Latest / Made of Stars / Yeah, Yeah, Yeah... Let's Bring Pluto Back
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
- 0:04Speaker 1: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
- 0:07Speaker 1: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
- 0:10Speaker 1: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
- 0:15Speaker 1: that's your own risk.
- 0:16Speaker 2: Go ahead. When made of stars, made them stars.
- 0:26Speaker 3: Made sizes. When made us stars, you could be from
- 0:34Speaker 3: high they would New Mexicomus, where all stars?
- 0:43Speaker 4: When we are made of stars. I'm Wes Carol, joined
- 0:56Speaker 4: by my good friend doctor Sean Cruising, Executive Director or
- 1:00Speaker 4: at Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center.
- 1:04Speaker 2: Hey Sean, Hey Wes, good to be here. All right.
- 1:07Speaker 4: We were there for the arrival of the Artemis two
- 1:11Speaker 4: core stage at the Kennedy Space Center. We did not
- 1:13Speaker 4: make the venture down for Artemis three. No disrespect to
- 1:16Speaker 4: Artemis three. It's an important mission. It's a very significant
- 1:19Speaker 4: part of the next mission towards getting human beings with
- 1:25Speaker 4: their boots on the ground on the surface of the Moon.
- 1:28Speaker 4: And we know that that mission then leads to hey,
- 1:31Speaker 4: let's build a house here, and then hey, let's go
- 1:33Speaker 4: to Mars and let's build a house there too. So
- 1:36Speaker 4: this is important. This is that bridge mission that goes
- 1:39Speaker 4: between going around the Moon and then going and landing
- 1:43Speaker 4: on the Moon. But as a little bit less glitz
- 1:46Speaker 4: to it, because this isn't the one. Initially we thought
- 1:49Speaker 4: this is the one where they were going to be
- 1:50Speaker 4: feet on the ground, but this isn't that mission. But
- 1:53Speaker 4: there's a lot of important things that were going to
- 1:55Speaker 4: take place on that mission. But this is a test mission,
- 1:59Speaker 4: something that they need to do. So we didn't make
- 2:01Speaker 4: this journey. It's no offense to Artemis three. We still
- 2:04Speaker 4: acknowledge how important this mission is.
- 2:07Speaker 2: I mean, if the good folks at NASA Media would
- 2:10Speaker 2: like to invite us down for the launch of Artemis three, ye,
- 2:13Speaker 2: we would more than happily accept that invitation.
- 2:16Speaker 4: We're down for that.
- 2:17Speaker 2: Justin Casher listening, we're already putting the date on our
- 2:21Speaker 2: calendar in the you know, summer of twenty twenty seven.
- 2:24Speaker 4: Well, we'll have it circled. We're ready to go. And
- 2:26Speaker 4: while we're at it, I mean, just so that we
- 2:28Speaker 4: don't discriminate in any capacity at all to the folks
- 2:33Speaker 4: at SpaceX, we know you just launched another Falcon heavy.
- 2:36Speaker 4: We'd be down to come cover that as well. So
- 2:38Speaker 4: you just let us know. Any of those big boys
- 2:40Speaker 4: going up has a different has a different feel to it.
- 2:44Speaker 4: It's like a Luke Carroll belch. It will shake the house,
- 2:47Speaker 4: you know, those one of those big boys going up.
- 2:50Speaker 4: My son is very, very good at belching. That's all.
- 2:53Speaker 4: We're looking into competitions. So let's talk about Artemis three
- 2:57Speaker 4: and the arrival at Kennedy. We know what it looks like,
- 3:00Speaker 4: we know the visuals. We know it's coming out of
- 3:02Speaker 4: that giant cigar, a cigarette cigar tube cigar, the big
- 3:06Speaker 4: cigar tube coming off the off the barge, slowly coming
- 3:10Speaker 4: off and then right on into the Kennedy Space Centers VAB.
- 3:15Speaker 2: Yeah. The cigar carrier is the Pegasus barge. It's a
- 3:19Speaker 2: weird looking ship that's made to carry big rockets like
- 3:23Speaker 2: this one. And I'm glad that Luke's thinking of future careers,
- 3:26Speaker 2: by the way, so that's a good thing. Career prep
- 3:29Speaker 2: is important. Gotta do what you gotta do. So what allegedly,
- 3:33Speaker 2: or what NASA keeps repeating is this is the top
- 3:35Speaker 2: four fifths, the top four fifths. I was never great
- 3:39Speaker 2: at fractions that seems like four out of five to me.
- 3:43Speaker 2: The top four fifths of the agency's Space Launch System
- 3:46Speaker 2: core stage for Artemis three. What's missing is the bottom
- 3:50Speaker 2: fifth and the bottom fifth are the engines, right, That's
- 3:54Speaker 2: that's where the power plant is down there at the bottom.
- 3:57Speaker 2: That's the Mighty RS twenty five engines that go on
- 4:01Speaker 2: and there's four of them that go on the bottom
- 4:03Speaker 2: of that stage, and that's what they'll be attaching. One
- 4:06Speaker 2: of the first things they'll be attaching to the top
- 4:08Speaker 2: four fifths is that bottom fifth with all the actual
- 4:11Speaker 2: engines on it. So the top four fifths more or
- 4:13Speaker 2: less just a giant fuel tank and fuel routing system.
- 4:17Speaker 2: So that's what's arrived down there at Kennedy Space Center.
- 4:20Speaker 2: It's still a very impressive site. It's amazing to see
- 4:23Speaker 2: that massive fuel tank core stage of the rocket come
- 4:27Speaker 2: on shore and then all of the workers at Kennedy
- 4:30Speaker 2: Space Center doing what they need to do to get
- 4:32Speaker 2: it from the barge dock to the actual vertical assembly
- 4:37Speaker 2: building or vehicle assembly building where they can actually take
- 4:40Speaker 2: the rocket vertical and begin to assemble these other components.
