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Saturn's Rings to Disappear in 2025! · Made of Stars

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Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics, and
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space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been known to learn about astronomical
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phenomenon, the scientific method, and expand to vocabulary to include terms like quasar,
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asterism and uranus. Listen, that's your own risk. Go ahead.
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When made of stars, made them stars, madies. When made of stars
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you could be from high they would new Mexicomas. Where are stars? When
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we are made of stars? Joined by my good friend doctor Sean Cruising from
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Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center. I'm Wes Carol, Hey Sean,
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Hey Wes. It's great to be here with you today. We have
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some great stories, some really weird and interesting things happening Thanksgiving Eve, our
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Thanksgiving edition of the show. I can't wait to be thankful tomorrow. By
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the way, yeah, I'm saying yes, I know exactly what you're saying.
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It's all about all about being thankful and then eating, you know,
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And if your football team's any good, maybe you know you might get to
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watch them play. If if they're one of the good teams, that's that's
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playing tomorrow, And if your team stinks, you know, we'll just say,
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hey, maybe we'll get a good pick in the draft. That's kind
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of where we're at. What if your team is just like mediocre, that's
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what mine is. Your team started stinking and then started to improve. So
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it's it's all mediocre right now. Though. We're not going to be good,
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but we're also not going to get good draft picks. Yeah, how
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does that help us? Yeah exactly. Well, let's jump for into SpaceX.
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We got a couple of SpaceX stories and they're all connected to the starship.
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But last time we talked, they were getting ready to launch, and
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we thought, well, all right, last Thursday we did the show and
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it was like, well, it's going to launch on Friday, and then
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it got pushed back to Saturday, and then all of a sudden sort of
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us, I mean, it's a successful launch. We discussed the possibility,
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and we've talked many times about the strategy that SpaceX uses when it comes to
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doing these kind of tests. So the first one was by all accounts,
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initially hailed a success, and that launch caused some complications. That's a diplomatic
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way to put it, some complications. They blew up the launch pad.
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They caused quite a mess in the neighboring communities and environmental areas, and they
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got put on hold for a while, and then they finally got around to
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launching a second time. And in spite of the fact that the first they
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got the rocket up in the air, they got it off the launch pad.
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It blew up the launch pad, but they got it up in the
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air, so they called it a success. And we anticipated that this time
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it might not be a complete success, but it would be something that they
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could still brag about. And hey, they're bragging about it. You have
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to think like SpaceX, which is they have a rapid iterative approach to engineering.
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They rapidly blow up rockets, and they rapidly figure out why, and
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then they rapidly make modifications and rapidly launch the next one. Now that's been
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the way they've been doing things for you know, the better part of twenty
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years. So the fact that they would do that with SpaceX Starship really isn't
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a surprise. It's just that the first explosion was big enough that they really
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made a mess of things in their neighborhood, and so that's what caused,
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you know, a substantial delay and finally they got permission from the FAA to
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fly. They launched again, as you say that on Saturday, they had
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by all accounts, a beautiful lift off and many many successful milestones. So
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the booster did what it was supposed to do. All thirty three of its
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engines powered and got that super heavy booster to lift the starship payload to where
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it needed to be. They separated just right, and then instead of coming
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back down and landing the heavy booster, the super heavy booster exploded in somewhat
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near proximity to the starship in somewhat of a surprising manner. I have to
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just say, the group of people I was watching with, we all said
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to each other, I don't think that was supposed to happen, as we
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watched a giant plume of you know, eruption take place. So anyway,
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the starship itself sailed away from that and was pushing on up toward it's nearly
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orbital trajectory, which was the plan for this mission, when then all of
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a sudden it had a rapid unscheduled destruction event for a RUD and so so
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it it rapidly disassembled, so rapidly, unexpected disassembly. I believe that's that's
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the term. So well, and a couple of things. So the first
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attempt at doing this that they had to detonate it themselves, right, that's
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correct. So this time this was not a self detonation. This is something
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well, I guess it was a self detonation. It wasn't done from the
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ground. This is something that happened while actually on the craft itself. Correct,
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and it appears that, you know, it was close to what they
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would have considered a successful launch trajectory. So they'll be looking into, now
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why, you know, what went wrong with both the vehicles, But hey,
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they hit milestones. They launched, they separated, the booster began its
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descent back to landing on the launchpad, the the Starship orbiter got into its
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flight trajectory, and then of course both of these vehicles then detonated. So
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they're gonna be looking into why all those things happened. But basically, what
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they did not do was blow up their own launch pad and litter the neighborhood
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with debris. That's that's the first step to being a better launch than last
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time. And they certainly did not do all of those things. So you
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know, it's it's going to be interesting to see because the FAA is investigating
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now right, So so it's an investigation even though it didn't damage the neighborhood
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in quite the same way, and cause, you know, an environmental study
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to be triggered because things blew up high in the air, they still went
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wrong. So you still have to tell the FAA or the Federal Aviation Administration.
