really fully confident that they that they understand it.
30:34
Speaker 1: It's pretty weird. I think it's pretty clear there's probably
30:37
Speaker 1: some some guys in black helmets inside turning a lever
30:41
Speaker 1: and that's what's costing these beams. I mean, obviously it's
30:44
Speaker 1: a death star. I find your lack of faith in
30:47
Speaker 1: science disturbing horhe um. And you know it costs these
30:54
Speaker 1: guys energy. Right, you can just beam a huge amount
30:56
Speaker 1: of energy into space for free. That energy comes from
30:59
Speaker 1: some where. So what happens is as the years and
31:02
Speaker 1: the millions of years go by, these pulsars start to
31:04
Speaker 1: slow down. Essentially shooting out all this energy into space
31:08
Speaker 1: is like friction on the on the pulsar and it
31:11
Speaker 1: slows down and they last, Like you know, we think
31:13
Speaker 1: like ten to a hundred million years, so only a
31:16
Speaker 1: little while in Yeah, only a little while. And they're unique,
31:21
Speaker 1: you know, each one has its own pattern, and that
31:23
Speaker 1: makes it really cool because you can use them for
31:26
Speaker 1: things like um cosmic locations, kind of like beacons. Yeah,
31:31
Speaker 1: you can say I'm this distance from that pulsar, and
31:34
Speaker 1: I'm that distance from this other pulsar, and I'm this
31:36
Speaker 1: distance from this third pulsar, and that's enough to say
31:38
Speaker 1: uniquely where you are in the galaxy. That's pretty cool.
31:43
Speaker 1: It is cool. We actually we used it because when
31:46
Speaker 1: we sent out some of those early satellites that we
31:48
Speaker 1: just sort of like lofted out into space, thinking maybe
31:51
Speaker 1: one day they'll crash land on an alien planet, we
31:54
Speaker 1: included on on that spacecraft a plaque that describes our
31:57
Speaker 1: location using pulsars. So then what happens after a hundred
32:01
Speaker 1: million years, after they run out of energy, they just
32:04
Speaker 1: become regular neutrons neutron balls, Yeah, yeah, exactly, they start
32:08
Speaker 1: to slow down, They just become dark neutron balls, yeah exactly.
32:13
Speaker 1: Hopefully the aliens find us before our address becomes obsolete. Yeah, alright,
32:19
Speaker 1: let's get into the last type of weird star out
32:22
Speaker 1: there in New universe. But first let's take another break. Okay,
32:38
Speaker 1: So the last kind of weird star that our listener
32:42
Speaker 1: our physics ninja, our physics ninja. Yeah, Kelly Smiths suggests
32:45
Speaker 1: that we talked about is something called a magnetar. Yeah, magnetar.
32:50
Speaker 1: Magnetars are like the extreme version of pulsars. So pulsars
32:53
Speaker 1: are the extreme version of neutron stars, which are already extreme,
32:57
Speaker 1: and magnetars are like the crazy of the crazy. Huh.
33:01
Speaker 1: But wait, if we're naming neutron stars neutron balls, you're
33:04
Speaker 1: saying this is the bossiest of all the neutron balls.
33:07
Speaker 1: That's right, these are the ballsiest balls of all um
33:11
Speaker 1: and a C d C would love these. Um, we
33:13
Speaker 1: have neutron stars sometimes have crazy magnetic fields, and they
33:16
Speaker 1: call them a pulsar. But when they have super crazy
33:19
Speaker 1: magnetic fields, like ridiculous, then you call it a magnetar.
33:23
Speaker 1: And so these are things that are spinning incredibly fast
33:26
Speaker 1: and have incredibly powerful magnetic fields. We think these are
33:29
Speaker 1: the most powerful magnetic fields basically anywhere in the universe.
33:35
Speaker 1: What do you mean, So it's just something, It's just
33:36
Speaker 1: a neutron star or neutron balls. It just happens for
33:40
Speaker 1: some reason to have started off with a giant magnetic
33:44
Speaker 1: field and rotation. Is there something that would you know?
