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We Could Receive Messages from Exoplanets in 2029 · Made of Stars

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Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics, and
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space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been known to learn about astronomical
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phenomenon, the scientific method, and expand the vocabulary to include terms like quasar
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asterism and uranus. Listen, that's your own risk. Go ahead. Where
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made of Stars, Made of stars? Made stars? You could be from
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Highllywood, New Mexico, Mars. Where are stars? We are made of
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stars? Joined by my good friend doctor Sean Cruising from Columba State University's Colcola
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Space Science Center. I'm Wes Carol, morning, Sean. May the fourth
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be with you. May the fourth be with you. They were doing this
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on May the fourth or anything. But you know, oh, oh we
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are actually But okay, I watched at the gym this morning a good chunk
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of rogue one while I was on the elliptical, and I couldn't help but
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appreciate. You know, jenn Urso's nickname Stardust that her dad had for her,
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and I thought, oh, that really fits in with the whole made
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of stars things. She started us, We're all star dust. We are
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all star dust, and that is the point of the title of this show,
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ladies and gentlemen, and we should do a whole show based on that,
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just like you know, Interstellar Medium and production of Heavy Elements and the
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core of Supernova and all kinds of cool stuff. We could talk about that
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for an entire show, but that's not this show today. So but yes
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it is. It is May the fourth, and we do appreciate all of
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those geeks out there like us who are Star Wars fans. And I'll be
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you know, finishing Rogue one today and I'll figure out what the next Star
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Wars movie is that I'll watch before the days over or there's no TV shows
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and things that I could could watch as well, rewatch, I should say,
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But let's talk about some uh you know, more scythe than sci fi,
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and talk about a different starship altogether than one of the ones in Star
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Wars, although I do know Elon Musk likes to you know, tie some
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Star Wars into the naming of some of his ships and things. But let's
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talk about a continuing story that we've had over the past few weeks, the
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successful or was it launch and then we had the no, it wasn't quite
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so successful because you know, it caused a whole lot of damage, you
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know, miles away. And then now it's the talk about well when can
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we try to launch again? And Elon Musk says we could be ready to
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go in a couple of months. Yeah, so I know that there's I
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have the impression that there's comments out there that we're SpaceX fan boys, and
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because we're always talking about SpaceX. But let's just let's just face it,
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ladies and gentlemen in the aerospace industry, they might be the most interesting company
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out there right or there might be the most interesting organization worldwide in terms of
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just putting things in space. So that's why they come up a lot,
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and they are moving on a variety of fronts. We're not even going to
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cover a story today about SpaceX where they now have some record number of satellites
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in their Starlink cluster alone. We're not even gonna talk about that they just
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launched yesterday whatever. Anyway, so I know, I know, I for
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the SpaceX family because I'm a SpaceX fanboy, I happen to sneak that in
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anyway, No, I'm not really, But anyways, so SpaceX, though
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clearly has the most interesting story for the last several weeks, which is they
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blew up a really giant rocket. They did manage to launch it, it
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did a horrendous amount of damage to their launchpad, and they got it into
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the sky, not really orbit, at which point they had to blow it
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up, and then it didn't blow up right away. So this is a
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big story, right because there's ramifications of all of those things, and so
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SpaceX themselves, Elon Muskin a tweet says six to eight weeks they're ready to
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go again. Six weeks on the early end. That's a month and a
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half to completely rebuild their launch pad that was really heavily damaged, to have
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all of the launch protocols that they should have learned from this flight already diagnosed
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and in place, ready to launch in six weeks on the early end.
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And when you say that they're the most interesting company anywhere that's launching things into
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space, this ties in to that. I mean, this is part of
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why they're so interesting because they can go from yeay, we just launched the
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biggest rocket ever to oh, by the way, you it caused damage,
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you know, in a six mile radius from your launch side and completely destroyed
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the launch pad. And oh my gosh, there's gonna be a whole lot
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of problems with the FAA and you're trying to get this. Oh, we
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could be ready to go in eight weeks. That's why they're interesting, it
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is, I mean, and it's almost like, you know, Elon Musk's
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tweets are so interesting, it's almost like he should buy the company. You
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would think that would be a good investment for him. Yeah, I mean,
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he might as well, he tweets. Oh wait anyway, So all
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right, so here we are. Six to eight weeks is a statement put
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out by SpaceX. Now, serious forecasters are saying, well, SpaceX does
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move quickly, so in terms of the launchpad logistics and getting the rocket ready
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to go, maybe inside six months they can be ready to launch. Again
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those that's a little bit more serious commentary I've read out there in other sources.
