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Auroras and Equinoxes Are Pretty Much BFFs · Made of Stars

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Warning, the following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: expand their vocabulary to include terms like quasar, asterism, and Uranus.
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  Speaker 1: Listen at your own risk. Go ahead.
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  Speaker 2: We're made of stars.
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  Speaker 3: Made of stars. Made of stars.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: We're made of stars.
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  Speaker 3: We really are. You could be from Hollywood, New Mexico,
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: or Mars. We're all made of stars.
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  Speaker 2: We are Made of Stars. I'm Wes Carroll, joined by
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  Speaker 2: my good friend, Dr. Sean Kruzan. He's the executive director
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: at Columbus State University's Coca-Cola Space Science Center. Hey, Sean.
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  Speaker 3: Good morning, Wes. Happy Equinox week.
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  Speaker 2: You know, we talk about this sometimes. Well, I mean,
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  Speaker 2: a couple times a year we talk about equinox stuff.
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  Speaker 3: As it turns out.
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  Speaker 2: Twice a year.
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  Speaker 3: It comes up somehow.
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  Speaker 2: But we talk about it, you and I, personally. I
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  Speaker 2: talk with friends about it because there's differing philosophies on
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  Speaker 2: this whole idea of when fall starts or spring starts
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  Speaker 2: and all that. And I know that we have this
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  Speaker 2: astronomical thing, and that's– certainly one of those standards. And
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  Speaker 2: for a lot of people, that's the standard of when
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  Speaker 2: it happens. I just kind of tend to think that
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  Speaker 2: when you get to the Burr months, it's fall. And
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  Speaker 2: I know we haven't felt like fall for, well, really
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  Speaker 2: until like today. But September certainly hasn't felt like fall.
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  Speaker 2: And that's one of the reasons that people kind of
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  Speaker 2: go on this guideline of this equinox thing. And I
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  Speaker 2: just kind of think of those, you know, three month,
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  Speaker 2: three month, three month, three month. And, but, but that's
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  Speaker 2: not really the way it works here, especially in the Southeast,
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  Speaker 2: some parts of the world, they don't even get that.
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  Speaker 2: And last year we actually kind of got a fall
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  Speaker 2: and I don't know that we're really going to get
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  Speaker 2: a whole lot of one this year based on what
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  Speaker 2: everybody's saying. But anyway, So it comes up when we
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  Speaker 2: get to the equinox, and it's fun to say autumnal equinox.
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  Speaker 2: So I like talking about it because it's just a
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  Speaker 2: fun couple of words to put together. But we're there.
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  Speaker 2: We're now into the astronomical start of fall.
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  Speaker 3: So.
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  Speaker 2: let's talk about like Aurora's and what it means for
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  Speaker 2: Aurora Borealis and, and all of that as, as we
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  Speaker 2: get into, uh, into the fall season. Oh, no, you.
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  Speaker 3: Don't my friend. Oh no, you, you're not teeing me
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  Speaker 3: up with that whole other seasons conversation and then jumping
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  Speaker 3: right into.
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  Speaker 2: The, I don't want to, I do. I just didn't
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  Speaker 2: know if you, okay, well, I didn't know if you
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  Speaker 2: wanted to get into it again. Cause we've talked about it.
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  Speaker 3: I am so into it.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: So like, All those, you know, your morning TV personalities
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  Speaker 3: want to get and go, hey, everybody, it's the first
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  Speaker 3: day of fall.
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  Speaker 2: First and foremost, the ones most likely to do that
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  Speaker 2: are ones that still use the term hump day on Wednesday.
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  Speaker 2: And there's no excuse for that. There's no excuse for
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  Speaker 2: the hump day shenanigans. But anyway, back to you.
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  Speaker 3: So. I mean, maybe these are just the broadcasters I
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  Speaker 3: grew up with, so they're somehow imprinted on my brain forever.
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  Speaker 3: But it was something along those lines. By the way,
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  Speaker 3: I was one time, as we've discussed on the show before,
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  Speaker 3: a broadcast major. So that was my first major in college.
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  Speaker 3: And then I dropped out and had a bad series
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  Speaker 3: of events that I turned to physics. And it's been
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  Speaker 3: downhill ever since. But anyway, all right. So broadcasters, they're
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  Speaker 3: talking about the first day of fall. Okay, yeah, I guess...
