Latest / Made of Stars / Very Large Array About to Get Larger

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Very Large Array About to Get Larger · Made of Stars

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Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics, and
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space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been known to learn about astronomical
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phenomenon, the scientific method, and expand the vocabulary to include terms like quasar
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asterism and uranus. Listen, that's your own risk, go ahead. When
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made of stars, Made of stars? When stars you could be from High
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Hollywood, New Mexico, Mars. Where are stars? When we are made
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of stars? Joined by'm a good friend, Doctor Sean Cruising from Columbus State
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University's Coca Cola Space Science Center. I'm Wes Carol, Morning Sean, Good
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morning West. Good to be here again today. The VLA is getting a
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major upgrade. This is a very large array and I we've talked about these
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are satellite dishes pointed into space. And we've talked before about the movie Contact
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Jodie Foster Matthew McConaughey, a great movie and it's uh so they're they're getting
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an upgrade for these dishes. And there's a number of things that they do
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in service to what we do here as far as as we're covering space news.
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Um, there's a lot of things that they're checking out, but a
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significant, very expensive upgrade. Yeah. So, first of all, ads
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and gentlemen, let's talk a little bit about the VLA. The VLA is
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an iconic array of radio telescopes. And if you think, well, there's
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no broadcasting from space, no, well, I'm not even sure that's true.
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By the way, we're we have lots of folks from setting trying to
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answer that question. Okay, so, but the ideas that natural processes out
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there can also generate radio waves. It's not just human made processes. So
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there's lots of things out there that emit radio, and we can map out
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the universe and better understand what's taking place out there by examining radio waves and
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comparing them to visible light or microwaves, or infrared or gamma rays or other
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parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that are coming from the very same objects. So
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oftentimes we are looking at objects in multiple wavelengths to better understand the overall processes.
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But let's be clear, there are also parts of the uni verse out
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there that can only be mapped in radio, and that's because they tend to
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be lower temperature than those really hot objects that emit gamma rays and X rays
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and those kinds of things. Cooler clouds of gas only emit radio waves,
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so sometimes we can only see parts of the universe when we look in radio
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Okay. So that's why we build these big arrays of radio dishes, and
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and we use them to examine the universe. It's not just to listen for
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aliens, like on the movie Contact. So I just want to get over
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that kind of misconception that, hey, the only thing they do with those
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radio dishes is there's somebody with headphones on listening to see if aliens are talking.
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No, in fact, that it would be a very very very micro
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limited use of what we do with giant radio telescopes. Okay, so the
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very large array, the name itself is simply there because astronomers can never name
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things in any kind of creative way. I mean, we see spots on
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the Sun, we call them sun spots. We see giant black holes out
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there in the universe, and we call them black holes. We see a
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big giant red spot on Jupiter, we call it the Great Red Spot.
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So much in the tradition of the very large telescope VLT or the overwhelmingly large
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telescope, the owl. We give these kinds of acronyms that don't have a
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lot of creativity and passion to them, but they are very good technical descriptions.
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So the very Large Array is a large array of radio telescopes out in
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the desert that we like to nickname the VLA. Okay, So those twenty
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seven radio dishes have been out in the deserts of New Mexico near Socorro,
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New Mexico for a number of years producing absolutely fa fantastic science. However,
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they have now gotten dated and through the through the somewhat creative mind of astronomers,
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they came up with a better way to do science if they could expand
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the number of dishes and also expand the sensitivity of the radio frequency range that
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those dishes examine from incoming wavelengths from the universe. So they have come up
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with the next generation of radio telescopes for the New Mexico desert and they call
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it the next generation of the very Large Array or ng VLA, makes sense.
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Knew what it was. I knew what it was. When you said
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ng VLA, I knew what it was. In their defense, I have
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nothing further to say about that. The VLA will bring two hundred and sixty
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new antennas with greater sensitivity range to what is now twenty seven dishes. By
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the way, they're not keeping the twenty seven dishes. They're gonna get rid
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of those. But I think a couple of weeks ago we talked about the
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fact that they're keeping the old solar panels aboard the International Space Station. They're
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just putting the new ones up right in front of the old ones. We're
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not doing that with the VLA. We're gonna get rid of the old dishes.
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We're gonna put up two hundred and sixty dishes. One hundred and sixty
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of those antenna will be on site at the current location of the VLA in
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your score to Mexico. But something interesting is the other one hundred dishes are
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going to be scattered around all around North America. Now, why would they
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do that? Well, it's because the power of an array, or in
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other words, a whole bunch of telescopes working together, is that the diameter
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of that array, which now will be roughly the size of North America,
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is used to improve the resolution of the combined observations of all those telescopes.
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In other words, that giant group of telescopes begins working like one big telescope,
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and the resolution is determined by the diameter of that one big telescope.
