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Life on Exoplanet K2-18 b? Seems Fishy · Made of Stars

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Speaker 1: Warning.
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Speaker 2: The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
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Speaker 2: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
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Speaker 2: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon the scientific method, and
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Speaker 2: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
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Speaker 2: that's your own risk.
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Speaker 3: Go ahead.
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Speaker 4: When made of stars, made them stars, madies. When made
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Speaker 4: of stars, you could be from high they would new Mexicomas.
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Speaker 1: Where are.
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Speaker 4: Stars?
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Speaker 5: When we are made of stars? I'm West Carol, joined
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Speaker 5: by my good friend doctor Sean cruising from Columbus State
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Speaker 5: Universe Cities, Coca Cola Space Science Center. Morning Shawn, Good morning, Less,
1:04
Speaker 5: good to be here. I have seen there have been
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Speaker 5: a couple stories that have popped in just in my world,
1:11
Speaker 5: like whether I've gotten emails about it, whether I have
1:13
Speaker 5: gotten text messages from friends about it, whether they have
1:16
Speaker 5: popped in social media. First of all, let's just let's
1:21
Speaker 5: get this one out of the way, because this is
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Speaker 5: kind of a little neat thing, but it's not really
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Speaker 5: you know, universe changing or anything we're gonna get apparently,
1:30
Speaker 5: And we record on Thursdays, So Tomorrow morning, Friday morning,
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Speaker 5: twenty fifth day of April, we're gonna get at five
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Speaker 5: thirty am or so, We're gonna get a smiley face
1:41
Speaker 5: in the sky.
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Speaker 3: I mean, if there's one thing we need right now
1:44
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty five, it's a giant smiley face in
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Speaker 3: the sky.
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Speaker 5: That's what I'm saying. And I could use maybe we
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Speaker 5: can find a way to make this permanent. Can we
1:52
Speaker 5: just constantly have a smiley face in the sky? Can
1:54
Speaker 5: we get with Elon maybe he can arrange that for us,
1:57
Speaker 5: just so.
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Speaker 3: We could probably put up a proper you know, out
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Speaker 3: of geostationary orbiting objects to make a giant smiley face
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Speaker 3: and just smile at Earth all the.
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Speaker 5: Time all the time. Now, is it a smile or
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Speaker 5: is it gonna be one of those like you know,
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Speaker 5: like a colon and a in a PARENTHESI kind of deals,
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Speaker 5: because that's kind of what it's going.
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Speaker 1: To look like.
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Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, let's come out the science behind it. It
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Speaker 5: sounds fun, but there's something that's happening in the sky
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Speaker 5: that's making this.
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Speaker 3: I was never any good at roar shock tests, Okay,
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Speaker 3: I just tell I'm not good at them, so.
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Speaker 1: So here, so here's what I'm going to see it.
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Speaker 5: Why do all these ink blots look like a guy
2:32
Speaker 5: strangling somebody, like, eh, you need to spend a little
2:37
Speaker 5: more time with your doctor. There.
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Speaker 3: Short of various interpretations of shape and style, the planets
2:46
Speaker 3: Venus and Saturn are going to be near the moon.
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Speaker 1: The end.
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Speaker 5: That's it. That's what happens. You get two dots in
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Speaker 5: the sky, you get a little swoop underneath it, and
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Speaker 5: you're gonna get a smiley face in the sky. It's
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Speaker 5: not overly complicated, and honestly, is it worth getting up
3:02
Speaker 5: at five thirty to see it? I don't know. You
3:04
Speaker 5: got to make that call yourself, but we're just.
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Speaker 3: A five thirty already. If you're one of those, go
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Speaker 3: out and check it out. It's could be pretty cool. Yes,
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Speaker 3: three really bright objects in the sky. You might if
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Speaker 3: you squit and turn your head sideways, you might see
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Speaker 3: a smiley face. If you don't, it's okay because Venus,
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Speaker 3: Saturn and the Moon are all gonna be really close
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Speaker 3: together in the sky.
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Speaker 1: There it is, and there you go.
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Speaker 5: It's what are they calling the triple conjunction to make
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Speaker 5: this happen or whatever? Anyway, that's right.
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Speaker 3: So what three objects are close together in a part
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Speaker 3: of the sky. We can sometimes refer to that as
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Speaker 3: a conjunction, depending on how close they are, and so
3:38
Speaker 3: you you've got a near I would call it a
3:40
Speaker 3: near conjunction of the objects Saturn, Venus and the moon.
