Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Can you roast a marshmallow in space, and other listener questions.

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Can you roast a marshmallow in space, and other listener questions. · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, or Hey, I have an important star geasing question
0:11
Speaker 1: for you. Hit me so obviously, to fortify yourself for
0:16
Speaker 1: a cold night of dark sky watching, everyone needs to
0:19
Speaker 1: make s'mores on the campfire after dinner. Is that any
0:22
Speaker 1: mean a question? It's a s'mores are required when you
0:24
Speaker 1: go camping. Yeah. Absolutely, But my question is how do
0:28
Speaker 1: you like your marshmallows? You like them white, gently toasted,
0:32
Speaker 1: or totally blackened? Because I'm pretty picking about my smores.
0:35
Speaker 1: They need to be like just slightly toasted. But mostly
0:38
Speaker 1: I just want more of them. I should have known
0:42
Speaker 1: the marshmallow jokes. We're going to make for a rocking
0:44
Speaker 1: road that makes more of them. Hi'm orhand make cartoonists
1:02
Speaker 1: and the creator of PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm
1:05
Speaker 1: a particle physicist and a professor at U c Irvine,
1:08
Speaker 1: and I have strong opinions about marshmallow tisting. Interesting. Is
1:11
Speaker 1: there a special physics technique to make perfect moores? You
1:14
Speaker 1: have to keep at exactly the right distance for exactly
1:17
Speaker 1: the right time, and any deviation from that results in
1:20
Speaker 1: inedible garbage. Interesting? And I guess you have to rotate
1:23
Speaker 1: it too. That's very important, you know, experimentally determined rotation rate.
1:28
Speaker 1: Did you rotate your marshmallows at and did you hook
1:30
Speaker 1: up some kind of motor to it so it's always
1:32
Speaker 1: precisely the same. I will say I have done a
1:34
Speaker 1: lot of extensive experimentation on this front. You know, for science,
1:38
Speaker 1: you have a lot of data points in your stomach
1:41
Speaker 1: and around your waist. That's exactly My data collection device
1:45
Speaker 1: gets bigger and bigger as I keep taking more data.
1:48
Speaker 1: But welcome to a podcast. Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
1:51
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radio in which we twist
1:54
Speaker 1: and turn the entire universe around, trying to understand exactly
1:58
Speaker 1: the right distance to look at it. So that makes
2:00
Speaker 1: some sense. We ask the biggest, the deepest, the squishiest,
2:04
Speaker 1: the tastiest, the toastiest of questions about the nature of
2:08
Speaker 1: the universe. What's in it? How big is it? And
2:11
Speaker 1: how can we possibly understand it? Yeah, because it's important
2:14
Speaker 1: to understand the universe, not too much so that it
2:16
Speaker 1: gets toasted, but not too little so that it's too hard.
2:19
Speaker 1: And the chalk that doesn't melt. You think it's possible
2:21
Speaker 1: to understand the universe too much like we ruined the mystery.
2:25
Speaker 1: It's no fun anymore. Yeah, you know, it's sort of
2:28
Speaker 1: like knowing too much about a movie before you go in.
2:30
Speaker 1: It's hard to enjoy it, you know. Or it's like
2:31
Speaker 1: knowing too much about writing, and then you can't enjoy
2:34
Speaker 1: a book or a TV show anymore. Oh man, give
2:36
Speaker 1: me all the physics spoilers. I want to know them.
2:39
Speaker 1: I'm happy to have all these surprises being ruined. I
2:41
Speaker 1: don't want to hear about the next year's Nobel Prize.
2:43
Speaker 1: I want to know about it now. But then you're
2:45
Speaker 1: gonna spoil it for everybody else. Isn't that the whole
2:47
Speaker 1: point of physics to disseminate the knowledge and spoil it
2:50
Speaker 1: for everyone that's in the clubhouse plaque? Right? That is
2:54
Speaker 1: part of it. But you know, I think that it's
2:55
Speaker 1: impossible to know the universe too well because I think,
2:58
Speaker 1: honestly jokes aside, there's an infinite amount of things to know.
3:01
Speaker 1: I think we will never know everything about the universe.
3:04
Speaker 1: They will always be more marshmallows to toast and more
3:08
Speaker 1: physics puzzles to unravel. Maybe you should preface every research
3:11
Speaker 1: paper you published, but that you know, warning spoilers ahead.
3:16
Speaker 1: Finding the spoilers is exactly the job of physics, right,
3:19
Speaker 1: Physics is basically the spoilers. Or maybe we should just
3:24
Speaker 1: like figure out the universe and very slowly dull it out,
3:27
Speaker 1: you know. We should talk to the Marvel folks and
3:28
Speaker 1: like have plot twists and stuff like that. Yeah, and sequels,
3:32
Speaker 1: lots of sequels, that's important. And multiverses. I guess now
3:35
Speaker 1: that's the thing. Yeah, I would definitely like sequels and
3:38
Speaker 1: multiverses for my funding. I guess if you spoil one universe,
3:41
Speaker 1: it's always more universes. Technically to watch movies right with
3:44
Speaker 1: different actors. There's an infinite audience out there and an
3:48
Speaker 1: infinite possible box office infinite spoiling war. It will be
3:53
Speaker 1: the name of the big culmination movie Marvel. We get
3:55
Speaker 1: a cut of that one one millions of infinity. But
3:58
Speaker 1: it is an amazing universe, a delicious universe, and an
4:01
Speaker 1: incredible universe to think about and to ask questions about it,
4:04
Speaker 1: and especially to be curious about. That's right. And it's
4:07
Speaker 1: not just academic physicists who are toasting marshmallows and thinking
4:10
Speaker 1: deep thoughts under dark skies while on camping trips. It's
4:14
Speaker 1: everybody out there who looks up at the night sky
4:16
Speaker 1: and wonders what's going on around that start is there
4:19
Speaker 1: an alien looking back at me? Or what's the physics
4:22
Speaker 1: of this marshmallow? How is it really getting roasty and toasty?
4:25
Speaker 1: Everybody out there who is curious about the universe is
4:28
Speaker 1: doing physics and being a physicist, that's right. We get
4:32
Speaker 1: questions on this podcast from little kids from seven years
4:35
Speaker 1: old to seventy seven year old who look at the
4:38
Speaker 1: universe and wonder how it all works and what makes
4:41
Speaker 1: it the way it is. And we love that because
4:43
Speaker 1: we think that being curious is part of being human
4:46
Speaker 1: and that science belongs to everybody. So if you're the
4:49
Speaker 1: kind of person who thinks about the universe and wonders
4:52
Speaker 1: how things work, then right to us, please send us
4:55
Speaker 1: your questions. Don't feel alone, we are all sharing these
4:58
Speaker 1: mysteries together. Right to us too, two questions at Daniel
5:01
Speaker 1: and Jorgey dot com. We answer every email. We right
5:04
Speaker 1: back to everybody. And let me send a special encouragement
5:07
Speaker 1: to those of you who have been listening to the
5:08
Speaker 1: podcast for years and haven't written to us yet. I
5:12
Speaker 1: know you have questions and we'd love to answer them.
5:15
Speaker 1: It sounds like you're scraping to the bottom of the
5:16
Speaker 1: barrel now, Daniel. But actually you get a ton of
5:20
Speaker 1: questions every day. You get questions every day through Twitter,
5:22
Speaker 1: through email, and also through our discord channel. We have
5:25
Speaker 1: a discord channel. That's what it's called, right, That's what
5:28
Speaker 1: my fourteen year old tells me. It's called a discord server.
5:31
Speaker 1: I think it's called Yeah, it's not a discord TikTok
5:35
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, exactly. We interact with people on Twitter.
5:38
Speaker 1: We answer dozens of questions over email, and on discord.
5:40
Speaker 1: We have a community not just me answering questions, but
5:43
Speaker 1: other listeners talking about cool things they've read, interesting stuff
5:47
Speaker 1: they've seen, and talking about the episodes, asking questions about
5:50
Speaker 1: things they heard. So please come interact. You're not out
5:53
Speaker 1: there alone wondering about the universe. Well, have you gotten
5:57
Speaker 1: listeners to answer their own questions? Like one listener aswers
6:00
Speaker 1: the question of another listener sounds like you might, you know,
6:03
Speaker 1: put us out of the job here. That's exactly what happens.
