Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What is the brightest thing in the universe?

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What is the brightest thing in the universe? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, you have a pretty wild family, right, Well,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: we don't go to raves or anything, if that's what
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: you mean. I mean you guys like you guys like
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: the wilderness, right, You go camping a lot. That's true.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: We are big fans of camping. We do car camping,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: we do backpacking. We even even rented an RV and
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: driven around Iceland. So yeah, we like to get out
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: there in the wild US too. We also like to
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: go camping, and I think mostly good because we just
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: like being out in nature. You know. I like the campfire,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: and really I like being under the stars. I love
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: how you can see so many more stars at night
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: when you're camping. Hi, I'm Poor. Hey, I'm a cartoonists
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: a particle physicist and an avid amateur camper and also
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: a physicist. Right you sort of you're an avid physicist
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: as well. I am an avid physicist. During the day,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I smash particles together at nearly the speed of light
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: underground in Geneva to try to figure out what is
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the universe made out of? What is the smallest particle?
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: How how do forces actually work? Can we make new
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: kinds of matter in the laboratory, all sorts of fun stuff.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I like ripping things apart and understanding them from the
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: ground up. And just to be clear, you are not
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: right now in a basement in Geneva, right, I can
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: either confirm nor deny that. Actually I see you may
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: or may not be in your Swiss bunker. That's right. Well, hey,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: quantum Mechanically, I may or may not be anywhere. Right.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I could be sitting in your living room right next
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: to you right now. You may or may not be.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: That's right. I may or may not be by the
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: end of this podcast. Who knows right? Life? Life is uncertain,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: crazy universe, sorry, this crazy, beautiful universe that we live
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: in where we can't really understand anything. But this is
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: our podcast in which we try to help you understand everything,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: and in particularly we try to take topics and tear
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: them apart so that you can understand them. That's right.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: of iheartrad You. That's right. And every week on this
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: program we take a topic that we think people are
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: interested in, something where everybody wants to know the answer,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: but maybe it seems a little bit out of reach technically,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: or it seems a little bit hard to dig into
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and your Google searching is not quite sufficient, and we
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: try to break it down for you and get you
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: to somewhere where you can understand it and maybe laugh
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: along the way. That's right, And today on the podcast
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: we are going to tackle another subject in our extreme
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Universe series, Extreme Universe, Extreme Universe exactly. I'm queuing some
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: heavy metal guitar riffs in the background there because heavy
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: metal is so in right now? Are we are we
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: dating ourselves? It was a little bit too much. Bill
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: and Ted. Bill and Ted are coming back. Have you
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: not heard? It's like Bill and Ted escaped the Seniors
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Senior Citizen Home or something. I think Kenna Reeves can
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: pull it off. Maybe we should have an episode on
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: why Kanu Reeves does not seem to age. He's sort
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: of like plateaued around forty five. I know, he's like
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: fifty something and he's a he's a good looking guy.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Him and Paul Rudd, I think is just sort of
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: hit some plateau. Maybe it's like Hollywood cryogenic freezing or something,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: or maybe they've been replaced by robots. Anybody figure that out,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: maybe their time travelers. We should have them as guests
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: on the show. Hey, Kanu, if you happen to be
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: listening to this episode, come on the show, explain it
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: all to us. And if you're Paul rudd Um you're
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: also invited. You can explain kna Reeves to us. You
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: guys all know each other, right, I'm sure they're hanging
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: out together listening to our podcast. Well, um, so this
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: is part of our series of Extremes of the Universe.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: So we've had episodes about the biggest thing in the universe,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: the emptiest place in the universe. Well, on today's episode,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: we will be talking about what is the brightest thing
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: in the universe, Like the shiniest right, like the one
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: that would totally most blind you if you stared at
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: it without any sunglasses. That's right, the sparkliest thing in
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: the universe, the most glitter covered thing in the universe. Now,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: I love our Extreme Universe series because I like that
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: it reminds me and hope everybody out there listening that
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: where we live in the universe is unusual. It's it's
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: not the most anything you know, and that there's whatever
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: you're thinking about whether it's temperature or brightness or size.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: There's always something out there to dwarf everything you thought
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: you knew. And that's sort of the larger lesson of astronomy,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: you know, is that the universe is vast and crazy
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: and there's always something out there to surprise you. And
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: so I love this Extreme Universe series because it shows
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: us how small we are or how dark we are,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: or how cold we are, or how slow we are
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: in the context of the whole universe. Yeah, it's fun
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: to think that, Um, we're kind of in the middle, right,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: We're not, you know, there are they're extremes, and both
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: directions where we stand right, like, we're not the hottest
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: or the cold is the brightest or the darkest. You know,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: are you saying we're just right like Goldilocks in her porridge?