33:47
Speaker 1: How do you what what causes um a neutron ball
33:52
Speaker 1: to to have these higher or higher energy and fields.
33:56
Speaker 1: I think Thor's hammer has to strike at it just
33:58
Speaker 1: the right moment. Now it was it was bitten by
34:02
Speaker 1: a microwave spider. Now, um, we don't know, you know,
34:05
Speaker 1: we don't understand. We know that it's not super rare.
34:08
Speaker 1: You know, something like one inten um of these pulsars
34:12
Speaker 1: is a magnetar, so it's not super rare, but they're
34:15
Speaker 1: super powerful. And you know, we don't even really have
34:17
Speaker 1: a strong grasp on magnetic fields of ordinary stars. So
34:21
Speaker 1: understanding like the crazy extreme magnetic fields of some really
34:24
Speaker 1: strange neutron stars is definitely an area of active research
34:27
Speaker 1: and not something that we understand very well. So wait,
34:29
Speaker 1: are these things are made out of pure neutrons? They like,
34:32
Speaker 1: there aren't There aren't any more atoms, basically, is what
34:34
Speaker 1: you're saying. It's just pure neutrons clump together. That's right.
34:38
Speaker 1: If you want to source of pure neutrons, you want
34:39
Speaker 1: to go to whole foods and like go in the
34:41
Speaker 1: both food sections, they don't have neutrons. You gotta go
34:43
Speaker 1: out to the neutron stars to get a pure spoonful
34:46
Speaker 1: of neutrons. Because remember Adams started out with protons and
34:49
Speaker 1: electrons and neutrons. But in the vicinity of a neutron
34:52
Speaker 1: star and the internal crazy compressed bits of a neutron star,
34:56
Speaker 1: the protons and electrons react to give neutrons. Then also neutrinos,
35:01
Speaker 1: which fly out into outer space and are not kept
35:03
Speaker 1: inside the star. But neutrons don't have any electric charge, right,
35:07
Speaker 1: They're not neither positive nor negative. So how can they
35:10
Speaker 1: have a magnetic field. Well, there are quarks inside the neutron, right,
35:13
Speaker 1: which have charge. So it's the spinning of spinning of
35:17
Speaker 1: those it's causing maybe these fields. Yeah, exactly, And as
35:21
Speaker 1: I said, we don't really understand it very well. Um,
35:23
Speaker 1: but these things are crazy and they're moving really fast,
35:26
Speaker 1: and they're moving so fast that they don't last very long.
35:29
Speaker 1: Like we said that pulsars take like a hundred or
35:31
Speaker 1: ten to a hundred million years to give up all
35:33
Speaker 1: their energy because they're spinning and beaming all this energy
35:36
Speaker 1: into space. Magnetars use of all their energy in like
35:39
Speaker 1: ten thousand years or something. Wow, that's super quick. That's
35:42
Speaker 1: like a like a it's like a blink in the
35:45
Speaker 1: in the age of the universe. Yeah, exactly, it's hardly anything, right,
35:48
Speaker 1: It's it's basically an explosion right from the from the
35:50
Speaker 1: time scale of the universe. It's an explosion. And they
35:52
Speaker 1: basically don't last at all. It's like a flash. Yeah, exactly,
35:55
Speaker 1: the flash. Um, but you know before they before they die,
35:58
Speaker 1: they do even weird or stuff. So the surface of
36:02
Speaker 1: the of this magnetar is very intense, right, it's a
36:05
Speaker 1: huge amount of pressure, and we think that maybe it's
36:07
Speaker 1: not stable, and that sometimes what happens is the same
36:11
Speaker 1: thing that happens on Earth when you have huge dense
36:14
Speaker 1: bits of matter pushed against each other, which on Earth
36:16
Speaker 1: you get an earthquake. So on the surface of this
36:18
Speaker 1: magnetar you might get a star quake. Huge blobs of
36:22
Speaker 1: these neutrons like push against each other and slide and slip,
36:25
Speaker 1: and you get cracks and the thing reforms. And yeah,
36:29
Speaker 1: I know it sounds like science fiction, right, but we
36:32
Speaker 1: think it's actually literally happening in this universe. Because they're
36:35
Speaker 1: spinning faster, you're seeing these spin even faster than a
36:38
Speaker 1: thousand times a second. Yeah, some of them do exactly,
36:41
Speaker 1: and they have crazy magnetic fields. And the reason we
36:43
Speaker 1: think that sometimes they have these star quakes is that
36:46
Speaker 1: we see these really strong flashes of light, these gamma
36:50
Speaker 1: ray bursts that we think are essentially like light escaping
36:54
Speaker 1: from the inside the neutron star during one of these starquakes,
36:57
Speaker 1: and so it releases this huge out of energy. And
37:00
Speaker 1: you know, we should do a whole podcast episode on
37:02
Speaker 1: gamma ray bursts. They're fascinating. They're not very well understood.