6:06
Speaker 1: You know, somebody asked a question like two am, and
6:09
Speaker 1: then by the time I log on at seven am
6:11
Speaker 1: or so, there's a whole discussion and people proposing answers,
6:13
Speaker 1: and it's a lot of fun. Obviously, you need to
6:15
Speaker 1: stay up all night every night on Discord, just like
6:18
Speaker 1: your fourteen year old son. Yeah, exactly. Maybe we should
6:22
Speaker 1: work in shifts euro Upe that time. Anyway, Yeah, there
6:25
Speaker 1: you go. But yeah, we do get a lot of
6:27
Speaker 1: amazing questions because people are curious. They look at the world,
6:30
Speaker 1: they listen to this podcast. They hear about things happening
6:33
Speaker 1: out there in the cosmos and the very nature of
6:36
Speaker 1: our atoms and courts, and the questions come up. Questions
6:39
Speaker 1: do come up, and they send them to us. And
6:41
Speaker 1: sometimes those questions are so fun that I think other
6:44
Speaker 1: listeners would like to hear the answers that we pick
6:46
Speaker 1: a few of them and answer them right here on
6:48
Speaker 1: the podcast. And so today on the podcast, we'll be
6:51
Speaker 1: tackling listener questions number twenty four or is that like
7:00
Speaker 1: the TV show twenty four? Are we going to talk about,
7:03
Speaker 1: you know, nuclear bombs? And if we don't answer it,
7:06
Speaker 1: something terrible's going to happen. I don't know which one
7:08
Speaker 1: of us is, Jack Bauer. Are you going to torture
7:10
Speaker 1: physics answers out of me? Torturing physicists. That might make
7:15
Speaker 1: a good show. I hope it doesn't get a big audience.
7:19
Speaker 1: Who wants to see a physicist suffered? Come on, that's right? Yeah,
7:22
Speaker 1: physics our self torturing anyways, exactly why else would you
7:26
Speaker 1: choose that career if not to torture yourself? Otherwise we
7:29
Speaker 1: just would have been a cartoonist, you know, easy, laid back,
7:32
Speaker 1: no stress career. That's right, Eat cereal at eleven am.
7:36
Speaker 1: You put on your earphones and you you hop on
7:38
Speaker 1: a podcast. Yeah, twice a week, easy living. I do
7:42
Speaker 1: get risk cramps though, that is the one hazard in
7:44
Speaker 1: the job. Also, your pajama pants and sometimes get a
7:47
Speaker 1: little bit cheap, but you know you have to remember
7:49
Speaker 1: to change them. So are you ambidextrics? Can you switch
7:51
Speaker 1: to the other wrist when you know the right wrist
7:53
Speaker 1: runs out of good jokes? You know? I just turned
7:56
Speaker 1: my computer around. I don't know how that works. You're
7:58
Speaker 1: the physicist, OK, yeah, I think you just violated parody symmetry.
8:02
Speaker 1: Did you just say I violated parrot tree? Did? Yeah?
8:06
Speaker 1: The parents are very upset about their tree. I flipped
8:09
Speaker 1: their tree. Yeah. This is the twenty four episode in
8:12
Speaker 1: which we answer listener questions, and so people send us
8:14
Speaker 1: questions and how does it work down and you ask
8:16
Speaker 1: them to record it and then send it to us. Yeah,
8:18
Speaker 1: if there's a question I think will work well on
8:20
Speaker 1: the podcast, I ask them to just record themselves at home.
8:22
Speaker 1: They use the phone, to use their computer, they use
8:24
Speaker 1: whatever they have, and they just email it to us.
8:26
Speaker 1: And so it's very easy, no big deal. And so
8:29
Speaker 1: that's why we get this fun audio from listeners all
8:32
Speaker 1: around the world with cool accents. Yeah, very cool. And
8:34
Speaker 1: so today we'll be answering three pretty awesome questions from listeners,
8:38
Speaker 1: and they're pretty exciting and kind of delicious as well
8:41
Speaker 1: to think about. One of them is about roasting marshmallows
8:44
Speaker 1: in space, the other one is about the impending collision
8:47
Speaker 1: of our galaxy with another galaxy. And the last one
8:50
Speaker 1: is about I guess what would you call that space rain?
8:54
Speaker 1: Dangerous space rain? About how to survive the cosmic weather
8:58
Speaker 1: between here and other stars. Interesting. I guess if you're
9:01
Speaker 1: roasting marshmallows out there, you want to be safe as well.
9:04
Speaker 1: You don't want to be extra crunchy, that's right. So
9:06
Speaker 1: we have deep questions about the future of our galaxy
9:09
Speaker 1: and practical questions about how to roast marshmallows. All right, well,
9:13
Speaker 1: let's tackle our first question, and this one comes from Aiden,
9:16
Speaker 1: who is a question about eating snacks. I was wondering
9:21
Speaker 1: how close would you need to get to the sun
9:23
Speaker 1: to safely roast a marshmallow, or basically, how close could
9:27
Speaker 1: a single person get to the sun and be safe,
9:30
Speaker 1: or how much closer to the Sun would the Earth
9:33
Speaker 1: need to move for humans to even notice a difference. Thanks,
9:37
Speaker 1: all right, thank you, Aiden. And I'm a little confused
9:40
Speaker 1: he sort of posted the same question in three totally
9:42
Speaker 1: different ways, I feel. I think his question is trying
9:46
Speaker 1: to understand sort of the temperature things get when you
9:50
Speaker 1: get closer or further from the Sun, because you know,
9:52
Speaker 1: the Earth is sort of like at the perfect temperature
9:55
Speaker 1: for water to be liquid on the surface and for
9:57
Speaker 1: humans to have like nice relaxing vacations in Haaii and
10:00
Speaker 1: not get too hot, but if we were any closer,
10:03
Speaker 1: things would get a little toastier. And so I think
10:05
Speaker 1: he's really asking about, like, what is the temperature gradient?
10:08
Speaker 1: You know, how close do you have to get to
10:09
Speaker 1: the Sun before things get uncomfortable? I see, well, he
10:12
Speaker 1: painted a picture of roasting marshmallows in space. So I
10:15
Speaker 1: guess I'm picturing Aiden in a spacesuit holding a stick
10:20
Speaker 1: with a marshmallow on it, and is he wondering like
10:22
Speaker 1: how close does he have to get to roast the
10:25
Speaker 1: marshmallow or how close can you get without you know,
10:27
Speaker 1: burning up? Yeah, it's a good question because he's using
10:30
Speaker 1: the marshmallow as a probe, right, like what happens to
10:32
Speaker 1: the marshmallow? Is it going to survive? The problem is
10:35
Speaker 1: that if the marshmallow gets toasted, he's probably also getting
10:38
Speaker 1: toasted because you know, unlike a fire, if you're near
10:41
Speaker 1: a fire, then the temperature drops off really quickly. So
10:45
Speaker 1: you know, you can have the marshmallow be a foot
10:47
Speaker 1: or too closer to the fire than you are and
10:49
Speaker 1: it'll get toasted and you won't. But when it comes
10:52
Speaker 1: to the sun, the temperature drop off is you know,
10:55
Speaker 1: over a much larger scale, and so if the marshmallows
10:58
Speaker 1: a foot closer to the sun than you are, you're
11:00
Speaker 1: probably getting just as toasted as the marshmallow. I see,
11:03
Speaker 1: unless I guess you have some kind of shielding, special shielding,
11:06
Speaker 1: like what if it's he's behind like a big shield
11:09
Speaker 1: with a little hole that you can stick the marshmallow
11:11
Speaker 1: through so that it gets roasted by the sun, but
11:14
Speaker 1: not yeah, or his stick is like really really long.
11:20
Speaker 1: That's a good physics solution there. Just make a roasting
11:24
Speaker 1: stick that's you know, three hundred thousand miles long. Yeah, exactly.
11:28
Speaker 1: I just ponwned off the problem to the engineers, like, please,
11:30
Speaker 1: you know, send me three prototypes by tomorrow. Yeah, just
11:33
Speaker 1: don't make it out of chocolate. That would defeat the purpose,
11:36
Speaker 1: like a chocolate cover roasting thick. I'm gonna write that down, Daniel,
11:40
Speaker 1: that's my next pat Okay, Yeah, I wonder how many
11:43
Speaker 1: of those will actually make it out of the lab
11:44
Speaker 1: or you know, well, I made it three hundred kilometers long,
11:47
Speaker 1: but it seems to have been chewed on. That's right,
11:49
Speaker 1: and I had a heart attack before it could write
11:51
Speaker 1: the pen. But I think there's actually two interesting questions
11:55
Speaker 1: here about roasting this marshmallow in space, assuming that aiden
11:58
Speaker 1: can somehow get to a safety ins or has shielding,
12:01
Speaker 1: and you know, one is like what happens to a
12:03
Speaker 1: marshmallow when you put it out in vacuum? And the
12:05
Speaker 1: other is then how close do you have to bring
12:07
Speaker 1: it to the Sun to get it toasted. I see
12:09
Speaker 1: you're thinking, like maybe let's just send the marshmallow by itself,
12:12
Speaker 1: Like let's throw it into orbit around the Sun, and
12:14
Speaker 1: when it comes back it'll be nice and toasting. Yeah,
12:16
Speaker 1: But also I'm wondering, like, well, listening actually be edible.
