Latest / Made of Stars / No, the Strawberry Moon Isn't Pink

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No, the Strawberry Moon Isn't Pink · Made of Stars

0:00
Speaker 1: Warning.
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Speaker 2: The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
0:04
Speaker 2: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
0:07
Speaker 2: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
0:10
Speaker 2: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
0:15
Speaker 2: that's your own risk.
0:16
Speaker 1: Go ahead.
0:22
Speaker 3: When made of stars, made them stars, madies. When made
0:30
Speaker 3: of stars, you could be from high they would New
0:36
Speaker 3: Mexicomus where a stars?
0:43
Speaker 4: When we are made of stars.
0:57
Speaker 5: I'm Wes Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
1:00
Speaker 5: Reisen from Columbus State Universities, Coca Cola Space Science Center.
1:03
Speaker 1: Hey Shaan, good.
1:04
Speaker 6: Morning, Wes. Good to be here today.
1:06
Speaker 5: So we're recording a little bit early. We're doing this
1:09
Speaker 5: on the eleventh for our show on the twelfth, and
1:13
Speaker 5: just as just general, I don't know how important it
1:16
Speaker 5: is that we say it, but we mentioned it because
1:19
Speaker 5: we've got a story that relates to this for possibly
1:22
Speaker 5: for tomorrow. As far as today goes, and then the
1:25
Speaker 5: next several shows will be pre recorded, as many of
1:31
Speaker 5: them will be because I'm going to be overseas. I'll
1:35
Speaker 5: be in Australia doing lots of planning, for a possible
1:38
Speaker 5: podcast and trip and visit down Under so that we
1:43
Speaker 5: can check out totality for the eclipse happening there. And
1:46
Speaker 5: I think it's twenty twenty nine. I forget the month,
1:48
Speaker 5: but so I'll make sure that'll be the first question
1:51
Speaker 5: I asked down there to make my trip at tax
1:54
Speaker 5: right off?
1:54
Speaker 4: When when is this thing going to happen?
1:58
Speaker 5: It's the beginning of my investigator report anyway, So the
2:02
Speaker 5: next few shows will be pre recorded and we've got
2:07
Speaker 5: some good stuff coming up. One of the things that
2:11
Speaker 5: we're going to be doing in a couple of weeks
2:14
Speaker 5: is you and I what.
2:16
Speaker 1: Was it fourteen years ago? Eleven years? How long ago
2:18
Speaker 1: was it?
2:19
Speaker 5: I forgot the We interviewed al Warden for radio because
2:24
Speaker 5: he was coming to the Cocola Space Science Center for
2:26
Speaker 5: an event, So coming up in a few weeks, we
2:29
Speaker 5: decided to officially make that part of the Mate of
2:32
Speaker 5: Stars podcast by transferring that over into a podcast so
2:38
Speaker 5: relevant because of his connections with Dave Scott. And then
2:41
Speaker 5: we'll also have a show coming up around Independence Day,
2:44
Speaker 5: a tribute for Dave Scott. So we got some cool
2:46
Speaker 5: stuff kind of planned while I'm gone. Anytime you can
2:51
Speaker 5: interview an astronaut and revisit an interview with an astronaut.
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Speaker 1: That's fun.
2:55
Speaker 5: And then obviously Dave Scott and you guys are doing
2:58
Speaker 5: a special thing. We'll talk about that towards the end
3:00
Speaker 5: of the show. But what you guys are doing compliments
3:03
Speaker 5: of the Scott family and things going on at the
3:07
Speaker 5: Space Science Center and the Bow Bartlett Center. But we'll
3:10
Speaker 5: get to that coming up. Before we do that, we
3:13
Speaker 5: want to talk about a few space things because we
3:17
Speaker 5: talked not long ago about the fact that we had
3:20
Speaker 5: China and Russia trying to teaming up so that they can,
3:24
Speaker 5: you know, they want to move forward on building a
3:27
Speaker 5: base on the Moon, and one of the things they
3:29
Speaker 5: wanted to do was get some kind of nuclear power
3:33
Speaker 5: there as a something that they've teamed up to do
3:37
Speaker 5: and I had questions about and it's going to be
3:39
Speaker 5: all like, you know, robots are going to be building
3:43
Speaker 5: this thing, AI and robots and nanobots and I don't know,
3:47
Speaker 5: just they're going to be sending some sort of nuclear
3:51
Speaker 5: agent to the Moon in order to do this. And
3:55
Speaker 5: and I'd had questions then about you know, how how
3:59
Speaker 5: many successful landings if we had by both of them.
4:04
Speaker 5: I know one of them is a little better than
4:05
Speaker 5: the other. Right now, I guess China's doing a little
4:07
Speaker 5: better than Russia. But it's just a concern to me
4:10
Speaker 5: when we start talking about plutonium or uranium or whatever
4:13
Speaker 5: it is they will send to the Moon because of
4:15
Speaker 5: the possibility of one of these crafts slamming into the Moon.
4:20
Speaker 5: The Moon's kind of important for a number of reasons,
4:26
Speaker 5: at least for our survival here on Earth, and I
4:29
Speaker 5: just get a little nervous about it. And then that
4:31
Speaker 5: leads us into our next story, which isn't about China
4:33
Speaker 5: or Russia. It's about Japan. But hey, Japan just slams
4:37
Speaker 5: something into the Moon.
4:39
Speaker 6: I mean, in the days of modern technology, artificial intelligence,
4:44
Speaker 6: advanced robotics, landing on the Moon in twenty twenty five
4:48
Speaker 6: is a piece of cake. I mean, not like back
4:51
Speaker 6: in the sixties where it was actually hard. Now today
4:56
Speaker 6: there is just zero problem landing anything on the Moon. Friends,
5:00
Speaker 6: if you don't know what this is, this is a
5:03
Speaker 6: scientist being sarcastic. That's what I'm saying right now, because yeah,
5:07
Speaker 6: yet another mission has failed to successfully soft land on
5:12
Speaker 6: the Moon. Now, let's make no mistake. They landed on
5:15
Speaker 6: the Moon. They took a payload, launched it from Earth.