37:05
Speaker 1: But one idea is that they might be caused by
37:08
Speaker 1: star quakes on the surface of magnetars. Wait, so doesn't
37:13
Speaker 1: that sound like fiction. It just sounds like fiction. Star
37:15
Speaker 1: quakes on the surface of magnetars. Well, it doesn't sound
37:18
Speaker 1: that impressive if you switch to balls, right, ball quakes
37:21
Speaker 1: and the surface of neutron balls. And that's why we're
37:24
Speaker 1: not using balls because it doesn't sound as good. Um, alright,
37:29
Speaker 1: so them, then how do we see these magnetars? Are
37:33
Speaker 1: they do they also see them blinking like the pulsars. Yes,
37:36
Speaker 1: they also admit a lot of radiation. That's why they
37:38
Speaker 1: slow down. So they're essentially like the super duper version
37:41
Speaker 1: of pulsars, and pulsars are super duper neutron stars, then
37:44
Speaker 1: magnetars are super duper pulsars, and we can see them
37:47
Speaker 1: in that same way. And then also sometimes they admit
37:49
Speaker 1: these huge flashes of gamma rays, which coincidently is what
37:54
Speaker 1: gave another Avenger his superpowers. What which one? You don't, uh,
38:00
Speaker 1: I'm not of my moral universe details. It's the it's
38:04
Speaker 1: the Hug. The Hug everyone knows got his powers from
38:07
Speaker 1: gamma rad Yeah, but not from gamma ray burst from
38:10
Speaker 1: outer space, right, that would affected everybody? Well, we don't
38:13
Speaker 1: we When he was getting one of his seven pH ds,
38:16
Speaker 1: he was doing an experiment that immersed him in gamma rays, right, yeah,
38:20
Speaker 1: all right, so um so those our magnetars are like
38:23
Speaker 1: super charged pulsars, which are like supercharged neutron stars, which
38:27
Speaker 1: are like actually neutron balls exactly exactly. And you know
38:32
Speaker 1: these things are not just ideas, right, these things they
38:34
Speaker 1: are out there there, literally there. You could take a
38:37
Speaker 1: spaceship and go and look at one and visit them
38:39
Speaker 1: and interact with them. Right. The universe really has this
38:42
Speaker 1: stuff in it, right, And I always try to remind
38:45
Speaker 1: myself in astronomy that we've only seen the tip of
38:48
Speaker 1: the iceberg. You know, every decade we find something else
38:51
Speaker 1: super weird that astronomers twenty years ago would have thought, No,
38:54
Speaker 1: that's incredible, that's crazy, that's too weird to exist, Which
38:58
Speaker 1: means that there must be lots of stuff out there.
39:01
Speaker 1: We haven't even imagined crazy stuff to trip over. We
39:04
Speaker 1: haven't even begun to think about. Well, there are even
39:06
Speaker 1: crazier things that we think might be out there, right,
39:08
Speaker 1: hypothetical crazy stars. Yeah, there's no shortage theorists out there
39:13
Speaker 1: thinking up other crazy stars that might exist. So let's
39:16
Speaker 1: transition from talking about real weird stuff to hypothetical weird stuff.