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And so basically they're going to create a telescope in a sense that has the
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diameter of North America roughly. That's a big telescope. I mean, I
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think that's an overwhelmingly large array. But that's not what they're calling it.
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Yeah, they're calling it the next generation very large array. And you know,
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maybe they'll capitalize vary. I mean, maybe maybe vary will be in
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all caps, I think, I don't know. Maybe they'll stake an extra
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vary in there. I don't know. Maybe maybe they would do that very
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very large. That's probably a good solution. It'll be the VVLA, it'll
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be the n GVVLA. Yeah, I'm not stuttering. It's just a very
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very large array, that's all I'm saying. Yeah. So, anyway,
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really cool science is going to come out of this, ladies and gentlemen.
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Because the radio frequencies are harder to resolve because they have longer wavelengths than their
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optical counterparts. So it's already it's already harder to get a detailed look at
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objects in space using radio, which is why you have to build these very
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very very large arrays out there. And so that's why they're looking at this
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next generation improvement to the VLA. Now, it is expensive. It's going
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to be two billion dollars. But let's remind ourselves that two things are true.
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Number One, those two billion dollars were budgeted for science anyway, so
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this seems like a pretty good use for those. Number Two, those two
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billion dollars will largely be spent right here in the US economy, stimulating jobs,
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technology expansion, furthering education and research, and generally creating a better world.
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And that equates to roughly an operational cost of about ninety two million dollars
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a year to run the n GVVVVLA. And so just to give us some
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level of comparison, let's remember that the New York Jets are going to pay
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Aaron Rodgers approximately fifty million dollars a year for what could end up being mediocre
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quarterback play. I'm just saying it's not a guarantee, but I'm just saying
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it's possible. I'm a Denver Broncos fan, and well, we can talk
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about Russell Wilson. So sometimes when those quarterbacks go to a different team,
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you don't quite get the same result as with the last team. And that's
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you know, one quarterback in the NFL half the price of the NGVVVVVLA.
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And as long as we're playing with letters, you know, he is AA
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Ron Rodgers, So you know that's another that's another use of extra just putting
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letters in there. So there there you go. Um. And I would
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just also like to point out you were talking about, you know, the
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red Spot being called the red Spot and those sorts of things. I'll throw
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another one. You get a planet that's called Uranus. Kids giggle, and
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then they rename it Uranus, and kids still giggle. I just want to
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point that out. That's why I maintain I still you say Uranus. I
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say Uranus because I'm old school. And I also say Pluto as a planet.
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But anyway, UM, all right, let's talk about as something else
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that relates to generations. Uh maybe they could. If the folks at the
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VLA were talking about these stars, they would be fgs's they might be.
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And by the way, I think people of our generation, Pluto is always
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going to be a planet for people of our generation anyway. I mean,
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it's not, but it's it's not what it is. It's not you know,
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I mean it is, but it's not, but it is. But
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yeah, I just revisited I just revisited that episode of Rick and Morty,
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by the way, and so I'm not gonna go too far down the rabbit
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hole there. But anyway, I can tell you this. When children come
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and visit the Space Science Center, now these are children, maybe ten eleven
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years old, they ask why did they kick Pluto out of the Solar system?
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That's the way they asked this question. Why did they kick Pluto?
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Like Pluto was in a club, but it got kicked out because it did
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something. They want to know the motivations. They want to know the level
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of punishment that the judicial system for planets to get kicked out of solar systems.
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And we have to say, no, no, Plutos didn't get kids.
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It's still there, It's still it's right where it was before. It's
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like when the call the Shuttle program shut down and people when they close NASA,
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Why did they close NASA? Why did they close NASA? What are
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you guys gonna do? Naad they close NASA? That was the question.
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We gotta here a lot. What are you guys that the space science that
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are gonna do that? Now that NASA is closed? All right, So
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NASA is not closed. Pluto is still there, and we have what are
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called first generation stars. But in the lingo of the actual astronomer, we
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call these pop three stars or population three stars. Because we do this,
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we call the generation of stars that are currently living that we can look at
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with our telescopes and see right now, we call those population one stars.
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But we know, as the name of our podcast invokes, that those those
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stars elemental have the contributions of previous generations of stars that produced heavy elements.
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And when we say heavy elements, we don't mean just uranium. We're also
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talking about like carbon, right, and calcium and kinds of things that we're
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made out of, so that we can say that we're made of stars.
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So our sun is made of previous generations of stars, as is the Earth
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and some of the elements, while all of the elements in our bodies.
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Okay, so that previous generation of stars we call those population two stars.
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See Population two stars lived and died and spread their elements out through the galaxy.