5:20
Speaker 6: It is now on the Moon, so we can't say
5:22
Speaker 6: they didn't land there. We can say that it's even
5:25
Speaker 6: impact with the lunar surface. We can say there's embedded question.
5:30
Speaker 5: Embedded is a word we could say, you know, like
5:32
Speaker 5: it's there is it is part of the Moon.
5:35
Speaker 6: Earlier this morning, friends, I sent my friend Wes a
5:39
Speaker 6: text message that had a gift of Wiley coyote falling
5:42
Speaker 6: off the cliff in a little mushroom cloud at the bottom.
5:45
Speaker 6: That's what the latest Japanese spacecraft did. Now, let's not
5:50
Speaker 6: make fun of the Japanese because we just had an
5:54
Speaker 6: American company do that a few months ago. Intuitive machines,
5:58
Speaker 6: this is I space. I don't know why they all
6:00
Speaker 6: start with ie. They just seem to anyway, So I
6:03
Speaker 6: got a good idea. Yeah, I mean, could could be
6:06
Speaker 6: the we might be referencing some other technological advances anyway.
6:10
Speaker 6: So then I mean, but also, you know, India and
6:14
Speaker 6: Israel and lots of other there have been a lot
6:17
Speaker 6: of spacecraft that have just simply ardered into the surface
6:20
Speaker 6: of the Moon and made a you know, a giant
6:24
Speaker 6: smudge yeah, and now we have one more. And as
6:27
Speaker 6: West pointed out, it's a good thing that there's not
6:29
Speaker 6: plutonium on it, because that site might not be acceptable
6:33
Speaker 6: for some long period of time to even try to
6:36
Speaker 6: go near or explore or you know, let alone build
6:39
Speaker 6: a space station or a power plant on the Moon.
6:43
Speaker 6: So yeah, there's all that. Yeah, the Moon's hard, even
6:49
Speaker 6: with AI, even with advanced robotics technology, even though we
6:52
Speaker 6: are just the smartest creatures that have ever lived on
6:54
Speaker 6: planet Earth. Again scientific sarcasm landing on the hard period.
7:01
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is, and it's it's going to be hard
7:04
Speaker 5: for the next long foreseeable future. Maybe we get to
7:07
Speaker 5: a point where it's just easy. It's back and forth.
7:11
Speaker 5: Some companies make it look a little easier than others,
7:14
Speaker 5: some countries make it look a little easier than others.
7:17
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean that it is easy.
7:19
Speaker 5: There's always that possibility of complications and problems.
7:23
Speaker 4: I just see this.
7:24
Speaker 5: You sent me that gift, and I sent you a
7:26
Speaker 5: gift of you know, some sort of world ending explosion,
7:31
Speaker 5: which wasn't I don't think the moon, but it looked
7:34
Speaker 5: close enough, and I just thought, wow, we we we
7:36
Speaker 5: need that. And I know it's not it's Japan. This
7:39
Speaker 5: isn't the Russia China project. I just have concerns that
7:43
Speaker 5: they're going to have this perfected in the next what
7:46
Speaker 5: seven years or whatever it is that they're going to start.
7:48
Speaker 1: Where's the kaboom?
7:50
Speaker 6: There should have been an earth shattering kaboom.
7:53
Speaker 5: Yes, indeed, Uh so there was that. And then now
7:57
Speaker 5: we have another follow up story. We were telling everyone
8:01
Speaker 5: that the uh uh ax four is was getting ready
8:07
Speaker 5: to launch. We talked about the significance of that as
8:10
Speaker 5: far as the passengers that we're going to be on board.
8:13
Speaker 5: That that has been delayed, and it had been delayed
8:19
Speaker 5: a few times.
8:20
Speaker 1: It's been delayed again.
8:21
Speaker 5: Uh, there's a chance that by the time we get
8:24
Speaker 5: around to uh we'll have this up tomorrow on the
8:28
Speaker 5: twelfth of June. And like I said, we're recording this
8:30
Speaker 5: on the eleventh, but if we get this up on
8:33
Speaker 5: the twelfth, well we'll have a better idea of whether
8:36
Speaker 5: or not tomorrow's potential launch happens or is going to happen.
8:43
Speaker 5: But yeah, we have a booster leak.
8:47
Speaker 6: Yeah, so it is Axiom space go ahead.
8:51
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, and it ties into this hole. This is
8:53
Speaker 5: hard because we often hear these stories about leaks, right,
8:56
Speaker 5: I mean, this is one of the things that is hard.
8:59
Speaker 4: So anyway, sorry, you have to take some.
9:02
Speaker 6: Of the lightest elements on the entire periodic table and
9:06
Speaker 6: put them under extreme pressure, which if you know a
9:13
Speaker 6: little bit about chemistry, those little molecules, those little atoms,
9:18
Speaker 6: those little molecules of elements, they sneak out of little holes,
9:23
Speaker 6: they get out really easy.
9:24
Speaker 3: Right.
9:25
Speaker 6: And so if you're trying to pressurize helium, which is
9:27
Speaker 6: necessary for these fuel tanks, or you're trying to pressurize
9:30
Speaker 6: some fuels that are again among some of the lighter
9:33
Speaker 6: elements on the periodic table and quite combustible, and you
9:37
Speaker 6: put them under extreme pressure, and then you have to
9:39
Speaker 6: stop all the leaks. I mean, we can't even stop
9:41
Speaker 6: links under sinks sometimes, right, there's I've had links in
9:44
Speaker 6: my lenks in my own bathroom that were difficult to
9:46
Speaker 6: plug up. It's a hard job, right, And so yeah,
9:51
Speaker 6: what happened was, well, what happened was the Falcon nine booster,
9:56
Speaker 6: which was scheduled to take the axiom Ax four IT
10:01
Speaker 6: astronaut mission to the International Space Station since late May.
