Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #403: Stellar Synthesis & Quasar Quests: Crafting Cosmic Particles & Unveiling the Universe's Brightest Beacon

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#403: Stellar Synthesis & Quasar Quests: Crafting Cosmic Particles & Unveiling the Universe's Brightest Beacon · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Hello there, Andrew Dunkley here the host of Space Nuts, and it's great
0:03
to have your company on the latest episode, and coming up, we're going
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to be looking at a couple of things very scientific show. Today, scientists
0:13
have done something that only colliding neutron stars can do. They synthesized new isotopes.
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I had to practice a lot to say synthesized new isotopes, and I've
0:24
said it twice without stuffing it up, so I'm very happy. We're also
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going to talk about a discovery. Recently, we talked about something that's the
0:34
biggest of its kind we've ever found. We've found the oldest of its kind.
0:38
Recently, now we seem to have found something that is defined as the
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fastest growing and brightest of its kind. What is it? We will tell
0:47
you very very soon. That's coming up on this episode of Space Nuts fifteen,
0:54
Channel ten nine Ignition Squench Space Nuts Side three two one spaces actually bought
1:07
it real goods and joining me as always is the goenna hunter himself. You've
1:15
got you've got a visitor in your backyard as we speak, Yes, we
1:18
do, yes, about one and a half meters long, something in the
1:23
region of five feet the ghana, which is a lizard like creature on four
1:27
eggs, with a long face and a big belly and a tongue that's coming
1:33
in and out all the time, and very sharp claws. Actually, you
1:37
don't want to mess with garaners because they can do a lot of damage.
1:42
So this one's pottering around the backyard at the moment as we speak, in
1:47
fact, a lot of sight of them. I'm not sure we'll hurt.
1:49
I'm not sure sure which way they have gone, but yeah, they were
1:53
there a minute ago. Quite extraordinary. They've got the pad food and they're
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gone. Yeah, that's right, that's what it is, left over plat
2:00
food. Yeah, they can grow to be quite enormous, and yeah,
2:04
you're right, they can do a lot of damage, and they're very very
2:08
They look harmless enough, but you don't really want to get too close.
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I've seen a couple of goannas at my parents' place in the year's gone by,
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and even the smaller ones can be a little intimidating close up there.
2:23
That's quite amazing and ancient creatures. Now, oh okay, never try that.
2:31
Now. Now we've got a couple of stories that we've got to talk
2:38
about. Fred and some exciting news in science with the synthesization of isotopes,
2:46
which was done in a lab using a laser. But this is a sort
2:54
of a replication of something only colliding neutron stars can do. We better sort
3:00
of work out what this means, because the scientists involved are very excited about
3:07
this. They are, that's right. So just very briefly the backstory,
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what do we mean by isotopes? And it starts off with our understanding of
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how chemical elements differ from one another, and so there's the chemical elements are
3:25
actually sort of defined by the number of protons in the nucleus, the atomic
3:31
nucleus, and so hydrogen, for example, has one proton and he always
3:38
has one proton, Helium always has two, iron has twenty six, just
3:43
to jump to another number, and so you know, you can't have hydrogen
3:47
with two protons, and you can't have iron with twenty five. And I'm
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quoting here from our old friendiespace dot com website. But in there atomic nuclei,
4:00
the atomic centers, protons are joined by neutrons, and so the number
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of neutrons essentially contributes can vary in a way that the number of protons can't.
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Protons are charged particles, Neutrons aren't positively charged particles. Neutrons are neutral,
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hence the name. So if you've got hydrogen atom with one proton and
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one neutron, bless you, then there'll be another ten of those. Okay,
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she sneezes once away. Her record is twenty five. Oh my goodness
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me, that's almost sounds like a medical condition. I just said, sorry,
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not no need to apologize. You can't help sneezing. So the bottom
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line is that adding neutrons doesn't change the element that it is, but it
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changes the isoto of the element, and so isotopes can vary. And once
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again, space dot com has a nice example. One of the isotopes of
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iron is iron fifty four, which has twenty six protons and twenty eight neutrons.