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However, they now have giant legal battles because they have to resecure their
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FAA license from the US Federal Aviation Administration and GALLI. They had some complications,
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didn't they. Yeah, they sprayed rocks and sand all over, as
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you say, a very large radius, which included other communities, wildlife refuge
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areas, and homes, beaches and roads in the near vicinity. Elon's again
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tweeting, Oh well that was nothing. Really, there's nothing really bad in
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all that. Nothing really talks. It just a bunch of rocks and sand.
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Yeah. Well, people get a little they get a little antsy when
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you're throwing rocks and sand on their homes and on you know, the habitats
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of animals that could go extinct. So you know, there, you gotta
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you can't just bypass all of that. But the biggest thing, believe it
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or not, is not the launchpad, not what happened there. I mean,
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that's a thing for sure, but not the biggest thing. The biggest
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hang up in their relicensing could potentially be the fact that their flight termination system
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didn't blow up their rocket right away. I mean, it's like, oh
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my gosh, this thing's going out of control. Hit the self destruct button.
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Hit the self destruct button. Somebody pushes the big red button, click
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and nothing happens. And I'm sure there was a few more, you know,
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click click click click click click click click cick click click click click cickick
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blow the thing up. Because it was forty seconds later, it was a
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full forty seconds Now that seems like a short time, not even a minute.
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But when you're trying to explode the world's largest rocket, the most powerful
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rocket that's ever launched, because it's spiraling out of control over the coast of
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Texas, forty seconds is an eternity, ladies and gentlemen. And when you
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say and when you say the world's biggest rocket, at that point, it's
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the world's biggest projectile, you know, I mean, this is something that
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has been flung and you need it to blow up. I would say,
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you know, maybe two three seconds. It's probably a reasonable amount of time.
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Forty is a lot. It's it's the size of a forty story building.
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Just get that picture in your head. It's nearly this. It's like
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a thirty nine story building full of rocket fuel, spinning above the coast of
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Texas, and miraculously the two sections holding together through some very rapid rotation.
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You see, the Starship vehicle was on top of the SpaceX booster, super
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heavy booster, and yet they weren't coming unattached, so they were just simply
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spinning away. And meanwhile, the sound of click, click, click,
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click click could be heard somewhere in the SpaceX control room. I'm sure.
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I mean, I wasn't there. I don't know if this button has a
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click function, because that's rather tactle, and I'm sure it was an electronic
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thing. But yet somehow my brain says there was some dude back. They're
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just going click click, click, click, please blow up, please blow
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up, self destruct, self destruct, And forty seconds elapsed before it happened.
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I just have this image of them hitting the button over and over again.
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And then someone is sitting somewhere in an office somewhere else in the building,
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and the lights are going on and off, and they're going, what
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is going on? Trying to watch this launch? What is happening with the
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lights in here? So there's something called the Twitter space Talk, And on
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Saturday's episode of the Twitter spaces spaces Talk, I'm sorry Twitter spaces Talk.
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And on Saturday's episode, I don't do this much anyway, I'm not I'm
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not social media guy anyway. Okay, So somewhere on Saturday's Twitter spaces Talk,
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Elon Musk had this quote, the longest lead item is probably is probably
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requalification of the flight termination system. So he's even kind of hat tipping to
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the fact that, yeah, this is going to be the hardest part to
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get taken care of, because you know, even though you're blowing up your
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own launchpad and you're causing some ecological damage and maybe blown out a couple of
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windows with pressure waves and certainly things you don't want giant forty story rockets spiraling
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over the Texas coast and not self destructive when you're sending the code. That
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seems like a bigger deal. So, to continue his quote, that's obviously
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something that we want to make sure of before proceeding with the next flight.