3:46
Speaker 3: That's if you want to see a smiley face, you
3:49
Speaker 3: know you can do that. If you want to see
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Speaker 3: a smiley face bad enough, just stare at random patches
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Speaker 3: of the sky and start connecting the dots on stars.
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Speaker 3: You'll find a smiley face up there somewhere. I start
4:00
Speaker 3: Rona Borealis, for instance.
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Speaker 5: I don't I see smiley faces on the backs of
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Speaker 5: cars with the tail lights and then the little lift,
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Speaker 5: a little handle for the trunk. But that's what I
4:09
Speaker 5: see all the time. But that's I'm just a happy person,
4:12
Speaker 5: I guess, all right. So that story has been a
4:14
Speaker 5: big one, and then we have this other story that's
4:17
Speaker 5: also been a big one. And as soon as I
4:19
Speaker 5: saw it popping up, I thought, wow, Sewn and I
4:22
Speaker 5: have already talked about this a couple of years ago,
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Speaker 5: I think, and I had to message you and go,
4:27
Speaker 5: this is not I mean, I know, it's new information
4:30
Speaker 5: to the story, and it's a follow up to it.
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Speaker 5: Because of James Webb. But we've already kind of mentioned
4:37
Speaker 5: and thought people should be, you know, following this story
4:40
Speaker 5: because more evidence of some important life chemicals on an
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Speaker 5: exoplanet one hundred and twenty light years from Earth, right,
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Speaker 5: and it's in the Goldilock zone of its star, and
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Speaker 5: all the indicators could be there that maybe there's something there.
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Speaker 5: But it's not like it's nearby, and it's not like
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Speaker 5: I mean, I.
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Speaker 1: Mean it's not like it's that far ish.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, but it's it's not right, it's yeah, it's one
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Speaker 5: hundred and.
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Speaker 3: Twenty four light years from Earth, so you know, it's
5:14
Speaker 3: it's it's a lot. You know, you're not gonna walk it.
5:17
Speaker 3: You're probably not gonna bike it. But you know, in
5:21
Speaker 3: terms of the size of the Milky Way Galaxy, it's
5:23
Speaker 3: you know, it's kind of in the neighborhood, right, It's
5:25
Speaker 3: it's sort of in our part of the of our
5:27
Speaker 3: of our local.
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Speaker 1: Family of stars. How about that?
5:30
Speaker 5: Not gonna walk it. When I was a kid and
5:33
Speaker 5: I would ask my dad for a ride anywhere, he
5:35
Speaker 5: would say, you know, walking ain't crowded, that was what
5:38
Speaker 5: he would say to me. Know, I could always just
5:40
Speaker 5: put the Adidas to the pavement and go. But when
5:43
Speaker 5: I say it's not that close, I just mean that,
5:46
Speaker 5: you know, if there is something there that is as
5:51
Speaker 5: curious about what's going on in our direction as we
5:54
Speaker 5: are in their direction, if they were capable of traveling
5:59
Speaker 5: light speed, there's still one hundred and twenty four years away.
6:02
Speaker 5: So it's not like it's a short little jaunt for
6:04
Speaker 5: anybody to go one way or the other. And it
6:07
Speaker 5: also is means if we decided to start sending any
6:11
Speaker 5: kind of signal in that direction, it's take a little
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Speaker 5: while to get there.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, even at the speed of light, it's going to
6:18
Speaker 3: take you know, a century and a quarter to get
6:21
Speaker 3: there one way, right, So yeah, I mean, yes, everything
6:25
Speaker 3: has its context, and you know, we talk about context
6:27
Speaker 3: a lot on this show. You know, what do we
6:30
Speaker 3: do on this show, Wes, We take space headlines and
6:33
Speaker 3: we help the folks in a fun way, hopefully try
6:36
Speaker 3: to make sense of things, right, So Smiley faces in
6:40
Speaker 3: the sky for instance. You know, we just try to
6:41
Speaker 3: put things in context.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 3: So, so in the context of the Milky Way galaxy
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Speaker 3: and its diameter, this is a relatively nearby star system.
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Speaker 3: In the context of how long would it take me
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Speaker 3: in a you Goo to drive there, or even in
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Speaker 3: a cherry red roads off by, you know, a falcon heavy.
7:02
Speaker 5: You gotta find a yugo first of all, that's still operation.
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Speaker 3: So yeah, I invoked I invoked you goo like like
7:12
Speaker 3: I didn't date myself with that cultural reference, right.