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  Speaker 3: Time-honored tradition. We have talked about the vernal equinox, which
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  Speaker 3: is its own thing, as also being the kickoff to
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  Speaker 3: the fall season.
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  Speaker 2: Wait, wait, wait. You said vernal. I just want to
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  Speaker 2: make sure. Well, I'm sorry. Autumnal. I thought we were
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  Speaker 2: going to address some difference between spring and fall, and
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  Speaker 2: I went, wait a minute.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you for catching me. This is my brain thinking
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  Speaker 3: about the next thing I'm going to say before I
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  Speaker 3: finish the thing I'm saying, which is why I did
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  Speaker 3: not go into a career in broadcasting. Okay. So one
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  Speaker 3: of many reasons, but.
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  Speaker 2: Anyway, I did go into a career in broadcasting and
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  Speaker 2: I do still screw things up all the time, but anyway,
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  Speaker 2: go ahead.
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  Speaker 3: Fair catch though.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 3: So autumnal equinox, first day of fall. So, so here's
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  Speaker 3: the thing. If we brought our, you know, one of
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  Speaker 3: our friends on like, oh, I don't know, Derek Kincaid or,
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  Speaker 3: you know, somebody like that. So a TV meteorologist in
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  Speaker 3: our local market. And, and we said, Hey, what about meteorology? Well,
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  Speaker 3: meteorologists have their own seasons. They consider that same autumnal
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  Speaker 3: equinox to be the midpoint of the season, as you
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  Speaker 3: just described, right? So we're kind of midpoint to fall,
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  Speaker 3: and we have a few more weeks of that, but
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  Speaker 3: then we're going to have the winter season start before
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  Speaker 3: the thing that actually happens in the sky that you
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  Speaker 3: and I would call the winter solstice. And so there's
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  Speaker 3: room for debate, let's just put it that way, between
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  Speaker 3: the astronomical and meteorological boundaries for seasons. And since you
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  Speaker 3: brought it up, I will just say I don't really
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  Speaker 3: want to have any of that debate. They can all
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  Speaker 3: fight over that however they want. We do know this.
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  Speaker 3: In the snowy state of Colorado where I grew up,
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  Speaker 3: by December, it's cold outside.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: And it's been cold outside for a while. And by
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  Speaker 3: December 21st, it may have already snowed two or three times.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: In fact, it's already snowed in the mountains of Colorado now.
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  Speaker 3: So to your point, that is some fall-like weather already
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  Speaker 3: beginning before this week where we marked the autumnal equinox.
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  Speaker 3: All right, so just to complete this because this has
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  Speaker 3: absolutely nothing to do, well, very little to do with
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  Speaker 3: the story we're about to talk about, but we might
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  Speaker 3: as well go ahead and complete it. What is an equinox?
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  Speaker 3: Equinox means in Latin equal night. That means equal hours
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  Speaker 3: of daylight and darkness. That's because the sun is crossing
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  Speaker 3: what we know in the sky as the celestial equator,
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  Speaker 3: and therefore the tilt of the Earth's axis is neither
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  Speaker 3: pointing toward the sun nor away from the sun, but
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  Speaker 3: off at a 90 degree angle. That happens again in
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  Speaker 3: the spring, except it's tilting the other way, but it's
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  Speaker 3: another 90 degree angle to the right or to the left. Anyway,
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  Speaker 3: so that happens again in the spring. We call that
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  Speaker 3: the vernal equinox, which I incorrectly spoke a moment ago,
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  Speaker 3: but vernal means green, so that's the equal number of
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  Speaker 3: hours of daylight and darkness that happen around the time
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  Speaker 3: when things are getting green in the Northern hemisphere. We
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  Speaker 3: have to always be ultra specific about these kinds of things,
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  Speaker 3: but those are actually astronomical events. Whereas the actual start
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  Speaker 3: of seasons, a little harder to pin down. So I'm
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  Speaker 3: just going to leave it there.
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  Speaker 2: There's that.
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  Speaker 3: Now there's the story where the story we're going to
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  Speaker 3: talk about, which if you're a long time listener, you've heard,
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  Speaker 3: you've heard Wes and I talk about this before. It's
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  Speaker 3: something called the Russell McFerrin effect.
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  Speaker 2: That's it.
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  Speaker 3: Don't worry. Be happy.
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  Speaker 2: Can't do much more of it or we might get
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  Speaker 2: in trouble.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, if you were dead on pitch, that might
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  Speaker 3: be true, but I don't know. Maybe varied enough that
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  Speaker 3: we can get by the copyrights.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know that I've been dead on pitch since
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  Speaker 2: I played Little League Baseball.