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You think, I mean, I think the FAA would agree with you,
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Elon, on that case. So so there you go. I mean,
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and hey, they have amazing success rates at fixing their problems in reasonably short
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order and getting things to actually launch again in times that seem, you know,
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amazingly fast compared to shall we say, legacy space companies. However,
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this seems like a This seems like a bigger hurdle from a legal perspective than
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would fit into a window of six to eight weeks. Now, in fairness,
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I think that's Elon talking about all of the mechanical components, and not
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necessarily that he believes he's going to get cleared by the FAA and all the
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environmental lawsuits which are now taking place to launch that sucker again in six to
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eight weeks. But he kind of sounds like it, doesn't he. I
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mean, I don't know, it's just it's just tweets, But I don't
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know. Yeah, well, you know, tweet tweet tweeting this. I
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mean you kind of wonder if he playing a little bit of the game with
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the FAA. Is this a little bit of a hey, we're intending to
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do this. I mean, it's not like his rocket is something that he
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can, you know, take to another country and launch it, is it?
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I mean, and he really wanted to try to launch from elsewhere if
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there's a lot you have to move to get it there. I mean,
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that was my next thought, is when I saw that he was talking about
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trying to get it done, and I thought, well, the FAA's involved,
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I think it's going to take longer than that. And then in my
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brain all I could think was, is there any possibility that he could get
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this thing elsewhere and launch it? If that's what he was going to try
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to do, And it just doesn't seem feasible to move this thing somewhere else
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to launch it. So it would have to be from Texas, right,
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I mean, he's got to rebuild the infrastructure anyway, and he does have
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the resources to move it. I mean I suppose, I suppose if there's
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a small island off French Guiana or wherever. I mean, I don't know,
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Yeah, then he has to contend with their version of the FA I
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don't know, but it's an interesting idea. I mean, a Bond supervillain
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would certainly buy their own island and just rebuild their own launch pad outside the
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auspices of the Federal Aviation Administration. I still picture the John Lovett's character from
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The bench Warmers, you know, trying to build a new launch site,
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new launchpad and just saying keep it under a billion. That's all I've got
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on me. So we are talking about Elon. Let's move on to another
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story. This story about nearby asteroid that the scientists have discovered some of the
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same properties as our moon and it could be a chunk of the moon.
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Yeah. So this is a really interesting story. It's on Universe today dot
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com and it's featured elsewhere. But Universe Today is a certainly a great site,
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and that's where I saw this story. So the question is there's an
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asteroid that's nearby the Earth, and could it be a chunk of the Moon.
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There's the question, right, and so well, how would a chunk
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of the Moon end up becoming an asteroid? Yeah, so what would have
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to happen is in one of those really large impacts that happened a long time
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ago. There have been no recent impacts that could have done this. That's
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in parentheses, So one of those that's a parenthetical thought. One of those
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long ago impacts that left very large holes in the surface of the Moon could
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potentially have thrown off a large enough chunk of the Moon that, because of
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the combined gravity of the Earth and Moon's system, was grasped into an orbit
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that's similar to Earth's orbit around the Sun. And now it's nearby. So
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to be clear, Earth only has one natural satellite, and that is the
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Moon itself. But there are these things called quasi satellites which certainly interact with
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Earth's orbit, and if you were just to kind of watch them and not
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really think about the physics that was going on, they might actually because of
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their weaving pattern of going both closer to the Sun than we are and farther
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from the Sun than we are. It might look like they're orbiting the Earth.
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However, what they're doing is they're really orbiting the Sun. They're orbiting
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the Sun while also interacting with the gravitation of both the Earth and the Moon,
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mostly the Earth, and then that's causing them to weave in and out
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of Earth's orbit as they progress around the Sun. So sometimes that these asteroids
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are closer to the Sun than we are, and then the Earth nudges them
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with its own gravity and pulls them out away from the Sun, and then
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they spend some time further from the Sun than we are. But then they
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have another close encounter with the Earth and it pulls them back in toward the
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Sun, and then they slide in where they're closer to the Sun again than
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we are, and it creates kind of a spirograph weaving type pattern around the
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Sun. But it looks as if they might be kind of orbiting around the
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Earth. Okay, so that's the class of objects are called called quasi satellites,
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and they are not pure satellites of the Earth, but instead objects are
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orbit the Sun very near to the Earth. Okay, Well, anytime there's
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an object orbiting the Sun really close to the Earth and having these shall we
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call them close encounters? Close encounters of the something kind I don't know anyway,
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So it's close enough that they become classified as a near Earth object or
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more specifically, an Earth crossing asteroid, which make them hazardous. Right,
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So these are chunks that could potentially run into us. So this particular chunk
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has a really interesting name, and it's called Como a Leiva. You can
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say that again. I practiced it. There was no way I was reading
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that the first time without a pronunciation guide. It is a whole Hawaiian name.