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There is also something called iron fifty six, which has twenty six protons
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and thirty neutrons, et cetera, And so it goes on. So that's
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what we mean by isotopes. It's elements in a different form, which is
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governed by the number of neutrons that are present in the atomic nucleus. Now,
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to cut to the trace, to cut to the story. There are
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facilities that can actually make isotopes. In fact, I think we've got one
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here in Australia at the Adanstow, the Australian Nucleus Science and Technology Organization.
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But this particular one that we're talking about, which is at Michigan State University,
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is a very fancy one. It's called f f RIB FRIB that's what
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the acronym spells, FRIB. I like that. Actually it's a bit like
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you're telling fribs. It's the Facility for Rare Earth Isotope Beams, that's what
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FRIB stands for. And it's basically an accelerator where they can synthesize isotopes.
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And what they've done is they've synthesized some of the isotopes that we think are
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created by colliding neutron stars. Now we can't go and test the insides of
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colliding neutron stars. What we can see though, is their gravitational waves,
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and that allows us to see some understanding of what's going on inside in that
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ultra turbulent environment when two neutron stars collide. And neutron stars, of course,
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are the remnants of massive stars which have got to the end of their
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lives and collapsed, usually a super over explosion that blows off the outer outer
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envelope. The center collapses to form a neutron star, where the collapse to
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a black hole is only stopped by the outward pressure of neutrons against each other.
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So what the scientists at FRIB, the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams,
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have done is created some isotopes which have never existed on Earth. That's pretty
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that's a pretty big, you know, pretty impressive, very bold claim exactly
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to be to be specific, they are thulium one eight two, thulium one
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eight three, itterbium one eight six, itterbium one eight seven, and lutetium
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one ninety. I think I went to school with a lutitian. There's one
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in every school I think I went. I went to school with a few
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euterbiums until they were rough anyway. And the thing is that we think these
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isotopes are probably involved with the process where colliding neutron stars create new elements.
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And we now know that the heavy elements elements and in particular gold and silver,
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are created in these neutron star collisions. And so if you can understand
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the way the sort of intermediate isotopes behave, then you are going a long
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way to understanding what the processes are as I said, the ultraturbulent environment of
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colliding neutron stars, if I can, if I may quote one of the
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scientists involved with this, Bradley Sheryl, who is the University Distinguished Professor in
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mitch Good State University's College of Natural Science and head of the Advanced Rare Isotopes
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Separator Department, says, this is probably the first time these isotopes have existed
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on the surface of the Earth. I like to draw the analogy of taking
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a journey. We've been looking forward to going somewhere we've never been before,
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and this is the first step we've left home and we're starting to explore.
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So that's really a very nice, almost poetic way of putting it. This
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journey to understand the nuclear processes that go on in some of these very exotic
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collisions. Is that the ultimate purpose to just try and understand a process or
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will there be applications that this might be able to be used for if they
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can take it to the next level? Yeah, yeah, I mean you
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never know what the applications might be. And in fact, I think nuclear
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physics generally can get can basically benefit by people understanding how these newly forged isotopes
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behave, so nuclear physics will be one of the benefactors in this In this
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work, one of the other scientists involved in this said, it's not a
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big surprise that these isotopes exist, but now that we have them, we
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have colleagues who will be very interested in what we can measure next. I'm
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already starting to think of what we can do next in terms of measuring their
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half lives, their masses, and other properties. So it is, you
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know, it's setting an improved baseline in the whole science of nuclear physics,
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but it is. But it's motivated, as as we've just said, by
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the idea of trying to understand these processes better that take place in collisions between
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neutron stars. I'm still a bit confused though, I mean, I've read
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through this and tried to absorb it and understand it, and I've taken some
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headache tablets afterwards. But what do they what do they make by synthesizing?