12:19
Speaker 1: If you put a marshmallow into outer space, it might
12:22
Speaker 1: like explode, right because of the internal pressure. And so
12:25
Speaker 1: then even if it is toasted, is aiden really gonna
12:27
Speaker 1: want to eat it? I mean, I just want to
12:29
Speaker 1: deliver to our listeners the treat that they're looking for.
12:31
Speaker 1: It sounds like you just said like that the marshmallow
12:34
Speaker 1: would explode or get bigger, which all both of them
12:36
Speaker 1: sound good, But you're not going to get more marshmallow, right,
12:40
Speaker 1: be the same marshmallows, just less dense. The idea, of course,
12:43
Speaker 1: is that marshmallows have air bubbles inside them. The way
12:46
Speaker 1: you make a marshmallows, if you whip up all this
12:49
Speaker 1: fat and this sugar and so it's really like a
12:51
Speaker 1: little froth. It's like a big foam. And so we
12:54
Speaker 1: take that into outer space, it might just explode because
12:57
Speaker 1: all those air bubbles no longer have air pressing on
13:00
Speaker 1: them from the outside. Interesting. But wait, is a marshmallow
13:04
Speaker 1: like a sponge or does it actually have air trapped inside?
13:07
Speaker 1: You know, like a sponge you can squeeze and and
13:09
Speaker 1: somehow all the holes are connected to each other. Right,
13:11
Speaker 1: it's a really good question. You know. I think that
13:13
Speaker 1: there is some air trapped inside this marshmallow. So I
13:16
Speaker 1: actually went and did some research. And there's a physicist
13:18
Speaker 1: at you see, Santa Barbara that did this experiment. He
13:22
Speaker 1: took a marshmallow and he put it in a vacuum chamber.
13:25
Speaker 1: So it's kind of vacuum chamber in his lab, probably
13:28
Speaker 1: for other real physics reasons, probably cause a few million dollars,
13:32
Speaker 1: but funded by the NSFU, Yeah, probably exactly. I mean
13:36
Speaker 1: the National Snack Foundation for Research and Snack Physics. Yeah, yeah,
13:41
Speaker 1: not to be confused with the nih which is the
13:43
Speaker 1: National Imbibing Headquarters in the National Indigested Headquarters. Well, he
13:48
Speaker 1: took some marshmallows and put them in a bell jar
13:50
Speaker 1: of vacuum chamber, and the marshmallow expanded to about twice
13:54
Speaker 1: its normal size, And so that suggests that there is
13:56
Speaker 1: some air trapped in there. And if you reduce the
13:58
Speaker 1: pressure on the outside of a marsh it really will inflate. Wow,
14:01
Speaker 1: did he or she polished these results just on a blog?
14:04
Speaker 1: So this is not a peer reviewed right, you know,
14:07
Speaker 1: so take it with the grain of salt people, right,
14:09
Speaker 1: or as a piece of chocolate. But there's another question,
14:12
Speaker 1: because the vacuum of space, of course, is much much
14:15
Speaker 1: colder than the atmosphere in this lab, and so you
14:18
Speaker 1: might also imagine that the marshmallow might flash freeze, in
14:21
Speaker 1: which case it wouldn't expand. It might freeze first and
14:24
Speaker 1: then the air would sort of leak out through cracks.
14:27
Speaker 1: And so it wasn't exactly clear what would happen in
14:29
Speaker 1: that case. They need to do more experiments, which also,
14:32
Speaker 1: you know, thinking about it, sounds like exactly the kind
14:34
Speaker 1: of research that goes on in the place like did
14:35
Speaker 1: you see Santa Barbara. Oh, they followed up more experiments.
14:38
Speaker 1: They took the marshmallow and dipped in liquid nitrogen and
14:41
Speaker 1: then put it in the vacuum chamber, and it didn't
14:44
Speaker 1: expand as much. And so you know, that's not exactly
14:48
Speaker 1: what would happen in space. But I think it's a
14:49
Speaker 1: pretty good proxy, and so I think this marshmallow before
14:53
Speaker 1: it gets toasted, is going to puff up a little bit,
14:55
Speaker 1: but still be recognizably marshmallowy. I see, But then as
14:59
Speaker 1: you get closer to the Sun, it's going to heat up.
15:01
Speaker 1: Then it's gonna heat up exactly. So then then it
15:03
Speaker 1: might expand to twice its size. Yes, because as marshmallows
15:06
Speaker 1: heat up, they do expand, right, because the error that's
15:09
Speaker 1: trapped inside them gains in pressure and volume. So it
15:12
Speaker 1: might not explode. Or maybe it depends on how quickly
15:14
Speaker 1: you put it in a vacuum too. So then you
15:16
Speaker 1: put this marshmallow out in space, it expands, and then
15:18
Speaker 1: how close do you have to be to the Sun
15:20
Speaker 1: before you can it gets nice and toasty. It's a
15:22
Speaker 1: good question, and you have to make some assumptions here
15:25
Speaker 1: about how you're going to heat the marshmallow, because there's
15:27
Speaker 1: some subtleties like if you take an object and you
15:30
Speaker 1: put it at the same distance from the Sun as
15:33
Speaker 1: the Earth, it'll get heated to about five celsius. So
15:36
Speaker 1: that's like, you know, forty five or so degrees fahrenheit
15:39
Speaker 1: just from being out in space, just from being out
15:41
Speaker 1: in space and getting radiation from the Sun. And that's
15:44
Speaker 1: assuming that it gets thermalized. That like, the energy coming
15:48
Speaker 1: on one side goes through the object and heats up
15:50
Speaker 1: also the other side of the object, and it goes
15:52
Speaker 1: into sort of thermal equilibrium. That's not true. For example,
15:55
Speaker 1: of the Moon. The Moon is an object, you know,
15:58
Speaker 1: very similar in distance as the Earth from the Sun,
16:01
Speaker 1: but it gets very very hot on one side and
16:03
Speaker 1: cold on the other side because it doesn't normalize. Like
16:06
Speaker 1: the Moon gets more than a hundred C on one
16:08
Speaker 1: side and it's very very cold on the other side
16:10
Speaker 1: because the heat is all trapped on one side doesn't
16:13
Speaker 1: like bleed all the way through the Moon. So if
16:15
Speaker 1: we're talking about a smaller object, we're not just that's
16:18
Speaker 1: like spinning, so the heat gets evenly through it. Then
16:21
Speaker 1: something at the distance of the Earth gets to about
16:23
Speaker 1: five C. I say, thinking about kind of the physics,
16:26
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, it's getting all this radiation and
16:29
Speaker 1: energy from the Sun on one side, but I guess
16:31
Speaker 1: all around it, it's still in a vacuum and a
16:33
Speaker 1: really cold vacuum, and so it's shooting off heat in
16:36
Speaker 1: all directions. Right, it's like just trying to get cold.
16:39
Speaker 1: But then it also has this source of energy from
16:41
Speaker 1: the Sun and so you're saying, at some point, maybe
16:43
Speaker 1: it gets to it clirium and it gets to an
16:45
Speaker 1: even temperature. Yeah, and things here on Earth they also
16:48
Speaker 1: cool off. Right, you have something really hot, like a pie,
16:51
Speaker 1: you put it on your counter, it's going to cool off.
16:53
Speaker 1: That happens mostly because the heat is diffusing. It's the
16:57
Speaker 1: molecules of the pie are bumping up against the air
16:59
Speaker 1: molecule and they're warming them up, and then that air
17:02
Speaker 1: gets pushed away and you get new cold air. There's
17:04
Speaker 1: another mechanism for cooling, which is that you can just
17:07
Speaker 1: radiate off heat. Like things that are hot get red
17:10
Speaker 1: hot or white hot, they glow. They give off heat
17:13
Speaker 1: through radiation, and so in space you don't have air
17:15
Speaker 1: to cool things down, but you can still radiate heat.
17:18
Speaker 1: So things cool down slower in space than they do
17:21
Speaker 1: on Earth. It's harder to lose your heat in space
17:24
Speaker 1: than it is here on Earth because there's no air,
17:27
Speaker 1: no wind basically to cool you down. But you're exactly right.
17:29
Speaker 1: We're talking to hear about an object that comes into
17:32
Speaker 1: thermal equilibrium, where it's gaining energy from the Sun and
17:35
Speaker 1: radiating some energy away, but it comes into equilibrium, And
17:38
Speaker 1: so what that equilibrium temperature is depends on how close
17:42
Speaker 1: you are to the Sun. If you're very, very close
17:44
Speaker 1: to the surface of the Sun, you're gonna be basically
17:46
Speaker 1: at the Sun's surface temperature, which is like thousands of degrees.
17:50
Speaker 1: And if you're out where the Earth is, you'll be
17:51
Speaker 1: around five degrees celsius. But I guess the question is,
17:55
Speaker 1: you know, at what point will it get toasty? You know,
17:57
Speaker 1: like if it's facing the Sun and you get close
18:00
Speaker 1: to it, I would imagine that at some point the
18:01
Speaker 1: side of the marshmallow facing the Sun is going to
18:04
Speaker 1: start to melt, maybe and maybe even toast. Yeah, And
18:07
Speaker 1: so I did a little calculation using stuff on Boltzimann approximation, etcetera.