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I do not speak the native Hawaiian language, so I built my own
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pronunciation guide. And if anybody does speak the Hawaiian language and I have butchered
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this, I am sorry. I did my best. Kamu aleiva, which
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name, thank you? You know I do the best I can anyway.
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So Leva a near Earth asteroid with properties that seem to be similar to the
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surface of the Moon. And that's what makes this one interesting. So upon
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further review, it looks as though this particular weaving orbit come from Kamoleva looks
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like it could have been potentially once associated with the Moon. How do you
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find that stuff out? You do a lot of computer simulation modeling of the
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orbits of the Earth, the Moon, and this asteroid together and you say,
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yes, this, with enough energy, could have been a chunk separated
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from the Moon. But that energy falls within the range of the kinds of
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energies delivered to the Moon during one of these collisions, so it makes it
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feasible. And then you start looking at the surface of the Moon and you
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find out, I'm sorry, the surface of Muliva, and you compare it
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to the surface of the Moon, and you find out that it's composed of
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silicate materials that seem to be very similar in composition and reflective properties. We
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call that's albedo is the name for that word, So similar to both the
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reflective properties and the chemical properties composition of the surface of the Moon itself.
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And you say, huh, a chunk that looks orbitally like it could have
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easily come from the Moon during one of the larger collisions and also just looks
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like a chunk of the Moon both physically and chemically. That is of serious
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possibility. So a group of astronomers from California. One. I'm sorry,
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I student from California. That's a different story. Sorry. One the lead
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author from the physics department of the University of Arizona, Ladies and gentlemen on
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this story has a quote and his name is Jose Daniel castros To Scenaros,
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and Jose has this quote. He says, considering it's earth like orbit and
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it's physical resemblance to the lunar surface material, we explore the hypothesis that it
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might have originated as a debris fragment from a meteoroidal impact with the lunar surface.
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And so that kind of is a much better summary than I just gave
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you a moment ago, all in one sentence. That's why he's the author
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of this paper and I'm not anyway. So the idea then is that it's
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really an interesting object for further study. If it is in fact a chunk
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of the Moon that we identified as an asteroid and it's in orbit around the
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Sun, it would be the first one of its kind. This would be
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the first time we've ever identified an object that is actually a fragment from the
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lunar surface and freed by some impact in the Moon's past history, and that
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makes it very exciting. To quote Jose one more time, it would be
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of great interest for Cosmo chemical study as a sample of the ancient lunar material.
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In other words, it's like a time capsule from the moment the impact
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event occurred in the long past of the Moon's history. So this is really
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an interesting object and there are going to be a lot of follow up studies
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now, perhaps even a spacecraft to visit Kamu Aleiva to see if we can
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take samples and return them to the Earth, which is feasible because it's really
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close by, right, and so a very interesting story. We're gonna watch
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how this develops and what other further studies come up based on this chunk of
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the Moon that could potentially be nearby. All right, it seems like an
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easy transition into the next story that has some similarities, I guess, and
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it's a little way except this one. Basically, you know, you could
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tie it into the band train. You could, because we're wondering if drops
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of Jupiter are falling because the air that's right possibly instead chunks of a really
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famous commet. Like if you've heard of any comments you've heard of this one.
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I mean, so we'll have to just dump train, I guess,
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because they're not drops of Jupiter. No, they're not, although there might
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be a Jupiter tie in later. We'll get back to that as we progressed
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in the story. Let's see. So this is from space weather dot com.
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Ladies and gentlemen, there is a meteor shower coming up this weekend.