- 4:43Speaker 2: So that's what we've been watching. It came in on
- 4:46Speaker 2: Monday of this week, Monday, April twenty seventh, twenty twenty six,
- 4:50Speaker 2: and that Artemis III will hopefully be launching astronauts to
- 4:55Speaker 2: Earth orbit, not to orbit around the Moon this time,
- 4:57Speaker 2: but Earth orbit, so that they can test out the
- 5:00Speaker 2: Oriyan's capability to dock up with a lunar lander. Which
- 5:05Speaker 2: lunar lander is it going to be SpaceX or Blue Origin? Well,
- 5:10Speaker 2: that's what we're still waiting to see, and that's what
- 5:12Speaker 2: the further development of the Artemis three mission is going
- 5:15Speaker 2: to be all about. It's going to be about finally
- 5:18Speaker 2: settling on a platform to land astronauts on the surface
- 5:22Speaker 2: of the Moon. And the two platforms that are in
- 5:25Speaker 2: consideration as of now SpaceX and Blue Origin. So we're
- 5:31Speaker 2: going to see We're going to be keeping a very
- 5:33Speaker 2: close eye on how that Artomist three mission develops, because
- 5:37Speaker 2: when you're in orbit around the Moon and you're trying
- 5:40Speaker 2: to land on the surface of the Moon, you want
- 5:42Speaker 2: to make sure that your lander is tested and reliable.
- 5:46Speaker 2: And this reminds me a lot of the Apollo ten mission,
- 5:50Speaker 2: Apollo nine mission, where they were doing dress rehearsals of
- 5:55Speaker 2: these very things so that they can make sure that
- 5:58Speaker 2: the Apollo eleven mission went off without a hitch, and
- 6:02Speaker 2: you know this one is more like the Apollo nine
- 6:04Speaker 2: mission actually, which was performed in Earth orbit and which
- 6:08Speaker 2: David Scott, Commander David Scott was part of that crew.
- 6:11Speaker 2: Why is that important to us here at Space Science
- 6:13Speaker 2: Center because we have a collection of Dave Scott artifacts
- 6:16Speaker 2: on display that were donated by Dave and his family,
- 6:19Speaker 2: Tom in particular, his brother. So so yeah, we like
- 6:22Speaker 2: to harken back to the days of Apollo and say
- 6:25Speaker 2: this next Artemiss three kind of looks a lot like
- 6:28Speaker 2: Apollo nine where they did a bunch of testing of
- 6:30Speaker 2: all the components in Earth orbit before actually trying to
- 6:33Speaker 2: do it around the Moon.
- 6:36Speaker 4: The Artemis two crew has been interviewed and they've been
- 6:40Speaker 4: talking about this next mission. Obviously they could they couldn't
- 6:45Speaker 4: have picked a better group of ambassadors for the whole
- 6:48Speaker 4: Artemis mission than these four astronauts, but they've been now
- 6:54Speaker 4: doing what you do, You talk about what you experienced,
- 6:56Speaker 4: you talk about the personal side of it. I've seen
- 6:58Speaker 4: them doing it, talking about their foht potos. Realizing in
- 7:02Speaker 4: the moment when we take these photos with you know,
- 7:04Speaker 4: a selfie that has my face in it. There was
- 7:07Speaker 4: one photo that Christina took where she said, Christina cooks
- 7:13Speaker 4: She basically said, I noticed it first, Hey, my hair
- 7:17Speaker 4: is in the photo. We should probably retake it, and
- 7:21Speaker 4: then she had the presence of mind to just say, no,
- 7:25Speaker 4: leave it in there. This tells part of the story.
- 7:27Speaker 4: And you know, that kind of personal side of things
- 7:29Speaker 4: where they were trying to do that and let us
- 7:32Speaker 4: and you and I've covered that over the past couple
- 7:34Speaker 4: of weeks about that personal side the reason that's important.
- 7:37Speaker 4: But I mentioned them because they, you know, looking ahead
- 7:40Speaker 4: to this Artemis three mission and what it's going to
- 7:42Speaker 4: be doing and ultimately Artemis four, and they talked a
- 7:47Speaker 4: little bit. I've heard them talk about the importance of
- 7:49Speaker 4: the South Pole and how that's ultimately where they're trying
- 7:53Speaker 4: to get to.
- 7:55Speaker 2: Yeah, so first of all, about the Christina Cook photograph.
- 7:57Speaker 2: We actually have that image blown up into a giant
- 8:02Speaker 2: poster and placed in our exhibit gallery because I think
- 8:06Speaker 2: I happen to think that that this is for me personally.
- 8:09Speaker 2: I think that's one of the best women in science
- 8:11Speaker 2: photographs that I've seen in quite some time that should
- 8:15Speaker 2: be just by pure visual power a great inspiration to
- 8:21Speaker 2: a new generation of females wanting to pursue flight space.
- 8:25Speaker 2: You young ladies can look up to Christina Cook as
- 8:28Speaker 2: a role model. See that photograph instantly identify the power
- 8:33Speaker 2: of being able to pursue science and be in that
- 8:35Speaker 2: kind of a venue or in that kind of a
- 8:37Speaker 2: circumstance and have that be an inspiration to them. So
- 8:40Speaker 2: that's why we put that up in our exhibit gallery
- 8:42Speaker 2: here at our facility at Coca Cola Space Science Center.
- 8:46Speaker 2: Second of all, you're right about them being tremendous ambassadors.
- 8:49Speaker 2: Every interview I've heard that featured the astronauts has been astounding.