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: We are? We are all Goldilocks. That's true. I mean,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to live in a brighter place or
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: a darker place, or a hotter place or a colder place.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: That's why you're in California, right, That's right. That's why
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: I'm in southern California where it's nice weather every single day. Um,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: but it's cool to learn about it, you know, I
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: like learning like where is the tallest mountain in the
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Solar System? Or where is the hottest spot on Earth?
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: And these sort of things. It's it's just fun to
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: know what what's the scale? You know? Oh, man, I
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: want to listen to those podcasts. Yeah, And I also
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: want to remind people that tonight today we're gonna be
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: talking about what is the brightest thing in the universe,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: and specifically we're talking about things that emit light, But
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: there are other ways to see the universe. Right. We
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: see a little bit of the universe, a tiny fraction
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: of it that gives off light that just makes itself
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: visible to us. But there's a huge amount of stuff
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: going on in the universe that's invisible to us. So
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: the brightest things in the universe are not even though
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: necessarily the most active things in the universe, they're just
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: the things that admit the most light, the most photons, right,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: because you could have something that's more powerful or more
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: energetic that's admitting other kinds of stuff. Yeah, But of
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: course light is important to us. You know, we're a
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: visual species. We look at each other, we draw, you know,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: it's an important part of how we live, and so
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: of course it's sort of the beginning of how we
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: explore space. We just turn our eyes skyword and look,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: and then we develop techniques to look deeper and deeper
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: into space. But the cool thing is that recently astronomy
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: has developed sort of other kinds of eyes, like other
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: ways to look at the universe that are not with
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: light but with like particles or with gravitational waves, and
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: sort of it's sort of cool to think about humanity
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: opening different new kinds of eyes and seeing different pictures
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: of the universe, because every different way you have to
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: look at the universe gives you a different picture because
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: different things admit different kinds of radiation, and so it's
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: it's just it's amazing to think about all the things
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: we will learn once we developed more and more ways
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: to look at the universe. So anyway, so today we're
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: tackling the brightest thing in the universe. So the thing
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: that gives the most photons per um per I don't
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: know for what, per per area, per for looking at it,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: per per second. We'll talk about some things that give
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: off sustained flows of photons and other things that are
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: very brief. They give off just a photons very briefly,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: bit of very very bright. But I think we'll be
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: talking about things that give off the most photons sort
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: of at a certain distance. You know, that's a good
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: way to measure brightness. But as a hand and then
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: as a little bit of a spoiler, will say that
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: it is not the sun. If you're thinking that maybe
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the brightest thing was the sun, um, you're a bit
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: far off. And as usual, I was curious, what do
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: people think is the brightest thing in the universe? What
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: do people have in their minds? And so I ran
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: around campus at UC Irvine and I asked, folks, what
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: do you think is the brightest thing in the universe?
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Are you hoping some of your students would say you,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Professor Daniel, you are the brightest thing, just like with
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: what is the hottest thing the universe? I wasn't explicitly
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: digging for compliments, but I guess I was secretly hoping
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: maybe somebody would give me one. You have sort of
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: a response prepared to meaning what me. That's right, Well,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: those of you listening, take a second to think about it.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: If someone asked you on the street, what is the
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: brightest thing in the universe. What do you think you
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: would answer? Here's what people had to say to my eyes.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: The brightest thing I have ever stand is the sun.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: The sun, the sun, a neutron star, stars, because that's
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: probably what I'm most familiar with. I don't know, maybe
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: like a supernova. I'm surprised how many people said the sun. Well,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: I think all of these people would have benefited from
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: your hint that it's not the sun, because as you heard,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: they mostly went for the Sun. Maybe it's the brightest
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: thing in their universe technically right, Yeah, well, you know,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: it's the brightest thing you observe mostly. I mean that's
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: not even actually true, but it's the brightest thing sort
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: out there in the sky. Yeah, I mean sort of