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We still have to convince them if you're SpaceX, that you have things
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under control right, that you know what went wrong with your vehicles, why
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they detonated, and what you're doing to fix that. So there's still going
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to be some licensing issues because they have to have a launch license for that
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next launch as well. But Elon Musk has come out and said on what
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used to be Twitter is now X. He's come out on X and said
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we should be ready to fly in three to four weeks. So we know
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we documented the very bold tactics that he was using to kind of we assume
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push the FAA and fishing game to get his approvals to do the second launch.
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I mean, do we think this was successful enough that he's just making
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a statement, or do we think this is a case of he's trying to
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kind of let them know, hey, I'd like to hurry up and get
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another one launched here before Christmas. So again, let's go back to the
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company's communication. This is from SpaceX. After that second launch, they immediately
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posted on X this statement, congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an exciting
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second integrated flight test flight of Starship. It was exciting in their words,
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Wes, So it's kind of exciting when things blow up, apparently at SpaceX.
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But then they said Starships successfully lifted off under the power of all thirty
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three Raptor engines on the super heavy booster and made it through stage separation.
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So by their standards, this is clearly a success. They will work to
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discover and eliminate the problems that prevented the vehicles from behaving in a way that
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they fully expected. But again they this is how they do their engineering.
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They blow things up then figure out what went wrong, rather than trying to
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every single possible problem before ever launching anything. And this is one of the
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reasons why they move as fast as they do. So so now again,
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as you say, maybe these are maybe them congratulating themselves and setting new timelines
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that are between now and Christmas is just a way to give a little extra
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pressure to the FAA or to the federal government for getting their next launch license
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to them as fast as possible. Apparently, they just have these starships all
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stacked up in their you know, in their warehouse. It sounds like Kiley
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Coyote with an acme box. They're just pull them out, next one,
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next one. It sounds like they've just got them all ready to go.
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I just wonder, And you know, this is just me approaching this,
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as you know, and I'm not the science guy here, I'm I'm I
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play one on a podcast, But I just look at this from a standpoint
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of we we know what their methods are when it comes to how they do
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their experiments. I just wonder, And this is what I think. When
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I hear them make a statement like we're going to launch again by Christmas,
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I just almost kind of feel like they're using this a very similar strategy with
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how they're handling the FAA and the fishing game. It just seems like they're
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just sort of like, well, let's just let's push the envelope here and
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see what happens. Let's kind of just push them and nudge them a little
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bit in that direction, and we'll find out if that strategy works or not.
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Yeah. So again, in a statement from Elon Musk himself on x
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he says that there are three There are three Starships in final production in the
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starbas High Bay, as can be seen from the Highway Highway. So he
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posted this on Sunday, so the day after the the you know, the
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incident, shall we call it, or the flight as they would call it.
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And so he's like, yeah, we got three more. It's no
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big deal. We'll just pull them out. We'll just launch them. Just
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give us our license, you know, we're ready to go. Don't let
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the federal government hold up business basically as their model. Right. So,
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so yeah, I think, I really think that all of these statements are
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definitely shaped in a manner as to apply pressure to any federal agencies that might
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come between them and being able to launch. So let's let's just hit quickly.
