Latest / Made of Stars / SpaceX Launces Psyche Mission as Part of Its Record Breaking Year
Transcript
- 0:00Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics, and
- 0:04space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been known to learn about astronomical
- 0:08phenomenon the scientific method and expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus.
- 0:14Listen, that's your own risk, go ahead. Were made of stars?
- 0:24Made them stars, madies. When maida stars you could be from high
- 0:35they would New Mexico maas where a stars whomens? We are made of stars?
- 0:54Alongside my good friend doctor Sean, cruising from Columbus State University's Coca Cola
- 0:58Space Science Center, I'm wes Carol Sean. I think the clouds finally parted.
- 1:03Can we see the eclipse? Now? What's going on? The eclipse
- 1:06just cleared? Man, it was such a disappointment. It was day.
- 1:14Just let me schedule an astronomy I mean, I mean, we always talk
- 1:19about launches, and we always have the qualifier where we say, you know,
- 1:23weather permitting. We even acknowledged at one point weather permitting with this eclipse,
- 1:30and we thought, oh my gosh, we're gonna get a fantastic day
- 1:34for this eclipse. And the other aspect of this I thought that this,
- 1:38and of course if you were under a rock, and apparently there were a
- 1:41lot of people under a rock. I had people in my neighborhood who were
- 1:42under a rock, because when we did get a few moments to see it,
- 1:47I was running around with my special eclipse glasses sharing them with neighbors and
- 1:51they were like, they know this was happening today. Thanks thanks for listening.
- 1:57But I thought, man, it's gonna be great. We're gonna have
- 2:00a football going on, college football games happening during the eclipse. There's gonna
- 2:05be some acknowledgment of that at some point on TV. Maybe they'll they'll find
- 2:08a way to talk about it. And I guess maybe all the games had
- 2:13clouds as well, because it was Jack squat on what I saw it to
- 2:15hear anybody talking about it. But we did finally get a moment in the
- 2:21afternoon where the clouds parted enough where we had just little little periodic moments of
- 2:24hey, I can see it. Okay, then I can see it.
- 2:28No, no cloud there, it is there, it is there, it
- 2:30is there, it is And then we had like a little stretch of it,
- 2:32so Luke and I were able to enjoy it here, Jill and Jake
- 2:36were. They were watching a kayaking championship or canoeing championship or something down closer
- 2:43to where you are, and they were able to see it very briefly there
- 2:46as well. So it happened. It did happen even if we didn't get
- 2:50to everybody didn't get a chance to see it. So the event happens over
- 2:55multiple hours, and the people who were patient and stuck with it at our
- 3:04location ultimately got to see it, and not long after the maximum. I
- 3:08would say, so they you know, they came in the first hour,
- 3:13they got impatient, and they left. Yeah, they might have missed it.
- 3:16Hopefully they took those eclipse glasses home and saw it from their backyard,
- 3:20that's right. But if they, I would say that most people actually stuck
- 3:23around. So we had over two hundred people show up at our facilities,
- 3:28about two fifty and so I would say, well, over you know,
- 3:35two thirds of those people were patient enough to stick around long enough to actually
- 3:39see it, as you say, through breaks in the cloud at first,
- 3:44and then by by about one point thirty, the brakes were pretty consistent.