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: technically right. I mean it's like they're observable universe. We
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: all have our little observable universe. What do you mean,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: do you think people have their own universe? Is like
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: my universe? Your universe is no. I guess what I
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: mean is like they're not observable, like if you have
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: your physicist with a billion dollar telescope, but you know,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: just from what they can see with their eyes. So
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: this is the thing about brightness right, is that Remember
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: that brightness falls with distance. You know, some object is
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: giving off light and that means it's shooting off photons, right,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: But as the distance grows from that object, you have
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: the same number of photons, but they're spread out over
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: a larger area. Right. And think about a sphere that
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: surrounds the sun or whatever else is giving off light.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: The size of this that sphere, the surface of that
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: sphere grows with the radius square because the formula for
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: the surface of a sphere goes like radius squared, and
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: so the same number of photons cover that sphere. So
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: as you get further and further away, the parent brightness falls, right,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: and it falls like one over distance squared for that
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: same reason, because the same number of photons are getting
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: spread over that distance. To the point is something can
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: be super duper bright, but if it's far away, it
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: won't feel as bright to you. So, yeah, you can
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: have a laser pointer that's that feels brighter than the sun, right,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: and it would probably hurt. So just we're clear, we're
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: not advocating that you shoot any light into your eyes.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: But why do you think a lot of people said
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: the sun. Do you think they actually think that's the
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: brightest thing in the entire universe or the brightest thing
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: you know. Do you think maybe they were just not
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: expanding their horizons in your answer, I think there's a
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: lot of that. I noticed that trend that when I
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: ask people about something, they tend to think about in
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: the solar system and not to think more broadly. And
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: sometimes I'll go to them like they don't know a
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: thing bigger the whole universe. But and I did that
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: a couple of times here, but people were still like, no,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: the sun. Maybe it's a bit of local pride. You're like, yeah,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: our sun is awesome, man, It's so good. It's like
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: the way people want to believe that their local sports
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: team is the best. You know, we got the best son.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: That's right, our hometown sun is the best son. I
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: think we all sort of do that. Like if I
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: ask you, hey, Daniel, how's it going, you don't think
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: well right now? In alpha centri there say right, you
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: sort of you assume that I'm asking about you and
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: your day. Yeah, I mean everybody has a sort of
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: a locust like a neighborhood they think about um. But
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: also I think people are just not sure you know
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: what else is out there and how how different is it?
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: I was I was imagining that the people might think
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: that the Sun is not the biggest star, the craziest star,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: and they would say, at least you know some other
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: star out there. And we had we had one guy
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: who said like a supernova um or a neutron star
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: or something like that. So maybe they thought, you meant,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: what's the brightest thing we can see from earth? Yeah,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: that's a good point. That's a good point. Maybe that's
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: what they thought, and in which case they would be
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: mostly right. I mean, if you take away all sort
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: of earth bound lasers, they could fry your eyeballs. It's
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: true that the sun is the brightest thing you can
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: see from the earth. So good job, Jorge just got
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: you guys all extra credit. Good except you already marked
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: them and sneered at them. Probably I did not sneer anybody.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much. I'm eternally grateful that, you see,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: students are willing to answer are my questions. I was
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: just walking around today, in fact, and not a single
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: person said no to answering my questions. So continued A
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: plus plus to you, see, I students for being open
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: to answering crazy questions without any warning from a stranger. Well,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: this is a perfect point to take a break. But
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: you do have a pretty interesting table here that you
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: sent me, which gives us the brightness of things relative
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: to the sun. Yeah, because the brightness of things depends
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: on your distance. I think it's more interesting to answer
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: the question what is the absolute brightest thing in the universe,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: not what is the brightest thing in our sky? Right,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: because there could be something super duper bright, but then
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: it's really far away and it seems dim. But we're interested,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: like what is that thing that's making all those photons?