- 8:54Speaker 2: They have a lot of very insightful things to say,
- 8:57Speaker 2: but a lot of very level headed and serious points
- 9:00Speaker 2: to make, and they've really been able to humanize this
- 9:04Speaker 2: trip around the Moon, which again we've talked about a
- 9:07Speaker 2: lot on this podcast, a lot, which is humans are
- 9:11Speaker 2: far more inspired to see humans going out and doing
- 9:14Speaker 2: adventurous things. Yes, we can send robots to do a
- 9:18Speaker 2: fair amount of things, but at the end of the day,
- 9:20Speaker 2: the thing that inspires us is to see other human
- 9:23Speaker 2: beings going off and being a part of this mission,
- 9:27Speaker 2: being tactically involved, because then somehow we channel their experience
- 9:32Speaker 2: and we get to feel just vicariously a small slice
- 9:36Speaker 2: of what that must have been like for those astronauts
- 9:38Speaker 2: to experience that. So the more of those kinds of
- 9:41Speaker 2: human experiences that these astronauts share, I really think, and
- 9:45Speaker 2: we've really felt that we've seen this impact here at
- 9:47Speaker 2: Space Science Center, the more that people just are engaged
- 9:50Speaker 2: with the whole event. We've done amazing robotic contributions to science,
- 9:58Speaker 2: including all the Mars Rowe and many of the other
- 10:01Speaker 2: probes like Osyrus Rex and those kinds of things, and
- 10:05Speaker 2: people barely they barely engage with that in terms of
- 10:08Speaker 2: you know, I'm not talking when to say people, I
- 10:10Speaker 2: don't mean people like me, a big space geek. I
- 10:13Speaker 2: mean just your average public person off the sidewalk coming
- 10:16Speaker 2: into the Space Science Center. They're vaguely aware of it,
- 10:19Speaker 2: or maybe they're not aware of it at all. But
- 10:21Speaker 2: suddenly when people go out and do something amazing like
- 10:24Speaker 2: go to the far side of the Moon, they know
- 10:27Speaker 2: their names, they know their backstories, they know all about them,
- 10:30Speaker 2: and they're watching each step of that amazing adventure. And
- 10:33Speaker 2: as you say that, that photograph kind of really summed
- 10:36Speaker 2: up a piece of that experience just in an image,
- 10:40Speaker 2: which is worth a thousand words. So check that, check
- 10:42Speaker 2: that photograph out, and you know, we're excited for Artemis three.
- 10:46Speaker 2: We're excited for the continuing process.
- 10:50Speaker 4: Our next story is one of hope, because there was
- 10:53Speaker 4: a point where you came in to the studio with
- 10:57Speaker 4: me years ago and you broke the news to me, Hey,
- 11:02Speaker 4: Pluto's not a planet anymore, and this is happening, and
- 11:05Speaker 4: I thought, well, what do we do to stop this?
- 11:07Speaker 4: How do we how do we stop these crazy people
- 11:10Speaker 4: from ruining Pluto?
- 11:13Speaker 1: And it's done.
- 11:14Speaker 4: They've they've changed the standards, they've they've or whatever they did.
- 11:18Speaker 4: They just said, we're just we don't we don't like
- 11:20Speaker 4: planets discovered by Americans. I don't. I don't know what
- 11:23Speaker 4: the what the deal was, but suddenly a planet that
- 11:28Speaker 4: many considered their fair I know, as a kid, there
- 11:30Speaker 4: were kids in school Pluto is my favorite planet, and
- 11:33Speaker 4: I said, well, you know, as long as Uranus is around,
- 11:37Speaker 4: you know, it's my second favorite.
- 11:38Speaker 2: Now.
- 11:39Speaker 4: But now, I wasn't even making Uranus jokes at that age.
- 11:43Speaker 4: Sorry to disappoint, but I certainly would probably giggle, but
- 11:48Speaker 4: not making the jokes. But my point is now it
- 11:51Speaker 4: seems we have at least one heavy hitter who's on
- 11:54Speaker 4: team let's bring Pluto back, and that is Jared Isaacman,
- 11:58Speaker 4: the head of NASA, and this has come up a
- 12:00Speaker 4: couple of times with him. It's come up again this week.
- 12:04Speaker 4: And so are we saying there's a chance that Pluto
- 12:10Speaker 4: may be back. I don't know. I don't know where
- 12:12Speaker 4: this is, but I don't give me hope Sean cruising.
- 12:15Speaker 2: If there's no hope, let me just tell you West
- 12:18Speaker 2: Carrol that I don't really think there's a lot of hope.
- 12:22Speaker 2: But it's interesting. It's an interesting discussion. So all right,
- 12:26Speaker 2: So first of all, first of all, sentimentally, for me personally,
- 12:32Speaker 2: the planet Pluto was discovered at the Loll Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.
- 12:38Speaker 2: Loll Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona happens to be a place
- 12:42Speaker 2: where I've done a lot of my professional telescope work
- 12:46Speaker 2: for my advisor, for fellow students, and published papers based
- 12:53Speaker 2: on data taken at the low observatory. So I've actually
- 12:56Speaker 2: been to the what they call Pluto camera, which is
- 13:01Speaker 2: in its own little observatory dome I've actually been to
- 13:04Speaker 2: the Pluto camera. I've touched the actual camera that Clyde
- 13:08Speaker 2: Tomba an inspiring story in himself, by the way, because
- 13:13Speaker 2: he was a really avid amateur astronomer who got to
- 13:17Speaker 2: go pro as he joined the team at Little Observatory.
- 13:20Speaker 2: Clyde Tomba then used that telescope to search for and
- 13:25Speaker 2: locate what was then the ninth planet in our Solar system,
- 13:31Speaker 2: which is why when it got booted out in two
- 13:34Speaker 2: thousand and six and we went back to eight and
- 13:38Speaker 2: all those plants were not discovered in the United States,
- 13:43Speaker 2: and someone like me who's kind of a partisan, because
- 13:45Speaker 2: I've actually been to that observatory, I emotionally just really
- 13:49Speaker 2: wanted Pluto to stay a planet. And I've made that
- 13:52Speaker 2: point clear on this podcast and on the radio broadcast
- 13:55Speaker 2: before I will tell you this. There are bona fide
- 13:58Speaker 2: science reasons for a reclassification, and part of that is
- 14:04Speaker 2: because we started finding a bunch of other Pluto type objects,
- 14:10Speaker 2: So we now know about more of those kinds of
- 14:13Speaker 2: objects than we know about what we're calling planets currently.
- 14:17Speaker 2: So then the question becomes, well, if you reinstate Pluto,
- 14:21Speaker 2: does it bring all of its stray cat friends into
- 14:23Speaker 2: the planet Club. And as I've made the point to
- 14:27Speaker 2: students a long time, we can either have eight planets
- 14:29Speaker 2: or we can have eight hundred planets eventually, right, And
- 14:33Speaker 2: so does Pluto fall into a category that's worthwhile defining.