10:05
Speaker 6: Actually they've been having delays for one reason or another,
10:09
Speaker 6: they got it out to the pad, and again this
10:11
Speaker 6: is yesterday as we're recording the show. They got it
10:14
Speaker 6: out to the pad, fueled it up, got ready to go,
10:18
Speaker 6: and it had a leak. And it had a fuel leak.
10:21
Speaker 6: And here's the interesting thing. The interesting thing is this
10:24
Speaker 6: is a reused booster. And that's the beautiful thing about
10:28
Speaker 6: what SpaceX is doing. They're not throwing away their main
10:31
Speaker 6: stage boosters. Therefore they're making space travel a lot more
10:35
Speaker 6: accessible and a lot more affordable. Okay, that's the upside.
10:39
Speaker 6: The downside is the last time this same booster launched,
10:42
Speaker 6: it was taking a Starlink constellation of satellites up to
10:46
Speaker 6: orbit and it had a leak then two. So apparently
10:52
Speaker 6: they didn't get the leak fixed in the liquid oxygen system,
10:57
Speaker 6: in this case liquid oxygen on the Falcon nine booster.
11:00
Speaker 6: According to Bill gersten Meyer, we haven't said Gersty's name
11:04
Speaker 6: for a while. Ohsty, Girsty's back. He used to be
11:07
Speaker 6: the director of Human Spaceflight for NASA. Now he is
11:09
Speaker 6: vice president of Build and Fly Reliability at SpaceX. He's
11:13
Speaker 6: got a new gig. In other words, went from the
11:17
Speaker 6: government side to the pay dollars side. Anyway, so there
11:20
Speaker 6: he is working at SpaceX. He came out and said this,
11:23
Speaker 6: the liquid oxygen leak was first detected on the booster's
11:26
Speaker 6: previous flight. We discovered we had not fully repaired the
11:30
Speaker 6: booster during refurbishment. He said, we didn't find the leak
11:35
Speaker 6: and didn't get it corrected. Well, okay, that's one of
11:41
Speaker 6: the problems with reusability. I mean it's you know, everything's
11:45
Speaker 6: a trade off, right, This is what we learn in physics.
11:48
Speaker 6: Everything's a trade off. So so yeah, it's now they're
11:52
Speaker 6: now they're actually going to address the leak. It's probably
11:55
Speaker 6: going to take a few days. I don't think this
11:58
Speaker 6: will be a quick turnaround. But they're not releasing or
12:01
Speaker 6: not suggesting a new launch date as of the time
12:04
Speaker 6: of the recording of this show. So we think it's
12:07
Speaker 6: we think we're safe. We think it's gonna be a
12:08
Speaker 6: bit probably not gonna be tomorrow, but you know who knows.
12:13
Speaker 6: So uh. This is Dana Weigel, who's NASA's ISS program manager.
12:19
Speaker 6: She said there is no immediate schedule pressure to launch
12:22
Speaker 6: AX four. The station can support launch opportunities through the
12:27
Speaker 6: end of June, and that's because you know, they're the
12:30
Speaker 6: traffic is low right now, there's not a lot of
12:32
Speaker 6: it's apparently not the tourist season on the ISS there's
12:35
Speaker 6: not well except the tourist we're trying to get up there,
12:37
Speaker 6: and they had a fuel leak other than them anyway,
12:40
Speaker 6: so they're they're still waiting to fly. Now, who's on
12:43
Speaker 6: the mission. It's Peggy Whitson. She's the actual Axiom employee. Now,
12:48
Speaker 6: she's former NASA astronaut and a legend of American spaceflight.
12:54
Speaker 6: So I'm just there's an avalanche of stuff in my
12:58
Speaker 6: office right now. It's probably making a lot of noise.
13:00
Speaker 6: Is just decided to fall against my wall. I have
13:02
Speaker 6: no idea why. Peggy Whitson a legend of American space
13:06
Speaker 6: flight and she is the commander of the AX four crew.
13:10
Speaker 6: She's of course from the US. Shibhan Shu Schokla from
13:15
Speaker 6: India as a mission specialist, slaswo Uzlananski is from Poland,
13:21
Speaker 6: and Tibor Capou from Hungary. It's gonna make the first
13:25
Speaker 6: Indian Poland person and Hungarian Polish person to go up
13:31
Speaker 6: to the International Space Station. So this is gonna be
13:33
Speaker 6: a good flight. It's packed full of interesting experiments. Actually,
13:37
Speaker 6: the one of those experiments is our next story, but
13:39
Speaker 6: we're gonna have to put it off for just a
13:41
Speaker 6: little longer until they fix that fuel league, that oxygen
13:44
Speaker 6: fuel league on that reused SpaceX Falcon nine boosters.
13:51
Speaker 5: Speaking of that next story, it relates to fruit flies,
13:56
Speaker 5: and it's kind of interesting and it's funny. This story
14:00
Speaker 5: came up because I was reading a completely different article
14:04
Speaker 5: about something else relating to fruitflies, another study that was
14:08
Speaker 5: being done.
14:09
Speaker 1: Because of the.
14:09
Speaker 5: Similar DNA or the similarities, we're not too far off,
14:13
Speaker 5: surprisingly from fruitflies who would have known. And my concern was,
14:21
Speaker 5: this doesn't relate to the NASA one we're about to
14:22
Speaker 5: talk about. But when you start saying they're doing all
14:25
Speaker 5: this work on fruit flies and figuring out ways to
14:28
Speaker 5: help their DNA and make them live longer, and I'm like,
14:30
Speaker 5: that's not.
14:30
Speaker 1: A good thing.
14:31
Speaker 4: We don't want those out there.