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: So I thought less define things in terms of their
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: brightness relative to the sun. And then let's imagine that
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: we're the same distance from that thing that we are
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: from the Sun. So we call that an astronomical unit.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: It's about ninety three million miles. It's the distance between
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: the Sun and the Earth. Well, I was thinking that
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: maybe a good way to think about it is that,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: you know, like if you stood outside right now and
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: it's daylight and you looked at the sun, you would
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: see the sun. But now if you swap the Sun
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: with something else, this is this table tells you how
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: bright that thing would be. Right, That seems like a
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: totally practical experiment. Yeah, I'm going to delete the Sun
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: and instantly transport some other crazy object there, and then
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna look at it. Yeah, you just swapped it out,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: So about the sun for something else, and this would
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: tell this table will tell you how bright that thing is. Yeah,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: I'm imagining you have some like app on your phone
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: where you're like select you know what you'd like at
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: the center of your solar system, and it's got like
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: a menu or something, and you're like, m M, let
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: me replace our sun with a supernova and see what
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: that feels like. Anything is possible with quantum physics, right,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: that's right, let's disrupt quantum physics with this app. So
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: let's do the exercise. So, now let's say, um, what's um,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: what's something that else is bright? Like, let's say we
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: swapped out the moon for the Sun. How bright would
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: the moon be? Well, it would be zero because the
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: moon doesn't give off any light, right, So the moon
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: actually just reflects light from the from the Sun. Right, Um,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: So that if you had no sun and you just
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: put the moon there, then the whole whole solar system
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: would be darker zero. All right, But let's say you
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: wanted to upgrade the Sun, and you're like, let's look
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: around for the sort of a bigger star, and like,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: one example of a bigger star is one of them.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: It's called serious A, and it's a pretty serious star.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: It doesn't like to make jokes. But if you took
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: that star and you put it in place of our Sun,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: it would be almost thirty times brighter. So wait, what
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: is this start to like a nearby star or the
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: one of the brightest stars that we know about. It's
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: one of the brightest stars in our sky, which is
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: what I why I picked it. And it's bright mostly
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: because it's it's sort of nearby. It's not it's not
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: that bright on its own, as you can tell, it's
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: only thirty times brighter than our sun. But it's a
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: cool star because it's part of a binary star system,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: which means they're two stars orbiting each other. So that's
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: why they're serious A. It refers to which one which
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: one it is. If you look up in the night
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: sky from Earth, it's one of the brightest stars in
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: the sky. And so if you if you did the
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Jorge exercise and you teleported that star to the center
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: of our solar system, then you know our days would
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: be thirty times brighter. You would need SPF something like that. Yeah,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: it would be It would be pretty serious. I mean,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, if life could survive because
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: the temperature with skyrocket and everything, we get fried. So
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: not something I recommend. And you know, or you can
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: think about it another way, like if we replace the
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Sun with serious A, then the Earth would have to
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: be further from the Sun in order to have the
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: same temperature. Uh, we would have to be thirty times
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: further away sort of, Well, it have to be square
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: root of thirty. If you're five times further from the Sun,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: then the brightness is one over twenty five, right, So yes,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: you have to be like five or five and a
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: half AU from serious A to have the same amount
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: of solar activity. And that's what we do. You know,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: when we find other star systems and planets around them,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: we ask for that star, where is the goldilocks zone?
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Where is the habitable zone, the zone where a planet
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: would have about the same amount of brightness from the
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: their star as we do from our Sun. And that
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: depends of course, on the brightness of that star. Well,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: that is definitely a serious distance, that's right. But it
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: turns out the serious is not even really that impressive.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: There's a star in than the constellation Orion, for example,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: and I'm not even sure how to pronounce it. I
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: think it's called rigel or rigel Um. And this is
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: a pretty serious star, right, And if you put this
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: star in our solar system, it would be thirty three
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: thousand times brighter than our sun. So Sirius, which was
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: a much brighter start thirty times, is nothing compared to
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: this one. Right, This one's thirty three thousand times brighter
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: than the Sun. That's right, It's easy. It's a sort
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: of bluish white star. And the other other interesting thing
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: about it is that the brightness varies a little bit,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: like there's something going on inside this star that makes
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: it like burn hotter sometimes or burned less, burned colder
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: other times. It's a massive blue super giant and it's
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: just spewing out photons thirty three thousand times more than
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: our current sun, which is pretty bright, yeah, exactly, but