- 14:38Speaker 2: The reason we're talking about that on the podcast today
- 14:41Speaker 2: is because the NASA Administrator, Jared Isiacman, said in a
- 14:46Speaker 2: meeting on Monday with the House Appropriation Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science,
- 14:52Speaker 2: and Related Agencies they were reviewing the twenty twenty seven
- 14:57Speaker 2: fiscal year budget for NASA on and then in a
- 15:02Speaker 2: kind of a side comment toward the end of the meeting,
- 15:05Speaker 2: Republican Senator Jerry Moran asked NASA administrator his thoughts on Pluto.
- 15:11Speaker 2: And here's the thing you need to know about Jerry Moran.
- 15:13Speaker 2: He's from Kansas.
- 15:15Speaker 4: He is one of the two senators from Kansas. That's right.
- 15:19Speaker 2: So Pluto, we're not in Kansas anymore, I mean anyway,
- 15:23Speaker 2: So why is Pluto tied to Kansas? Well, you see,
- 15:26Speaker 2: that's the home state of Clyde Tombaugh. There's the punchline.
- 15:31Speaker 2: That's Clyde Tombaugh's home state. Yes, he discovered the planet
- 15:36Speaker 2: while working in Arizona, but he grew up in Kansas
- 15:39Speaker 2: and attended the University of Kansas. So so, then this
- 15:44Speaker 2: Republican senator from the Great State of Kansas asked the
- 15:49Speaker 2: NASA administrator, what are your feelings on Pluto? What do
- 15:52Speaker 2: you think about that Pluto situation. Jared Isagman responded with
- 15:56Speaker 2: something kind of maybe a little bit surprising. He said, quote, Senator,
- 15:59Speaker 2: I am very much in the camp of make Pluto
- 16:02Speaker 2: a planet again. Does that sound like a phrase we've
- 16:05Speaker 2: heard somewhere else? It does a red hat or something.
- 16:08Speaker 4: Something like that. Yes, I think we've had a certain
- 16:13Speaker 4: a certain president has even uttered those words before to make.
- 16:18Speaker 2: A planet again. I don't know something like that anyway,
- 16:20Speaker 2: all right, So so, but then Jaredisacan went on to say,
- 16:23Speaker 2: we are doing some papers right now on I think
- 16:27Speaker 2: a position that we would love to escalate through the
- 16:30Speaker 2: scientific community to revisit this discussion. And then Jaredisigman continued,
- 16:36Speaker 2: Jaredisigman being the director of NASA, by the way, NASA
- 16:38Speaker 2: Administrator Jaredizegman went on to say he wanted to ensure
- 16:42Speaker 2: that Clyde Tombaugh gets the credit he received once and
- 16:46Speaker 2: rightly deserves to receive again unquote the credit mister Isaacman
- 16:52Speaker 2: speaking of is the discoverer of a planet, a discoverer
- 16:57Speaker 2: of worlds rightly should be in the discoverer of World's club.
- 17:02Speaker 2: I happen to agree with this. Again. I'm not going
- 17:07Speaker 2: to deny the scientific justifications out there, I get it.
- 17:10Speaker 2: But maybe for historic reasons we should just make an
- 17:14Speaker 2: exception for Pluto and reclassify all the rest of those
- 17:17Speaker 2: buggers out there. That's kind of what I think. So anyway,
- 17:20Speaker 2: this is an interesting open the chapter from two thousand
- 17:24Speaker 2: and six. It feels all like two thousand and six
- 17:26Speaker 2: again when we're talking about this, But all right, reopen
- 17:29Speaker 2: that chapter from two thousand and six. Let's go back
- 17:32Speaker 2: and maybe take one more look at the classification for
- 17:36Speaker 2: what is and for what is not a planet. Wes,
- 17:41Speaker 2: I think you mis mentioned this to me before we
- 17:42Speaker 2: went on air today, that some of those some of
- 17:45Speaker 2: those conditions don't match some of the other planets that
- 17:48Speaker 2: are already in the Solar.
- 17:49Speaker 4: System, including Earth, including Earth, and including Jupiter, which quite
- 17:54Speaker 4: honestly is the most planity planet you can imagine. It's
- 17:57Speaker 4: about as planety as you can get and of course
- 17:59Speaker 4: you know the one that's got people on it. I mean,
- 18:01Speaker 4: those are the two most planity planets.
- 18:03Speaker 2: A couple of pretty planty planets there. So anyway, so yeah,
- 18:07Speaker 2: so they're gonna go back and they're gonna look at
- 18:08Speaker 2: that circumstance again. They're gonna they're gonna reevaluate that scientific
- 18:13Speaker 2: criteria and maybe send one more requisition up to the
- 18:18Speaker 2: International Astronomical Union the IAU, the governing body for deciding
- 18:23Speaker 2: what is and what is not a planet, and maybe
- 18:26Speaker 2: let them reevaluate that one more time. Now, what what
- 18:29Speaker 2: do you think the odds are in twenty twenty six?
- 18:32Speaker 2: The IAU going, oh, yeah, those folks over in America,
- 18:35Speaker 2: they've got a good point. Let's go with what they say.
- 18:39Speaker 2: Doesn't feel likely right now, but okay, there it is.
- 18:42Speaker 2: Maybe it also might.
- 18:44Speaker 4: And this is just you know, we don't do politics,
- 18:46Speaker 4: but just on the spirit of just pointing out the
- 18:49Speaker 4: pr side of it, might not be doing themselves any
- 18:53Speaker 4: favors by making any sort of statement that sounds like
- 18:57Speaker 4: anything on a red hat just for the purposes of
- 19:00Speaker 4: international science. That might not be helping the cause. No
- 19:04Speaker 4: matter where you stand on the red hat, we're not
- 19:06Speaker 4: making necessarily a statement on that. We're just saying it
- 19:10Speaker 4: might be a better way to word it just for
- 19:12Speaker 4: the purposes of a campaign to get behind it. But
- 19:15Speaker 4: that's just my two cents on them.