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The meteor shower is from the debris leftover from Haley's commet. If you like
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Bill Haley and the Commets, or if you're in the if you're in the
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profession as I am, you call it commet Halley game after Edmund Halley,
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the discoverer that this this comment revisits the Earth. He didn't really discover the
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commet. He discovered the pattern of the commet revisiting the Earth every seventy six
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years. So this commet comes back around. Huh. I do feel like
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I should at least mention if you're a fan of Dave Barry, then you
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like Bill Holly and the Smoots. But that's getting into some deep dive into
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obscurity. But anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry. I just I couldn't
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resist. I mean, I missed that Dave Barry, is that George Smoot
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That would be awesome. All right, we'll get back to that later.
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So these chunks of material left over from Hailey's comet or comment Halley, are
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going to be entering into our atmosphere this weekend because the Earth is actually passing
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through a debris stream, in other words, the trail or the train tracks.
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See what I did their train I like it, thank you, the
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train tracks left over from Halley's comments. So we're gonna go through the Holly
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comet debris trail this week end. And that happens every year at the same
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time, and that's that's why meter showers are repeatable, and we can say,
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oh, well, these certain meteor showers happen on certain days of the
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year. This one is known as the Ada Aquarid Meteor Shower and it is
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an annual meteor shower. This year, the peak rates are expected to be
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ten to thirty meters per hour, which is a pretty good one. Now
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there's something that's unfortunate, which is there's also a full moon this weekend,
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and the full moon makes it really hard to see the little tiny flex from
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a meteor shower because they're just not nearly as bright as that big old moon,
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so basically you only see the large ones come in. So okay,
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a little bit of a bummer. But wait, now we're getting back to
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drops of Jupiter, Ladies and gentlemen, because Jupiter's helping us out. We
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might get an extra dose of these meteoroids entering into our atmosphere becoming meteors because
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back in time, the gravity of Jupiter tugged this debris stream closer to the
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Earth. In other words, the massive planet Jupiter perturbed this comet stream as
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those two objects got close together. And now we're getting to kind of a
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fat part of the comet stream where a bunch of chunks are just a little
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closer to the Earth. So we might get an overall enhanced number of impacts
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of these little fragments with the Earth's atmosphere, which means if you have more
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chunks, you have more bigger chunks, which means, despite a full moon,
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it might well be worth going outside and looking up anyway, because of
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this perturbation of the holly comet meteor stream. Who figured this out? Not
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me? This is I don't do this, I do other stuff. But
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this was figured out by a famous person that lives rather nearby to us.
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Just a little skip and jump from Columbus, Georgia where we are over to
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Huntsville, Alabama, and that would be Bill Cook. Bill Cook is a
25:12
very famous scientist for those who are space geeks, because he studies the near
25:18
Earth environment and has done so for a really long time, and he comes
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up with stories like this. He's the lead for the meteor Environment Office at
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NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. And wait, there's one
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more local tie. He was also the former boss of one of our former
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students, Cameron McCarty here at Columbus State University, who interned with Bill Cook
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at the Media Environment Office at the Marshall space Flight Center. And now Cameron
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happens to be the Payload Operations Director at the Marshall Space Flight Center working with
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astronauts on the International Space Station. So there you go full circle back to
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Bill Cook. And sometimes he does his job while listening to train you know,
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I mean, I don't know. I can't. I don't want to
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put that on him. If he's not a train fan, I don't want
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to put that on him. I'll just say that I don't. I don't
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want to. Maybe we should send Cameron to text and just ask him to
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see if Bill Cook likes drops of Jupiter, because that would just be the
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best. Yeah, that would then fully bring it back full circle. Coming
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up after a quick break, we could hear from aliens in deep space in
26:30
like six years. We'll get into that right after this. So looking back
26:56
just through our text history, there's a lot of different things that we text
26:59
about out. Sometimes it's about the Giants or Broncos, we'll talk about football,
27:03
or sometimes we're just texting about the fact that we're staring up at the
27:07
sky at the time. Occasionally it's because there's a story like this next one
27:12
that one of us stumbles into and shares it with the other one. And
27:18
this is one of those things that I vaguely remember talk about, Hey,
27:22
we're gonna send a message into deep space, and then in the amount of
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time it takes to get out and the time that someone could maybe hear it
27:30
and send a message back, it'll be around twenty twenty nine when we might
27:34
get something back from it. And it's it's kind of that can that you
27:37
just kind of, you know, kick on and you just say well,
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we'll wait and see how that all pans out. And then I saw this
27:45
update story and it was like, oh, yeah, by the way,
27:48
we're getting close to that message, maybe coming back in twenty twenty nine.