14:35
Speaker 5: But but I suppose some of this could relate to
14:39
Speaker 5: some of this, because they're trying to study DNA of
14:44
Speaker 5: fruitflies in space as part of a mission. So yeah,
14:48
Speaker 5: let's let's talk about that.
14:50
Speaker 6: As long as we don't share the data freely with
14:53
Speaker 6: the fruitfly scientists. That's true, you know, begin to employ
14:57
Speaker 6: this technology in the fruitfly society.
15:00
Speaker 5: Because we're gonna we're gonna be able to figure out
15:02
Speaker 5: if there's a lab where they do experiments on fruit
15:05
Speaker 5: flies somewhere, and then if we have a fruit fly
15:10
Speaker 5: problem that comes out of that lab, maybe that would
15:11
Speaker 5: be the first place we should look.
15:14
Speaker 6: We definitely don't want to share this with the dingy flies.
15:17
Speaker 1: Oh, we do not.
15:18
Speaker 5: I'm gonna hear a lot of I'm gonna hear a
15:20
Speaker 5: lot about dingy fever over the next few weeks, lots
15:24
Speaker 5: about it.
15:26
Speaker 6: Well. This story is from the American Physical SOCIETYFIZZ dot
15:30
Speaker 6: org phys dot org. It says this, NASA partners with Axiom. Yep,
15:35
Speaker 6: that's right, it's the ax for mission. Friends, NASA partners
15:38
Speaker 6: with Axiom for International Space Station DNA repair experiment. Okay,
15:43
Speaker 6: so here's here's one of the important characteristics that we
15:45
Speaker 6: share with fruit flies. We all like watermelon. Yes, that's
15:50
Speaker 6: that must be at least one of them. That's not
15:52
Speaker 6: in the story, by the way, I just threw that
15:53
Speaker 6: in pro bono.
15:54
Speaker 1: And bananas.
15:56
Speaker 6: Bananas are good. Yeah, I like them. Actually, I had
15:59
Speaker 6: a really squishy banana on my lunch yesterday, probably the
16:01
Speaker 6: fruitflies would have liked it better than me. I'm just
16:03
Speaker 6: thinking that's but that's too much information. Let's go back
16:06
Speaker 6: to the story, all right. So on the AX four
16:09
Speaker 6: flight is an experiment that NASA scientists are hoping will
16:14
Speaker 6: help us better understand the effects of space travel on
16:17
Speaker 6: the human body, particularly on something called the DNA repair process.
16:24
Speaker 6: Here's what happens. There are elements in the space environment,
16:29
Speaker 6: such as cosmic radiation that can damage our DNA, and
16:34
Speaker 6: if it damages our DNA strings, that's what our body
16:38
Speaker 6: uses to rep for the replication process to produce new
16:42
Speaker 6: cells that help us rebuild our muscles and our brain
16:45
Speaker 6: tissue and all the important parts of our organs. So
16:48
Speaker 6: we want those DNA strands intact. We don't want them
16:52
Speaker 6: to be disrupted by cosmic radiation because if our body
16:55
Speaker 6: starts replicated on damage DNA, that can lead to things
16:59
Speaker 6: like cams and so that's not good. So the one
17:03
Speaker 6: thing that we share in common with fruitflies is that
17:06
Speaker 6: they rebuild their DNA code in much the same way
17:09
Speaker 6: that we do. It's not that we share the same
17:13
Speaker 6: pant sizes, and we certainly can't use their glasses because
17:18
Speaker 6: they have more eyes than us. So it's all those
17:20
Speaker 6: things are not in common how and they have wings
17:24
Speaker 6: we don't, at least most of us don't. So and
17:27
Speaker 6: then so let's ignore those characteristics, but let's look at
17:30
Speaker 6: the way that they replicate their DNA and how that
17:33
Speaker 6: might be affected by the space environment. That is what
17:35
Speaker 6: they're doing, all right. So, because humans and fruitflies share
17:38
Speaker 6: a lot of this process of repairing their genetic codes,
17:43
Speaker 6: we do a lot of experiments on the International Space
17:45
Speaker 6: Station with fruitflies, and for one reason is they're just
17:48
Speaker 6: cheaper to take to space than Michael Strahan. He's too big.
17:54
Speaker 6: We love that Michael Strahan went to space. We can
17:57
Speaker 6: talk about later whether he's an astronaut or not he is,
18:02
Speaker 6: but for sure he's not as small as a fruit fly,
18:05
Speaker 6: definitely not. He's going to take a little bit more
18:08
Speaker 6: infrastructure to go to space than a fruitfly. So, if
18:11
Speaker 6: we're going to perform DNA experiments on someone, and your
18:15
Speaker 6: choice is Michael Strahan, who's a big fellow, and a
18:20
Speaker 6: fruitfly who's a small fellow, you want to take the
18:24
Speaker 6: fruit flies and lots of their friends because you can
18:27
Speaker 6: do a lot more experimenting. See, there's what we're up
18:31
Speaker 6: to right. So, through a New Space Act agreement between
18:34
Speaker 6: NASA and Axiom Space, Axiom is agreed to transport NASA
18:38
Speaker 6: experiments on board the AX four flight, including the quote
18:42
Speaker 6: vented flybox vented v n ted sounds like they might escape.
18:47
Speaker 6: I don't know. Well, I'm not responsible for looking at over,
18:51
Speaker 6: but I have some students who might be responsible for
18:53
Speaker 6: looking at over over at their former students working over
18:56
Speaker 6: at Marshall Space Flight Center working with the astronauts on
18:58
Speaker 6: board the International Space Station. And if they're listening today, guys,
19:01
Speaker 6: just make sure you check out the vented flybox, because
19:04
Speaker 6: you know, you would just want to double check make
19:06
Speaker 6: sure that the flies don't get out.