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So that when Population one stars formed and with their solar systems, they
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were enriched by all the materials created by those Population two stars. But wait,
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there's more. Scientists have long speculated a third population or Population three stars
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stars that existed prior to the Pop two stars, and now we have some
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direct evidence that yes, that population of stars Pop three stars actually existed,
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and they were almost entirely hydrogen and helium, which means at the time they
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formed, the universe itself was almost entirely hydrogen and helium. Nothing that we
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would consider the kinds of materials that can make a rock, for instance,
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or even drier LNT existed at that time on highrogen and helium. It was
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because of the engines of these massive Population three stars that we even have the
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heavier elements that can create life as we know it today. Okay, so
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that's fun. Well here's what happened. Here's what the latest study is.
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It's a study in Nature that was largely led by people from the child Chinese
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Academy of Sciences. There are some evidence of chemical signatures for these really massive,
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massive supernova explosions that are so massive that we can't even call them supernova
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anymore, we call them hypernovae. A hypernova is a supernova that's too big
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to be a supernova, so we call it a hypernova. It's more of
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that astronomical naming process again. But these hypernova appear to have generated gamma rays
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of such high energy intensity that they formed all kinds of crazy chemical signatures in
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the clouds left over from the explosions of those supernovae, which could have only
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happened from stars that are something on the order of one hundred to one hundred
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and fifty times the mass of our sun. Now Here comes the punchline.
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Ladies and gentlemen, No stars that exist today are that big, and no
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stars that apparently existed in the population two stars are that big. The only
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stars that could be so big as to cause hypernova explosions of this magnitude are
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the population three stars that must have existed in the super early part of the
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universe and generated those crazy hypernova with the ultra high energy gamma rays to produce
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the chemical signatures that we find in some weird supernova remnants, which are the
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clouds leftover after these hypernova go off. So that's the story. Read about
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it on Universe Today dot com more evidence of first generation massive stars that must
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have been the universe's first stars. Coming up after a quick break, we'll
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talk about a significant anniversary for Mars rovers. Will get into that next.
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So we're at the twenty year anniversary for Spirit and Opportunity rovers. Yeah,
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it's a really neat story on astronomy dot com. There's probably other articles out
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there, but check out astronomy dot com read about the twenty year anniversary and
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history of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers that launched from Mars twenty years ago this
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summer this June, in fact, from launch complex is seventeen A and seventeen
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B at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. So Spirit launched on June tenth
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of two thousand and three, Opportunity launched on July seventh of two thousand and
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three, and they began their long travel to Mars, but then also their
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long long exploration of the Martian surface and something very very important as a legacy,
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these two rovers were the first ones to give us ultra clear definition of
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the history of liquid water on the surface of Mars, and so we have
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our clearest evidence and the first real solid evidence that Mars was once a very
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wet place. We have that because of these two rovers. Right, Spirit
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lasted six years up on the surface of Mars. It traveled a distance of
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four point eight miles, which doesn't sound very far if you're in a land
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rover, but if you're a Martian rover with no roads, that's a pretty
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long way to go. So it survived up almost five miles of the Martian
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terrain. The Opportunit Tunity Rover, it's cousin's twin brother. Basically, the
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Opportunity Rover lasted fifteen years and it drove the farthest distance of any vehicle on
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the Red planet. So it's a Mars world record, shall we say so.
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Opportunity had over twenty eight miles traveled over those fifteen years, which is
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really really cool. Between the two rovers, they snapped three hundred and forty
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one thousand photographs and most importantly, the Spirit Rover found six distinct rock types
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that led us to understand that there was an aqueous environment or in other words,
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standing water on the surface of Mars for a long period of time.