- 3:49We were even getting telescopes on it by then, and then by two o'clock
- 3:53and again it's it's drifting toward the end of the eclipse by two pm our
- 3:57local time, but you can still see an eclipse go going on, and
- 4:00so people were able to get really good telescope views from our telescopes here at
- 4:03Space Science Center by about two pm, and then the thing wrapped up by
- 4:08you know, roughly two forty five. So anyway, yeah, so sometimes
- 4:12with astronomical events you just have to exercise a little patience with all of the
- 4:17meteorology that's in between. And you know, I wanted to contact our local
- 4:21meteorologists, you know, mister Derek and Kaid, mister Bob, Jezwaald and
- 4:27the like, and just congratulate them on getting their clouds in the way of
- 4:30my eclipse. Yeah, it happens. They probably already knew this, so
- 4:33anyway, it happens. And of course we have another one coming up in
- 4:38April, and you know, April's not known for showers or anything, so
- 4:41we probably have little chance of any clouds in April for that one. It's
- 4:46just astronomy in the southeast, you know. So it's just actually one person
- 4:49actually called the facility and told us that we scheduled it at a very inconvenient
- 4:54time and wish that we had scheduled it differently. And you know, I
- 4:58do wonder if these people are calling a prank. Yeah, but they seemed
- 5:01serious. They seem sincere. Yeah, And we said, well, next
- 5:05time we have any clips, we will try schedule it at a more convenient
- 5:10time for you and your family. Well, they don't like when you schedule
- 5:14the night time ones either. Those aren't good, especially when it's late.
- 5:16I mean, it's so late the kids have to be in bed for this
- 5:19lunary eclips. That's very orbital mechanics. I'll try to sort that out.
- 5:25It's like any kind of championship sporting event other than the super Bowl. They
- 5:29always happen. And I've got, you know, an eleven year old going,
- 5:31I just want to stay up and watch. Sorry, you gotta go
- 5:34to bed. I didn't realize they were starting at at nine o'clock. Too
- 5:38bad, you got school tomorrow. All right, Well, let's talk about
- 5:44we got a few SpaceX stories today, and we'll just jump right into I
- 5:50mean, this one is it's a SpaceX story because of the vehicle used in
- 5:56the launch process, but still it's it's part of our second story, really,
- 6:00which is about the number of launches for SpaceX. But let's jump in
- 6:04first with the Psyche mission, because we were talking about that for the last
- 6:08two weeks. So if folks don't know about the asteroid Psyche or the NASA
- 6:13space mission called Psyche, they both have the same name. Actually, the
- 6:15asteroid is called sixteen Psyche, and so the NASA space mission called Psyche is
- 6:23the spacecraft going out to visit the asteroid called sixteen Psyche, which is a
- 6:27catalog number. The interesting thing about that asteroid is this, it's what's known
- 6:31as a metal rich asteroid. It's the result of a protoplanet coming together in
- 6:38the early part of the Solar System, and while that protoplanet is still very
- 6:41hot, all of the really heavy, dense material sinks down into the middle
- 6:46of the core of that protoplanet, and then that protoplanet suffers a collision and
- 6:50just basically explodes all that material back out into the Solar System. This asteroid,
- 6:57sixteen Psyche is a chunk of all that differentiated heavy material that's sunk down
- 7:02into the middle of the planet, and so therefore it contains some very interesting
- 7:08metals, including things like platinum and gold and silver and other earth rare heavy
- 7:15materials which are very very valuable back on Earth. And so if somebody were
- 7:20to say, bring this asteroid back to Earth and cash it in on the
- 7:25metals market, this thing would be worth more than the gross domestic product of
- 7:30every country in the world simultaneously. So it's really really valuable stuff. Now
- 7:35NASA's not going out to do a prospecting mission. They're actually doing a science
- 7:40mission. They want to know more about the way that some kid together in
- 7:45the early part of the Solar System. But it is valuable information that they're
- 7:48going to be gathering for those, say commercial companies that might want to go
- 7:51out and actually mine this thing at some point and bring back some of those
- 7:56earth rare valuable materials for say the computer industry or electronics industry, or a
- 8:03variety of industries that use those metals back on Earth. Now it's it's distant.
- 8:07It's a distant asteroid. It's out in the asteroid belt, which is
- 8:11between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It's gonna take a while for the
- 8:16spacecraft to get out there. It's got to fly kind of a twisty windy
- 8:20route. That's about two point two billion miles. It's going to reach that
- 8:24asteroid in twenty twenty nine, so it's gonna be a little bit of a
- 8:28flight to get out there. But man, oh man, are the views
- 8:31gonna be great? Now? When it gets there, it's gonna be studying
- 8:33a very interesting object and tell us a lot about science, but also tell
- 8:39us a lot about the future of prospecting mineral resources in our own solar system.