19:09
Speaker 5: We don't need super ones or anything. The article I
19:11
Speaker 5: found the article that i'd been reading, and it's, I guess,
19:15
Speaker 5: talking about some of those same things, but this specifically,
19:18
Speaker 5: and I think what got my attention is it was
19:20
Speaker 5: talking about neurodegeneration and fruitflies sort of like Alzheimer's disease,
19:25
Speaker 5: and they're trying to figure out how that generates their
19:27
Speaker 5: death and what we could possibly connect with all that
19:30
Speaker 5: pretty fascinating stuff. I would have never guessed, Hey, fruitflies
19:33
Speaker 5: could be the key to fighting cancer and possibly Alzheimer's disease.
19:37
Speaker 1: That's wild.
19:38
Speaker 6: It's amazing, isn't it. You know, it's you know, neurodegeneration
19:42
Speaker 6: and DNA repair. We just share a lot more with
19:47
Speaker 6: fruitflies than I ever realized.
19:49
Speaker 1: Me too.
19:49
Speaker 5: It jumped out at me and I thought, well, and
19:51
Speaker 5: then it started talking about doing some kind of experiments
19:55
Speaker 5: to help them live longer, and I was like.
19:56
Speaker 6: I mean, I don't want to harm anybody's self esteem,
19:58
Speaker 6: but you know, if there's if you look in the
20:01
Speaker 6: mirror and you just go wow, I just I'm a
20:03
Speaker 6: lot like a fruit fly. It's not you, it's the
20:05
Speaker 6: DNA code.
20:06
Speaker 5: Sometimes it feel like I have a hard enough time
20:09
Speaker 5: trying to grab them when they when they're in the
20:11
Speaker 5: kitchen somewhere, and you're you know, I don't need a
20:13
Speaker 5: super one fighting back.
20:14
Speaker 1: We don't.
20:14
Speaker 6: They're definitely faster than I am.
20:16
Speaker 1: They are, no doubt.
20:18
Speaker 5: Coming up after a quick break, we're going to talk
20:20
Speaker 5: about the not so pink Strawberry Moon.
20:23
Speaker 1: We'll do that next.
20:43
Speaker 5: Really bum because on this trip to Australia coming up,
20:46
Speaker 5: I'm probably not going to get to see Graham Hobson
20:49
Speaker 5: because he's the singer of our theme song for the show,
20:53
Speaker 5: and I'm not going to be going to his hometown.
20:55
Speaker 5: And we were just discussing that a couple of days ago,
20:58
Speaker 5: and I was like, I don't think we're taking it
21:00
Speaker 5: to Brisbane this time. So anyway, but we appreciate Graham
21:04
Speaker 5: for giving us that, did he not? Yeah, we've we
21:09
Speaker 5: really appreciate it.
21:10
Speaker 6: You know, Graham, you and I have never met, but
21:13
Speaker 6: I would just like to say thank you. It's a
21:15
Speaker 6: great theme song. It demands attention. We love the part
21:19
Speaker 6: about New Mexico or Mars. It's just the best. So
21:23
Speaker 6: he understood the assignment.
21:25
Speaker 5: Yeah, when he volunteered to do it, he listened to
21:27
Speaker 5: like two of our shows maybe and he goes, I
21:29
Speaker 5: got it, and then he just that was the first
21:31
Speaker 5: thing he wrote. There was a couple two little notes
21:34
Speaker 5: in it that we tweaked. I think that was it,
21:36
Speaker 5: and then otherwise it was dead on it and it.
21:38
Speaker 6: Just captures the spirit of what we do here.
21:40
Speaker 5: Ninety nine percent of that is all him. So other
21:44
Speaker 5: than my tiny little notes that were there, that was it.
21:46
Speaker 5: So anyway, all right, So we get excited whenever there's
21:50
Speaker 5: a story that gets people talking about anything to do
21:53
Speaker 5: with space and staring at the sky. That's always a
21:56
Speaker 5: good thing. It is almost always, it's usually a good thing. Now,
22:00
Speaker 5: occasionally we get these stories that we're glad that people
22:04
Speaker 5: are talking about the moon and talking about cool events,
22:06
Speaker 5: and really there's a more significant thing to this than hey,
22:10
Speaker 5: the moon's going to be pink, because that were the
22:13
Speaker 5: pictures that were posted, were all these photoshop pictures of
22:16
Speaker 5: pink moon, saying what's going to be the strawberry moon?
22:19
Speaker 5: And I already had a couple of people go.
22:21
Speaker 1: It's not pink.
22:22
Speaker 5: I don't understand. It's a little orangeish, but it's not pink,
22:25
Speaker 5: And it's like, hey, don't believe everything on the internet.
22:28
Speaker 5: I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who wrote that on Twitter.
22:31
Speaker 5: So let's talk about the strawberry moon, what it is
22:34
Speaker 5: and why, what's actually really cool about it? More so
22:37
Speaker 5: than just it's the strawberry moon, but the significance of
22:40
Speaker 5: this major lunar standstill.
22:42
Speaker 6: I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who named the strawberry moon,
22:45
Speaker 6: probably because I read that on Facebook.
22:48
Speaker 1: Yeah that's true, think he did.
22:50
Speaker 6: He was I can't remember Twitter, I don't know. Yeah,
22:53
Speaker 6: it's one of those one of those something. Okay, let's
22:56
Speaker 6: get serious. Hey, space dot com has an article about
22:58
Speaker 6: the strawberry moon, as does everyone else. Okay, so the
23:02
Speaker 6: strawberry moon, as we're recording the show, happened within the
23:05
Speaker 6: last twelve hours. So it was a full moon, the
23:07
Speaker 6: full moon of June. It's always called the strawberry moon.
23:12
Speaker 6: Not because it's pink, pa nk pink. Not because it's pink,
23:17
Speaker 6: as they say down here where we are, Not because
23:19
Speaker 6: it's pink. It's because it's because, friends, the strawberries come
23:24
Speaker 6: out at the same time as the full moon. See,
23:28
Speaker 6: this is when you might start finding wild strawberries at
23:31
Speaker 6: their peak ripeness. So found the Native Americans who began
23:35
Speaker 6: to call it a strawberry moon because they knew which one.