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: it's it's just much bigger, you know. It's one of
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: these massive super giants. Which means it got more stuff, right,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: So it's denser and hotter in the middle, and it's
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: just this it's a bigger fire burning. You know, like
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: if you're having a little camp fire and the guys
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: um one camp side over have like bought ten times
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: as much firewood and having a big bonfire than Yeah,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: there's just gonna be more photons coming out of their
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: fire than yours because they've got more stuff. In the
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: same way, this star just has more fuel, so it's
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: burning more fuel at the same time. It's like a
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: quantity thing. It's not like there's different you know, physics
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: going on inside of it. It's just it's just there's
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: more stuff burning. Yeah, exactly, it's just a bigger pile
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: of fuel that that that got set on fire. Well,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: thirty three thousand sounds pretty bright, brighter than the sun.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: It sounds pretty bright. But that's that's not even like
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: we're not even halfway through the table, right, That's right. Um,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: there's another star it's called this one has an awesome name,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Zeta Scorpi. I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that correctly, but
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: it's a hyper giant star in the constellation Scorpius and
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: this one burns two hundred thousand times brighter than our sun,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: So you need two hundred thousand suns just to match
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: this one star, that's right, exactly. That's incredible to think
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: of two hundred thousand of our stars of our sun.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: That's right or um if you if Earth was orbiting
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: this thing, then you'd have to be you know, the
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: square root of two hundred thousand times farther away. That's
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: like four hundred and fifty times as far away from
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: this star as Earth is from the Sun in order
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: to not get fried. Does that mean that sun, that
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: star is two hundred times heavier also like more massive
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: or is it just some sort of no, it's actually
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: that that's fascinating question. It's actually only about thirty five
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: times more massive than the Sun. What, but it's burning
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: two hundred thousand times brighter. Yeah, And you know these
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: suns also have different life cycles, right, and they burn
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: colder or hotter, or more brighter or or dimmer at
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: different points in their life cycles, so that couldn't be
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: part of it. But also when you get a you
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: get a start that that much bigger, there can be
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: different physics going on inside. But it's pretty awesome, and
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: that's why they call it a hyper giant. Plus, it
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: has a pretty cool name, Zeta Scorpi. Yeah, it is
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: pretty cool. Um, but even that's not so impressive compared
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: to the reigning champion of the universe. Right, is it
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: also a star? It is? Well in terms of stars, right,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: we'll get um. In terms of stars, this is the
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: brightest star in the universe. But it doesn't have a
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: very cool name. You know, the other ones Serious and Scorpii,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: those are pretty cool. This one is called wait for it,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: are on six three a one. That's a cool name.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: You know. If this was like a Star Wars character,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: you know, you can make it work. Wait, I think
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: I swapped it even I think it's our one three
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: six a one. Is that still cool? Yeah? I know
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: that's it's not that one's not as cool. Um this
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: one comes in. I think their friends just calm our
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: one our one. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Actually, um Our
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: one is actually the name of the cafeteria at CERN,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: also short for restaurant one, So people are always saying, hey,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: I meet you at our one, and and and is
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: the food also bright and shiny and hot? Um? Yeah,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: I don't think the restaurant's cern is famous for its food. Yeah,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: that's not the that's not the most impressive thing about
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: that restaurant. I think the view is better. You can
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: see them on Blanc. You can see also it's of
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: the Alps. It's a gorgeous place to eat lunch. But
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: I hear it's pretty cool because they cooked the food
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: like where the particles collide, right, isn't that how they
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: heat up the food? They just they just dip it
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: down into the ground. Yeah, they're like, hey, the meat
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: is getting cold, crank up the excel or it or no.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: But back to our star are one. It's a three
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: hundred times as massive as the sun, but it's eight
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: point five million times brighter than our sun. Wait, so
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: let me just wrap my head. You would need three
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: hundred thousands of our sons just to match the size
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: of it and the weight. But then it's eight million,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: three hundred, three hundred sons, not three hundred thousand or
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: three hundred sons three hundred sons. But it burns eight
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: point five million times as bright eight million times, so
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: you would need eight million of our sons just to
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: match the brightness of this one star. Yeah, it's ridiculous.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's like it boggles on mine. I mean,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: our son already is super bright. Right, We're glad we're
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: ninety million miles away from it, and still it can
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: burn your eyeballs, right, Just that's an incredibly bright source
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: of light. And then to imagine something eight million times
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: it can burn eight million eyeballs much more easily. It's
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: it's hard to get your head around that. And it's
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: like a sustained fire, right, It's like a it's just
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: always burning at eight million times better than the sun. Yeah, exactly.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: It's not like an explosion or like a supernova. It's