18:11
Speaker 1: And I'm figuring that you need the marshmallow to get
18:14
Speaker 1: to be about fifty c in order to toast, in
18:17
Speaker 1: order to melt, which is a temperature with the marshmallow melts,
18:20
Speaker 1: And in order to get to that temperature, you need
18:22
Speaker 1: to be about point four a U. So of the
18:26
Speaker 1: distance between the Earth and the Sun is a temperature
18:29
Speaker 1: where an object will get to fifty c in equilibrium
18:32
Speaker 1: somewhere between Venus and mercury. I see, that's an equilibrient
18:35
Speaker 1: meaning I guess if you're constantly rotating your marshmallow, or
18:38
Speaker 1: you give it a little bit of a spin in
18:40
Speaker 1: space before you throw it out there, it might reach
18:42
Speaker 1: some sort of equiproum, right, because it's going to be
18:44
Speaker 1: you know, kind of basting calm almost rotisserie marshmallow solar rotisserie. Right,
18:52
Speaker 1: that's really what you're doing when you're rotating the steak. Right, Yeah,
18:54
Speaker 1: that's right, the poor man's rotissory. And so that's assuming
18:57
Speaker 1: that it's spins it's equally distributed. If it's not, then
19:00
Speaker 1: one side of it will get hotter. So, for example,
19:03
Speaker 1: if you have a marshmallow at that's just stationary and
19:05
Speaker 1: all the energy is going to the surface of the marshmallow,
19:08
Speaker 1: then it's going to be like the Moon where it
19:10
Speaker 1: gets really hot on one side even at our distance.
19:13
Speaker 1: You know, a marshmallow in space that isn't rotating is
19:16
Speaker 1: going to get roasted on one side, even at one
19:18
Speaker 1: au from the Sun. Oh I see, So just putting
19:21
Speaker 1: a marshmallow out in space in orbit around Earth, it's
19:24
Speaker 1: going to get toasted or melted at least. Yeah, if
19:27
Speaker 1: it gets like tidally locked to the sun, so one
19:29
Speaker 1: surface of it is always facing the sun. Then the
19:31
Speaker 1: sun will eventually toast, it will heat it up to like,
19:34
Speaker 1: you know, more than a hundred seed and then and
19:36
Speaker 1: then what will happen. It will become like goof floating
19:39
Speaker 1: in space and I know which sentence, and then an
19:41
Speaker 1: attack Earth. It will be warm and so it'll be liquid.
19:44
Speaker 1: I don't know if life can spontaneously form inside space marshmallows,
19:48
Speaker 1: So I think that's a topic for another podcast. But
19:50
Speaker 1: then you're saying that it can't actually roast like you will.
19:53
Speaker 1: You'll never get it that nice brown color because in
19:55
Speaker 1: space you can't have that. Yeah, the roasting, that browning
19:59
Speaker 1: is actually an oxid Asian effect, right, that's reacting with
20:02
Speaker 1: the air. And so that can happen because there isn't
20:04
Speaker 1: any air out there. So you can melt a marshmallow
20:07
Speaker 1: in space. But I don't think you can brown it
20:09
Speaker 1: because there's no oxygen out there. Really wouldn't at least
20:12
Speaker 1: like you know, totally convert into carbon or something. You know.
20:16
Speaker 1: I find it hard to be heat up something in space,
20:18
Speaker 1: even to a million degrees, and when in't like char
20:21
Speaker 1: at least. I think the charring in some biochemists out
20:23
Speaker 1: there should correct me, involves the process where you are,
20:26
Speaker 1: you know, using oxygen to react with the elements and
20:29
Speaker 1: doing chemical transformations. If all you're doing is heating it up,
20:32
Speaker 1: and you're just going to be heating it up, you're
20:34
Speaker 1: not gonna be making any other chemical transformations. But I
20:37
Speaker 1: guess there is a little bit of oxygen, right, because
20:39
Speaker 1: the marshmallow does have some air tract into it, as
20:42
Speaker 1: as scientists have found out. Oh that's true. So if
20:44
Speaker 1: the marshmallow freezes and cracks and expels a little bit
20:47
Speaker 1: of oxygen, so now it has its own tiny little atmosphere,
20:50
Speaker 1: and you heat it up fast enough, it could also
20:53
Speaker 1: use that oxygen to brown I suppose. Yeah, there's like
20:55
Speaker 1: an interdisciplinary study here. We need like biochemists and physicists
21:02
Speaker 1: engineers to build this giant stick. Well, we're writing a
21:05
Speaker 1: grand proposal to the National Snack Foundation and uh, maybe
21:08
Speaker 1: they'll fund this study. But they don't give you money.
21:10
Speaker 1: They just give you more snacks in kind costs. They
21:14
Speaker 1: call it all right, aiden, Well, I think that's that
21:17
Speaker 1: the answer for you there. You need to put the
21:20
Speaker 1: marshmallow to roasted in space. You need to put it
21:22
Speaker 1: about point four adu, so the way to the sun,
21:26
Speaker 1: the somewhere between Venus and Mercury. If you put a
21:28
Speaker 1: marshmallow out there, spin it around, it will eventually melt
21:32
Speaker 1: and turn goody, delicious, and maybe even a little crispy.
21:34
Speaker 1: Let us know, and don't forget to publish your work,
21:36
Speaker 1: and stay tuned for our next episode, in which we
21:38
Speaker 1: asked the same question for chocolate. But in the meantime,
21:41
Speaker 1: we'll answer more questions from listeners when we come back.
21:44
Speaker 1: We have questions about galaxy collisions and micro meteors. Will
21:48
Speaker 1: get to those, but first let's take a quick break.
22:03
Speaker 1: All right. We are answering listener questions and also getting
22:07
Speaker 1: a little hungry talking about marshmallows, sns more. We should
22:09
Speaker 1: stop recording this podcast around lunchtime, and I think it
22:12
Speaker 1: focuses our jokes around feud, or at least after lunch.
22:16
Speaker 1: You know, so they were hungry for dessert, but then
22:18
Speaker 1: we're going to be full and sleepy. But who needs
22:20
Speaker 1: to dessert when you have the knowledge and the mysteries
22:23
Speaker 1: of the cosmos to snack on? Exactly? But we're supposed
22:26
Speaker 1: to be soothing our listeners to sleep and not going
22:28
Speaker 1: to sleep ourselves on the podcast. What do you mean
22:32
Speaker 1: we're actively trying to make people sleepy? No, but I
22:35
Speaker 1: got a lot of listeners who write in and say
22:37
Speaker 1: that they enjoy listening to our voices as they fall asleep,
22:40
Speaker 1: which I think means we put them to sleep. Or
22:45
Speaker 1: did they like our voices to be the last thing
22:47
Speaker 1: to hear before they fall asleep. That's very feels very intimate.
22:51
Speaker 1: You're getting very sleepy. What's your day? I don't know.
22:57
Speaker 1: Did you turn off the lights now you're going to
22:59
Speaker 1: give the nightmares? Is the stove still on? Is there
23:03
Speaker 1: somebody right behind you staring idea you're gonna give me nightmares?
23:08
Speaker 1: Is there a physicist standing over your deck right now?
23:12
Speaker 1: Did you lock the windows? Everything is fine, nothing is
23:15
Speaker 1: screwed up. Go to sleep. The universe is going to
23:20
Speaker 1: turn on without you. Everything's out of control, I mean
23:24
Speaker 1: in control. But as you go to sleep, think about
23:26
Speaker 1: the nature of the universe and what your questions are.
23:29
Speaker 1: It's right, yeah, and a lot of people have because
23:31
Speaker 1: they send us their questions and we are answering them
23:33
Speaker 1: here today on the podcast. Is our next question comes
23:35
Speaker 1: from Ryan, who is a question about our impending collision
23:39
Speaker 1: with the Andromeda galaxy. Hey, Daniel and Jorge, I have
23:43
Speaker 1: a question that spent on my mind for a while
23:45
Speaker 1: regarding galaxies, and they're galactic collisions that can occur. So
23:50
Speaker 1: my question is, how is it the galaxies like Andromeda
23:53
Speaker 1: and Milky Way are destined to collide with each other
23:56
Speaker 1: in the far future. I know that the universe is
23:58
Speaker 1: expanding and therefore all matter isn't a constant motion, but
24:02
Speaker 1: how can two massive objects like galaxies just be going
24:06
Speaker 1: towards each other? Thanks for inserting the question by all right,
24:10
Speaker 1: Thanks Brian. It sounds like it's something that's he's been
24:13
Speaker 1: thinking about it for a long time. Yeah, maybe Ryan
24:15
Speaker 1: falls asleep wondering about the cosmic fate of the galaxy. Well,
24:18
Speaker 1: he would have to sleep a lot for it to
24:19
Speaker 1: happen in his sleep, right, Maybe he's wondering how long
24:22
Speaker 1: can I sleep? Should I set my alarm clock for
24:24
Speaker 1: a million years, for a billion years? I don't want
24:27
Speaker 1: to miss it? Or do I have to set my
24:29
Speaker 1: alarm or will joint galaxy crashing into us waking up?