7:15
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know. Wait not some more references from late
7:18
Speaker 5: night talk shows from back in the late eighties and
7:21
Speaker 5: another just quick thing, and I'm gonna let you finish,
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Speaker 5: because I also pointing out the fact of the distance
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Speaker 5: of it. And this is the other part of this.
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Speaker 5: It's always fun when we're looking at something in the
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Speaker 5: sky that's this far away. It's we're looking back in time.
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Speaker 5: And that's the other part about it. So our discoveries
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Speaker 5: about it there, there's a certain amount of that that's
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Speaker 5: going on as well as far as this information. But anyway,
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Speaker 5: but possibility.
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Speaker 1: Of life, that's a good point.
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Speaker 3: So you know, because of that light travel time, what
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Speaker 3: you're really doing is taking a measurement of the state
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Speaker 3: of this exo planet called K two eighteen B just
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Speaker 3: rolls off the tongue. You're taking a measurement of the
8:00
Speaker 3: status of that planet as it was one hundred and
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Speaker 3: twenty four years ago, because that's when the light left,
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Speaker 3: the light that we have picked up with James Web
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Speaker 3: we hadn't even started building We haven't even started building
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Speaker 3: spacecraft one hundred and twenty four years ago, right, So
8:16
Speaker 3: in the time since that light left this distant exoplanet,
8:20
Speaker 3: we invented the space age, built the James Web Space
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Speaker 3: Telescope and caught the light just like a flyball over
8:29
Speaker 3: the center field at Yankee Stadium, right, So it's like
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Speaker 3: just in time Bank caught it and so and now
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Speaker 3: we have this measurement, and the measurement is showing this
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Speaker 3: chemical constituent called dimemethyl sulfide.
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Speaker 1: And Wes is right.
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Speaker 3: We did this story about eighteen months ago, September of
8:51
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three. Well, that's because it's the same group
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Speaker 3: of scientists at the same university, which is Cambridge University,
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Speaker 3: and they're using the same instrument, the James Webspace Telescope,
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Speaker 3: to find the same thing, dimethyl sulfide. But here's the difference.
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Speaker 3: The difference is they measured it a second time at
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Speaker 3: slightly different wavelengths that you could also measure this same
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Speaker 3: chemical constituent, and they found it again. So This is
9:18
Speaker 3: a follow up observation. It's hit the press here in
9:21
Speaker 3: the last few days, and yeah, like Wes, it's been
9:23
Speaker 3: all over my newsfeed from a variety of sources, and
9:27
Speaker 3: the headlines are something like, have scientists found life on
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Speaker 3: another planet? You know, breathless like aliens? Like it's it's
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Speaker 3: just got to be aliens, right, Well, so let's let's
9:36
Speaker 3: put it in perspective, because that's.
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Speaker 1: What we do here.
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Speaker 3: This is most likely a water covered world, a hydrogen
9:45
Speaker 3: atmosphere and an ocean surface. It's called a Hycien planet.
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Speaker 3: And so so this is as Wes mentioned earlier, it's
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Speaker 3: a planet that's sitting in the Goldilocks zone, the just
9:58
Speaker 3: right distance from its parent star where it could have
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Speaker 3: liquid water on its surface. We call that the Goldilock zone.
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Speaker 1: So there it is.
10:04
Speaker 3: It's sitting in the Goldilock zone of its own star,
10:07
Speaker 3: its parent star. And for a second time now, scientists
10:12
Speaker 3: using the James Web Space Telescope have found evidence of
10:16
Speaker 3: a chemical called dimethyl sulfide that here on the Earth
10:21
Speaker 3: we really only know of one source to make any
10:25
Speaker 3: kind of significant amount of dimethyl sulfide, and that is
10:32
Speaker 3: ocean life. Right, It's microorganisms in the oceans of Earth
10:38
Speaker 3: that produce the dimethyl sulfide that ends up in the
10:41
Speaker 3: Earth's atmosphere. That is really the only source of significant
10:46
Speaker 3: amounts of dimethyl sulfide here. So scientists have long considered
10:50
Speaker 3: this particular chemical a robust indicator or a robust biosignature,
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Speaker 3: a robust indicator of the potential life on another planet.
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Speaker 3: That's why they go looking for this one, right, So
11:03
Speaker 3: they're specifically looking for this chemical in the spectroscopy taken
11:09
Speaker 3: of the atmospheres of exoplanets planets around other stars, and
11:13
Speaker 3: they haven't found any, and they haven't found any, and
11:15
Speaker 3: they have not found any, and suddenly they found some.