23:39
Speaker 6: See they knew which one, you know, because they measured
23:42
Speaker 6: its position in the sky very very carefully. And to me,
23:47
Speaker 6: even though you might have gone out last night looking
23:48
Speaker 6: for a pink moon, and if you did and didn't
23:50
Speaker 6: see one, you were disappointed about that, please don't blame astronomy,
23:54
Speaker 6: because it's not astronomy's fault. Here's where astronomy is cool.
23:59
Speaker 6: Not only was it the Strawberry Moon that happens every June,
24:04
Speaker 6: just the nickname for the full moon in June. It
24:07
Speaker 6: was also something called a major lunar standstill, which only
24:11
Speaker 6: happens every eighteen point six years. In fact, it's on
24:14
Speaker 6: an eighteen point six year cycle. Well, what in the
24:17
Speaker 6: world is that, doctor Cruisin, I'm here to tell you.
24:21
Speaker 6: Because of the position of the tilt of the axis
24:26
Speaker 6: of the Earth in June, which tilts the northern hemisphere
24:30
Speaker 6: toward the Sun, we have something called summer, and the
24:35
Speaker 6: first day of summer is somewhere on or around the
24:38
Speaker 6: twenty first of June, which is just days away, you
24:41
Speaker 6: might notice. And so this full moon is particularly close
24:44
Speaker 6: to that day that we call the summer solstice. Okay,
24:48
Speaker 6: that's one thing, but to get a major lunar standstill,
24:52
Speaker 6: you have to have a second thing. And the second
24:55
Speaker 6: thing is this. The Moon is tilted in its orbit
25:01
Speaker 6: around the Earth relative to the Earth's orbit around the Sun.
25:07
Speaker 6: It's like wearing two hats and the brim of the
25:11
Speaker 6: second hat doesn't line up with the brim of the
25:13
Speaker 6: first hat. They're tilted relative to each other. See how
25:17
Speaker 6: that goes. And so the Moon's orbit around Earth is
25:20
Speaker 6: tilted relative to the Earth's orbit around the Sun, like
25:24
Speaker 6: you're wearing two hats and their brims don't line up.
25:27
Speaker 6: Now here's the fun part. When you have a particularly
25:30
Speaker 6: high sun in the sky, like on the twenty first
25:34
Speaker 6: of June, you have particularly low full moons. That happens
25:39
Speaker 6: every June, so the highest that the June full moon
25:43
Speaker 6: gets above the horizon is quite a bit lower than
25:46
Speaker 6: it does the rest of the year. But then you
25:49
Speaker 6: have that second effect of the two tilted hats, and
25:53
Speaker 6: the moon is also at its lowest point in the
25:57
Speaker 6: south relative to the Earth's orbit around the Sun because
26:02
Speaker 6: of its own tilt. So it's a compounded effect, and
26:07
Speaker 6: that only happens every roughly nineteen years. And the ancient
26:12
Speaker 6: Native Americans of the American Southwest, also native cultures throughout
26:18
Speaker 6: South America, knew this phenomenon very well and actually built
26:23
Speaker 6: massive monuments that were aligned not just with the rising
26:28
Speaker 6: and setting sun on certain days like the winter solstice
26:31
Speaker 6: or the summer solstice or the equinoxes, which we've all heard,
26:35
Speaker 6: but also they lined up entire structures with the moon's
26:40
Speaker 6: major and minor lunar standstills, both north and south of
26:45
Speaker 6: the celestial equator, which is all amazingly impressive because this
26:49
Speaker 6: thing that I tried to explain to you the listeners
26:54
Speaker 6: out there in the theater of the mind, I tried
26:56
Speaker 6: to use the two hat example. They knew this too
27:00
Speaker 6: within well, let's just say this a high degree of precision.
27:04
Speaker 6: They knew the positions of these moons as they rose
27:07
Speaker 6: and as they set on the northern and southern parts
27:11
Speaker 6: of the western and eastern horizons. That's not a small
27:15
Speaker 6: feat because it takes twenty years to see it once.
27:20
Speaker 6: In order to get this high precision, they had to
27:22
Speaker 6: see it maybe ten times, So that culture had to
27:27
Speaker 6: be observing with this high rate of precision for a
27:30
Speaker 6: couple of one hundred years before they built those monuments
27:34
Speaker 6: that lined up with these standstills. If you want to
27:37
Speaker 6: know more about this, go search online. A place called
27:42
Speaker 6: Choco Canyon Cchaco Canyon that is in northwestern New Mexico.
27:49
Speaker 6: I have taken college students there many times, and we've
27:52
Speaker 6: actually measured with our modern compasses, because we have such things,
27:57
Speaker 6: and we have math and numbers and such, we actually
28:00
Speaker 6: measured the alignments of these structures out there in the
28:02
Speaker 6: desert southwest of the United States and found indeed that
28:05
Speaker 6: they were aligned with certain astronomical alignments like the major
28:10
Speaker 6: lunar standstill. So if you knew all of that going
28:12
Speaker 6: into last night's Strawberry Moon, and you weren't just looking
28:15
Speaker 6: for the color pink, good on your friend. And I
28:20
Speaker 6: have high confidence that that might be you, because you're
28:22
Speaker 6: listening to this podcast.
28:23
Speaker 4: It's true.
28:24
Speaker 6: Good on you a second time.
28:26
Speaker 5: Yeah, or you're listening and you're going but.
28:28
Speaker 4: I wanted a pink moon.
28:30
Speaker 1: I thought I was getting a pink.
28:32
Speaker 6: And at that point I might suggest other podcasts that
28:34
Speaker 6: you could listen to. No, no, no, no, well this
28:38
Speaker 6: one we'll always Lady Barry has a podcast. Maybe I
28:42
Speaker 6: don't know.