24:33
Speaker 1: If you can sleep through that, then like wow, that's
24:36
Speaker 1: a superpower. I haven't managed to sleep through my morning
24:40
Speaker 1: at our kids morning routine, So maybe if a galaxy
24:44
Speaker 1: collision happened, I wouldn't know it. Well, that's another question.
24:46
Speaker 1: How many galaxies would it take to wake up Rhead
24:49
Speaker 1: or any cartoonist. But yeah, Ryan asked about our impending
24:52
Speaker 1: collision with Andromeda, and so phillis in Daniel. We're going
24:55
Speaker 1: to collide with another galaxy. We are going to collide
24:58
Speaker 1: with another galaxy, and Jomeda is headed our way, and
25:01
Speaker 1: Drameda is the nearest galaxy to us, but it's still
25:04
Speaker 1: pretty far away. It's millions of light years away. But
25:07
Speaker 1: there's something really cool that I think is not widely
25:09
Speaker 1: enough appreciated about Andromeda, and that's how big it is.
25:13
Speaker 1: It's millions of light years away, but it's actually so
25:16
Speaker 1: big that if you could see it in the night sky,
25:18
Speaker 1: it would be bigger than the full moon. It would
25:21
Speaker 1: be like a huge object in the sky. Well, I mean,
25:24
Speaker 1: if if it's right next to us, it would occupy
25:27
Speaker 1: our entire night sky, right, that's right. But even millions
25:30
Speaker 1: of light years away, it's still enormous. You know. Somebody
25:32
Speaker 1: wrote me and asked me a question about seeing distant
25:35
Speaker 1: objects using telescopes. And the thing that telescopes do is
25:38
Speaker 1: not so much magnification as gather more light so you
25:42
Speaker 1: can see dim things right there, like enhance the brightness
25:46
Speaker 1: of things more than they make them bigger. Because a
25:48
Speaker 1: lot of exciting things the nice guy are already really big.
25:51
Speaker 1: They're just too dim to see. So Andrameda is like that,
25:54
Speaker 1: it's incredible if you can see Andrameda in the nice sky.
25:57
Speaker 1: It's really very dramatic. Oh, I see, you're saying, like
26:00
Speaker 1: if we could keep our eye cones open and of
26:03
Speaker 1: and looked at the sky at night, we would see
26:06
Speaker 1: Andromeda and it would be about the size of the moon. Yeah,
26:08
Speaker 1: it would be larger than the full moon. People imagine
26:11
Speaker 1: that all the galaxies are out there are like the tiniest,
26:13
Speaker 1: dimmest little dots. They're even dimmer and further than stars.
26:17
Speaker 1: But this is like look up in the nice sky.
26:18
Speaker 1: You would see this enormous spiral galaxy like right there.
26:22
Speaker 1: It would be incredible, but it's just so dim that
26:25
Speaker 1: you can't see. It's not newly as bright as the
26:27
Speaker 1: full moon or many of the other stars in our galaxy.
26:30
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a good thing we can't see it. You know.
26:32
Speaker 1: Imagine if every time you looked up at the sky
26:34
Speaker 1: you saw this giant galaxy coming towards you. I mean,
26:37
Speaker 1: be frightening, right when it's like, oh I look at
26:40
Speaker 1: that beautiful moon and the giant galaxy. Yeah, be like
26:46
Speaker 1: is it getting there? Is it coming this way? It
26:48
Speaker 1: is getting bigger, but by a very small amount every year.
26:51
Speaker 1: And this is a question people ask kind of often.
26:53
Speaker 1: They're trying to reconcile two things they've heard. One is
26:56
Speaker 1: that Andromeda is coming towards us, and the other is
27:00
Speaker 1: space between galaxies is expanding, and the whole universe is expanding,
27:03
Speaker 1: and everything is getting further and further apart. And these
27:06
Speaker 1: two things seem to be in contradiction. So I get
27:08
Speaker 1: a lot of people writing in asking this kind of question,
27:11
Speaker 1: or this very exact question. That's right, because we have
27:14
Speaker 1: talked a lot in this podcast about how the universe
27:16
Speaker 1: is expanding due to dark energy, and the universe is
27:19
Speaker 1: getting bigger and bigger, and so I guess Ryan's question is, like,
27:22
Speaker 1: very everything is getting bigger and bigger and farther and
27:24
Speaker 1: farther away. How is it that we are even in
27:26
Speaker 1: danger of colliding with another galaxy. Yeah, and so there
27:28
Speaker 1: are two effects happening there right. One is the universe
27:32
Speaker 1: is expanding. New space is being created all the time,
27:35
Speaker 1: and that new space is not just being made out
27:37
Speaker 1: there in deep space. It's made everywhere. It's made between
27:40
Speaker 1: me and you, it's made between the atoms in your body.
27:43
Speaker 1: It's made between the Earth and the Sun, it's made
27:46
Speaker 1: between the Sun and other stars. It's everywhere. Home geniously,
27:49
Speaker 1: like everywhere in space is expanding. But that expansion is
27:53
Speaker 1: not that dramatic, you know, over a light year or so,
27:56
Speaker 1: it's like a centimeter per year, and so it's sort
27:59
Speaker 1: of like a very gentle breeze. And the other effect
28:02
Speaker 1: that's going on, of course, is gravity or other bonds.
28:05
Speaker 1: The reason that dark energy is not tearing you apart
28:08
Speaker 1: is because the bonds in your body are more powerful
28:10
Speaker 1: than dark energy. Over short distances, they win, and over
28:14
Speaker 1: distances like between the Earth and the Sun, gravity winds.
28:18
Speaker 1: So gravity, even though it's super duper weak compared to
28:21
Speaker 1: the other forces, is more powerful than dark energy over
28:24
Speaker 1: these short distances. But as distances get larger and larger,
28:28
Speaker 1: gravity gets weaker and weaker. Right, you don't feel the
28:31
Speaker 1: gravity of distant objects as much as you feel the
28:33
Speaker 1: gravity of nearby objects. So as distances get larger, gravity
28:37
Speaker 1: gets weaker, but dark energy doesn't. Dark energy gets more
28:41
Speaker 1: powerful with distance, so at some point, over long distances,
28:45
Speaker 1: dark energy winds, and over short distances, gravity winds. Like
28:48
Speaker 1: right now, dark energy is trying to pull our solar
28:51
Speaker 1: system apart, or even you apart, right, but the gravity
28:54
Speaker 1: is sort of keeping things tightly bound together. Yes, it's
28:57
Speaker 1: like there's a very gentle breeze, but you and your
28:59
Speaker 1: friend are holding each other's hands, so you're not getting
29:01
Speaker 1: pulled apart. But over large distances that that gentle breeze
29:04
Speaker 1: becomes like a hurricane almost right, Like it's additive like that,
29:07
Speaker 1: The breeze just gets more massive the longer use sample it,
29:11
Speaker 1: and gravity gets weaker. Because if we're talking about gravity
29:15
Speaker 1: between galaxies or between clusters of galaxies, now we're talking
29:19
Speaker 1: about hundreds of millions of light years. And while gravity's
29:23
Speaker 1: extent is infinite, right, you do feel the gravity of
29:26
Speaker 1: Andromeda and other galaxies, it drops off like one over
29:29
Speaker 1: the distance squared, and so you get twice as far.
29:32
Speaker 1: It's four times weaker. Over those vast distances, gravity gets
29:36
Speaker 1: pretty weak and then dark energy takes over. So if
29:39
Speaker 1: you look at the universe only at the scale of
29:41
Speaker 1: like superclusters of galaxies, right, the structure is our solar system,
29:45
Speaker 1: that our galaxy, and then clusters of galaxies, then clusters
29:49
Speaker 1: of clusters of galaxies that we call superclusters. Between superclusters,
29:53
Speaker 1: dark energy is winning. Superclusters are moving away from each
29:56
Speaker 1: other faster and faster every year. Gravity cannot hold them
29:59
Speaker 1: together because the distances are too great. Yeah, it's almost like,
30:02
Speaker 1: you know, we're on a tiny little island and the
30:05
Speaker 1: other galaxy cluster isn't another tiny little island somewhere in
30:08
Speaker 1: the over the vast ocean, and the ocean is getting
30:10
Speaker 1: bigger yea, And the largest thing that gravity can hold
30:13
Speaker 1: together is sort of one galaxy cluster. So like the
30:16
Speaker 1: Milky Way and Andromeda and the other galaxies in our
30:19
Speaker 1: cluster that we call the local group, these things are
30:22
Speaker 1: gravitationally bound. Gravity is strong enough to hold them together
30:26
Speaker 1: like a little group of islands, but the ocean between
30:28
Speaker 1: our cluster and other clusters is expanding like a supercluster.