- 8:46Why don't they send the Osiris REX craft out there so it could scoop
- 8:50up some of this valuable stuff, you know, maybe a little Is there
- 8:52any plans that they could have done that? Little wink wink? Maybe we
- 8:56just don't know they're scooping it up out there that it just had you and
- 9:00me in the planning mission, we could have suggested this. I mean,
- 9:03I'm just saying, get a little part of that. The value of this
- 9:07asteroid, by the way, approximately ten thousand quadrillion dollars. I don't know
- 9:15what that translates to in a pesos or yen, but ten thousand quadrillion I'm
- 9:18guessing this is US dollars. I don't know that it sounds like a number.
- 9:22That sounds like a number I would have made up when I was seven
- 9:24years old, it does. It sounds like when you just start throwing in
- 9:30extra letters in front of illion and just making up words. So ten thousand
- 9:35quadrillion dollars. I just know that if we're able to get all of the
- 9:39asteroid back to Earth at some point, man, we could go on a
- 9:41shopping spree on another planet, on a grebdar and another galaxy. Something we
- 9:46could really clean up there. Yeah, you know, it's the Solar System.
- 9:50We're a video game and Earth were a player. I mean, that's
- 9:54a lot of tokens right there. That's a bonus point, I believe.
- 9:58Yeah, just get to an other galaxy and really start to explore some of
- 10:03the shopping there, some of their malls and other galaxies that could be a
- 10:07possibility. I was speaking of that, and just quickly we wentn't really plan
- 10:11to talk much about Hubble, but Hubble just got a couple of really great
- 10:15images of some galaxies, including the Sombrero Galaxy. Uh. One of my
- 10:18old high school teachers posted the Sombrero Galaxy image and she basically just shared it,
- 10:26and she herself is a poet. Now, I wanted to just give
- 10:30her credit, proper credit for her comment, because I thought this was words
- 10:33of a poet. She said, I wonder whether the Sombrero Galaxy has a
- 10:37picture of us well spoken as a poet, right, I mean, it's
- 10:43an interesting thought, and you know, I'm going to go ahead and say
- 10:46probably yeah, because yeah, I mean, I sent them a camera for
- 10:50Christmas last year. I'm pretty sure if you want to see more of her
- 10:54in depth works, Laura johnsonpoet dot com is or she's got a book on
- 10:58there. Anyway, I just I thought that was really nice. It was
- 11:01so I thought about Hubble. You know, we're kind of living in the
- 11:03in the era of James Webspace Telescope because the James Web, the JWST James
- 11:09Webspace Telescope is providing us with some absolutely unbelievable, unimaginable images of objects in
- 11:16space, and so everybody's kind of high on GWST right now for a good
- 11:20reason. But this is kind of like the og coming out and saying,
- 11:26hey, I'm still here, right. This is the Hubble Space Telescope.
- 11:31What they did is they did a kind of intensive survey of a variety of
- 11:35galaxies recently, this being one of them, and they're studying a lot more
- 11:39about the way that galaxies form their structures, and so this is part of
- 11:45that study. It is an absolutely fantastic image of the Sombrero. The Sombrero
- 11:50galaxy. The Sombrero galaxy gets its name because it's got an unusual dark banded
- 11:56structure because it's actually two galaxies that are collec which is interesting. They collided
- 12:03a little while ago, so it's kind of an evolved collision, but it
- 12:07shows. This new image from Hubble shows all kinds of bright purple specs throughout
- 12:11the disc of the Sombrero. Those are all places where accelerated star formation is
- 12:18taking place. In other words, it's just a whole baby fest of brand
- 12:22new stars being born in the Sombrero due to this collision of galaxies, which
- 12:26is part of the way that galaxies end up looking the way they do.
- 12:31So a really amazing image. Yeah, check that out. It's worth searching
- 12:33for it out there online. Check out the new Sombrero Somburrow Galaxy image from
- 12:39Hubble Space Telescope. Now back to SpaceX, we had the SpaceX Falcon.