27:52
So yeah, as it gets closer to that, I start wondering do we
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want to get a message back or not. I mean, there's certain emails
28:03
that've sent out that I think I'm gonna get an answer by twenty twenty nine.
28:07
Yeah, I've got a few of those. Two. I think there's
28:11
some friend requests on Facebook that I might get back around to me by twenty
28:14
one. So yeah, I mean I get the concept. Yeah, no,
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that you sent me a really cool story. It's from Popular Science and
28:22
it talks about the fact that we send these radio communications off into space and
28:27
at light travel times. Eventually they will pass by some exo planet systems that
28:33
we know about there that potentially have earthlike planets. Now this sounds familiar if
28:41
you've seen the movie Contact. The movie Contact was derived from a book by
28:47
Carl Sagan. The motion picture features Jody Foster and what happens is, Hey,
28:53
you gotta mention Matthew McConaughey or Jill's gonna get mad at us. And
28:57
there's a guy named McConaughey. I don't know what his first name is,
29:02
ye may or may not be related to another Hollywood actor, Deep Path,
29:07
but they may be brothers. Who knows half brothers, I don't know.
29:11
Whatever. That's a that's a subject for a different show anyway. So so
29:17
all right, in the motion picture, radio signals that we have been beaming
29:22
out into you know, just broadcasting around the world have been drifting off into
29:26
space. And that includes things like, you know, Hitler's broadcast from Nazi
29:30
Germany and something almost as bad, the Ed Sullivan Show, and I don't
29:34
know my three sons, I don't know that's I was supposed to be a
29:40
joke, plays a joke. Yeah, anyway, there was nothing worse than
29:44
Hitler's. I'm just joking anyway. So but here's the problem with all of
29:48
those semi locals. Somewhere at Sullivan just in his grave setup and went hey
29:55
right now. So, so the problem with these kind of general broadcasts around
30:03
the Earth is that they don't have very much signal power in any given direction.
30:08
So the likelihood of any of that stuff, or maybe the worst of
30:12
all, I dream of Genie episodes. I don't know something getting up.
30:17
No, I'm just kidding. These are all great things. They're not going
30:19
to get out to space. They're not all great things. Hitler's broadcast.
30:22
We're not great things, a great thing. Just delete this part of the
30:26
show West. I'm just off on. It's all right, So if you
30:30
don't get around to this editing, just know that I'm joking. Ladies and
30:33
gentlemen. I love Barbara Eden, all right, So here we go.
30:37
Those things won't make it deep enough into space because there's not enough power behind
30:42
them. They will dissipate, and their signal strengths will likely be too weak
30:48
to make it out to any exo planets. However, we use something called
30:53
the Deep Space Network with our National Aeronautics and Space Administration to beam much higher
31:02
powered, much more focused signals of radio communication out in the direction of our
31:08
spacecraft that we launched a long time ago, and we're still having conversations with
31:15
them, including Pioneer, Voyager one, Voyager two, and other deep spacecraft
31:25
that have gone there. So we're still getting pings back from some of these
31:30
spacecraft that are they're still going out there, so we send them in return
31:34
some high energy, highly directed radio beams just to say, yes, we
31:38
still hear you, Yes we know you're still out there. Please keep signing
31:41
us data. Well, the radio beams are much more powerful in a certain
31:49
unique direction than any of those radio or television broadcasts from the nineteen fifties and
31:56
sixties. Therefore, they may have a fall are better chance of reaching an
32:02
exoplanet with sufficient intensity that if there were alien civilizations on those exo planets,
32:08
they might actually pick them up and say, hey, that seemed like a
32:16
set of one, a set of ones and zeros that came from an intelligent
32:22
civilization. And that's because they didn't see my three sons. So the whole
32:27
point is that if aliens saw those signals, they might actually send the signal
32:32
back. All right. So now a group of scientists, and this time
32:37
it is from California, A group of scientists from California began to look at
32:40
hey, so what direction have we sent those more intense radio communications to our
32:46
spacecraft and are there exo planets out in those directions that might be oh something
32:53
similar to the Earth. So you know, they can potentially have alien civilizations
33:00
on there. And what's the closest one, what's the closest exoplanet that is
33:05
somewhat like the Earth that might have a civilization on it. And then when
33:09
would that radio transmission get to them? And then if they just kind of
33:15
said, hey, reply all and send a message back, how soon would
33:20
it get here? That is, ladies and gentlemen, how we come up
33:25
with a time estimate of twenty twenty nine because the round trip light travel time
33:31
to the nearest exoplanet in a certain direction where we beamed out these intense radio
33:36