30:32
Speaker 1: Astronomers argue about whether it's even really a thing, because
30:36
Speaker 1: they don't not sure whether it's gravitationally held together or
30:39
Speaker 1: just sort of currently right now near each other, but
30:41
Speaker 1: dark energy will eventually tear it apart. I see, that's
30:44
Speaker 1: kind of sad, but I guess you know, it sort
30:46
Speaker 1: of depends on the distances, right, Like, if our cluster
30:49
Speaker 1: was closer to another closter close enough, then they would
30:52
Speaker 1: maybe feel more gravity towards each other. It just so
30:55
Speaker 1: happens that there's a bunch of space in between. There
30:57
Speaker 1: is a bunch of space in between, and so that
30:59
Speaker 1: lets us answer Ryan's question. You know, how is it
31:02
Speaker 1: possible if space is expanding, for Andromeda the Milky Way
31:06
Speaker 1: to becoming close to each other. Well, the answer is
31:08
Speaker 1: that gravity wins over dark energy between neighboring galaxies. Even
31:12
Speaker 1: though in Drameda is millions of light years away, it's
31:14
Speaker 1: got a lot of gravity, and that gravity is pulling
31:17
Speaker 1: us towards it, and our gravity is pulling it towards us.
31:20
Speaker 1: So what you're saying that the Milky Way does feel
31:23
Speaker 1: gravity towards Andromeda, like we feel it, like it's actually
31:26
Speaker 1: changing our trajectory. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a huge object. It's
31:31
Speaker 1: much much bigger than the Milky Way. It's much more
31:33
Speaker 1: massive than the Milky Way. So we do feel it's gravity,
31:36
Speaker 1: and you know it's going to take a long time.
31:37
Speaker 1: It's billions of years for these large distant objects to
31:41
Speaker 1: pull each other together. But eventually that's what gravity does.
31:44
Speaker 1: You know, gravity operates over large distances in long times,
31:47
Speaker 1: but it's very patient. It just keeps going. It's like
31:50
Speaker 1: the energizer Bunny of the universe. But you know, I
31:53
Speaker 1: kind of interpreted Ryan's questions a little bit differently because
31:55
Speaker 1: he used words like destiny and like why is our
31:58
Speaker 1: galaxy destined to crashing to another one? And so I
32:01
Speaker 1: think his question sounded more like he was wondering, how
32:03
Speaker 1: is it a coincidence that we, in this vastness of
32:05
Speaker 1: space our galaxy isn't a crush collision course with another
32:09
Speaker 1: galaxy when you know it could have easily, you know,
32:12
Speaker 1: be aimed to to miss this or you know, it's
32:15
Speaker 1: almost like trying to hit two pebbles out there in
32:17
Speaker 1: the vastness of space. Yeah, and if you just imagine
32:19
Speaker 1: like a bunch of bouncy balls in a huge volume
32:23
Speaker 1: of space, you figure they're never going to hit each other.
32:25
Speaker 1: But these bouncy balls are attracted to each other. Gravity
32:28
Speaker 1: is pulling these things together, So it's not random that
32:31
Speaker 1: these things are pointed towards each other. It's not just
32:33
Speaker 1: bad luck or good luck, depending on which side you're
32:35
Speaker 1: rooting for. Gravity is actively pulling this stuff together. The
32:38
Speaker 1: whole reason the galaxy exists is because gravity has pulled
32:41
Speaker 1: the matter together to make the stars, and then pulled
32:43
Speaker 1: those stars together to make galaxies. And now it's pulling
32:46
Speaker 1: those galaxies together to make bigger galaxies. And this wouldn't
32:49
Speaker 1: be the first collision for the Milky Way. We've collided
32:52
Speaker 1: with many other galaxies. We have other little dwarf galaxies
32:56
Speaker 1: inside our galaxy that we've already gobbled up and eaten,
32:59
Speaker 1: and most galaxies out there, I've been through several rounds
33:02
Speaker 1: of collisions, and so more collisions definitely in our future.
33:06
Speaker 1: But I guess that you know, there is sort of
33:08
Speaker 1: an element of luck to it as well, Right Like,
33:10
Speaker 1: we're not destined, Like our whole galaxy cluster isn't destint
33:14
Speaker 1: all destined to crash into each other at some point
33:16
Speaker 1: in the future, right Like it's not all going to
33:17
Speaker 1: be just a giant black hole eventually, is it? Yeah? Actually,
33:22
Speaker 1: it kind of is definitely become a giant black hole.
33:25
Speaker 1: If you look really far into the future, these islands
33:28
Speaker 1: that gravity is controlling, eventually they will pull them all
33:32
Speaker 1: into a black hole. The only thing that lets us
33:34
Speaker 1: resist that is angular momentum. Like the reason our Milky
33:38
Speaker 1: Way hasn't yet collapsed into a black hole is because
33:40
Speaker 1: those stars have a lot of velocity, so they can
33:42
Speaker 1: maintain an orbit around the black hole. But eventually they'll
33:45
Speaker 1: lose that. They'll radiate away some of that energy and
33:47
Speaker 1: gravitational waves, or they'll bump into each other and they
33:50
Speaker 1: will collapse into the black hole. And similarly, all the
33:52
Speaker 1: galaxies and our local group eventually will coalesce into one
33:56
Speaker 1: meta galaxy with a super duper black hole at its
33:59
Speaker 1: center eventually will eat all the stuff. Wow. But then
34:02
Speaker 1: we're talking like trillions of years now, right, not like billions.
34:05
Speaker 1: We're talking like maybe even like, you know, hundreds of
34:09
Speaker 1: trillions of years. Yes, exactly. But the deep, deep future
34:12
Speaker 1: of the universe, assuming dark energy keeps going, is that
34:15
Speaker 1: it's nice and cozy, little crowded. It's a bunch of
34:18
Speaker 1: super isolated, super massive black holes, and it's going to
34:21
Speaker 1: take a really really long time. But The cool thing
34:23
Speaker 1: is that if you took like a time lapse movie
34:26
Speaker 1: of this process, it would look like it's happening really fast.
34:28
Speaker 1: It would make a lot of sense. You're like, oh, crash, crash, crash,
34:31
Speaker 1: and then the whole thing coalesces. We're just sort of
34:33
Speaker 1: watching it in super duper slow motion. Interesting. So it's
34:38
Speaker 1: a little bit of a coincidence we're crashing into Andromeda
34:40
Speaker 1: in the next couple of billion years, but it's not
34:42
Speaker 1: a coincidence in the long term of things, where you know,
34:45
Speaker 1: eventually everything's going to collide with with itself exactly. It
34:48
Speaker 1: wasn't predestined that we would collide with this galaxy at
34:51
Speaker 1: this particular time, but there was no way we were
34:54
Speaker 1: going to avoid colliding with other galaxies at some point.
34:57
Speaker 1: So either way, it's still a few trillion or billion
34:59
Speaker 1: a year US and so Ryan used to have a
35:01
Speaker 1: lot of time to sleep in. It's right in Rusty
35:03
Speaker 1: marshmallows the rest easy. All right, let's get to our
35:06
Speaker 1: last question of the day here, and it's about micro
35:09
Speaker 1: meteors and surviving being out in space. But first let's
35:12
Speaker 1: take another quick break. All right, we are answering the
35:27
Speaker 1: listener questions here today on the podcast, and we've had
35:30
Speaker 1: two awesome questions and our last one is about micro
35:33
Speaker 1: meteors and it comes from Bess Hi Daniel Jorge. My
35:37
Speaker 1: name is boss Um from in the Netherlands. I have
35:40
Speaker 1: a question for you guys. So if you travel really
35:44
Speaker 1: quickly to space, like you go really fast, maybe almost
35:47
Speaker 1: just feel a light, what would happen if you would
35:50
Speaker 1: hit like a tiny piece of debris or maybe like
35:53
Speaker 1: a tiny rock. Would it bounce off or would it
35:57
Speaker 1: explode the ship? And if so, like, how are we
36:00
Speaker 1: able to to travel in the future without having to
36:03
Speaker 1: worry about exploding with flight? I was really curious about that.
36:07
Speaker 1: Thank you, bye bye. Alright, awesome question here about being
36:11
Speaker 1: out in space, I guess is space is not a
36:13
Speaker 1: complete empty vacuum, right, There's stuff floating out there in space.
36:17
Speaker 1: There is a lot of stuff out there in space,
36:19
Speaker 1: and not just like the tiny quantum fields that are
36:21
Speaker 1: fluctuating at very low energies. There's really stuff out there.