- 19:17Speaker 2: That phrase might play well with a senator from Kansas,
- 19:20Speaker 2: I'm sure it would, and it probably would play well
- 19:23Speaker 2: for I don't know about half the country, but we're
- 19:27Speaker 2: not talking about the country.
- 19:28Speaker 4: We're talking about sending this overseas to sign serious doubts.
- 19:31Speaker 2: If that's going to play well in front of the
- 19:32Speaker 2: International Astronomical.
- 19:34Speaker 4: Union's that's I just feel like, yeah, that's a fair
- 19:37Speaker 4: way to put it. More made of stars right after this,
- 20:01Speaker 4: all right, Our next story is one of those stories
- 20:03Speaker 4: that you see the headline and you go, my gosh,
- 20:05Speaker 4: this almost sounds like, you know, back in the day,
- 20:09Speaker 4: one of those atomic era movie titles, the Arctic Tongues
- 20:13Speaker 4: of Ionization.
- 20:14Speaker 2: Wow, Wow, beautiful man like that could have that could
- 20:18Speaker 2: have come off the trailer for the thing. It could
- 20:21Speaker 2: have this or this the world in the nineteen fifties
- 20:24Speaker 2: with James Arnest walking around like Frankenstein, or you know,
- 20:28Speaker 2: throw the Antarctic Station of Science.
- 20:30Speaker 4: Throw way past his prime. Bell Legosi in there and
- 20:34Speaker 4: it could be an Edward d. Wood junior movie. You know,
- 20:36Speaker 4: it's it's very possible.
- 20:40Speaker 2: But this came from This came from the website spaceweather
- 20:42Speaker 2: dot com.
- 20:43Speaker 4: Yeah, so what are tongues of ionization? This sounds interesting
- 20:48Speaker 4: and I'm hoping to god this isn't something that they're
- 20:51Speaker 4: about to reveal to us in this big, you know,
- 20:53Speaker 4: information drop about aliens that's coming, because it sounds terrifying
- 20:58Speaker 4: in that regard.
- 20:59Speaker 2: Arcticus of ionization. Does you know? It feels enough surreal
- 21:04Speaker 2: that it gives you just a little jolt of fear, like, oh,
- 21:07Speaker 2: I should pay a tent. It's a news story and
- 21:09Speaker 2: the headline is something about Arctic tongues of ionization. I
- 21:12Speaker 2: should pay attention to that, And yeah, you probably should,
- 21:15Speaker 2: so all right, our good friends from spaceweather dot com
- 21:18Speaker 2: wrote this. I call them good friends not because we
- 21:21Speaker 2: know them. I just like we quote them a lot
- 21:23Speaker 2: on this podcast because they are one of the best
- 21:26Speaker 2: space news websites out there. Go check out spaceweather dot
- 21:30Speaker 2: com every chance you get, because they're just great. Doctor
- 21:34Speaker 2: Tony Phillips and the crew over at space weather dot
- 21:36Speaker 2: Com all right, So you and I my friend got
- 21:38Speaker 2: to enjoy a phenomenon in the actual nighttime sky together
- 21:41Speaker 2: back in May of twenty twenty four. In fact, it
- 21:44Speaker 2: was May the tenth of twenty twenty four. I remember
- 21:47Speaker 2: because we were slamming texts back and forth to each other,
- 21:49Speaker 2: going why is our sky glowing? And the reason it
- 21:53Speaker 2: was glowing is because there was a giant geomagnetic storm
- 21:56Speaker 2: that took place on May the tenth. Oddly enough, October
- 21:58Speaker 2: the tenth of the same year, that was another giant
- 22:01Speaker 2: geomagnetic storm. And people might be going, okay, well a
- 22:03Speaker 2: big deal. Northern lights. No, we live in Georgia. Yes,
- 22:08Speaker 2: these are not northern lights. These are southern lights in
- 22:12Speaker 2: the direction of north is what they are, which makes
- 22:15Speaker 2: that of tad unusual. So we saw this geomagnetic storm,
- 22:19Speaker 2: and the story on spaceweather dot com today is all
- 22:23Speaker 2: about the big storm that happened in May of twenty
- 22:25Speaker 2: twenty four. If you happen to be hanging out in
- 22:29Speaker 2: Antarctica at that time, there were giant tongues of ionization.
- 22:34Speaker 2: What does that mean? There were rivers of electric current
- 22:38Speaker 2: passing through the atmosphere due to all of the impending
- 22:42Speaker 2: solar radiation on the geomagnetic system here around our own
- 22:46Speaker 2: Earth that bent down into our atmosphere, that caused these
- 22:50Speaker 2: rivers of plasma in our own ionosphere that messed up
- 22:54Speaker 2: the GPS system. Friends, And okay, well all right, can
- 22:58Speaker 2: we live without you know, Google Maps for a couple hours?
- 23:01Speaker 2: I mean, what's the big deal? No, no, no, no,
- 23:04Speaker 2: you're thinking like an American. Think like you're in Antarctica
- 23:08Speaker 2: and you're in a plane and you're flying over just
- 23:12Speaker 2: endless ice sheet, and you need to know where you're going,
- 23:16Speaker 2: and they're fresh out of road signs because it's Antarctica,
- 23:19Speaker 2: and you're relying on the GPS system, And suddenly the
- 23:23Speaker 2: GPS system gets so scrambled because of a solar storm
- 23:27Speaker 2: and it's impending tongues of ionization that you have positional
- 23:32Speaker 2: errors in your GPS as much as twenty eight meters. Well,
- 23:35Speaker 2: wait a minue twenty eight meters? What is that ninety feet?
- 23:37Speaker 2: That doesn't seem like a big deal. No, no, no,
- 23:39Speaker 2: don't think that way. Think angle right, So it's ninety
- 23:43Speaker 2: feet off where you're at right now. But then you
- 23:46Speaker 2: set your angle in an airplane, you might miss the
- 23:50Speaker 2: you might miss the Antarctic base. That's a problem, right,
- 23:56Speaker 2: And so what they've done is they've gone and looked
- 23:58Speaker 2: at these events in space weather that have caused deteriorations
- 24:02Speaker 2: in the navigational system that is satellite based for positioning
- 24:07Speaker 2: systems that affect aviation and maritime navigation at high latitudes.