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I mean they obvi, they didn't have any neutron stars lying around A bit
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of drawn out not in there. So what does synthesizing mean? Well,
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so I'm not not a nuclear physicist, but my guess is that it involves
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a particle accelerator that is colliding things together to smash them up and synthesize other
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things. That's essentially what happens at the large Hadron collider, for example,
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on the on the Swiss French border cerns large adron collider, So it's all
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about colliding things together. In the large Adron collider, it's generally protons,
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although they also collide lead atoms the nuclei of lead atoms and learn different things
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from that. So not only when you smash atoms together you don't just break
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things apart, you also get reactions taking place that create new things, so
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you can synthesize them. Often though, those elements that you've synthesized only lasts
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for a very short fraction of a second, and I don't know in this
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particular work just how long these newly synthesized isotopes are. So I can actually
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just say a little bit more once again quoting from space dot com talking about
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those isotopes threi, one, eight, two, et cetera. These isotopes
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formed by firing a beam of platinum ions that's platinum without its electrons a target
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of carbon at the frib the rare isotope manufactory and the isotopes they say might
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not be present in the wreckage of neutron star collisions, but their existence on
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Earth is definitely a step towards creating those briefly lived, transitional super heavy elements
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on our planet to see if they result in elements like gold. In other
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words, these are temporary things that only exist temporarily and that might themselves decay
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to form something recognizable and stable, like the nucleus of the gold at it's
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really exciting stuff. I think, you know, it's tinkering around with matter
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at it's most rudimentary. Yes, yeah, indeed, I think it was
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also fascinating to try and understand that you're talking about stars being the furnaces of
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all these elements. And yes, I think most stars can't do anything more
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significant than create iron. You need a neutron star to smash into another neutron
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star to get these, That's okay, and my furn is not is ignoring
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what I'm saying. That's okay. So you need a neutron star smashing into
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a neutron star to start creating heavier elements like silver and gold. That's correct,
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Yeah, that's correct. And how often do these How often did neutron
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stars hit each other? Or wouldn't I wouldn't expect it to be here every
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day, a van or is it? It's well, given you know the
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size of the universe and the number of objects in the universe, and the
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fact that we can now detect these by the gravitational wave signals, I think
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they are pretty pretty frequent, actually, so I wouldn't like to put a
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number on it. But I don't think you're talking about events that are essentially
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very rare. And so it's now thought, whereas not very long ago we
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used to think that all the gold and silver were created in super and over
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explosions. The evidence that apparently has been uncovered really by the James Web Space
14:48
Telescope and other recent facilities have suggested that all of the Earth's gold was actually
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made in neutron star collisions. And in fact, I think that that story
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was also covered by space dot Com not very long ago actually, but essentially
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in recent weeks. So yes, it's it's exciting stuff. Well, our
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thinking is moving along if I can put it that way from perhaps a simplistic
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viewpoint, that every neutron star collapse produces gold from a super and over explosion,
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but that is possibly not the case. It might need colliding neutron stars
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to do it. So all of this happened before Earth was formed, and
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as the planet was created, all that this stuff was just floating around and
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accreted into the into the crust. That's right for floating around read interstellar medium.
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That's just that's the technical term. Interstellar medium means floating around. Yeah,
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it's the you know, the debris between the stars, and a lot
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of that debrity is the result of super and over explosion and we're now seeing
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nuclear sorry, neutron star collisions. Fantastic, all right, it's a really
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fascinating discovery and a major achievement. And if you would like to chase that
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story up, as Fred mentioned, it's the space dot com website. This
16:18
is space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson. Three space Nuts.
16:30
Our second story. Fred looks at something just as spectacular, if not
16:34
more spectacular, And we talked recently about finding the biggest UH what was it
16:40
the biggest black hole ever? Or it might have been the oldest, the
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oldest we found, the oldest one ever. We found, we found all
16:49
the brightest cosmic explosion ever. Now we've found the brightest quasar. And this
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is also conjunction with a huge black hole that you're normally at. This is
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hard to comprehend. That's correct, it is. The statistics are extraordinary,
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So let's do the statistics. This is an object with a very memorable name
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Jay zero five two nine minus four three five one. Don't forget that it
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is. It's intrinsically the brightest object in the universe. It has a luminosity
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equal to seventeen billion times the Sun's luminosity. I beg your pard, that's
17:37
the mass. The luminosity is even more. It's even more dramatic. So
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I have given you the wrong statistic. Its mass is seventeen billion times the
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soulness, so that makes it a supermassive black hole. Its luminosity is five
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hundred trillion times the luminosity of the Sun. Forget the billions, five hundred
17:57
trillion times the Sun's luminosity. And all of this is taking place at a
18:04
great distance in the universe in fact at the look back time of about twelve
18:08
billion years, so that's really long it is. So we're seeing this as
18:15
you know, as it was when the universe was less than two billion years
18:18
old. And the work has been led by Christian Wolfus and astronomer at the
18:22
Australian National University here in Australia. And as you said, the story kind
18:27
of starts at Siding Spring Observatory where I used to work as the astronomer in
18:33
charge of the Anglo Australian Telescope then Australian Astronomical Observatory. So they started with
18:45
basically the story starts before that with an analysis of data from the Gaya spacecraft
18:52
that we've talked about before, European Space Agencies Gaia satellite which measured billions and
18:57
I think it's still doing it bon of stars. So it essentially in automatic
19:04
mode analyzed this object as being a star because they thought it was too bright
19:11
to be anything else than the only real alternative to a star is a quasar.