36:25
Speaker 1: You know, the Sun pumps out the solar wind which
36:27
Speaker 1: is filled with particles, but also there's lots of space
36:29
Speaker 1: dust and micromedeors and all sorts of things. Whizzing around
36:33
Speaker 1: out there in space. Yeah, he talked about micro meteors,
36:37
Speaker 1: and so what is the micromedia. Micromedia is just like
36:39
Speaker 1: a pebble that's out there in space, you know, micromeding
36:42
Speaker 1: really really small. And the stuff that's out there in
36:45
Speaker 1: space has been coalescing in the Solar System for a
36:47
Speaker 1: long time, and so most of it's in the form
36:49
Speaker 1: of the Sun and the planets and even big asteroids.
36:53
Speaker 1: But sometimes those things collide and leave debris. And we
36:56
Speaker 1: talked on an episode recently about space dust, which are
36:58
Speaker 1: like little particles of stuff that are out there in
37:01
Speaker 1: the Solar System. Nobody's exactly sure where they come from.
37:04
Speaker 1: Maybe they're whipped off of storms on Mars. Maybe they
37:08
Speaker 1: come from collisions of asteroids and the asteroid belt. We're
37:10
Speaker 1: not exactly sure. Exploded marshmallows, perhaps from failed experiments by aliens,
37:16
Speaker 1: alien campers. That's right, edible space junk, just open your
37:19
Speaker 1: mouth and space. And there is also a lot of debris.
37:22
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of debris near Earth from
37:24
Speaker 1: you know, satellites that have fallen apart and burned up,
37:27
Speaker 1: and you know, screws dropped by astronauts and stuff like that,
37:31
Speaker 1: and some of the stuff is moving pretty fast yea.
37:33
Speaker 1: And in fact, the Earth sort of gets pelted by
37:35
Speaker 1: micromedeors all the time, right, Like we're literally getting showered
37:38
Speaker 1: by these tiny little rocks, except that they get burned
37:41
Speaker 1: up in the atmosphere. Yeah, the size of the rock
37:44
Speaker 1: is inversely proportionals the frequency of the chances that it
37:46
Speaker 1: hits Earth. So really really big rocks like the one
37:49
Speaker 1: that killed the dinosaurs really rare, small enough rocks to
37:52
Speaker 1: make shooting stars, not that rare, like you can see
37:55
Speaker 1: them on a random night. Really really tiny rocks that
37:58
Speaker 1: don't even make shooting stars happen all the time, like constantly,
38:02
Speaker 1: and so like if you see it as a shooting star,
38:04
Speaker 1: it means the atmosphere burned it up. But if you
38:06
Speaker 1: are above the atmosphere, those things can hit you, right, absolutely,
38:09
Speaker 1: those things can hit you. And they're moving pretty fast.
38:12
Speaker 1: You know. The Earth is moving around the Sun at
38:14
Speaker 1: like thirty kilometers per second, so these speeds are really high,
38:18
Speaker 1: and things are flying through the Solar system, you know,
38:20
Speaker 1: like five to twenty kilometers per second is totally not
38:23
Speaker 1: unusual for micromediors. These tiny little space petals, whoa You
38:28
Speaker 1: just made me realize that maybe it's not the meter
38:30
Speaker 1: hitting you, it's like you hitting the meteor, like it
38:33
Speaker 1: was just floating out in space peacefully, and then the
38:35
Speaker 1: Earth just kind of you and the Earth so came
38:38
Speaker 1: barreling around and and you hit the little rock. Yeah.
38:42
Speaker 1: The rocks have their own little podcasts like, Hey, I'm
38:44
Speaker 1: worried about people coming and hitting me at high speed. Yeah,
38:48
Speaker 1: I had to dream or a giant marshmallow totally engulfed
38:51
Speaker 1: or ecosystem. It was delicious and it had a lot
38:54
Speaker 1: of air in it, but now everything's really sticky, I
38:57
Speaker 1: don't know, embedded in giant marshmallow. Pretty good way to
39:01
Speaker 1: what if our entire milky way like an andramatous sized marshmallow, right,
39:05
Speaker 1: that would be interesting. It depends is it melted marshmallow
39:08
Speaker 1: or is it nice and room temperature. Because I don't
39:11
Speaker 1: want to be boiled alive, and so I have a
39:13
Speaker 1: molten marshmallow. That's times horrible. That's true. That probably also
39:16
Speaker 1: ruined the marshmallow. Nobody wants to eat marshmallows with boiled
39:18
Speaker 1: cartoonists inside. That's right, nobody wants more of those. But
39:21
Speaker 1: Boss's question is also about like how do we survive
39:25
Speaker 1: this field of micro meteors. Like, if we're moving through
39:28
Speaker 1: space at high speed, you know, then these things basically
39:31
Speaker 1: coming at us at high speed, how can we possibly
39:34
Speaker 1: survive transit between stars? Right? It's it's kind of like
39:37
Speaker 1: being shot at by bullets, right, Like these things are
39:40
Speaker 1: going faster than a bullet. Yeah, these things are super fast,
39:43
Speaker 1: and like bullets, they can be small, but they can
39:45
Speaker 1: carry a lot of energy. Right, bullet rips right through
39:48
Speaker 1: you because it's going super duper fast, so it's a
39:50
Speaker 1: lot of kinetic energy. So yeah, these things are dangerous
39:54
Speaker 1: and everybody that goes out into space, even near Earth,
39:58
Speaker 1: needs shielding to protect themselves from these things. Remember we
40:01
Speaker 1: talked about the Juno spacecraft that went out to explore
40:05
Speaker 1: the outer reaches of the Solar System and it was
40:07
Speaker 1: pelted by space dust so much so that it's solar
40:09
Speaker 1: panels had all these little spellations that came off that
40:12
Speaker 1: helped them even measure the amount of space dust. So yeah,
40:15
Speaker 1: it's like being in a dust storm right where it
40:17
Speaker 1: can shred you kind of right, because these things are
40:19
Speaker 1: going like like kilometers per second, like three to eighteen
40:23
Speaker 1: kilometers per second. Exactly. Imagine being in a dust storm
40:26
Speaker 1: where the winds are kilometers per second velocity that it's
40:30
Speaker 1: like sandpaper, right, it would totally shred you. And so
40:32
Speaker 1: I guess the solution if you're at third space is
40:34
Speaker 1: to have shielding. I guess, like something to block those
40:37
Speaker 1: incoming bullets. Yeah, and so we got a lot of
40:40
Speaker 1: stuff out there in space, and so NASA has worked
40:42
Speaker 1: on this kind of thing, and for example, the I
40:44
Speaker 1: s S the space station has shielding. And the standard
40:47
Speaker 1: solution to this is something called a Whipple shield, named
40:50
Speaker 1: after an engineer whose last name is Whipple. And the
40:52
Speaker 1: basic idea is to have like multiple layers of shielding.
40:56
Speaker 1: So you have like your internal shield, and then you
40:58
Speaker 1: have a gap and you have another layer of shielding
41:01
Speaker 1: and the outer layer shielding. Its job is to break
41:05
Speaker 1: up the micro meteorite into even smaller pieces, so instead
41:08
Speaker 1: of having like a bullet instead you have like a
41:10
Speaker 1: bunch of smaller bullets. And the idea is that it
41:13
Speaker 1: spreads out, so it's not like one localized impact on
41:17
Speaker 1: your inner shield, like spreads it out over multiple smaller
41:21
Speaker 1: impact sites. Interesting, but what is this outer shield made
41:24
Speaker 1: out of? Doesn't it get destroyed when a bullet hits it,
41:27
Speaker 1: so eventually you can get used up. It cannot last forever.
41:29
Speaker 1: You don't want to get hit twice in the same spot. Though.
41:32
Speaker 1: Some people are working on these shields that are self
41:35
Speaker 1: healing that will repair a hole in themselves. Interesting. How
41:39
Speaker 1: does that work? Well, they use some sort of gel
41:41
Speaker 1: so that at low temperatures it's solid and it can
41:44
Speaker 1: act as a shield. But then when something passes through it,
41:47
Speaker 1: the friction of it heats it up and so it
41:49
Speaker 1: becomes liquid and then it like flows just close up
41:53
Speaker 1: the whole automatically. Oh whoa interesting Now, of course you
41:56
Speaker 1: make me think of what if we make it out
41:58
Speaker 1: of marshmallows, like it bounce to get absorbed and with
42:03
Speaker 1: the heat also you know, reseal it. I think we're
42:06
Speaker 1: gonna have to consult the marshmallow lab, but you see
42:08
Speaker 1: Santa Barber to find out. I'm thinking like a layer
42:12
Speaker 1: of marshmallows to slow down the meteor, than a layer
42:14
Speaker 1: of chocolate to really take out the kinetic energy. And
42:17
Speaker 1: then Graham Cracker plates to um to really fortified. And
42:23
Speaker 1: when we walk into the lab and see somebody heating
42:25
Speaker 1: this thing with a laser, and you're like, no, seriously,
42:27
Speaker 1: we're doing space physics. Here. You see somebody with like
42:32
Speaker 1: a gun pointed at a Smores sandwich. There doing real science. Yeah,
42:38
Speaker 1: and so this is sort of the state of the art.