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: just like it's just like a something that's just burning
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: super bright. It just keeps going. Yeah, and it's you know,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: it's illuminating space all around it. Um. One thing is
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: it's pretty dangerous, right, because you get too close, you're
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: gonna get fried. On the other hand, it's like making
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: things visible. You know, if you were near that solar system,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: you could see all sorts of interesting stuff. The rocks
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: and the planets and all all the stuff around it
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: are are shining brightly because of that star. But you
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: need to be pretty far away just just to be
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: near it, Yeah exactly. You couldn't get too close. Exactly.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: It's pretty dangerous thing to visit. So any of you
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: guys planning to visit are one three six A one.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: You know, pack some protection. That's bring eight eight and
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: a half million bottles of some block. That's right, exactly.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: You have to be like three thousand times the distance
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: from the Earth to the Sun in order to have
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: the same amount of solar energy. So that's the brightest
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: star that we know about in the universe, like that
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: the draining record holder. Yeah, that's right, that's the brightest
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: star that's been observed. And where is it. It's in
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: a neighboring galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud. So
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: this is like a big cluster of stuff out there,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: and it's a hundred and sixty three light thousand light
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: years away, so it's in another galaxy. So it's not
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: even in our galaxy. Yeah, no, it's not even in
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: our galaxy. Yeah exactly. So the Milky Way is outstripped
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: by this other star. And you know, this is fascinating stuff,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: and I think from a science point of view, and
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: you're always interested in the extremes because you're wondering like
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: what is the hottest or the brightest thing, because we're
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: trying to understand how these stars work, right, we have
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: like models for what's going on inside them, and then
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: they make predictions and they always go out there and
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: then they discover something that's like twice as crazy or
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: twice as bright as anything they understood, and it makes
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: us tweak those models to understand what else could be
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: happening in those stars to produce so many photons. So
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the extremes are really valuable, um scientifically because they show
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: us like the boundary of what can happen um. And
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: so these are just stars that we're talking about right now,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: right now, right, there are even brighter things in the universe.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Right there's other kinds of things that are brighter than
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: the brightest stars in the universe. That's right. These stars
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: are crazy bright. You know, our son is pretty bright.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: These other ones totally a strip it. But when it
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: comes to the record holders, so the brightest things in
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: the universe, these things are pretty dim alright. So let's
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: let's get into those things. But first let's take a
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: quick break. All Right, we're talking about the brightest things
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: in the universe, and we don't just mean like your kids, Daniel,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: which I'm sure very bright and good looking and and
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: good looking, and they have a great dad apparently. Yeah,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: I'd like to meet him someday. My kids are basically
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: look like my wife. I mean, it's sort of funny
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: because I have dark eyes and dark hair, and my
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: wife is Scandinavian, so she has like blue eyes and
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: blonde hair. And interestingly, our kids both came out blonde
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: with light colored eyes, So genetics, I don't know, explaining
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: to me, maybe she just cloned herself in the lab.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: She is a biologist. This sounds like a game of
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: thrown situation. I'm not sure what you're implying over there. Um,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: I prefer I'm just saying the results seemed Yes, that's true. Yes,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: it's it's been a mystery for a while. Um anyway,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: But there are brighter things in the universe than even
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: the stars and even my family or yours. So we
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: left it at the brightest star that we know about
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: in the entire universe, which is our one three six
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: something something a one, which was eight and a half
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: million times brighter than our sun, which is mind boggling,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: which is amazing. But there's are things that are even
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: much more brighter than that. Right, that's right, And sort
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: of counterintuitively, these are things that'sociated with black holes. Right,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: black holes you think of immediately it's like, oh, that's
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: super dark. If you'd ask me what's the darkest thing
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: in the universe, you'd say black holes. But remember black
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: holes themselves don't give off much lighter or much radiation.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: They're pretty dark, but they're very powerful. They're incredibly strong
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: sources of gravity, and the things that have not yet
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: fallen into the black hole, those things can go off
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: and give off a lot of light. Okay, so the
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: brightest things in the universe then are paradoxically black holes.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Is that what you're saying? No, not even the brightest,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: but some of the bright but brighter than stars. And
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: so what happens is that, you remember, the black holes
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: have these things around them, the stuff that has not
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: yet fallen in. Right. It's like, you know, the toilet
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: is still flushing, and these things are swirling around about
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: to go inside, and because of the incredible gravitational energy
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: of the black hole, it's creating a lot of stress