- 24:14Speaker 2: And we think when we think of high latitudes here
- 24:15Speaker 2: in the North, we have this north prejudice. We think
- 24:17Speaker 2: all the Arctic, like near the North Pole. Well, it's
- 24:20Speaker 2: also high latitudes if you go south right, So high
- 24:24Speaker 2: latitude in the southern hemisphere is Antarctica. And so they're
- 24:27Speaker 2: looking at Antarctica and saying, wow, these big solar events
- 24:32Speaker 2: can really cause dangerous circumstances for anybody who might be
- 24:36Speaker 2: doing aviation or meritime navigation during a giant solar storm
- 24:42Speaker 2: with tinging tongues of ionization in the Arctic. So there
- 24:46Speaker 2: you go, friends, If that's interesting to you, check out
- 24:49Speaker 2: the story on spaceweather dot com. They actually have the
- 24:53Speaker 2: actual journal article linked there and check that out too.
- 24:56Speaker 2: It's pretty interesting. And so you can check out all
- 24:59Speaker 2: of the inform on how solar storms can wreak havoc
- 25:02Speaker 2: on navigation in the Arctic and antarcticut. But really the
- 25:06Speaker 2: solar storm is big enough that starts to move toward
- 25:09Speaker 2: lower latitudes as well.
- 25:11Speaker 4: Let's talk about Canada's Poet mission, as they are working
- 25:17Speaker 4: on looking for Earth size I guess and even larger
- 25:20Speaker 4: than earth sized exoplanets.
- 25:23Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of northern latitudes, let's go to Canada.
- 25:25Speaker 4: There you go. Also, you could have segued it with
- 25:29Speaker 4: the the art of his two crew, since there was
- 25:31Speaker 4: a Canadian there on that mission.
- 25:33Speaker 2: Also, I could have just said something about backbacon that's.
- 25:36Speaker 4: True too, yes, yes, or silver medals in hockey. But anyway,
- 25:40Speaker 4: that's probably.
- 25:40Speaker 2: Still that could have gotten there.
- 25:43Speaker 4: Probably still stings a mite just.
- 25:46Speaker 2: A little bit, probably probably a little Yeah, wasn't shatterer yet?
- 25:50Speaker 2: Never mind? All right, So Canada has proposed a novel
- 25:55Speaker 2: microsatellite system and you can read about this on Universe
- 25:57Speaker 2: today dot com. This mission called Poet. Poet of course
- 26:03Speaker 2: an acronym. Not it's not going to be rhyming. It's
- 26:07Speaker 2: not going to be laying down the rhymes up there.
- 26:10Speaker 2: No no no wrap battles. Well, I don't know, I mean,
- 26:12Speaker 2: it could still have a rap battle for more. But
- 26:14Speaker 2: I suppose. But the acronym for POE is photometric Observations
- 26:18Speaker 2: of Exoplanet transits, which has a poetry all its own
- 26:24Speaker 2: in scientific lingo.
- 26:25Speaker 4: You know, and as far as uh, you know, space
- 26:27Speaker 4: related acronyms go, that's not too bad.
- 26:30Speaker 2: Let's break this down. Photometric means the measurement of brightness.
- 26:33Speaker 2: Observations means, okay, you know that one. Exoplanets are planets
- 26:39Speaker 2: around other stars, and transits are when planets around other
- 26:43Speaker 2: stars pass in front of the parent star or in
- 26:48Speaker 2: other words, on a line between that parent star and
- 26:50Speaker 2: the Earth. So as viewed from Earth, that little planet
- 26:54Speaker 2: is passing in front of its parent star's face and
- 26:56Speaker 2: it's blocking the parent star's face out for a bit.
- 26:58Speaker 2: And we can tell that with tell scopes that do
- 27:00Speaker 2: photometry and make observations so that they have poet photometric
- 27:04Speaker 2: observations of exoplanet transits. This mission, however, is not just
- 27:09Speaker 2: designed to find exoplanets. It's designed to find a certain
- 27:13Speaker 2: class of exoplanets, and these are specifically Earth sized objects
- 27:21Speaker 2: or perhaps super Earth's. What's a super Earth, Well, it's
- 27:25Speaker 2: it's a rocky planet that might have some Earth like
- 27:28Speaker 2: conditions that may be bigger than our planet Earth, but
- 27:32Speaker 2: smaller than say, Uranus. All right, so it's that sized
- 27:37Speaker 2: planet orbiting small cool stars. End of story. These are
- 27:43Speaker 2: stars smaller than our sun. Why would we pick those?
- 27:46Speaker 2: And by the way, they call these ultracool dwarfs, that's
- 27:49Speaker 2: an astronomical term. It's not referring to people. Researchers refer
- 27:54Speaker 2: to these stars as ultra cool dwarfs. Dwarf stars are
- 27:58Speaker 2: the smallest of the stars that are still stars. In
- 28:02Speaker 2: other words, they still have fusion going on in their core.
- 28:04Speaker 2: They're not nearly as big and bright as our sun,
- 28:07Speaker 2: and our sun is not nearly as big and bright
- 28:09Speaker 2: as the stars on the top end of the of
- 28:11Speaker 2: the categorization for stars. So the categoration for categorization for
- 28:16Speaker 2: stars has a sort of non alphabet letter order to
- 28:20Speaker 2: it that astronomy students in into astronomy class have had
- 28:23Speaker 2: to learn for a long time, and it goes like this,
- 28:26Speaker 2: ob a f gkm O b A f gkm O
- 28:32Speaker 2: stars the hottest, most massive, most short lived violent stars
- 28:37Speaker 2: O stars. They usually end up in supernov explosions in
- 28:40Speaker 2: a very short period of time, kind of like the
- 28:42Speaker 2: James Dean Live Fast Die young kinds of stars out
- 28:46Speaker 2: there in the galaxy. That's the stars B like that,
- 28:50Speaker 2: but a little smaller. A. It's starting to get a
- 28:54Speaker 2: little bit more sunlight like Sun, like our Sun, but
- 28:58Speaker 2: still fairly large ob A. They're very much like the Sun,
- 29:03Speaker 2: but just a little bit bigger. OBAFG. Well that's G
- 29:07Speaker 2: is the Sun. So the Sun is a G type star.