42:39
Speaker 1: It's a whipple shield. You have like a thin outer
42:41
Speaker 1: bumper and then you have a gap, and you can
42:43
Speaker 1: have multiple layers of it, right to try to like
42:46
Speaker 1: make yourself protected from even higher energy objects, so you
42:49
Speaker 1: can break them up in several stages. You can do
42:51
Speaker 1: things like stuff the gap with materials that could help
42:54
Speaker 1: absorb the energy, like kevlar, etcetera, like a bulletproof vest literally, yeah,
42:59
Speaker 1: like a bulletproof But in the end you have to
43:01
Speaker 1: build shielding because, as Vast says, if this thing passes
43:05
Speaker 1: through your ship and punctures it, then boom your toast, right.
43:08
Speaker 1: So this could be a real problem, and it is
43:10
Speaker 1: going to be a real problem if we ever do
43:12
Speaker 1: get to travel in between the stars. Yeah. I've always wondered, like,
43:15
Speaker 1: if you're going through space and you're going really really fast,
43:18
Speaker 1: almost at the speed of light, like if a tiny
43:20
Speaker 1: rock hits you, it's your toast, right, Like it would
43:23
Speaker 1: have so much energy exactly unless you have a really
43:26
Speaker 1: good shielding at the front of your ship that can
43:28
Speaker 1: break it up so that it becomes like many smaller rocks.
43:32
Speaker 1: And the key here is the pressure applied for each rock, Right,
43:35
Speaker 1: it's amount of kinetic energy delivered, like per area. Same
43:38
Speaker 1: kinetic energy that's in a bullet isn't a big deal
43:41
Speaker 1: if it hits over a much broader area. Like that's
43:43
Speaker 1: how a bulletproof vest works, right. It takes a bullet
43:46
Speaker 1: which is trying to put a lot of energy into
43:48
Speaker 1: like one half a square centimeter, and it just spreads
43:51
Speaker 1: it out over your entire chest. And so that's why
43:54
Speaker 1: when you're hit with a bullet and you're wearing a
43:56
Speaker 1: bulletproof vest, you get knocked over, right, but you don't
43:59
Speaker 1: get penetrated, doesn't like go into your body. So that's
44:01
Speaker 1: the idea is to spread out the energy over a
44:04
Speaker 1: larger area. But yeah, if it gets through, then you've
44:06
Speaker 1: been shot with a bullet and you're dead. I guess
44:08
Speaker 1: the International Space Station that's covered in all this shilling,
44:12
Speaker 1: they have all sorts of shielding on the space station.
44:14
Speaker 1: They have like a hundred different kinds of shields based
44:17
Speaker 1: on like how much time the astronauts spend there because
44:20
Speaker 1: you have to balance mass, right, these things are heavy,
44:23
Speaker 1: and so lifting them into space costs energy and money,
44:27
Speaker 1: so you don't want a bunch of shielding where you
44:29
Speaker 1: don't need it. So they have like more shielding with
44:31
Speaker 1: the astronauts spend more time, and then they have like
44:33
Speaker 1: one special room that's like super shielded, so if they
44:37
Speaker 1: see like a shower of these things coming, the astronauts
44:39
Speaker 1: can like you know, basically go into their panic room.
44:42
Speaker 1: And recently, one of these things like smacked into the
44:44
Speaker 1: one of the windows. They have this like observation room
44:46
Speaker 1: in the I S S. We have big windows you
44:48
Speaker 1: can look on the Earth, and the micromedia right hit
44:51
Speaker 1: one of those windows and you know, took out a
44:53
Speaker 1: little vivid and so that was a little bit scary
44:55
Speaker 1: because if it cracks the window, it's kind of a
44:57
Speaker 1: panic time. But there, yeah, exactly then it time to
45:00
Speaker 1: do space marshmallow experiments. Yeah, quickly before you can run
45:03
Speaker 1: out of auxin. And and like you said, these things
45:05
Speaker 1: were out right, like they're constantly getting pelted by micrometers
45:09
Speaker 1: and so they were out right. So is is a
45:11
Speaker 1: space station doesn't have like a maintenance program where it
45:14
Speaker 1: replaces its shields every now and then. Yeah, exactly, you
45:16
Speaker 1: got to replace them and launch new ones. And that's
45:19
Speaker 1: why everything in space is constantly getting degraded. And so
45:21
Speaker 1: when you hear people talking about, like, you know, launching
45:24
Speaker 1: space based solar power or space based or space space that,
45:27
Speaker 1: remember that these things will not last that long in space.
45:30
Speaker 1: This huge radiation to fry the electronics. But there's also
45:34
Speaker 1: basically space sandpaper wearing down everything. Is this you know,
45:38
Speaker 1: constant wind of stuff just like trying to destroy in space.
45:42
Speaker 1: Remember the atmosphere protects us from all of this. You know,
45:45
Speaker 1: it's basically a huge shield. It sounds like you want
45:48
Speaker 1: to have maybe some air trapped around your space station
45:51
Speaker 1: to protect you. Maybe maybe trapped in the form of marshmallows. Yeah,
45:56
Speaker 1: or maybe we should use the plan we talked about once.
45:59
Speaker 1: Instead of lying somewhere else away from our solar system,
46:02
Speaker 1: we should just move the entire solar system, like we
46:05
Speaker 1: want to go visit another star. We just turn our
46:07
Speaker 1: son into our rocket. Remember that idea. Yeah, Yeah, we
46:10
Speaker 1: had a whole podcast about it. Yeah, And that would
46:13
Speaker 1: solve a lot of these problems, right, because you could
46:14
Speaker 1: bring your atmosphere shield with you as you move around
46:17
Speaker 1: the galaxy. And you also need shielding if you're going
46:20
Speaker 1: out in space by yourself, right in a space suit. Yeah,
46:22
Speaker 1: that's one of the dangers of these e v A
46:25
Speaker 1: s when the astronauts leave the space station and they're
46:27
Speaker 1: just protected by their suit. They have some shielding on
46:30
Speaker 1: these suits as well, but you know, that's a pretty
46:33
Speaker 1: dangerous if you're hit by a micro meteorite, it could
46:35
Speaker 1: puncture your suit. And so they do have them shielded,
46:39
Speaker 1: and they do some calculations. You know, they say, we
46:41
Speaker 1: want less than a one percent chance that we're gonna
46:44
Speaker 1: lose an astronaut per decade, and that's the threshold they
46:47
Speaker 1: apply to figure out like how much shielding they need. Yeah,
46:50
Speaker 1: I guess it's like walking out into the middle of
46:52
Speaker 1: a gunfight, kind of hoping you don't get hit. Yeah,
46:55
Speaker 1: you're doing signs in the middle of a gun range.
47:00
Speaker 1: That's gutsy, Daniel. How dangerous is your day job. I'm
47:05
Speaker 1: not taking any risks like that. I'm just eating too
47:07
Speaker 1: many marshmallows for science. And so you're building a little
47:10
Speaker 1: you know, shielding around your middle section, not so a
47:14
Speaker 1: little anymore. All right, Well, that answers a question for Boss.
47:17
Speaker 1: I guess micrometers would shread you? Is the answer to
47:20
Speaker 1: his question. You know, if you're out there without any shielding,
47:23
Speaker 1: eventually probably something is gonna start poking holes, So start
47:27
Speaker 1: training your your outer suit. That's right. So before you
47:30
Speaker 1: make plans to move out of the Milky Way to
47:32
Speaker 1: avoid the collision with Andromeda, pack a lot of marshmallows,
47:35
Speaker 1: and also pack a lot of shields and sorry, in
47:37
Speaker 1: a suit of armor if you can, guess be iron
47:40
Speaker 1: man if you can, or carbon fiber man. Maybe all right, Well,
47:44
Speaker 1: that answers all of our questions. Thank you to all
47:46
Speaker 1: of our listeners for sending in. There are questions. We
47:49
Speaker 1: really enjoy answering them here online. Please don't be shy,
47:52
Speaker 1: right to us two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
47:55
Speaker 1: And keep being curious and keep tasting those marshmallows just right.
47:59
Speaker 1: If not while you're awake, then while you're asleep, which
48:02
Speaker 1: hopefully most of you are by now. If we did
48:05
Speaker 1: our job, maybe we should be talking quieter and quieter
48:08
Speaker 1: as the podcast gets on. Yes, what you start whispering
48:12
Speaker 1: good night, pleasant dreams? Al right, everybody, thanks for joining us.
48:17
Speaker 1: See you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that
48:27
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge explained the universe is a production of
48:30
Speaker 1: I heart Radio. For more podcast from my heart Radio,
48:34
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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