39:26
Speaker 1: What are some of the things that physicists think might
39:29
Speaker 1: be out there that are even weirder. Well, one of
39:31
Speaker 1: them is called a quark star, And so we talked
39:34
Speaker 1: about how the neutron has quirks inside of it, right,
39:37
Speaker 1: and that in a neutron star is really compressed and
39:39
Speaker 1: the neutrons are all pushed up against each other. Well,
39:42
Speaker 1: it might be that you get a neutron star that's
39:44
Speaker 1: so dense that has enough gravity not to become a
39:47
Speaker 1: black hole. But to break up the neutrons right where
39:50
Speaker 1: the bond between the quarks um is weaker than the
39:53
Speaker 1: energy of the gravity and so basically breaks them up.
39:56
Speaker 1: And then you just have a ball of quarks, a
39:59
Speaker 1: quirk ball, a cork ball. And you know, we don't
40:02
Speaker 1: see even though we're made out of protons and neutrons,
40:04
Speaker 1: which are made out of quarks, we never see quarks
40:07
Speaker 1: by themselves. Even in particle colliders, we never see that
40:09
Speaker 1: because corks have really really strong bonds with each other.
40:13
Speaker 1: They have this really strange kind of force. You know
40:15
Speaker 1: how gravity, How gravity gets weaker as things get further apart. Well,
40:20
Speaker 1: the bonds between quarks is really weird. He get stronger
40:23
Speaker 1: as things get further apart, which means it's very very
40:26
Speaker 1: difficult to pull things apart because the amount of energy
40:28
Speaker 1: stored in that bond becomes enormous. But where would this
40:31
Speaker 1: pressure come from, Like, what would be the difference between
40:33
Speaker 1: a regular neutron star and a quark star. I don't know,
40:36
Speaker 1: that's a great question. I think it must just have
40:38
Speaker 1: to do with the mass of it and the gravitational pressure. Right,
40:41
Speaker 1: So if it's bigger than if it's enough mass to
40:44
Speaker 1: form a neutron star, but not quite enough to form
40:46
Speaker 1: a black hole. Then under some conditions it might break
40:49
Speaker 1: down those neutrons into corks, but that's not something we've
40:52
Speaker 1: ever seen. So you would just see like a ball
40:55
Speaker 1: of solid quarks, yes, exactly. And I'm not sure how
40:58
Speaker 1: you would observe that, right, that's a great question. How
41:01
Speaker 1: would you tell the difference between a neutron star and
41:03
Speaker 1: a star with the neutrons have broken down into quarks.
41:06
Speaker 1: There must be some sort of strange radiation that that's
41:09
Speaker 1: generated from that kind of star you just asked, right,
41:11
Speaker 1: like on on the red carpet here over here, over here,
41:16
Speaker 1: that's right. And the kinds of quirks that are in
41:19
Speaker 1: um neutrons are just up corks and down corks, but
41:22
Speaker 1: there are other kinds of corks. There's the strange cork,
41:25
Speaker 1: and the bottom cork and the charm cork. And so
41:27
Speaker 1: some people thought of like, well, what if you had
41:29
Speaker 1: a star made exclusively of strange quirks, for example, And
41:34
Speaker 1: so they called that, of course, the strange stars. And
41:37
Speaker 1: that's another just crazy hypothetical example of something. But it
41:40
Speaker 1: could be out there, right, It could be this enormous
41:43
Speaker 1: ball of pure strange corks just out there floating in
41:46
Speaker 1: the universe. Well, that's a different that's a whole different avenger.
41:48
Speaker 1: I think that's right, that's the strange hulk, right. But
41:53
Speaker 1: I also read that there is something that might be
41:56
Speaker 1: called a dark matter star. Yeah, exactly. Remember that stars
42:00
Speaker 1: are formed from gravity, right, it's gravity pulling stuff together
42:03
Speaker 1: and squeezing it, making denser and denser. Well, we know
42:06
Speaker 1: that dark matters out there. In fact, there's more dark
42:08
Speaker 1: matter than anything else, and we do know that it's
42:10
Speaker 1: affected by gravity. That's how we discovered it. So it's
42:13
Speaker 1: entirely possible that in every star this dark matter, but
42:17
Speaker 1: that there are some stars that have huge fractions of
42:19
Speaker 1: dark matter, or that in the early universe some of
42:22
Speaker 1: these uh, some of these stars were formed primarily from
42:25
Speaker 1: dark matter, or even you might have stars that are
42:28
Speaker 1: pure dark matter, like a dark star, a dark star exactly.