- 29:10Speaker 2: So you have OBAFG, and then K and M are
- 29:14Speaker 2: the smallest end of that scale. Those are the dwarf stars.
- 29:19Speaker 2: Giant stars are up there in the OB section. Dwarf
- 29:23Speaker 2: stars are down there in the KM section, and so
- 29:26Speaker 2: those are the smallest stars. Now why would the Poet
- 29:29Speaker 2: Space Mission go after the dwarfs Because when an Earth
- 29:33Speaker 2: sized planet passes in front of that tiny star, it
- 29:37Speaker 2: makes a bigger dip in the overall stars light, and
- 29:41Speaker 2: so therefore it's a little easier to detect. Plus the
- 29:44Speaker 2: outcome is a little bit more interesting because then it's
- 29:48Speaker 2: an Earth sized planet. And we want to know planets
- 29:51Speaker 2: out there that are like Earth because we have this,
- 29:54Speaker 2: we have this notion in the back of our minds
- 29:56Speaker 2: that if we find planets that are about the same
- 29:58Speaker 2: size as Earth and might be in that kind of
- 30:01Speaker 2: Goldilocks zone around a smaller cooler star, which is a
- 30:04Speaker 2: bigger Goldilocks zone by the way, because the star is cooler.
- 30:07Speaker 2: Then if those are the if statements, then it might
- 30:12Speaker 2: have life, right, and so these might be good planet
- 30:15Speaker 2: candidates to find life. So anyway, all right, So the
- 30:18Speaker 2: Poet Mission currently slated to be launched from the Great
- 30:21Speaker 2: White North somewhere in twenty twenty nine, and we will
- 30:25Speaker 2: hope that they are they are successful in locating Earth
- 30:29Speaker 2: like planets. The most recent study done that we're discussing
- 30:33Speaker 2: now again on Universeday. Dot Com a good place to
- 30:35Speaker 2: go see the story. It's an effort to locate the
- 30:40Speaker 2: kinds of stars and the kinds of exoplanets that we
- 30:43Speaker 2: might want to look at, potential targets and potential outcomes.
- 30:46Speaker 2: That's the that's the latest research coming out about the
- 30:49Speaker 2: Poet Mission from Canada.
- 30:52Speaker 4: Side note, My favorite UH poem of all time is
- 30:55Speaker 4: by poet Rolf Nelson who did the great Haiku Hi
- 30:59Speaker 4: KuPS are easy, but sometimes they don't make sense. Refrigerator.
- 31:07Speaker 4: That's my kind of poem.
- 31:10Speaker 2: My question is, did William Shatner ever read that on
- 31:13Speaker 2: one of his albums?
- 31:15Speaker 4: I mean, we could try to make it happen.
- 31:17Speaker 2: He did a lot of great Canadian poetry.
- 31:19Speaker 4: I'll reach out see if we can't make it happen,
- 31:21Speaker 4: then I think that would be a fantastic addition to
- 31:25Speaker 4: any poetry reading. More made of Stars right after this,
- 31:51Speaker 4: let's talk about the floating mountains on the Sun. Is
- 31:56Speaker 4: this part of the giant ionization tongues or whatever? How
- 31:59Speaker 4: do we got mountains tongues? What's going on?
- 32:02Speaker 2: Here's what I can tell you is there is a connection,
- 32:05Speaker 2: and you are very astute. I try hear that connection out,
- 32:08Speaker 2: my friend. So congratulations on being a stute and pointing
- 32:12Speaker 2: out the connection between Arctic tongues of ionization and floating
- 32:16Speaker 2: mountains on the Sun. Because here's what they have in common,
- 32:21Speaker 2: the Sun. Yeah, they have in common. Now, what it
- 32:26Speaker 2: points to is they're both connected to the activity cycle
- 32:29Speaker 2: on the Sun. And as West pointed out, these giant prominences,
- 32:33Speaker 2: which are features that lift off the side of the
- 32:36Speaker 2: Sun and can be observed with solar telescopes. Great examples
- 32:40Speaker 2: of those on Universe today dot com. Again, So a
- 32:42Speaker 2: second story from Universe today dot com. The title of
- 32:46Speaker 2: that article on Universityday dot com is the Sun's impossible
- 32:49Speaker 2: floating mountains. But what they're really talking about are solar
- 32:53Speaker 2: prominences and solar prominences. One of the reasons they're compared
- 32:56Speaker 2: to mountains, you know in this headline, is that they
- 32:59Speaker 2: can pain approximately the same mass as Mount Everest, so
- 33:04Speaker 2: they're not small, but that mass is stretched out over
- 33:08Speaker 2: a super gigantic area, so they are very low density
- 33:13Speaker 2: either loops or kind of linear features sticking up off
- 33:20Speaker 2: the edge of the Sun. We observe these from our
- 33:23Speaker 2: own solar telescope here at the Coca Cola Space Science Center,
- 33:26Speaker 2: so we actually have observations of solar prominences that our
- 33:29Speaker 2: students and faculty have made right here from our observatory
- 33:33Speaker 2: at Space Science Center. So the interesting thing about these,
- 33:36Speaker 2: according to a new study by the Max Planck Institute
- 33:38Speaker 2: for Solar System Research in Germany, is there's a reason
- 33:42Speaker 2: why they hang around a long time. Some of these
- 33:45Speaker 2: loops can go on for weeks or even months, suspended
- 33:49Speaker 2: above the solar atmosphere, which is that kind of top
- 33:52Speaker 2: layer is what we call the photosphere, and they appear
- 33:55Speaker 2: to be suspended with no touching connection, so you can
- 33:59Speaker 2: see them above the photosphere. Without being able to see
- 34:03Speaker 2: the kind of the legs or the physical connection to
- 34:06Speaker 2: that photosphere. That's because they're hanging in magnetic loops. Now, listen,
- 34:10Speaker 2: that's not the new piece. We knew this already. We
- 34:14Speaker 2: knew that they were in powerful magnetic fields. What we