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Because the first launch they did not get the all of the engines to
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fire. They did this time, so obviously at the very least being able
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to do that, they're going to call that a win anyway. And we
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we sort of talked about that a little bit last week, because anything that
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they do that is an improvement is a step in that direction, so that
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is a win. And then they did get it again. Like you've pointed
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out, they lifted the you know, the biggest rocket ever now twice up
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in the air, but this time it went a little further and it got
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actually to that separation stage of it. So obviously not a one win,
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but every stage of this, every step moving forward, is a little bit
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closer to getting to the ultimate goal. Yeah, let's not gloss over that
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point. This is the most powerful rocket to ever fly, and they've flown
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it twice in the same year, and according to Elon, they're going to
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try to fly it a third time in the same year. So if you
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look at that cadence compared to say, you know, the nineteen sixties during
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the Apollo era when we were building Saturn fives, I mean, at the
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height of the Apollo program, we had a launch cadence that was something on
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the order of what SpaceX is doing. But this is their first year launching
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starships, right, what is it going to be like when they get these
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issues shall we call them tweaked and addressed how many starships could they potentially just
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be sitting there and popping off into space within a given twelve month period.
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I mean, we see what they've done with Falcon nine, we see what
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they've done with Falcon Heavy, in terms of just rapid launch cadence, and
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part of that is just being able to build and test and launch the way
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they do in order to figure out their rapid approach to engineering, the agile
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development method. So so yeah, it's gonna be very interesting to see will
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they launch before the end of the year, and will that launch be totally
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successful? What does that mean for Why? Quite frankly for NASA, because
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remember NASA is counting on Starship to be its ride down to the surface from
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of the Moon from lunar orbit. So it's part of the of the of
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the Artemis program, right, So so NASA is counting on this rocket.
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So again, don't think it's just eccentric million billionaires firing rockets off in the
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middle of the desert out in Texas. Now, this is actually part of
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NASA's Artemis program, and they need to get Starship launched safely delivered to lunar
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orbit so that it can then dock with the Orion spacecraft and take NASA astronauts
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down to the surface of the Moon. So there are national interests involved with
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the success of Starship. You almost wonder if, I mean, I don't
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I don't want to go too far into the communications part of this, but
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you do just wonder if maybe they have that tweet already strategically written that references
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China and the new space Race, Like you wonder if they've got one of
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those somewhere ready to put it in the chamber, like just in case they
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need it. You think maybe they might have one of those written just in
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case somebody at the FAA is, you know, thinking about slowing things down
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a little bit. All you have to do is look back at Elon Musk
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and his marvelous record with Twitter and see how all of that went. Yeah,
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to understand what space Ex's communication strategy is all about. Yep, I
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think that. I mean, I'm just saying if I was there, and
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I was on the marketing team, I'd probably have that tweet somewhere, just
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written and saved somewhere just in case I need to copy and paste it.
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But that's just me, all right. So maybe by Christmas, let's talk
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about the Sun. This is an interesting story as this sun spot there's some
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activity and it's starting to turn towards us. Yeah, so anybody who's a
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reasonably often or fairly regular listener to our podcast knows, good old doctor Cruzin
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has kind of a fetish with looking at the Sun. I think the Sun
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is just pretty awesome. It's the nearest star to the Earth, so we
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get the best look at it. We can really figure out a lot of
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the mechanics that's taking place with a star by studying our own Sun. And
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the other thing that's cool or at least interesting, is that it has a
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direct relationship with what's taking place here on the Earth through the Sun Earth connection
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or solar geomagnetic interactions. So that's just a kind of an interesting area of
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astrophysics to be able to study. It's a fun way to get students engaged
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in astronomy because things change kind of in real time and they're not just distant
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sort of static objects out there in the universe. The Sun is a very
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dynamic body in which to study. So that draws us to one of our
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favorite websites that we refer to here a lot, spaceweather Dot com. Friends
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go out and read spaceweather dot com each and every day because it's a great
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website. It's got lots of great information. But on today's website, as
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we're producing the show, here a big sunspot is turning toward the Earth.