signals that they can immediately send a signal back and would get here, would
33:40
arrive in twenty twenty nine. So there are the scientists in California who are
33:47
suggesting that perhaps those people who work for the organization that was fictionalized in the
33:52
movie Contact, which is SETTI the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, should possibly begin
33:59
to point their radio antenna in certain directions in the year twenty twenty nine to
34:06
really start listening for possible echoes from other intelligent life on these exoplanets that were
34:13
contacted. See what I did. They're contacted by our radio signals beaming out
34:17
to our spacecraft, and the message that we sent out was alright, alright,
34:23
alright, I don't know. I had to tie back into it as
34:27
well. All right, let's talk about furbies. That's by the way,
34:30
that's an awesome story. It's also a little scary. But I just thought
34:35
it was a fun story and I knew we had to talk about it on
34:37
the show. Let's talk about the scary part. Let me just say the
34:39
scary part of the scary part is maybe these people don't like us, yeah,
34:43
or maybe you didn't know we were here, and they really want,
34:45
you know, like popsicles. And they said, oh, these people have
34:47
popsicles on Earth. Maybe it's a planet that had recently sent a message out
34:53
somewhere else and then another planet came and, you know, wipe them out.
34:58
And they're just sitting there going what next. And then they get our
35:00
message and they go, oh, oh, okay, well we got that.
35:05
Let's maybe they're just a civilization that really likes cheer wine. And they
35:07
say, wait, these people have cheer wine. We've got to go there
35:13
and take over their planets all because of cheer wine. It could happen,
35:15
Ladies and Jones. This is the strangest collection of pop culture references ever in
35:20
this from picking on my three sons, and I dream of Jeanis and now
35:25
cheer wine. Let's talk about furbies because we got a new record, furbies.
35:31
Let's never forget it. Sullivan, by the way, and that's about
35:35
now. And I'm sorry, Ed, I was joking. It was just
35:37
a joke, all right. So astronomers have discovered twenty five brand new but
35:45
yet repeating fast radio bursts, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is a
35:50
record discovery. Fast radio bursts have an acronym of FRB, and therefore we
35:57
call them furbies. And I'm sure those people who study them also called them
36:00
furbies, because why wouldn't you. It's frbes, right, Farbs is not
36:04
fun to say, Furbies is hilarious to say. So astromers have discovered twenty
36:07
five new repeating fast radio burst furbies. And let me tell you the reason
36:13
that this is important, because fast radio bursts are actually nothing to be laughed
36:17
at. They are one of the most powerful releases of energy that we've ever
36:22
discovered anywhere, and they happen rather quickly, and they can for a short
36:29
time outshine an entire galaxy with a burst of radio emission, So that is
36:38
one way of an energetic process. But because their time is so short,
36:45
these are extremely rapid events that are here and gone in a very short period
36:51
of time, they're incredibly hard to study because they're basically like a flashbulb going
36:55
off, and then you look to see where the flashbulb went off, and
36:59
then another one goes off behind you. Then you look in that direction,
37:01
and another one goes off below your left foot, and you look in that
37:05
direction and you can't figure out what are these things flashing. You kind of
37:07
see the echo of the flash, but you don't really get to examine the
37:10
target well. When they repeat, then you can just look in one direction
37:16
and wait for the thing to flash again. So the fact that we've now
37:21
discovered twenty five repeating fast radio bursts means that we can kind of hone in
37:28
on the direction of those repeating fast radio bursts and study their origin sites to
37:34
try to figure out where they're coming from and what the heck they are and
37:38
where did this amazing discovery come from. By the way, reported in space
37:44
dot com. Check out the article on space dot com. It was kind
37:45
of about six or seven days ago. Go back on space dot COM's archive
37:50
a little bit. So it was released by a new study led by astronomers
37:53
from the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment. We know that better's chime, so
38:02
it's the Chime Experiment in Canada, and the FRB collaboration and the University of
38:08
Toronto. So these are all the entities that we're working together that have identified
38:14
these twenty five again a record number, twenty five new repeating frb's fast radio
38:20
bursts. And now they know where they're at, and so now we have
38:23
a total number of fifties. So they basically doubled the number of known repeating
38:30
fast radio bursts and gave scientists a whole new platform to study this very short
38:37
lived, extraordinarily energetic, and very mysterious phenomenon occurring somewhere out there in the
38:45
depths of space. Could it be hyperdrives from the Millennium Falcon causing giant bursts,
38:54
or perhaps ships from the Empire. We don't know. Anything is serious.