- 34:17Speaker 2: didn't know is how long they could be sustained and
- 34:20Speaker 2: what is actually causing the sustaining processes. Well, the new
- 34:25Speaker 2: research from Max Blanc Institute is that there are on
- 34:28Speaker 2: the surface supporting loops of magnetic field that feed into
- 34:35Speaker 2: that prominence and continue to supply the material that hangs
- 34:39Speaker 2: in that solar loop for those weeks or even months
- 34:42Speaker 2: of time. And we didn't really understand that that was
- 34:46Speaker 2: the flow process. But now it looks like, based on
- 34:50Speaker 2: new computer simulations from Moxplunk, that it's those ground loops
- 34:54Speaker 2: are not ground, but the photosphere level loops that are
- 34:58Speaker 2: feeding the giant floating loops with new material that cause
- 35:02Speaker 2: them to hang for such long periods of time and
- 35:06Speaker 2: sustain them for more than you know, hours or days,
- 35:10Speaker 2: but on into weeks or months. So a much more
- 35:13Speaker 2: complicated process than we understood being explored and sorted out
- 35:20Speaker 2: by the folks at Max plumkins toute. Remember that when
- 35:22Speaker 2: these loops collapse, that's when you have giant solar flares
- 35:28Speaker 2: that occur. So that's one of the ways that solar
- 35:30Speaker 2: flares can be initiated on the Sun. And when they
- 35:35Speaker 2: are initiated, then they can have coronal mass ejections as
- 35:38Speaker 2: the result of that, which then throws all that particle
- 35:41Speaker 2: radiation at the Earth and causes you guessed it, arctic
- 35:45Speaker 2: tongues of ionization in Antarctica. So it is all tied,
- 35:48Speaker 2: as mister Carroll has suggested. And so there you go.
- 35:52Speaker 2: We're all connected. Friends, You me, loops on the Sun,
- 35:56Speaker 2: Arctic tongues of ionization. We're all just one big, one
- 36:01Speaker 2: big solar system out there.
- 36:04Speaker 4: Let's talk about what's going on at Columbus State University's
- 36:07Speaker 4: Coca Cola Space Science Center. A concert is just days
- 36:12Speaker 4: away now.
- 36:13Speaker 2: And that's part of the solar system too, along with Pluto.
- 36:15Speaker 4: It is all just and when you can connect a
- 36:19Speaker 4: musical instrument to graphics on a screen above, it's kind
- 36:24Speaker 4: of the same thing, right.
- 36:25Speaker 2: It's good, it's good, And that's exactly what's gonna happen
- 36:28Speaker 2: the next Tuesday coming up, which is May the fifth,
- 36:32Speaker 2: We're gonna on Tuesday evening, we're gonna be having our
- 36:34Speaker 2: next Music under the Dome concert event. But this one's
- 36:37Speaker 2: going to be just a little bit different. It's going
- 36:40Speaker 2: to feature a special guest and musical artist, Dan Tepfer
- 36:45Speaker 2: from New York City coming down to visit us here
- 36:47Speaker 2: a Coca Cola Space Science Center and Columbus, Georgia. The
- 36:49Speaker 2: reason Dan's coming is because in our planetarium we have
- 36:53Speaker 2: a disc Levier nine foot concert grand piano from Yamaha,
- 36:58Speaker 2: a very generous gift to clumb State University from Gail Greenblatt,
- 37:02Speaker 2: who's one of CSU's amazing supporters. That piano has a
- 37:07Speaker 2: unique feature. It is a concert grand and it plays
- 37:10Speaker 2: just fine all on its own when people are playing it,
- 37:13Speaker 2: but it has the additional capability of being hooked up
- 37:15Speaker 2: to electronics and being able to send out electronic control
- 37:19Speaker 2: signals that can generate images on the dome of the
- 37:22Speaker 2: planetarium as well. And the world's leading expert in interfacing
- 37:28Speaker 2: these kinds of digital instruments with large format screens like
- 37:32Speaker 2: our planetarium is Dan Teffer and that's who's going to
- 37:35Speaker 2: be here. So Dan will be performing our music under
- 37:38Speaker 2: the Dome Concert on May fifth. That concert begins about
- 37:41Speaker 2: five thirty if you buy tickets, the reception begins at
- 37:44Speaker 2: five with wine and cheese. There are still a handful
- 37:47Speaker 2: of tickets left online. However, there are a few tickets
- 37:50Speaker 2: left day of the show as well. Friends, this is
- 37:53Speaker 2: an amazing concert experience, unlike anything that you've seen before.
- 37:57Speaker 2: You might say, well, wait a minute, I saw dot
- 38:00Speaker 2: Dan Tepfer last year when he came, Yes you did.
- 38:03Speaker 2: Dan was performing solo at that concert. This time, he's
- 38:07Speaker 2: actually going to be performing in conjunction with the students
- 38:11Speaker 2: and faculty from the Shwob School of Music. So they're
- 38:13Speaker 2: gonna have a few of the musicians from Schwob here
- 38:17Speaker 2: at Columbus State University performing live with Dan Tepfer at
- 38:20Speaker 2: that event. It's a one off. It's unique. Come down
- 38:24Speaker 2: and check it out. You can find out more about
- 38:26Speaker 2: this concert and all the ticket information at our website.
- 38:29Speaker 2: Visit www dot cc s SC dot org. Charlie Charlie
- 38:35Speaker 2: SamSam Charlie dot org. And yes, I know you no
- 38:38Speaker 2: longer have to type the w's, but I still say
- 38:40Speaker 2: it that way anyway, just to get your attention so
- 38:43Speaker 2: you don't say, what was that first letter? He said,
- 38:46Speaker 2: just www dot Here comes cc SSC dot org.
- 38:52Speaker 4: Sean, and I thank you for listening, and we will
- 38:54Speaker 4: do this again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbus
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