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  Speaker 3: Anyway. So here's, I will tell you something. We've made
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  Speaker 3: this joke a lot. And again, long time listeners are like, oh,
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  Speaker 3: they're making that joke again. There it is. Okay, you're right.
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  Speaker 3: So the Russell McFerrin effect simply states that there are
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  Speaker 3: more likely to be more geomagnetic storms from interactions with
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  Speaker 3: the sun and its activity around the equinoxes than there
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  Speaker 3: are at other times during the year. Now, This is
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  Speaker 3: due to when the axis neither tilts toward the sun
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  Speaker 3: nor away from the sun, it actually lines up the
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  Speaker 3: Earth's magnetic field with the solar magnetic field in sort
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  Speaker 3: of an unusual way that creates magnetic pathways or portals
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  Speaker 3: that allow the streaming solar wind from the sun to
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  Speaker 3: more readily penetrate the Earth's magnetic field, getting down into
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  Speaker 3: the atmosphere and causing the reaction with molecules in the
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  Speaker 3: Earth's atmosphere that we call the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis.
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  Speaker 3: If you're in Australia or New Zealand, for all of
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  Speaker 3: our listeners down there, including you, Graham, it's called the
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  Speaker 3: Southern Lights, the Aurora Australis, but it's the same kind
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  Speaker 3: of interaction that's taking place. That effect happens more in
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  Speaker 3: September and October and March and April than it does
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  Speaker 3: throughout the rest of the year. And there were two
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  Speaker 3: scientists by the name of Russell and McFerrin At UCLA,
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  Speaker 3: who realized this effect and first defined it in 1973.
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  Speaker 3: And then the joke is that, you know, then Wes
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  Speaker 3: and I always kind of make references to the Bobby
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  Speaker 3: McFerrin song. Well, I'm going to tell you something that
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  Speaker 3: I did not know up until researching this time. The
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  Speaker 3: researcher named McFerrin is actually Robert McFerrin. So it is
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  Speaker 3: Bobby McFerrin.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, you can't make it up. It almost sounds unbelievable,
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  Speaker 2: doesn't it?
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  Speaker 3: It does. It's certainly not beyond the capacity to make
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: certain things up on this show. We probably have done
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  Speaker 3: that from time to time, just for the sake of humor.
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  Speaker 3: But this is real. His name is actually Robert McFerrin,
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  Speaker 3: which I just found out in preparation for the show today. Anyway, 2026,
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  Speaker 3: the autumnal equinox happened on September 22nd. So if there
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  Speaker 3: are any interactions between an accentuated outpouring of charged particles
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  Speaker 3: from the sun due to a solar flare and Earth's
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: magnetic field in the next couple of weeks, go and
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: look outside. Follow spaceweather.com. Make sure you're keeping an eye
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: on the sky because as we found out in 2024
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  Speaker 3: in October, this effect happened then, right? The Russell McFerrin
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  Speaker 3: effect made a beautiful display of the northern lights over
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  Speaker 3: the very southern state of Georgia. And Wes and I
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  Speaker 3: were there to capture that with our phone cameras. So Anyway,
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: stay tuned to spaceweather.com for updates on solar activity, but
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  Speaker 3: also just be aware that the Russell McFerrin effect is
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  Speaker 3: making Northern Lights more possible, more likely in your area,
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: no matter where your area is.
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  Speaker 2: More made of stars right after this. So we know
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: we lost Pluto as a planet because of some jerks,
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  Speaker 2: and they just didn't like Pluto, and they wanted it
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  Speaker 2: to go away and not be a planet anymore and
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: all that fun stuff. And they're like, no, no, no,
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  Speaker 2: it's a dwarf planet. All right, that's fine.
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  Speaker 1: Whatever.
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  Speaker 2: I'm not going to be happy with it. I have
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  Speaker 2: just as many issues with that as the, good morning,
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  Speaker 2: it's the first day of fall. The same thing as
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  Speaker 2: far as annoyance level. But what I found interesting about
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  Speaker 2: this next story is the fact that it's certainly not
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  Speaker 2: the only planet that we may have lost, because apparently
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: we almost had another planet, possibly, in our solar system,
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  Speaker 2: except the sun ate it.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, what?