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It's actually a sunspot complex. They all get catalog numbers, so it's active
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region number thirty four to ninety. But this active region was so big they
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couldn't they couldn't properly catalog it with only one number, So it's active region
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number thirty four ninety, Active region number thirty four ninety one, and active
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region number thirty four ninety two, all in the same giant magnetic disturbance on
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the face of the sun. Literally, the sunspot group is so big it
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takes three numbers to properly classify it and label it. I mean something on
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the order of two it's something on the order of two hundred thousand kilometers wide
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west. I mean this is kind of body shaming, isn't it. I
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mean this is like the old remember that when we first heard those stories about
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they were making people buy two or three seats on an airplane. That's what
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this feels like. And I think it's wrong. I mean, we could
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say that it's two hundred thousand kilometers tall, that's right. Does that change
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it? I think it would change it. So it's it's basically they're having
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to use three numbers to label it because it's so big. It's just so
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tall. It's so tall. That's what it is, really a tall sunspot
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group. That's the way they measure the that's the way they measure the coordinates
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on the Sun is by height. I mean it is now. I think
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it's rather lean, you know for such a tall sunspot group. Yeah,
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it's like a newt bowl type, you know. It's it's really really skinny,
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but just very very tall. So what could this what could what could
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this mean for us? When as as this is starting to turn towards us
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and uh, you know, getting us into potential problems, uh with the
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communications and things. So so what a sunspot group is? Again, it's
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a geomag I'm sorry, it's a solar magnetic storm that can have geomagnetic ramifications,
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uh if it erupts in such a manner that it injects material towards the
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Earth. This particular sunspet sunspot complex contains a dozen dark cores. So it's
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really more than twelve individual sunspots in this giant sunspot group, and this whole
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complex is crackling with M class solar flares. That's when the magnetic field is
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breaking down to such a point that it erupts material into space and also amidst
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a significant amount of X rays. It's doing this kind of off to the
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side right now, but the Sun rotates similar to how the Earth rotates,
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and it's rotating around in a direction it's going to bring this very big active
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region of sunspots directly in line with the Earth over the next few days.
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And that's why we're talking about the story, because if this giant sunspot group,
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which is very active, is pointing toward the Earth, it can actually
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pose a threat for Earth directed solar flares by the middle of the or toward
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the end of this week. So while you're sitting there eating your Thanksgiving turkey
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with your family, you might be getting just a giant dose of radiation from
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the Sun in the form of ejected material from a massive solar flare. But
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you know, just enjoy the cranberry sauce. Well, and I think you
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should also maybe just factor in that radiation. As you're coordinating and calculating your
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cooking time for your turkey, that would probably be just look, you know,
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it might be a small adjustment, maybe it's like ten seconds you take
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off the cooking time, but if you want it to be perfect, you
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got to figure there might be some of that radiation coming in. I mean,
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the pros can read all the signs, if you know what I'm saying.
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They know how to read the greens, right, so they know where
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you know where, they know where the slope is on the green. And
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this is just kind of like that. If you if you're a true awesome
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professional turkey chef for Thanksgiving, you're going to consider the sole radiation that's going
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to contribute to that oven temperature and throw off your cooking times. So I
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think that's that just goes without saying. I think true expert cooks or consulting
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spaceweather dot com they should be I think I'm speaking for a lot of folks,
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especially I don't want to say especially, but I'll say especially. There's
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there's fans of a certain team that always plays on Thanksgiving. They probably want
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me to ask this question. I not so much. I don't really care
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so much because of who this team is and who my team is. UH,
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but is there any danger of uh satellite problems and maybe as football being
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ruined on the Thanksgiving Day, even if it's just for a few minutes,
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and the Cowboys fans have to see them for every possible second they can see
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them. I mean, I think that there's at least a reasonable opportunity for
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that kind of an event to take place. I don't know what it would
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do to the jumbo JumboTron and Jerry World, I mean, not get to
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the Cowboys. But you know, I'm just saying. You know, a
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misplaced solar flare can have repercussions right here on the Earth, including power glitches
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that might actually take down fantastically huge stadium monitors and cause disruptions to NFL broadcast.