- 12:45Every rocket we talked about. Now, let's talk about this, the accomplishment
- 12:50that they decided that they would be this year planning to break last year's record
- 12:56of most launches. They had sixty one launches and a single year last year.
- 13:01This year they've blown right by that. They're at seventy four now and
- 13:05planning to hit triple digits by the end of the year. It's an unbelievable
- 13:09launch cadence. And they're talking about this year's launch cadence, but we're also
- 13:16hearing their plans for next year's launch cadence, which is absolutely astounding. So
- 13:22if you think there's only twelve months, right, there's only twelve months,
- 13:24and so still currently, if you're gonna launch seventy four rockets in nine months,
- 13:31that's a lot of rockets per month. Just think about this is like
- 13:33launches happening all the time, and literally people along the Space coast will tell
- 13:39you, oh, yeah, it's another SpaceX rocket going up. I've seen
- 13:41all kinds of those. People on Florida are almost getting bored with a number
- 13:46of SpaceX rockets being launched, ladies and gentlemen. That's a pretty astounding just
- 13:50societal fact right there. Last year SpaceX launched sixty one in twenty twenty two.
- 13:58So far in twenty twenty three, they've launched seventy four. They plan
- 14:01to try to hit the one hundred mark. So one hundred rocket launches in
- 14:07a single year. Now that's twenty twenty three. But just this week on
- 14:15Wednesday, the former NASA Associate Administrator for a Human Exploration and Operations, which
- 14:22if you know your NASA, if you have your NASA bubblegum cards, this
- 14:24guy's pretty famous. He's like a Mickey Mantle. He is not one you
- 14:28want to put in the spokes of your bike. You do not want to
- 14:31put this guy in spokes to your bike. This is Bill Gerstenmeyer. If
- 14:35you've got a Bill Gerstenmeyer rookie card, you want to hold onto that.
- 14:39So Bill Gerstenmeyer, Kirsty so gersty was in charge of the International Space Station
- 14:46program for a number of years. Then he moved up to the Associated Minister
- 14:52for NASA basically over all human spaceflight. Then he jumped to SpaceX. So
- 14:58he's now a SpaceX employee and he's in charge of program safety, innovation and
- 15:07competitiveness for SpaceX. Trust me, there have innovations and competitiveness down right,
- 15:13So he's doing a pretty good job over there at SpaceX. So so the
- 15:18notion is this. Bill Gerstameyer is testifying before Congress on Wednesday of this week
- 15:24saying, hey, friends in Congress, we have too many regulations holding us
- 15:28back because we want to launch more rockets more often so that we can make
- 15:33more money, so that we can make space accessible to more companies, more
- 15:39people, and more industries. So this is the message that Bill Gristameyer was
- 15:43speaking on Capitol Hill, and basically what he said is part of this message
- 15:48is this, as we look to next year, twenty twenty four, as
- 15:52we look to next year, we want to increase that flight rate to about
- 15:58twelve flights per month. It's not quite every other day, but it's getting
- 16:04there, right, Almost almost every other day another SpaceX rocket going up.