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: and strain on this gas and this dust, and so
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: it ends up emitting a huge amount of radiation. We
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: cover this in another podcast episode. It's called these are
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: things are called quasars, and they're so bright in the
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: night sky that for a long time people didn't even
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: understand what they could be because they're incredibly bright and
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: incredibly far away. So people did the math and they're like,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: what if it's that bright already and it's super far away,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: that means if you got close to it, it would
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: be mind bogglingly bright. So for a while, people didn't
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: even believe it until they found other ways to prove
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: that these things really were happening. Yeah, we talked about
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: that in an episode. I think the episode was titled
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Strange Stars, right, Yeah, exactly the strangest craziest things in
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: the universe. Yeah, and so we talked about quasars and blazers,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: which um sounds like they're popular in the eighties. Exactly,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: shoulder pads. What is the biggest shoulder pad in the universe.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: That's the whole podcast episode right there. And so if
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: you're curious about how what they are and how they work,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: please check out that podcast. But but I don't think
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: in that podcast we talked about how actually bright they
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: are like in comparison to other things. Yeah, exactly, Well,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: it's ridiculous. It's hard to even wrap your mind around
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: these things. Um, these quasars. For example, one of the
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: brightest quasars we've ever found has a sexy name of
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: three C two seven three. It's four trillion times brighter
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: than our son. Like, if you put that thing in
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: the center of our solar system, we would get fried. Well,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: first of all, who names these things? They were all
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: waiting for you, man, everybody's heard that you're good at
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: naming things. They actually get to like three hundred and
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: seventy three of these, and so this one just happened
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: to be the number of two seventy three. Yeah. You know,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: there's just so many things out there you can't name
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: them all. You just got to give them numbers. Um.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: But you know, sometimes one of them gets special and
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: then he gets a name. And I don't even know
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: how that works, but this one should deserve a name.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's the brightest quasar in the universe, right,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: give it a name like Thour or something like Daniel's kids.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: That's right. I'd like to I'd like to nomin I'd
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: like to name this quasar after my own kids. I'm
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: sure that would fly. No, no, not after your kids.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Just Daniel, Daniel, that sounds like a reference to karate
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: kid um. But this thing is, I mean, four trillion
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: times brighter than our son is hard to understand. Remember,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: there's like a hundred or two hundred billion stars in
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: the Milky Way, right, which means that this thing is
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: brighter than all the stars in the Milky Way by
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: like a factor of a hundred. And just to be clear,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: four trillion means four thousand billion, right, that's right, that's right,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: or four million million, not just a million times brighter
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: than our sun, but like four million and then a
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: million times over again. Yeah, exactly. And you know at
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: this point it's basically infinity. I mean, in my head,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: I can't understand the difference between trillions and quadrillions and whatever.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: It's just all big number insanity. It's just crazy. It's insanity.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: It's intensity intensities, man. And so that's a quasar, Right's
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: giving off a huge amount of radiation super bright. It's
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: not a star, but it is in the same sense,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: sort of in a similar category because it's a huge
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: amount of gas that's being compressed in generating radiation, but
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: it's not technically a star. But then remember that some
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: of these quasars, some of these quasars we call them
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: blaze ours, because they also emit a beam, right, and
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the beam is sort of perpendicular to the plane of
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: the galaxy. Remember, a lot of these galaxies are sort
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: of flat, they're swirling disks and the black holes at
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: the center of it, and blaze oars our galaxies that
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: emit these huge jets of radiation sort of perpendicular to
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: the flat plane of the galaxy out from the center, right,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: And so that it's you're saying, it's um their energy
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: and their light is sort of focus, it's concentrating. It's
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: not just like a light bulb shining in all directions.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Some of these things sort of focus their um light
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: in a particular kind of beam. Yeah, exactly, it's collimated,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: and we don't really even understand the physics of that,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Like how do you take all this radiation and bend
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: it into one direction. People think it's maybe crazy magnetic fields,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: but you know, it's a huge amount of stuff we
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: don't understand about what's going on in the center of galaxies.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: But sometimes one of these beams happens to be pointed
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: right at us, you know, just by chance. And there's
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of galaxies and a lot of quasars, and
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: they're pointing a lot of different directions, and so one
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: of these blazers is going to be shining right at us.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: And because of some relativistic physics, when it's shining right
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: at you, the intensity is even higher. And so um,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: you can look for um, which blaze are is the
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: brightest from our point of view, right being pointed at us.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: And so there's a blazer. It's name is three CE
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: four five four point three, right, what a sexy name?