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It's not out of the question. Yeah. Well, they are playing
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the Commanders, and even the Giants beat them twice, so I think they
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probably are going to be just fine if they miss a few seconds of the
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game coming up after a quick break. This is one of the best,
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one of the best teases ever. UH, Saturn's rings are going to disappear.
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We'll talk about that next. I want to be clear that was not
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really Cowboys hating. That's not what I was doing. That was not I
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mean, I hate them, but that's not what I was doing in that.
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That's just part of sports, sports rivalries. I wasn't throwing shade.
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I'm acknowledging they're having a fantastic season and I'm not happy about it. But
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that's just because you know, my team stinks, That's all I mean.
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And here I thought you were talking about the Lions. Well they look pretty
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good too. They look pretty darn good as well. Let's talk about Saturn.
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Let's talk about the Rings of Saturn, because I've seen the story floating
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around online and I thought, oh no, this is one of those stories
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where they're just trying to like bait you and reel you in and they want
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to oh man, they want to get you and a click on it and
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it's just clickbait. And but no, this is a real thing. This
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is Saturn's rings are going to disappear sometime in twenty twenty five. Now,
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there's some positive news on the other side of it, But how how do
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the Rings of Saturn just vanish? Yeah? I mean, I think you're
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right the first time, I think this is total clickbait, but you know
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that's just me. No, let's just talk about it a second. So
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what's really happening is that they're going to turn edge on relative to our vantage
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point of here on the Earth. So in the manner in which some of
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the headlines are written, they do kind of lead it to believe that Saturn's
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rings are going away. So they're not really going away. They're just gonna
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We're just gonna move to a position in our orbit around the Sun where we
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line up with that plane of the rings of Saturn and they disappear for a
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while as viewed from the Earth. And what's kind of weird is they're going
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to disappear in March, then they're going to kind of come back over the
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summer, then they're going to kind of disappear again in November, and that's
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just some orbital mechanics taking place. But anyway, we're going to see we're
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going to see Saturn with a largely diminished set of rings once again as viewed
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from the Earth. Now when they really are at a point of vanishing again
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relative to the Earth. It's just a perspective, folks, Saturn's rings are
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very very thin, and if you get right in line with them, you
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can't you can barely tell they're there, even with powerful backyard telescopes. So
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that's going to happen in March and again in November of twenty twenty five,
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but only for a very short period of time. This is called a ring
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plane crossing. Ring plane crossing. It occurs approximately every fifteen years or so.
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This one's going to occur, though, largely when Saturn is also aligned
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with the Sun relative to the Earth. So it's really going to be hard
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to even see this ring plane crossing during the twenty twenty five events, and
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so that's, you know, it's a little bit unfortunate. It's kind of
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actually interesting sometimes to look at Saturn through a telescope and not see its rings.
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It's just kind of instructive. But as happened in two thousand and nine
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that that event was largely obscured back in two thousand and nine because of again
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an alignment with the Sun. It's going to happen that way again in twenty
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twenty five, so it's going to be into the twenty thirties before we really
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see a ring plane crossing. With Saturn. That makes the rings appear to
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disappear and still be visible in the nighttime sky because Saturn's not also in line
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with the Sun as relative viewed from Earth. So so yeah, it's it's
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all kind of clickbait. Now, listen, it's interesting clickbait, right,
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it's fun. But Saturn's rings really are evaporating, and that's a whole different
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story, and you might see some headlines out there on that story. That
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appears to be something really interesting is that we're living in a very special time
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where Saturn actually has large visible rings. It seems from the most recent science
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that those rings weren't always around. In other words, Saturn has not had
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those rings since the early part of the Solar system. It actually is not
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going to have them at least in terms of the age of the Earth that
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much longer. And so we just happen to be living at a time where
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those rings do exist. They're very easy to see because they're somewhat relatively dense
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and very ice coated, which reflects light back to the Earth very well,
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and so we can actually see them line up with the plane of Earth's orbit
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and disappear. And so yeah, consider yourself fortunate that you actually lived during
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a time where Saturn actually had big, massive rings and you got to see
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them. And it's good for the sake of sitting around the table Thanksgiving.