- 16:12In other words, one hundred and forty four flights is SpaceX's target for twenty
- 16:18twenty four, which means, man, if you go to spend a three
- 16:22day span down at the space coast, you're gonna see a rocket go up
- 16:26statistically speaking, which is really cool. Right. So so we're just this
- 16:32is just another sign friends that we are moving into a new era of spaceflight
- 16:37and space exploration and that company called SpaceX. Like it or not, Yes,
- 16:44they happen to be leading the way. And by the way, I
- 16:45do like it. I like it. So I'm assuming that when the announcement
- 16:49was made somewhere Elon Musk said at a boy Thursday, and then you know,
- 16:55they had a nice celebration about it. Since he's in the competitiveness,
- 16:59I think it was that social media platform called ACT And we're not gonna we're
- 17:03not gonna mention what it was formerly called because everybody does that. We're not
- 17:08as prints. That's what it was, all right. So now we got
- 17:11on this in the spirit of safety component of this. Uh, we've been
- 17:18talking about the starship. They tried to do their launch. Uh they blew
- 17:23up a launch pad, uh in a different way than what we uh,
- 17:27and that's what that's what Elon called it. He said, we don't want
- 17:30to blow up a launch pad. And I think you and I assumed he
- 17:33meant one thing. But he called the shot. I mean there he was
- 17:40pointing at the outfield wall with the bat. Here it comes. This is
- 17:42the shot. This is what's gonna happen. And then it did, and
- 17:47it of course caused a lot of complications for the next test flight. And
- 17:52we've been waiting and waiting and waiting for a number of people to sign off
- 17:56on this. The first we thought was the the well, I guess the
- 17:59first with SpaceX they had to say, hey, we figured out what we
- 18:02did wrong, made some modifications to the next launch pad. Then it was
- 18:07the FAA, and it seemed that the FAA was ready to go, at
- 18:12least according to Elon, and they were waiting on the environmental folks to come
- 18:18in and say, you're not going to kill any more birds or whatever.
- 18:21I don't know what all they they killed a lot of potentially caused some serious
- 18:26problems to the environment around the launch site. But the FAA says, wait
- 18:32a minute, wait a minute, not so fast. Yeah. So so
- 18:37this is part of mister gerson Meyer's testimony was addressing this issue. And so
- 18:48so what's happened is I mean, it's kind of like saying I was gonna
- 18:52make beer, but I blew up the house, and it's kind of like
- 18:53that, so that, yeah, they blew up the house. And when
- 18:56they blew up the house, the FAA had a few suggestions for the next
- 19:02flight, except they weren't really suggestions, they were requirements. There was over
- 19:06sixty of them. SpaceX busily set out to correct all of those sixty plus
- 19:12recommendations from the FAA before a new launch license would be granted. And SpaceX
- 19:18says, hey, we're ready. We've addressed him, We've got our rocket
- 19:22stacked. We're ready. Let's go. Let's go, let's go, let's
- 19:25go. Because in that coming year's launch cadence that we were just talking about,
- 19:30certainly their biggest and most powerful rocket, the Starship. This is the
- 19:36one that's powerful enough potentially not only to carry folks back to the Moon but
- 19:41all the way to Mars for Mars colonization. That rocket is sitting on the
- 19:47pad, ready to go. However, the FAA says, whoa, whoa,
- 19:52whoa, whoa, whoa, mister gersta Meyer and SpaceX, we still
- 20:00we'll have a couple of boxes that haven't been checked off. And one of
- 20:03those is from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, who you just mentioned moments
- 20:07ago, and they are doing what is known as a biological assessment. And
- 20:15the Fish and Wildlife Service is in no great hurry because well, they don't
- 20:21have to be. So they're going to do a thirty day review and a
- 20:26biological assessment, and then they have one hundred and thirty five days after that
- 20:33to issue an amended biological opinion. So that one hundred and thirty five days
- 20:40is comprised of a formal consultation period which could last up to the ninety days,
- 20:45and the process of crafting its biological opinion, which is another forty five
- 20:48days resulting in resulting in a big weight for SpaceX. It could be months.
- 20:56And I don't believe by the tone of what I'm reading at least that
- 21:02the Fish and Wildlife Service is really feeling much of any pressure from SpaceX to
- 21:07complete their summaries in a rapid manner. Now I don't know that entirely,
- 21:12because I do know that as part of mister gerson Meyer's testimony on Capitol Hill,
- 21:19consenters like Ted Cruz we're weighing in on Gersty's comments saying, yeah,
- 21:25we really do need to speed up this process. So maybe there is some
- 21:29kind of congressional pressure being applied, But certainly, certainly it looks like a
- 21:37longer than expected delay, at least expected by SpaceX in order to get their
- 21:41largest rocket launched again. Mister Gerstabayer had this comment while testifying on Capitol Hill.