28:43
Speaker 5: I'm wondering if maybe, now we've said pink so much,
28:46
Speaker 5: maybe Pink needs to go to space and come back
28:48
Speaker 5: and the two of them could do a show together
28:51
Speaker 5: about me.
28:51
Speaker 6: She spilled her name pa n K. I'm not sure.
28:54
Speaker 5: Uh, actually she spells it p upside down exclamation point NK.
29:01
Speaker 5: I know because I've got a platinum record in my
29:03
Speaker 5: office in here on the wall. Coming up after another
29:11
Speaker 5: quick break, we're going to talk about this mysterious planet
29:15
Speaker 5: sending all kinds of fun stuff our way, including radio we.
29:18
Speaker 6: Love you, paint by the way, we love you.
29:35
Speaker 5: All Right, So I've got friends that got really excited
29:38
Speaker 5: when they heard the story about, oh my gosh, there's
29:40
Speaker 5: something that's blasting radio waves towards us at a very
29:46
Speaker 5: specific frequency, like happening seemingly on a cycle, and they're going,
29:51
Speaker 5: what's going on there. We've blasted radio waves out into
29:55
Speaker 5: space ourselves, haven't we. So I guess that's reason enough
29:58
Speaker 5: to go, huh.
30:00
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is a weird story because it's another one
30:04
Speaker 6: of those that we just don't know what it is like.
30:07
Speaker 6: So there are times when observational astronomers like myself, who
30:13
Speaker 6: point telescopes of various kinds at the sky and actually
30:16
Speaker 6: take data, we usually can match those right on up
30:21
Speaker 6: with some physical circumstance out there in the universe that's
30:24
Speaker 6: been predicted to exist or has been known to exist
30:28
Speaker 6: because of the theoretical astrophysicists who do all that great
30:31
Speaker 6: modeling and things on computers back in the day on chalkboards,
30:36
Speaker 6: but now on computers, right. So there's just times though
30:42
Speaker 6: that their math predicts something that we've never seen with
30:45
Speaker 6: our telescopes, or as in this case, our telescopes are
30:49
Speaker 6: seeing something that they haven't caught up with with the
30:53
Speaker 6: math end of things yet, and that's what this story
30:56
Speaker 6: is about. This story is about something that has been
30:59
Speaker 6: observed by the NASA's Chandra X ray Observatory, and it's
31:04
Speaker 6: caught a blasting of X ray radiation, which we've seen before,
31:12
Speaker 6: so that alone isn't weird, but it's also blasting out
31:18
Speaker 6: at the same time that radio waves are blasting out, which, okay,
31:22
Speaker 6: that narrows things a little bit. Objects out there are
31:25
Speaker 6: usually producing either radio waves in abundance or X rays
31:29
Speaker 6: in abundance, but not both in abundance. They produce both,
31:33
Speaker 6: but not both in abundance, so that already makes it
31:36
Speaker 6: a little strange. But now here's the weird thing. It's
31:42
Speaker 6: a flash of both radio waves and X rays for
31:46
Speaker 6: a two minute period, which is a long time, and
31:52
Speaker 6: it's happening every forty four minutes, which is also a
31:58
Speaker 6: long time. Now you may think, well, the universe is
32:01
Speaker 6: billions of years old, how can forty four minutes be
32:03
Speaker 6: a long time. It's a long time for the kinds
32:06
Speaker 6: of objects that usually blast out X rays and radio waves,
32:11
Speaker 6: because usually those are the cores of collapse stars, and
32:15
Speaker 6: they're things like neutron stars or white dwarfs or even
32:19
Speaker 6: black holes, and those things usually spin very very rapidly,
32:23
Speaker 6: and so if we're getting pulse radiation from space, it's
32:27
Speaker 6: usually due to a collapsed object like a neutron star,
32:31
Speaker 6: and those happen on the scales of milliseconds, so they
32:37
Speaker 6: can be very very powerful sources of radiation like either
32:41
Speaker 6: X rays or radio waves, usually radio waves, and they
32:45
Speaker 6: only happen in either milliseconds or microseconds or you know,
32:50
Speaker 6: some fractions. Some of them are like on the order
32:53
Speaker 6: of one second, that's a pretty slow spinning neutron star.
32:57
Speaker 6: But every forty four minutes, that's yirdle the turtle. Friends,
33:02
Speaker 6: that's not something that's moving very fast. That's really slow.
33:06
Speaker 6: And the fact that the blast of both X rays
33:09
Speaker 6: and radio waves lasts for a period of two minutes,
33:11
Speaker 6: well the period of like think of like a blinker
33:14
Speaker 6: on a car on, off, on, off, Right, if your
33:17
Speaker 6: blinker stays on for two minutes and it only flashes
33:21
Speaker 6: every forty four minutes, no one's gonna know you're turning.
33:25
Speaker 6: They're thinking that you just have a problem with your
33:27
Speaker 6: brick light. They didn't understand that it's that actual turn indicator.
33:32
Speaker 6: So that's that's kind of the situation with this weird
33:35
Speaker 6: object called askap J eighteen thirty two dashes zero nine
33:42
Speaker 6: eleven rolls off the tongue. Friends, that's a catalog number.
33:45
Speaker 6: They haven't given it a name yet. It's just a
33:47
Speaker 6: catalog number from the Chanter X ray Observatory, And so
33:49
Speaker 6: it's one of the phenomenon that is now known as
33:52
Speaker 6: long period transients, a long period transient which is both
33:59
Speaker 6: a high energy X ray and a very low energy
34:02
Speaker 6: radio wave burst of light simultaneously for a long period
34:07
Speaker 6: of time, and then even longer period in between flashes.