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  Speaker 2: It's not looking so bad for Pluto now, just being
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  Speaker 2: kicked out of the planet club.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, just lost the insignia on his T-shirt. Whereas this
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  Speaker 3: is actually like being consumed by your parent, which is weird.
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  Speaker 2: Which that's not uncommon. Like, like stars do that, right?
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  Speaker 2: I mean, sometimes.
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  Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad you clarified that. Yeah, no, it's, you're right.
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  Speaker 3: It's not uncommon for stars to do that. So, all right.
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  Speaker 3: So over the history of the formation of the solar system,
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  Speaker 3: we know that many, many of these objects called proto
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: planets get created. And so, Right now, again, with Pluto
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  Speaker 3: being kicked out of the club, we're pretty much only
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  Speaker 3: counting eight. We don't even need all of the fingers
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  Speaker 3: on our hands to count up the planets if we
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: include the thumbs because there's only eight planets in our
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  Speaker 3: solar system so far. Let's not talk about accidental finger
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: loss or any of that kind of stuff.
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  Speaker 2: All right.
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  Speaker 3: So this is just a weird show today. I don't know.
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  Speaker 3: How did we get so off? But anyway, okay. So
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  Speaker 3: here we go. The sun itself shows pieces of evidence
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: that indicate that it may have swallowed a fairly large
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  Speaker 3: planet in the early part of the solar system, a
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  Speaker 3: planet larger than our own planet Earth, but with many
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  Speaker 3: of the same qualities. Now, how in the world do
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  Speaker 3: scientists pin that down? Well, first, scientists notice other things, right?
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  Speaker 3: They notice this. Because of something called helioseismology, which is
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: actually when like one of these solar flares occurs, we
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: can actually measure how the shockwave from a big explosion
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: on the sun propagates through the sun to the side
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: to side locations or down into the core and bounces
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: back up. That's very similar to what geologists do on
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: the earth when they're trying to measure the earth's interior
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: and there's an earthquake. That earthquake sends shockwaves that travel
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: through the interior of the earth and then with vibrational
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: listening stations around the Earth, geologists collect that information about
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  Speaker 3: how those waves move through the inside of the Earth,
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: and they can figure out boundary layers and how fast
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: the waves are traveling, and they can tell a lot
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  Speaker 3: about the interior of the Earth. Well, that same process
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: can be done on the Sun, and it's called helioseismology.
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  Speaker 3: So with this helioseismology, astronomers have figured out a while
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: back specialists who study the sun, that there's a weird
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  Speaker 3: oddity with the way that the speed of sound, or
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  Speaker 3: in other words, how fast these shockwaves propagate through the
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  Speaker 3: interior of the sun. There's a boundary near the bottom
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  Speaker 3: of the layer called the convection zone, and it just
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  Speaker 3: doesn't look like it travels through that part of the
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  Speaker 3: sun's interior in the way that we think it should
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  Speaker 3: based on our modeling. All right, so there's one thing,
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: a mystery to explore, okay? Here's the second thing. The
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: second thing is that we know the chemistry of what
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: we call the primeval solar nebula, or in other words,
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: the cloud of stuff that all the planets formed from,
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: because we know the chemistry of the planets that there
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: are here today. And so therefore, we expect a certain
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: level of certain chemicals. Well, it turns out that the
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: level of lithium in the sun is way more than
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: the sun is thought to have had. And why would
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: the sun end up with way more lithium than it
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: should have based on modeling of how the sun formed
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: in that early cloud? So now there's two pieces of
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: evidence that seem unrelated, but then some very bright scientist goes,
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: wait a minute, wait a minute. I wonder if I
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: can drop something into a model and have it predict
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  Speaker 3: both of these strange occurrences. the weird odd speed of
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: sound near the bottom of the convection zone, and the
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  Speaker 3: weird lithium in the sun's outer shell. And it turns
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: out that this scientist named Mutla Yaldiz, Mutla Yaldiz is
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: a professor at the IJ University in Turkey. I'll try
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: to not say that again because I'm sure I've mispronounced
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: that badly.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: But okay.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: We'll just call him Mutla Yaldiz.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Mutlu. Mutlu Aldiz.
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  Speaker 3: Okay, so Mutlu Aldiz said this. Hey, I'm going to
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: model what would happen with both the speed of sound
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: and the interior layers and boundaries of the sun and
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: with its chemistry of lithium in particular if I dropped
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: a larger-than-Earth protoplanet into the sun in its early days.