11:19
Speaker 3: At least they thought they did. They had kind of
11:21
Speaker 3: a it was a little bit of a sketch observation.
11:24
Speaker 3: Wasn't just absolutely sure back in September of twenty twenty three,
11:28
Speaker 3: but they went ahead and published the results anyway, and say, hey,
11:31
Speaker 3: potential biosignature on this exoplanet called K two eighteen B.
11:36
Speaker 3: Now what we're seeing in the last few days is
11:39
Speaker 3: a follow up observation by the team from Cambridge and
11:42
Speaker 3: they say, hey, we took these measurements at a different
11:46
Speaker 3: emitting wavelength of the same compound dimethyl sulfide, and we
11:51
Speaker 3: found it again. And not only do we find that,
11:54
Speaker 3: but we also found its first cousin, called dimethyl disulfide,
12:00
Speaker 3: is a similar compound, and both of them are potential biosignatures,
12:05
Speaker 3: and they have found both of them again. Now, please
12:10
Speaker 3: know that when we give stories like this, just to
12:14
Speaker 3: go back and quote the famous Carl Sagan, extraordinary claims
12:19
Speaker 3: require extraordinary evidence. Alien life on an exoplanet is an
12:25
Speaker 3: extraordinary claim. Right now, we have pretty good indications that
12:32
Speaker 3: there's probably dimethyl sulfide in the atmosphere of this exoplanet,
12:39
Speaker 3: and so we're not exactly there to the extraordinary evidence yet.
12:45
Speaker 3: Right That is a case being made by many scientists
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Speaker 3: who are analyzing these data to review this research work,
12:53
Speaker 3: and they're coming out and saying, look, I mean, it's
12:55
Speaker 3: a good solid indicator, but it is not a dead certainty.
13:00
Speaker 3: There's a better than average chance that we're actually seeing
13:03
Speaker 3: dimethyl sulfide. And even if we did confirm that we
13:07
Speaker 3: were seeing dimethyl sulfide, maybe there's some other process besides
13:12
Speaker 3: life that can create dimethyl sulfide in the atmosphere of
13:15
Speaker 3: an exoplanet different from Earth. Right, so we're a long
13:20
Speaker 3: way from saying they're aliens. Another quote from Carl Sagan,
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Speaker 3: the life hypothesis should be the last resort, right, it
13:29
Speaker 3: should be. Life should be the hypothesis of last resort.
13:32
Speaker 3: We should not go We should not go to aliens
13:35
Speaker 3: until we have exhausted absolutely every other contingency and possibility.
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Speaker 5: Well, and here's the other thing that I feel like
13:43
Speaker 5: is worth repeating, because many times these sorts of things
13:47
Speaker 5: get ignored. And we've discussed this before because we've said, well, okay,
13:51
Speaker 5: so if they found life on another planet, what might
13:53
Speaker 5: that life look like? And if you're talking about an
13:57
Speaker 5: ocean planet, a planet that is cover water, if there
14:02
Speaker 5: was something living there there, we don't have any idea
14:06
Speaker 5: what it would look like. What it would be tiny
14:11
Speaker 5: tiny organisms that are in the ocean. Could it be
14:13
Speaker 5: some sort of evolved fish type creatures that's far from
14:19
Speaker 5: intelligent life that's capable of jumping on a spaceship and
14:23
Speaker 5: coming here. No offense to the creature from the Black
14:26
Speaker 5: Lagoon or any of his ancestors or anything. But the
14:29
Speaker 5: point is, if there is something living in there that's
14:33
Speaker 5: causing this, chances are. It's probably very different than what
14:39
Speaker 5: might be perceived as little green men ready to come
14:41
Speaker 5: here and visit.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, for anybody who's tried to strike up a conversation
14:45
Speaker 3: with a fidal plankton, you know, that's a tad one sided.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, just a little. Yeah.
14:51
Speaker 3: So even if there are fital plankton in the oceans
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Speaker 3: of K two eighteen B, we're not to the movie
15:00
Speaker 3: intact for quite some time.