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If people are talking about anything and they mentioned, oh, I heard that
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the rings are going to you can explain they're still there. You're just not
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gonna be able to see them. It's an optical illusion. Yeah, and
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really we're looking for reasons to be thankful during this week of Thanksgiving. That's
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another one. We're thankful that we're even living during a time where Saturn has
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rings. But that's if the family is trying to, you know, having
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a hard time identifying their blessings, you know, just throw that one out
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and see how they see how they react well. And then there's also the
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just and we talk about this a lot, especially when it's uh there.
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We talk about it with stories like an eclipse or something. But this is
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one of those things that if it gets people, if it's the gateway,
27:40
if it's what gets them into being curious about our planets and our solar system,
27:45
then you know, clickbait away. But we know that people are just
27:48
they're they're they're dabbling this, which sounds so crazy. You know, Oh
27:53
my gosh, the rings of Saturn are going to go away and they're going
27:56
to disappear, and they and then they have to actually click on it and
27:59
read it. A lot of times people even if they don't even click on
28:02
it and read it, they just see it and then they move like,
28:03
oh man, the rings are going to disappear, and that's what they think
28:07
is the story. So that's why I'm saying at the table, if someone
28:10
says it, you can sound really smart by being able to explain it absolutely.
28:15
And so you're welcome podcast listeners. There you go. Let's talk about
28:21
this asteroid image from Lucy. This is pretty interesting. Yeah, so,
28:26
I mean, perhaps another clickbait term kissing asteroids. Oh my goodness, it
28:30
sounds scandalous. I mean, if you lead with that headline. Yes,
28:37
So, Lucy, Ladies and Gentlemen, is a spacecraft that's out there investigating
28:41
asteroids in our Solar system. It got the name Lucy after that very famous
28:48
Ethiopian fossil that appears to show an early human relative and might be kind of
28:53
a missing link. So this asteroid mission is actually looking for the seeing link
29:00
in the asteroid evolution. Out there in our Solar System, which is kind
29:03
of interesting. So that it's a NASA spacecraft that's out there studying asteroids and
29:11
and exploring the early origins of the Solar System. Well, on its way
29:15
out there, it was investigating an asteroid by the name of din Kinish didn't
29:21
Kinesh? How do you read that west, didn' kanesh? That sounds good
29:25
to me? Esh what we're gonna go with didn't Kinesh at least? I
29:30
am? It's an Ethiopian word. It means the lucy fossil, So it's
29:33
the Ethiopian word for the lucy fossil, an Ethiopian fossil. Anyway, So
29:37
all right, So asteroid didn Kinesh was discovered by the what they call Project
29:45
Linear, which is the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Survey out at SCORO in
29:48
New Mexico. That's where the big radio telescopes that that we're out there in
29:52
the desert during the movie Contact. Anyway, So this asteroid that was discovered
29:56
is it's an interesting asteroid because it's very small itself. It's only about twenty
30:03
six hundred feet across in diameter. It's one of the smallest asteroids in the
30:07
main belt of the asteroid belt. It's the smallest one ever to be explored
30:12
by a spacecraft, which is that Lucy vehicle that's out there from NASA.
30:18
So all that's interesting, But Dinkinesh has also been discovered to be what they
30:22
call a contact binary. In other words, it has a little Moon asteroid,
30:29
It has a contact binary satellite that's only about seven hundred and twenty feet
30:33
across. And what it means by contact is the orbit of that little Moon
30:40
asteroid gets so close to Dinkinesh that it actually makes contact. It actually physically
30:45
touches, bounces back off, and goes about its way in its orbit.
30:52
So contact binaries now turns out that contact binaries in the asteroid belt, they're
31:00
maybe not as rare as we might think they are. It's it's kind of
31:03
an unusual circumstance in a sense, but it's really not as rare as we
31:07
might think. So asteroids touch each other, they bump into each other in
31:11
their orbits out there. However, here's the punchline. The little Moon itself,
31:18
the natural satellite that's only seven hundred and twenty feet across itself, is
31:22
also a contact binary. In other words, it's not just one little asteroid.