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  Speaker 3: So on the computer, bloop, in goes the model planet.
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  Speaker 3: Mix things up. Sure enough, A few billion years later,
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  Speaker 3: there's both the exact kind of inconsistency with the speed
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: of sound near the bottom of the convection zone and
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  Speaker 3: the enhanced levels of lithium in the sun's outer layers
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: that we are actually measuring today. And so Mutlu Yildiz professor,
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: he's university in Turkey. I know, I knew I shouldn't
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: have said it again, but I, I, Challenge accepted. I
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: thought I would try it one more time. Anyway, so
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: he had this quote. He said, by modeling the sun's
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: evolution and comparing the results with precise observations of its interior,
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: we find that the ingestion of a super-Earth could help
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: explain long-standing differences between standard solar models and observations, including
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: subtle changes in the sun's internal structure and its depleted
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: lithium abundance. So there you have it.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: Uh i was controlling myself and then you got to
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: five times you said speed of sound and i didn't
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: shout out cold play so i was fighting that urge
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: every single time you did it because you just have
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: to say that the artist when you hear the title
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: of the song um you know that's just uh how
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: it goes um or at least that's how it goes
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: for me so you know Uh, remember the, uh, um,
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Hawaiian tropic would do those, uh, those, uh, calendars and
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: they'd have those, uh, uh, solar models, I think would
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: be a good name for them.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: Solar models. That is a good name. And, you know, I,
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: I can only imagine what that calendar would look like
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: in a strange imagination sort of way. The heads of sun. Nevermind. Anyway,
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: I do have to, I have to make one oopsie correction.
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  Speaker 2: Uh oh.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: Depleted levels of lithium. I said there was more lithium
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: in the sun's outer atmosphere. It's actually one half of
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: what it should be, not double what it should be,
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: one half of what it should be. It's depleted levels
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: of lithium. Just for those keeping score out there, I
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: made a mistake. But still a discontinuity in lithium abundance.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: There's actually not enough lithium in today's sun relative to
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: what we think it should be.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, a brag, but I caught that. I just didn't
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: say anything.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I appreciate that. I mean, that goes right hand
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: in hand with the, you know, solar models.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I was more thinking about the solar models
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: than I was the lithium. So Nirvana also, you know,
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: got to say the name of the artist more made
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: of stars right after this.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: When it starts.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: We have a SpaceX launch scheduled for next week and
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: it's going to happen no earlier than Monday, but at
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: some point next week, that's the plan. Yeah.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: So, I mean, I couldn't get the abundances right and
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: I couldn't get the guy's name right. So what are
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: my odds on this next story? So I will tell
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: you this. We said last week on the podcast that
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: that SpaceX Starship next launch will be next week. And
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: now we're still saying it this week.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: That happens sometimes though.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: It does happen. This time, not because I could not
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: read my own story that I prepped on the show,
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: but because SpaceX actually changed the launch date. And so they,
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: for a variety of reasons, postponed the rollout of the
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: Mega Rockets booster stage to the launch pad, which then
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: that delayed the rest of the schedule. So now the
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: earliest date is no earlier than Monday, September 28th, which,
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: as we're recording the show right now, is officially next week.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: So that's next week, even though we said next week
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: last week. All right, but here's the point. The point
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: of that is this particular launch will be, if all
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: goes well, the first time SpaceX is able to put
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: their ship in orbit for the first time. you might
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: be saying, well, wait a minute. They've launched that Starship
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: ship before. Yes, they have. And those have all been
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: suborbital trajectories where that rocket climbed to a certain altitude
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: but did not achieve a sufficient altitude on purpose, by
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: the way, to go all the way around the Earth.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: And they let that ship fall back somewhere, usually into
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: the Indian Ocean, where it was recovered later or it
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: simply sank. So all of those kinds of things are true.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: But this time... all the way around the Earth in
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: the orbit that they need to achieve in order to
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: participate with the Artemis III mission. That's the goal. So
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: that means, friends, that the FAA had to give them
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: a license to orbit that vehicle. That's the way it
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: works in the United States. If you're launching spacecraft from U.S. soil,
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: the Federal Aviation Administration is the one who has to
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: provide the license. This was the first time that the
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: FAA ever granted an orbital license for an object the
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: size of Starship. It's 171 feet in length from tip
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: to tail. That's bigger than America's space shuttle. So this
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: will be the largest single launch to orbit ever from U.S. soil.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: And that is the SpaceX Starship, friends.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: All right, we talk a lot about the cool pictures