39:00
Suggestion is that it's some kind of alien propulsion, because when mysterious things
39:05
get put forward, somebody suggests aliens. So there it is, Ladies and
39:09
gentlemen. Ferby's might be aliens but are probably colliding black holes or neutron stars
39:15
from something else. Don't take this away from me. On May the fourth,
39:19
it's Star Wars Day. Let's just say it could be Han and Chewie
39:22
out there somewhere drives baby, That's what it could be. All right,
39:25
let's talk about you guys have a show this weekend and next weekend there at
39:30
the Coca Cola Space Science Center, a special show. We have a really
39:37
cool collaboration with the State Theater of Georgia, which is the spring Or Opera
39:42
House, and they are located just a couple of blocks from us, and
39:46
we got you know, they're friends of ours, so we got talking with
39:49
them and we said, hey, what if what if there was a time
39:52
where you guys could do a play a show inside of our Omnisphere theater And
39:59
they you know what, that sounds like a really cool idea. Why don't
40:04
we see if we can bring our theater for the very young to the Space
40:07
Science Center and do it inside of your planetarium. Well, ladies and gentlemen,
40:13
that has actually occurred once one other time, but now this is our
40:15
second show working with the Springer Opera House. It's entitled a superhero for all
40:21
seasons. And it's a show that is intended to teach really young children.
40:28
We're talking about preschool children to kindergarteners, kind of in that age group.
40:31
Teach those kids the fundamental ideas about the seasons. And we're going to be
40:37
running that show from May sixth through the thirteenth. And since this is only
40:42
May fourth, none of those shows have happened, but if you're in the
40:45
future, hopefully you haven't missed the May thirteenth show. So they're gonna be
40:50
on May sixth at ten and eleven thirty am, May seventh, which is
40:53
a Sunday two thirty pm, and then again on May thirteenth at ten at
41:00
eleven thirty am. That's a Saturday, So that's when the shows are going
41:02
to be running. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have young children, and
41:06
if you're anywhere in the regions of southeastern Alabama or southwestern Georgia, come on
41:14
down and see this great show at the Coca Cola Space Science Center. Tickets
41:17
are available, Ladies and gentlemen, And normally I would point you to our
41:21
website, Oh why not, I'll just do it anyway. Www dot CC
41:27
SSC dot org, Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org, the Coca Cola Space
41:31
Science Center initials dot org. Why would I even consider not sending you to
41:37
our own website, Well, because really you're going to buy those tickets from
41:40
the Spring or Opera House. But we do have a link on our own
41:45
website that will send you to the right place to buy the tickets from the
41:49
Spring or Opera House. So, once again, thank you for listening to
41:52
our podcast, ladies and gentlemen. And if you're listening from our general area
41:54
of origin, then you can avoid drops of Jupiter and chunks of Halley and
42:00
get to the Space Science Center. You'll be able to see Superhero for All
42:05
Seasons. Follow that link on the website once again www dot cc, SSC
42:10
dot org, Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org. Click on the link for
42:15
Superhero for All Seasons, follow it, get your tickets, bring the kids,
42:17
have a good time on any of those days that we just discussed Overhead
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