42:32
Speaker 1: That that sounds like a science fiction novel. I'd like
42:34
Speaker 1: to me. You could get enough dark matter condensed in
42:38
Speaker 1: the same spot that it might actually start to like
42:40
Speaker 1: combust or burn. Well, that's a question. We don't know,
42:42
Speaker 1: the institute, because we don't know if dark matter has
42:44
Speaker 1: any interactions with itself other than gravity, so gravity can
42:48
Speaker 1: cluster together. The reason that normal matter starts to burn
42:51
Speaker 1: is because of the other forces, right, the strong force
42:54
Speaker 1: and fusion. All that stuff comes from the other interactions.
42:57
Speaker 1: We don't know anything about dark matters interactions. If it
42:59
Speaker 1: has some sort of crazy interaction with itself, then yeah,
43:02
Speaker 1: it could combust and start to burn. But then it
43:04
Speaker 1: might admit some sort of radiation we can't see, right,
43:07
Speaker 1: It might admit dark photons, for example. So again you're
43:10
Speaker 1: just talking about dark matter balls. Back to the balls
43:13
Speaker 1: as always, dark balls. Welcome to Daniel Jorge, explain the
43:20
Speaker 1: balls now. But do you know what I mean? Like
43:23
Speaker 1: you're you're really just talking about clumps super danse dark
43:26
Speaker 1: matter clumps, Yes, exactly, But they might be so dnse
43:29
Speaker 1: and so crazy that they might uh amid some sort
43:33
Speaker 1: of lighter radiation. They might that part of pure speculation.
43:36
Speaker 1: I would not be surprised if dark matter formed clumps.
43:39
Speaker 1: That was at least his dances stars, right, so you
43:41
Speaker 1: could call that a star. I think, Um, we don't
43:44
Speaker 1: know anything about dark matter interactions for generating radiation, so
43:47
Speaker 1: that is just pure wild guesses. It might be the
43:50
Speaker 1: dark matter has no other kind of interaction, in which
43:53
Speaker 1: case it just sort of quietly gets clumped together by
43:55
Speaker 1: gravity to form these structures but never radiates anything. It
43:59
Speaker 1: could be, I don't think so. I think dark matter
44:01
Speaker 1: must have some kind of interaction with normal matter, otherwise
44:04
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have come into equilibrium in the early universe.
44:07
Speaker 1: But we haven't figured that out at all. That's like
44:09
Speaker 1: one of the biggest questions in science right now is
44:11
Speaker 1: doesn't dark matter feel any forces other than gravity? Does
44:15
Speaker 1: it feel anything? It's so cold and distant, just like
44:18
Speaker 1: all those other stars so em so full of itself,
44:26
Speaker 1: all right? Or those are the all the weird stars
44:28
Speaker 1: that um Kelly Smith wanted us to talk about. And
44:31
Speaker 1: I think the lesson is here is that the universe
44:33
Speaker 1: always has more surprises waiting for us. That's right. Don't
44:36
Speaker 1: be bored by the universe. It's always got something on
44:38
Speaker 1: the next page to just turn the page, dial that
44:41
Speaker 1: telescope up one more notch and you'll see something else
44:44
Speaker 1: to entertain you. All right, Thanks everybody, Thanks for listening everybody,
44:47
Speaker 1: and tune in next time. And if you have questions
44:50
Speaker 1: about something we said, or you have questions about something else,
44:52
Speaker 1: or you on an episode where we talk about your questions.
44:55
Speaker 1: Just send us your suggestions to Questions at Daniel and
44:59
Speaker 1: Jorge com. All right, see you next time. If you
45:11
Speaker 1: still have a question after listening to all these explanations,
45:14
Speaker 1: please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
45:17
Speaker 1: You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
45:20
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge That's one word, or email us at
45:24
Speaker 1: Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening,
45:27
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45:30
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