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: that we get from the James Webb Space Telescope and
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: the history of Hubble. It's always good to have these
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: stories that remind us. The pictures are certainly part of science,
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: but when we get data from these things, and then
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: that goes towards science and discoveries. And that's this next
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: story we have as some research, thanks to James Webb
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: and Hubble, giving us an idea about how massive star
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: clusters help with galaxy evolution.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so one point before we jump too deep into
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: the story is simply this. A lot of people think
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: that the James Webb Space Telescope was designed to replace Hubble.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: I think that was a lot of the language. Well,
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: it's the next generation space telescope. But now it's an
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: important time because of the story to remind ourselves that
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: they don't do the same jobs. James Webb Space Telescope
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: is an infrared telescope. It is designed to look at
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: the infrared portion of the spectrum, whereas the Hubble Space
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Telescope is primarily an optical telescope. It looks in the
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: visible light part of the spectrum, so they don't do
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: the same job, which means sometimes they can work hand
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: in hand because having information both in the infrared part
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: of the spectrum And the visible light part of the
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: spectrum is often very important. This is one of those
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: hand-in-hand stories. By the way, this story is coming to
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: us from astronomy.com. So this story is talking about how
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: the data from both JWST and Hubble on about 9,000
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: different star clusters, which, by the way, are not in
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: our own galaxy. These are clusters of stars identified in
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: four other galaxies that how that data, when added together,
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: is giving us a better idea about how galaxies themselves
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: evolved in time from their earliest periods of time where
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: the galaxy itself was very young and it hadn't formed
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: many stars yet up until today when it's more mature,
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: like our Milky Way, more mature galaxy, it's been around
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: a minute, right? So that's why we have to understand
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: the stages of the various processes of evolution and which
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: is one reason why we can't just look at the
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: Milky Way because we only see galaxies at the stage today.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: So we have to look out into space. We have
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: to look back in time as we do that because
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: of the finite speed of light. And we also have
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: to look at galaxies that we can actually see well,
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: which means ones that are not lined up with the
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: plane of the Milky Way. We have to look out
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: the top or the bottom of the Milky Way in
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: order to see these because otherwise the Milky Way itself
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: gets in the way. All right, so there's the big story. Now,
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: several of these star clusters were chosen to be observed,
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: about 9,000 of them in these neighboring galaxies. And as
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: we looked out at these neighboring galaxies, we measured these
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: star clusters. We looked at both the ultraviolet light, the
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: visible light, and the infrared light. One of Hubble's other
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: capabilities is UV. And so what we find out is
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: that these big, giant, massive star clusters apparently formed quicker
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: and had a greater effect on the environment within those
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: galaxies than their smaller cousins, which evolved more slowly. So
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: the big clusters that put out more UV evolved in
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: the first 5 million years, while the less massive ones
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: only took over seven or even eight million years to evolve.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: And so that affected how stars and where stars were
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: forming in these giant galaxies. And so because of these studies,
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: because of these data, we now understand that process of
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: very early star formation. And we realize more than ever
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: how much these massive star clusters, the largest ones, as
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: they were forming huge families of stars, really affected the
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: overall evolution evolution of galaxies more than their smaller siblings.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: And there it is.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about the upcoming start of the new season
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: for Music Under the Dome. The very first Music Under
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: the Dome of this new school year and new season
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: is coming up the first Tuesday of October.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so October the 6th is the first day of
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: Music Go to the Dome. And that concert will be
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: here at the Coca-Cola Space Science Center. It's going to
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: be a great light and sound extravaganza, friends, because the
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: students and faculty members from the Schwab School of Music
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: will be performing live inside our Omnisphere Theater. And then
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: there will be original graphics produced, choreographed to that music
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: by our own planetarium director, Lance Tankersley, this month, October 15th.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: There are different artists that will contribute to later shows,
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: but the first show of the season is going to
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: feature our own Lance Tankersley. So you can buy tickets
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: for that concert and the subsequent concerts online at the
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: Space Science Center's website. Go out and visit www.ccssc.org, charliecharliesamsamcharlie.org.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Sean and I thank you for listening, and we will
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: do this again next week. When it starts, we really are.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Overhead Door Company of Columbus has all of your garage
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: door needs covered. Residential and commercial, service and repairs. If
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: you need a new garage door or you're just looking
• 28:16
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• 28:19
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• 28:22
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