- 21:47It's a shame when our hardware is ready to fly and we are not
- 21:48able to go fly because of regulations or review. Mister Gerstermeyer said. We
- 21:55need to be safe, we need to protect the environment. We don't dismiss
- 21:59those, but we need to fly at the fastest pace that we can do
- 22:03hardware development to do this active development process and this test flight experience that we've
- 22:10described. So says William Gerstenmeier testifying on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, coming up
- 22:18after a quick break. Yes, they've done it. They've found proof of
- 22:21life on exoplanets, or have they. We'll talk about that next. Sure
- 22:48a poet would look at a incredible image of another galaxy and wonder, I
- 22:53wonder if they've taken a photo of our galaxy and and but that's not it's
- 23:00not just the poets that are doing that. We have actual astrobiologists that have
- 23:03been doing this for a long time and looking and they found something interesting on
- 23:11an exoplanet potential. Yeah, I mean, it's one reason we should all
- 23:17hang out with poets. All of us astrophysicists should just find a poet friend,
- 23:22just so we can get perspective. I think that's important. That puts
- 23:26the A in steam, right, Yeah, that's right, it does so.
- 23:30A group from Cornell though, has said, hey, as we're out
- 23:34there looking for exoplanets, which many many of them have been identified now by
- 23:41various spacecraft, and we're now going back and doing follow up studies with instruments
- 23:45like the James Webspace Telescope. As we go look at these exoplanets and try
- 23:49to figure out whether there's life or not on them. We suggest looking for
- 23:55over abundances of two elements, compounds containing oxygen and methane, and particularly if
- 24:03there are combinations of oxygen and methane. Because these folks from Cornell have run
- 24:11simulations of the atmosphere on what would be the early Earth, or an earlier
- 24:17era on planet Earth, a time when Earth's atmosphere was actually really pretty toxic.
- 24:22It had a lot of nitrogen and carbon dioxide and traces of volcanic gases
- 24:26which today wouldn't be all that pleasant. However, it was helping to make
- 24:33the garden bed for new life to exist on planet Earth. It's a time
- 24:41that geologists know as the Fantozoic Federozoic eon. Then did I blow that?
- 24:48But it's okay, I'm just a silly astronomer. The Phanerozoic eon on Earth.
- 24:52The Phanerozoic eon on Earth is a time where the earliest life forms were
- 24:57beginning to plant themselves, and they were responsible for a lot of chemical changes
- 25:03taking place, and they as they digested that kind of what would now be
- 25:07toxic atmosphere to us, they were creating all kinds of new oxygen and methane
- 25:14compounds, and so those two elements, in various compounds would be in great
- 25:21abundance in Earth's atmosphere doing the Phanerozoic eon here on Earth. So these astronomers
- 25:27are saying, well, wait a minute, our simulations show that this is
- 25:30true. So if you're looking out there and trying to figure out if any
- 25:34of these exoplanets are capable of supporting life, maybe you should look specifically for
- 25:41exoplanets planets around other stars. They're going through their own version of the Phanerozoic
- 25:48era. In other words, they're early life forming planets, and those early
- 25:53life forms are creating large abundances of oxygen and methane in the atmospheres oxygen and
- 26:00methane are spectral lines. In other words, they're chemicals that we can detect
- 26:06with the James Webspace Telescope rather readily. So what's the story. What's the
- 26:11plan? Then, Well, you take JWST, you point it at known
- 26:18semi earthlike exoplanets, and you look for abundant signatures of the two compounds of
- 26:25the two elements in compound oxygen and methane, and if you find that,
- 26:29that could be a strong indicator of the potential of early forming life beds on
- 26:34these other planets around other stars. So it's a really neat story. You
- 26:40can read the story. By the way, it's on Universe today dot com.
- 26:42Go check out that story. A new chemical signature for life on exoplanets.