19:15
But then observations, yes, deciding to bring observatory with the Australian National
19:22
Universities two point three meter telescope there allowed astronomers to recognize that this was not
19:30
a star, but it was a quasar, and that it was bright,
19:34
and that meant and quasars are always seen at great distances, but the fact
19:40
that it was bright meant that this might be a very special object. So
19:44
applications were made to the European Southern Observatory for time on their marvelous facility in
19:52
northern Chile, THEVLT, the Very Large Telescope, which is actually four telescopes
19:59
that can be used together or singly, each one with a mirror eight point
20:03
two meters in diameter. And the only reason that these Australian astronomers could do
20:07
that could apply for time on this facility was because of the strategic partnership forged
20:15
between the Australian government and the European Southern Observatory back in twenty seventeen that gave
20:22
astronomers in Australia ten years of access to the VLT, as well as access
20:26
to the sort of governance of the Southern Observatory and the ability to build instruments
20:30
for them as well. Thinks of that sort. So this strategic partnership,
20:34
which is knowing about it, it's a big part of my job, Andrew,
20:38
which is why I'm waxing lyrical about it at the moment. And it's
20:41
not the first time we've seen classic examples of astronomers being able to capitalize on
20:47
a combination of Australian instruments and the VLT the Very Large Telescope. Only last
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year we saw reports of the most distant fast radio burst ever discovered. The
21:00
one Yes, that was from discovered by a radio telescope in Western Australia,
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but identified as being the most distant fast radio burst at eight billion light years
21:11
away or look back time of eight billion years by the VLT, the Very
21:15
Large Telescope in the Chilean andes the European Southern Observatories facility. So that's the
21:21
sort of backstory of the observations. But yeah, what a claim to fame
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that this object the brightest, the most luminous object known in the universe.
21:32
We We've talked about boats for some time before, right of all time,
21:37
Rights of all time, and I think this one might be. I think
21:40
this is the new boat. Yeah, the new boat. You mentioned the
21:44
statistics. I don't know if you mentioned the size of the event horizon.
21:48
This is just unthinkably huge. I don't think there's a word big enough to
21:53
describe the size of this event horizon. This thing stretches seven light years,
22:00
which is fifteen thousand times the distance from the Sun to the orbit of Neptune.
22:07
Fifteen thousand times bigger than that. That's that's unbelievable. I just you
22:15
can't get your head around it. It is, that's right, And that's
22:21
the kind of inner dimension of the accretion disc, which probably corresponds to the
22:26
event horizon exactly as you've said. And that accretion disc is, of course
22:30
what lets what makes this thing bright, because this is all stuff swirling around
22:34
the black hole, some of it being sucked in, some of it being
22:38
redirected magnetically into the jets to the north and south poles of the black hole,
22:44
if I put it that way. But all of that highly energetic and
22:48
emitting emitting well light as well as X rays and radio waves, so very
22:53
very energetic object. And I'm not sure whether I mentioned I might have said
22:57
this already, but gobbles up the equivalent of one Sunday every day, one
23:04
solar mass per day is what it's actually a creting. So I think it
23:08
is also the most voracious known of all the black supermassive black holes. Now
23:15
correct me if I'm wrong. I have this distant memory that suggests that at
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this point in the age of the universe, quasars are all extinct. Or
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am I thinking of something else? But do you mean by this point what
23:27
we're seeing now? Yeah, yes, that's correct. We think what we're
23:33
saying is quite historical data because of the time it takes for the light to
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reach us. Yes, twelve billion years. Yeah, this all happened twelve
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billion years ago. Now, you're right. The nearest the nearest quasar,
23:47
which is caused by a very active black hole, is actually less than a
23:52
billion light years away, but there are very few within that distance. In
23:56
fact, perhaps only one maybe to perhaps, but most of them are more
24:03
than a billion light years away, which means we're seeing them as they were
24:07
before a billion years ago, and so today they're extinct. That's right.