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Think like lake beds or stream beds or river beds that persisted for some long
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period of time long enough for a variety of elements to have formed, and
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these elements can not elements. These compounds, these rock compounds formed. These
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rock compounds formed in these long standing water environments, and they can only form
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that way based on our understanding of earth geology. And so that leads us
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to know that there were these long standing bodies of water. Opportunity found such
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a compound, which is called hematite, and they were in these little sphere
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rules, these little tiny realm balls of hematite on Mars. They got nicknamed
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the Martian blueberries. But the fact that hematite was present on the surface of
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Mars is a dead giveaway that there were lake beds or long standing rivers on
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the slow flowing rivers on the surface of Mars. Right. So in addition
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to that, they found these stratified rock columns, and they found other kinds
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of things, including the presence of chlorine and bromine, which hinted at the
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salty shorelines of Martian Oceans that had to exist in order for those chemical compounds
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to be formed. So all of these things informed us as a as a
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as a very curious species investigating in what is we think is possibly a dead
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planet that a long ago, it was much more earthlike and a much more
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friendly environment for possibly forming life. All because twenty years ago we launched a
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couple of rovers up to the planet Mars. So hat tip to our friends
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Spirit and Opportunity for their twenty year history years of service. Right, let's
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talk about we got a story about supermassive black holes. I know at some
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point you're going to mention the band Muse because you always do. I used
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to do it all the time, and now you do it all the time,
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so I had to get one in. But you this is something that
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you've studied, and there's a we have a new study that is this sort
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of building on something that you studied before. Because that's one of the cool
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things in sciences when you you find out something that you worked on, Not
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that I have any experience with this, but something that you worked on,
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someone else is working on it and building on it and sort of furthering that
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research or that study into something else. So is there a connection with this
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story and what you you did in the past. There absolutely is, So
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you know it's it's not maybe a direct connection, but this is an area
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of research that I was able to contribute to in the past, and it's
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the it's the study of galaxies in low density environments. In other words,
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think of it this way. They're kind of like urban dwelling galaxies where they
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all like to hang out in very large numbers. But there's also a set
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of rural dwelling galaxies where they kind of live far apart and you know,
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put up fences and live in pasture land and tell people to get off my
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property. You know, that's that's that kind of thing, right. I
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happened to live in a rural environment myself out in Harris County north of here
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in Columbus, Georgia, and the galaxies I studied as a graduate student were
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kind of like that. They were like the small town not too many folks
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around type galaxies or galaxies in what we know as voids. And so a
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study that just recently appeared in a presentation at the American Astronomical Society conference that's
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taking place this month in Albuquerque in New Mexico. This is kind of building
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on the same area area of research that I was able to contribute to.
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But a really fun fact is it's actually done by a high school senior at
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Harrisonburg High School in Harrisonburg, Virginia. So some astronomers got this high school
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student involved in a very cool project, which hats off to all of them
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for doing this. And basically, this high school student was able to examine
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galaxies in these low density environments and in also in high density environments in a
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new wavelength region of the infrared spectrum. And if you want to read more
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about that, ladies and gentlemen, just go click on the article on astronomy
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dot com. So it's a great article about about lonely galaxies snacking having snacking
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supermassid black holes. But the idea is this that in these low density,
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lonely parts of the universe, where there are very few galaxies, it's actually
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a good place for small to mid size galaxies to form very hungry Howie black
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holes. So there's central supermassive black holes in the small to mid size galaxies
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in the void regions tend to be very active and they have plenty to eat
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and they are consuming large amounts of material and so they're nucleus. The center
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part of the galaxy is very in other words, they have very active,
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active galactic nuclei. So so AGM is a term that we use in astronomy
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active galactic nuclei, and in the void galaxies, the smaller to midsized galaxies
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are very active. Okay, So it turns out, though that the big
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galaxies in those voids aren't quite as active as they are in the higher density
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environments. Now there's a reason for this, ladies and gentlemen, and this
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is something something we already kind of knew in this field. Is that when
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you get a lot of galaxies together, they tend to run into each other,
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and when they bump into each other, they steal gas from each other
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in those collisions, and the gas that is stolen during these collisions feeds the
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supermassive black holes in the middle of those galaxies. So in the in the
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galaxy clusters, or in other words, where places where galaxies tend to cluster
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together, it's the big galaxies that have active supermassive black holes, But in
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those quieter, more lonely environments, it's actually the small the mid size galaxies
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that have the more active central supermassive black holes. So anyway, there it
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is a neat piece of research done by a high school student. Read about
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it on astronomy dot com. And it's a really interesting story and a place
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that's close to my heart out there in the research realm. Let's talk astronomy
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nights with the Coca Cola Space Science Center out of Callaway Gardens. Yeah,
26:33
so check our Astronomy Nights schedule for the astronomy nights that are taking place out
26:37
of Callaway Gardens. You can find those under the events section on our website
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that's www dot CCSSC dot org Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org. When you
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go to the website, you can find out this calendar of events taking place
26:52
at Callaway Gardens and educational collaboration with that very beautiful nature center out there just
27:00
north of Columbus, Georgia, where we have our broadcasts here. And so
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our astronomy team with doctor Rosa Williams and some of our students from Columbus State
27:07
University's Earth and Space Sciences Program take telescopes out to Callaway Gardens and show people
27:14
the nighttime sky. And something fun is because it's a collaboration between us and
27:18
Callaway. It's a time where you can get into the gardens for free because
27:23
it's after the gardens closed down for the day, and so you can bring
27:27
out the family and go enjoy a nice sunset, and then look through the
27:32
telescopes and see the Sombrero galaxy, the Ring nebula, the Dumbbell nebula,
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lots of really cool objects up there in the nighttime sky. The Hercules cluster
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is up right now. All of these things our team can show you,
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and you can see it with your own eye, which is just different than
27:48
looking at a picture on the internet. Seeing that light coming into your own
27:52
eye is just something special. If you're anywhere near our region, join our
27:56
astronomy team for these wonderful astronomy nights at Callaway Garden. We thank you for
28:00
listening, and we'll do it again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbus
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