31:29
It's actually a pair of little asteroids. That's what the new look at
31:33
some of the Lucy data has discovered. So what we have is a pair
31:38
of contact binary asteroid moons orbiting around a relatively small asteroid called Dinkinesh. And
31:48
they themselves also bump into Dinkinesh. So there's just a lot of bumping into
31:52
each other out there in that part of the asteroid belt around that Loucy named
32:00
object in the Ethiopian language, and they refer to this as kissing asteroids.
32:07
This is what Kissing asteroids are asteroids that just just gently kind of nudge one
32:13
another. They're not slamming into each other with the violence that causes disruption,
32:19
kind of like a dart mission or something. You know that the dart mission
32:22
was like the ultimate, like, hey, let's go hit an asteroid as
32:23
hard as we can and see what happens. So but but these are these
32:28
are gentle contacts that do not destroy the the objects, and they also do
32:31
not knock them out of their orbits. They just come into contact and that
32:36
and and therefore it's kind of like a kiss in the sense of a gentle
32:39
touch, right, so, Uh, NASA is kind of funny sometimes to
32:44
listen to when they describe things. Uh, they describe finding this companion that's
32:47
also a contact binary as quote unanticipated. Well that was unanticipated, you know.
32:55
The next time, you know, I go to a restaurant and ask
32:59
for a lobster and they served me a shoe. I'm gonna say, well,
33:01
that was unanticipated. Just a master of understatement, which is project scientist
33:09
John Spencer at NASA saying that this find was somewhat unanticipated to go on.
33:15
His quote further says, we just haven't seen many close up, and we've
33:20
never seen one orbiting another asteroid. Says Spencer in referring to contact binaries.
33:27
Dincannessh showed unusual brightness variations as the spacecraft got closer. So here's the interesting
33:31
thing. They already knew that this might be going on, just by watching
33:35
how bright and how dim din Kinesh was getting over time. They had a
33:39
brightness variation. So John Spencer goes on to say, it gave us a
33:44
hint that didn Kinesh might have a moon of some sort, But we never
33:47
suspected anything as so bizarre as the moon itself being a contact binary. So
33:53
there you go, a fun story from the folks at the Lucy Project and
33:59
just a couple observations. One I like that you went to the old classic
34:02
joke about being served as shoe. That's great. I don't know when that
34:07
would ever actually happen in a restaurant, but it's a classic old joke and
34:10
I appreciated it. The other one is if you're a middle school teacher and
34:14
you'd like to, I don't know, stand in front of your class and
34:16
talk about kissing asteroids and try to get through it without anybody giggling and just
34:22
daring them to. You pulled this story from Universe today dot com. Just
34:27
want to let you know it's there, because when school starts back next week,
34:30
I think that would be a great challenge that first day back. They're
34:32
all wound up there back at school, and you know, they're hopped up
34:37
on desserts and things from that. I don't know, they're probably just going
34:39
to be dragging when they get back Monday. But if you want to throw
34:43
this story out there to them about kissing asteroids, good luck. We challenge
34:46
you. I challenge you to do this story middle school science teachers, and
34:52
you know. If people laugh, then you can say, well that was
34:54
unanticipated, yes, I like it all right. Well, what you can
34:59
in anticipate is that you guys are going to be closed for Thanksgiving and for
35:02
a few days after that so that the staff there can enjoy time with their
35:08
families and get a few days off. But you guys will be back open
35:10
again soon. It's not like the rings of Saturn that are going away forever,
35:15
you know, go away. You guys'll be back. I don't know.
35:21
I mean, we might be evaporating like the rings of Saturn, who
35:23
knows. But we're gonna be closing down midday on Wednesday, November twenty second,
35:30
and then be reopening the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday, which is Monday,
35:35
November twenty seven. So just yeah, check the website, check our
35:38
Facebook page, and you can find out all the great information about all of
35:43
the programs taking place at Coalmustate University's Coca Cola Space Science Center, including all
35:46
of our awesome shows in our Omnosphere Theater. And that website is Go to
35:52
www dot cc SSC dot org. Point your universal resource locator at Charlie Charlie
36:00
SamSam Charlie dot org. Happy Thanksgiving, my friend. Same to us and
36:07
to our listeners, and we appreciate you listening, and we'll do this again
36:10
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