24:12
So if we would go, if we were able to just sort of flash
24:15
over to this boat, now, what would we see if the quasar is
24:22
extinct, brightest of all time? What would be happening there now? So
24:29
it probably will be. Yes, in today's universe, it's probably a fairly
24:37
quiescent galaxy a bit like ourses. I mean, we think our own galaxy
24:42
comfortable, warm and cozy place that it is for stars like the Sun and
24:47
its planets like ours. We think that that may in its history have also
24:52
been a quasar. There is actually evidence of outbreaks out sorry outburst from the
25:00
center of our galaxy from the supermassive black hole there, which probably caused by
25:03
debris falling into it, quite significant amounts of debris. There's evidence of there
25:08
having been jets, because there's fluorescence of some of the gas above and below
25:17
the center of our galaxy, which has probably been excited to fluoresce by basically
25:23
by jets of material which are now long gone from the center of our galaxy,
25:30
jets of material that excited that stuff to fluoresce. The jets and material
25:33
have gone, but the fluorescence is still there. So yes, maybe we
25:40
think all galaxies might go through a quasar phase. I've always described quaisars as
25:45
delinquent galaxies, and it's not quite true because the quasar itself is the thing
25:49
that's at the middle of the galaxy. The galaxy is just hosting the quasars,
25:55
so it's more parasitic perhaps than delinquent, so they think this is the
26:00
brightest in the universe. Do you think anything could top it? On me?
26:06
Any thing just is gargantuan in size and brighter than anything. Like the
26:11
numbers are just staggering. Is there any chance will find anything? Well,
26:18
I think in astronomy, like many other things, never say never. You
26:25
know there might be another discovery. This is a serendipitous discovery because this thing
26:29
is it said, was thought by the Gaya Survey to be a star,
26:32
and it was only because it was followed up as being an object of some
26:36
interest by astronomers the A and EU Australian National University that it was discovered to
26:41
be a p quasar and then found to be a particularly interesting one. Yascinating,
26:47
Yes, most definitely and well worth reading about. If you'd like to
26:51
have a look, you can go to the ESO website that's e SO dot
26:56
org and just do a search for lightest and fastest growing and you'll definitely find
27:03
it. It's a great story and a nice pickup from I mean, the
27:08
thing's been hiding in plain sight basically, it's only just now we've pieced it
27:14
all together. It's fascinating. Fred just about to the end. I just
27:18
need to remind people that if you're following us on YouTube, don't forget to
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hit the subscribe button below. If you would like to go to our website
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and learn about supporting us financially, you can do that. There's all sorts
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of options there under support space. I hang on, what does it say?
27:37
And now I can't remember, but anyway, it's there somewhere. Oh
27:41
look, support space nuts. That's what I say. So there you go.
27:44
I was right. I should have stuck to my guns. So yeah,
27:45
just have a look around and see what you can see. And if
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you want to support us, great. If you just want to be a
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listener, that's fine too. The more the merrier, that's yeah, we've
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got to keep the family growing. And Fred, that brings us to the
28:00
end of this episode. Thank you so much, great pleasure, talk to
28:03
you and soon I hope, yes, yes, indeed, and good luck
28:07
with you going a hunt and pictures. Yeah, what wares me is the
28:15
guy that might be hunting us? Yeah, yeah, don't let the cat
28:18
out exactly all right. Yeah, thanks for red Sea soon and see you
28:23
later. Cheers up. Fred Wat's an astronomer at large and thanks to hu
28:30
not in the studio today when a wall and from me Andrew Dunkley. Always
28:33
great to have your company. Looking forward to joining you again on the very
28:37
next episode of Space Nuts. See you then bye byepauts. You'll be listening
28:42
to the Space Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio,
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or your favorite podcast player. You can also stream on demand at bites dot
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