- 26:48So they don't specifically have a planet in mind. They've got a number
- 26:52that I guess thirty five or so that right now they're thinking about as far
- 26:56as but they know what to look for and they have a means of looking
- 27:00for thanks to the James Webspace Telescope. Yeah, that's right. So this
- 27:04is new modeling saying, hey, as you're looking for the atter of you're
- 27:11speaking of these two elements together. So we do have certain exoplanets that we
- 27:18have detected oxygen in their atmospheres, so we're already there. We've already detected
- 27:22water in the atmospheres of certain exoplanets. So now this group from Cornella is
- 27:27saying, well, hey, maybe look for overabundances or unexpected amounts of oxygen
- 27:33and methane together, and that could be a phenorozoic Eon type exoplanet, in
- 27:41other words, a burgeoning life planet, and we need to study it a
- 27:45little bit more carefully. All right. So there's been like a ringing sound
- 27:49that's been going on. It's been stuck in my head for a while now,
- 27:52just some kind of a ringing noise. I don't know what's going on
- 27:56with it. Can you give me some sort of scientific explanation for it?
- 28:00You know what's weird, West is I've been I've been detecting that same thing.
- 28:03I mean, I've had this terrible allergy from ragweed pollen and it's just
- 28:06kind of plugged up my ears. And ever since that's happened, I'm detecting
- 28:11an oscillation about once every twenty five seconds. I don't know what that.
- 28:14It's an ultra low frequency like in and out of my ear drums. Maybe
- 28:18it's related to this. What do you think it could be? But I
- 28:19can tell you right now. My wife would say that I'm full of it
- 28:22because I don't even hear the kids when they're talking to me, apparently,
- 28:25And I guess when she tells me to do something on the honeydew list for
- 28:29some reason, I don't hear that either. So I guess if she could
- 28:30only put it in this particular pitch, maybe I could hear it. I
- 28:34don't know. I don't know if the strange phenomenon of selective hearing is related
- 28:38to astronomy and anyway, but we could, you know, maybe we can
- 28:41tie it to the story. See if we can, we'll get us We'll
- 28:45get ourselves out of trouble. But this is a really cool story, and
- 28:48I know it's We always talk about stories from spaceweather dot com. They have
- 28:52these very unique stories that pop up from time to time, and this is
- 28:56a really cool one. You know. The fun thing about space weather spaceweather
- 29:00dot com, it has its own kind of selected fan base and they're a
- 29:06bunch of really really they're a bunch of really fun amateur and professional astronomers who
- 29:15look at things in the Solar system that maybe we don't really think about a
- 29:18lot. So there's one of those named Rob Stemas and and Rob is a
- 29:23he's a space weather astronomer in Lofeton, Norway, and he's got his observatory
- 29:32set up to detect oscillations in Earth's magnetosphere. Now, I don't know how
- 29:37many times you've been in a party and you've met one of these guys,
- 29:41but I'll bet it's not often. No, it's not often at all.
- 29:47Like, Hey, my main hobby is I have a homemade telescope in my
- 29:49backyard that detects oscillations in Earth's magnetosphere. Oh that's cool. So what's in
- 29:55this ardervatory over here? I don't know anyway. So but really, if
- 30:00you talk to these people and you find out what they're doing, this stuff
- 30:03is absolutely fascinating. So right now we're approaching a time of more activity on
- 30:10the Sun, not less, and so the phenomenon that Rob Stamus has identified
- 30:17with his backyard magnetosphere monitoring observatory is something that usually only is detectable when the
- 30:25Sun is very very quiet. So, in other words, it doesn't really
- 30:29happen around times of greater increased activity on the Sun. But yet there was
- 30:33a very quiet period and Rob had his telescope going, and he detected during
- 30:41this really quiet, quiet enough to hear a pin drop kind of period of
- 30:45time, he detected an oscillation in Earth's magnetosphere. By the way, what
- 30:51is Earth's magnetosphere. It's the magnetic field around the Earth that protects us from
- 30:55space radiation, primarily from the Sun. Okay anyway, So this thing kind
- 30:59of oscillates, It bounces in and out due to the buffeting of the solar
- 31:03wind. Well, so Rob detected a very stable, once every twenty five
- 31:08second magnetic oscillation that appeared in his data, his recordings, and it lasted
- 31:15for more than twenty minutes. So, in other words, Earth's magnetosphere was
- 31:22just up there, ringing like a bell with a very perfect tone and decided
- 31:27frequency in and out every twenty five seconds. Rob's quote says, a very
- 31:36stable twenty five second magnetic oscillation appeared in my recordings. It lasted for more
- 31:38than twenty minutes. It was fantastic to see the magnetic field swing back and
- 31:44forth by abou zero point one degrees peak to peak so in other words,
- 31:48that's the orientation of Earth's magnetosphere. So apparently, according to spaceweather dot com,
- 31:55this is what's known as a pulsation continuance or PC event capital P lower
- 32:01case, distinguishing it from other PC acronyms that are out there in society.