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: And what is the point three? I don't know what
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: the point three comes around the third? You know, like
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: this is the grandson, grandson of the real grand Pappy Blazer.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. I cannot give any
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: accounting for how they name these things. Um, but this thing,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: this monster, is three hundred trillion times brighter than our sun.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: You would need three hundred trillion pairs of sunglasses, just
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: not so that you don't burn your eye out. That's right.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: You could get three hundred trillion sunburns in one day
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: and one millis I can probably exactly. Yeah. Um, so
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: we're glad that these things are pretty far away because
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: they're ridiculously bright. I mean, the intensity of light is
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: just incredible, you know, and so there's there's stuff going
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: out there in the universe which is insane, you know,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: which would fry us and destroy us. Also, you know,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: it makes me think about like our energy problems, Like
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: we're trying to squeeze a little bits out of energy
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: out of like liquid stored underground, but the amount of
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: energy that's out there in the universe it's just being
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: like you know, shot out into space and wasted is incredible. Um.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: You know, the scale of our problems are really tiny
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: in comparison to the stuff that's happening out there. And
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: so that's that's the king in terms of constant brightness,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Like that blazer is going and it's not going to
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: stop anytime soon. It's just pumping out photons constantly, at
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: at the rate that makes our sun look pathetic. Now,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: is that still brighter than pointing at least or pointer
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: in my eye? Or that's still pretty bright? Yeah? I
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: mean it would be hard to get a laser pointer
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: that's three trillion times as bright as the sun. So
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: that would be the brightest, constantly shining thing in the universe.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: You're saying, that's right, But sometimes there's a crazy event
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: in the universe and even that gets out shown by
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: something else. So you know, sometimes stars go supernova. Right,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: this is when they reached the end of their life
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: and they decided it's not worth it anymore. You know,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: I'm done, I want to check out. And they have
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: this massive explosion where they basically use most of the
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: rest of their fuel in a very brief moment, and
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: they can outshine entire galaxies, they can outshine sets of galaxies,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: they can even outshine blaze ours. And so there's one
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: and then they emit these huge things they called gamma
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: ray bursts. We had a whole podcast episode about them,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: these brief pulses of gamma rays. Remember gamma rays are
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: just light, right, just very high energy light, and so
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: and so we keep track of these gamma rays and
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: these gamma ray bursts, and one of them came by,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: and this is gamma ray burst zero eight zero three
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: one nine B right, not to be confused with one
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: nine A. It's much demercust or ce right, which was
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: pathetic as a as a sequel. But this one is
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: the brightest sort of emission we've ever seen ever in
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: the universe. And this one is twenty two quadrillion times
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: brighter than our sun. Wow, that sounds like a lot.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: How much is how much is a quadrillion? How much
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: is a quadrillion? He says as he types that into Google.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: There's like ten thousand times brighter than the brightest blazer
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: in the universe. Kind of something something along with that magnetude,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: right exactly. But the key is that it didn't last
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: very long, right, It's a it's a very short burst.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: You know, we're talking about things that last seconds. So
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: it's a pretty dramatic way to go out. You know,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: it's some nice fireworks and for a few moments you
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: outshine the otherwise brightest thing in the universe by a
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: huge factor. Right, So that's really like your your moment
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: of fame in the universe. But then it fades. Right,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: So you know, if you want the brightest thing ever
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: is gamma ray burst. If you want something consistency, you
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: know that's going to win the marathon rather than the sprint,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: then then you want to go for blaze rs I
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: guess it depends on what you mean by brightest, right.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: It could be it depends on the time scale. Yeah,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: it's an integrated brightness or momentary brightness, right? Or who
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: can shine the brightest thing into je's eyeball? Right? Yeah,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: let's not give our listeners any suggestions here how many
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: um laser pointers can be shined into an eyeball? At
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: the same time, there's a whole podcast episode. I'm sure. Yeah,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: let's send it to Bill Knight. He knows the answer
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: to every question. So what is it called g r B?
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: Is it just some sort of physics GRB stands for
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: gamma ray burst? Oh, I see, Or it could be
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: green red blues. That what you're thinking. No, I was.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: I was confused for a second. I thought it was
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: like r GB. No RBG No, that's the Supreme Court justice,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: just like what Ruth Baylor Gisbury is the brightest thing
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: in the universe. She may be the brightest thing on
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. Yeah she is. Actually, she's a She's
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: a star for sure. All right. So that was a
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: two were of brightness in the universe, the brightest things
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: in the entire unit. We went from zero brightness, which
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: is a black hole to the brightest things that we
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: know about as human beings. Right, that's right. And so
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: next time you're out there camping and you're looking up
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: at the night sky, I remember that there is crazy
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: stuff out there that's pumping out photons at levels we
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: could hardly imagine. Most of it seems dim because it's
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: far away, or because you can't see it because your
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: neighbor's portlight. But if you got too close, it would
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: definitely fry you. But you know what to say, It's
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: better to light one blazer than to curse the darkness.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Who says that you? I think it's my grandmother. Your
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: grandmother has a lot of funny things. I'd like to
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: meet this lady. All right, Well, thank you for joining us.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: I hope you found that discussion illuminating and shining. I
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: hope we turned a light on in your mind but
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: didn't fry your eyeballs with it or your ears. But
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Tune in next time. Thanks very much, and don't forget
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: if you have a question about what we said, or
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: you have a suggestion for a topic you'd like to
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: hear us breakdown please send it to us at feedback
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: at Daniel and Jorge dot com. If you still have
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: and Jorge That's one Word, or email us at feedback
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. From more podcast from my
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.