34:12
Speaker 6: We just don't have an explanation right now for what
34:15
Speaker 6: is going on. There's a guy from the team of researchers,
34:19
Speaker 6: which by the way, is down Under again. We're back
34:21
Speaker 6: to Australia at Curtin University. His name is Andy Wong,
34:24
Speaker 6: and Andy said in a statement, this object is unlike
34:28
Speaker 6: anything we have seen before. Remember, friends, in the context
34:33
Speaker 6: of Andy's quote, we have seen literally billions of objects.
34:39
Speaker 6: Astronomers have observed billions of objects in the universe, and
34:43
Speaker 6: we can almost always put them in some kind of
34:45
Speaker 6: a bin and understand what's going on. But now let
34:49
Speaker 6: me reread Andy's statement. This object is unlike anything we've
34:54
Speaker 6: seen before. Andy goes on to say this discovery could
34:57
Speaker 6: indicate a new type of physics or new models of
35:02
Speaker 6: stellar evolution unquote. Those are bold claims, friends, and bold claims,
35:08
Speaker 6: as we know, require significant evidence to back them up.
35:13
Speaker 6: So we're just beginning this journey. We're just now heading
35:15
Speaker 6: down this new road of some very entertaining physics because
35:19
Speaker 6: we just don't know what's causing this thing to switch
35:22
Speaker 6: on and switch off at these long intervals, but yet
35:26
Speaker 6: regular and unusual intervals. It's a weird new branch of physics.
35:31
Speaker 6: Read all about it on space dot com.
35:34
Speaker 5: All right, let's talk about Dave Scott.
35:36
Speaker 6: Shall we I love talking about Dave Scott, and to
35:39
Speaker 6: honor America and the American space program, we're gonna have
35:43
Speaker 6: some We're gonna have some Apollo fifteen highlights coming up.
35:46
Speaker 6: I think Wes is gonna tell you about that here
35:48
Speaker 6: at the end of the show on some of the
35:49
Speaker 6: upcoming shows. But we have a special connection with the
35:52
Speaker 6: Apollo fifteen astronauts here at the Coca Cola Space Science
35:55
Speaker 6: Center in Columbus, Georgia. And that's primarily because David Scott,
35:59
Speaker 6: the command under of Apollo fifteen, has donated many artifacts
36:03
Speaker 6: to a very large collection that we now have here
36:05
Speaker 6: at Coca Cola Space Science Center through his brother Tom.
36:09
Speaker 6: And by the way, Tom, if you're listening to the podcast,
36:11
Speaker 6: we really appreciate you and facilitating all of these great
36:14
Speaker 6: donations from the American hero David Scott, commander of Apollo fifteen.
36:19
Speaker 6: We now have so many of these pieces of memorabilia
36:22
Speaker 6: and photographs from Dave's personal collection through his brother Tom,
36:26
Speaker 6: donated to us here at Columbus State University and the
36:28
Speaker 6: Coca Cola Space Science Center that we can't put them
36:31
Speaker 6: all on display in our exhibit gallery. It's too small
36:34
Speaker 6: and it's too already pack jammed with other cool fun things.
36:37
Speaker 6: So we have a very important collaboration with the Bo
36:40
Speaker 6: Bartlett Center, which is an art gallery at Columbus State
36:43
Speaker 6: University just down the street from us about three blocks
36:46
Speaker 6: here on Front Avenue in downtown or uptown as the
36:50
Speaker 6: case maybe Columbus Georgia. You can walk literally three blocks
36:54
Speaker 6: down the street from the Space Science Center, go in
36:56
Speaker 6: and visit the Bo Bartlett Gallery between the hours of
36:59
Speaker 6: eleven am and Tuesday through Saturday and see the extended
37:04
Speaker 6: collection from astronaut David Scott, who flew on three Apollo missions,
37:08
Speaker 6: Gemini eight, which is an adventure story all to its own,
37:12
Speaker 6: Apollo nine, which was a very important dress rehearsal for
37:15
Speaker 6: the moon landing, and Apollo fifteen, where Dave Scott himself
37:19
Speaker 6: became the first American, first person at all to drive
37:23
Speaker 6: a motorized vehicle on the surface of another world. He
37:26
Speaker 6: was the first person to drive a car on the Moon,
37:29
Speaker 6: which is pretty fun. On that mission Apollo fifteen with
37:34
Speaker 6: Dave was Al Warden, another very important astronaut in America's
37:40
Speaker 6: space program. Al Warden has actually visited us here at
37:44
Speaker 6: the Coca Cola Space Science Center. He was the command
37:46
Speaker 6: module pilot, which is what I was stumbling over only
37:48
Speaker 6: moments ago. He was the command module pilot aboard the
37:51
Speaker 6: Apollo fifteen mission. In other words, he was the ride home.
37:55
Speaker 6: He stayed in orbit and flew and did many experiments
37:58
Speaker 6: and took all kinds of import and topographical photographs of
38:01
Speaker 6: the Moon from orbit in Apaula fifteen while James Irwin
38:06
Speaker 6: and Dave Scott drove around on the surface of the Moon.
38:08
Speaker 6: So what I'm telling you today, friends, is you can
38:11
Speaker 6: see many photographs from this historic collection from David Scott.
38:16
Speaker 6: Also a patch that went to the Moon with Dave
38:19
Speaker 6: himself and is now on display at the bo Bartlett
38:22
Speaker 6: Center here at Columbus State University. Check out all the
38:25
Speaker 6: details online at our website here at the Coca Cola
38:29
Speaker 6: Space Science Center, visit www dot cc SSC dot org,
38:35
Speaker 6: Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org.
38:38
Speaker 5: And as Sean pointed out, we'll have that Dave Scott
38:41
Speaker 5: tribute show coming up on July third, right before Independence Day,
38:45
Speaker 5: and then our Al Warden interview tribute for him on
38:48
Speaker 5: the twenty sixth of June, So those are both coming
38:53
Speaker 5: up sewn and I thank you for listening, and we
38:55
Speaker 5: will do this again next week. Overhead Door Company of
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