- 32:06There are a pulsation continuous continuous event PC three. Weird thing about PC three's
- 32:14you can really only hear them when they're quiet. But these oscillations can flow
- 32:17all the way around Earth's magnetic field and they can actually cause a tearing instability
- 32:23in our planet's magnetosphere. In other words, they can set the stage for
- 32:28magnetic reconnection and geomagnetic storms, the kinds of things that can cause aurora phenomenon
- 32:32here on the Earth without even a giant disturbance from the Sun, which is
- 32:37just weird. And so when me and my astronomer buddies get together at our
- 32:44at our you know, after work parties, we like to talk about pulsation
- 32:49continuances and PC three waves and the kinds of you know, tearing instabilities that
- 32:53can create an Earth's magnetosphere. I don't know what you and your friends talk
- 32:57about, but these are the kinds of things that we love to get and
- 33:00talk about. If you're one of us, one of us, one of
- 33:04us. If you're one of us, check out spaceweather dot com for that
- 33:07fantastic article. And by the way, just check spaceweather dot com every single
- 33:12day because they are absolutely loaded to the max with these kinds of cool stories.
- 33:16All Right, you mentioned earlier about adding arts to stem and creating steam.
- 33:22You guys are doing that again on November the seventh with Music under the
- 33:27Dome. We have a fantastic concert series. It's in collaboration with our friends
- 33:30here at Columbus State University, the Schwob School of Music. The folks from
- 33:36Schwob, both faculty and students, come in and perform live inside our planetarium
- 33:40on the amazing Disclivie Piano, a quarter of a million dollar nine foot concert
- 33:45grand piano donated to us by Gail Greenplatz. Thank you, Gail, if
- 33:50you're listening, we appreciate your donation to Clumbus State. And this concert series
- 33:54is fantastic because we have contacted a whole colony of local artists who work on
- 34:01original artwork choreographed to the music presented on our planetarium dome. This is one
- 34:07of the very coolest concert experiences I have ever witnessed in my life. If
- 34:13you're anywhere near us in the Greater Southeast of the United States, try to
- 34:16come down and attend a music under the Dome concert. The next one is
- 34:20on Tuesday, November the seventh here at Coalmas State University's Coca Cola Space Science
- 34:24Center. You can find out all the information for tickets and all the activities
- 34:29taking place at science center on our website. Come and check out WWW.
- 34:34I think that stands for Worldwide Web. Yes, when I was a kid,
- 34:37it did anyway. Www Dot CCSSC, dot org Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie
- 34:45dot org. That stands for Coca Cola Space Science Center, And we're a
- 34:51nonprofit organization. That's how we get that logo, that tag up there,
- 34:54that handle out there on the URLs. I think I'm a little hurt that
- 35:00you do the Charlie Charlie SamSam, Charlie, but you've never referred to the
- 35:02www part as the Weswestwest dot Charlie, Charlie SamSam, Charlie. I'm just
- 35:08a little hurt. You can go with the worldwide. It from on.
- 35:12It's there, it's in the ether now. If you will, thank you
- 35:15for listening. We will do this again next week. Overhead Door Company of
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