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Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, And just you know, maybe there are versions
15:05
Speaker 5: of evolved sea life there, which it would be fascinating. Obviously,
15:10
Speaker 5: that would be something that would be amazing to actually
15:14
Speaker 5: discover and find a way to confirm in the very
15:17
Speaker 5: distant future. But it certainly does not indicate that we
15:22
Speaker 5: have people flying around from there here visiting us, unless
15:27
Speaker 5: they're just in a giant aquarium and flying around, you know,
15:30
Speaker 5: that's probably what it would involve, so kind of kind
15:34
Speaker 5: of a reverse scuba thing, right, they got to keep
15:37
Speaker 5: the water on them while they're But anyway, so that's
15:40
Speaker 5: the other thing to remember with it is whatever this
15:43
Speaker 5: life might be, if it's there, probably not too complex,
15:48
Speaker 5: probably not too intelligent. And if they're listening to this
15:51
Speaker 5: podcast and taking offense to it, I would love to
15:54
Speaker 5: have you on the show. We'd like to chat with you,
15:57
Speaker 5: and you know, we'll come. We'll come up with a
16:00
Speaker 5: system if we got to get music involved. That's the
16:03
Speaker 5: universal language, they say that, or mathematics whatever I've got,
16:07
Speaker 5: you know, mathematical musicians in my house that could probably
16:11
Speaker 5: talk to you using one of those things. But you
16:14
Speaker 5: get what I'm saying. We don't need to quite freak
16:16
Speaker 5: out yet. We're a long way from freak out, is
16:18
Speaker 5: all I'm saying. The people that want to make this
16:20
Speaker 5: into a bigger deal.
16:21
Speaker 3: Not everyone is the same distance from freak out. Yes,
16:26
Speaker 3: and you and me, Wes, we are a long way
16:28
Speaker 3: from freak out.
16:29
Speaker 5: We're a long way from it. But this is pretty
16:31
Speaker 5: exciting just the possibility that, you know, because we haven't
16:34
Speaker 5: done this before, and if this ends up being a
16:36
Speaker 5: real thing, it's a pretty exciting. It's an incredible discovery already,
16:41
Speaker 5: but it would be an amazing discovery if you know,
16:44
Speaker 5: even if it was just you know, what would you
16:47
Speaker 5: call it?
16:47
Speaker 1: Fight?
16:47
Speaker 5: What kind of plankton did you say? If we find that,
16:52
Speaker 5: that's pretty darn impressive, and it would be pretty cool.
16:54
Speaker 5: It would be game changing in so many ways.
16:57
Speaker 3: But you know, one can just imagine though, a where
17:00
Speaker 3: we find like incontrovertible evidence of life with a telescope.
17:08
Speaker 3: And by the way, that's not going to be just
17:09
Speaker 3: one observation. That's going to require hundreds of observations, right,
17:14
Speaker 3: We're gonna have to have lots and lots and lots
17:16
Speaker 3: of follow ups and verifications before we say that. But okay,
17:19
Speaker 3: but all right, somebody's got to see it first. This
17:22
Speaker 3: could be it. I mean, it really could be it.
17:24
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's gonna be interesting. We're going to
17:27
Speaker 3: watch the story. We're going to see when more data
17:29
Speaker 3: comes in. Certainly this planet among all the exoplanets has
17:33
Speaker 3: become one of the most interesting ones to continue to observe.
17:36
Speaker 5: I mean, does this now become officially the most interesting
17:41
Speaker 5: thing outside of our Solar system?
17:44
Speaker 1: Yeah?
17:44
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're looking for biosignatures, this is the
17:48
Speaker 3: most robust indication that we have actually observed a biosignature
17:53
Speaker 3: out of anything we've ever observed.
17:54
Speaker 1: Right, So, yeah.
17:56
Speaker 3: I guess in a way, it becomes the most interesting
17:59
Speaker 3: planet besides Earth for the time being.
18:02
Speaker 5: Coming up after a quick break, we'll talk about this
18:05
Speaker 5: peanut shaped asteroid we'll get into that next. All right,
18:30
Speaker 5: it's a peanut shaped asteroid, but it's bigger than a peanut.
18:34
Speaker 1: Right, it is bigger than a peanut.
18:36
Speaker 3: Uh, it's it's a few dozens of kilometers as cross.
18:40
Speaker 3: So it's it's a very large object, but it is
18:43
Speaker 3: still an asteroid.
18:44
Speaker 1: Right. Uh.
18:44
Speaker 3: It's got an interesting name. It's called Donald Johansson. All
18:49
Speaker 3: one word, Donald and then Johansson. It's Donald Johansson. When
18:56
Speaker 3: I first read it, I thought it was Don Johnson.
18:59
Speaker 5: I mean, that seems like a good nickname, at the
19:02
Speaker 5: very least for the part I thought I.
19:03
Speaker 3: Was gonna be wearing kind of a you know, a
19:04
Speaker 3: pastel pink T shirt with a white jacket and driving
19:07
Speaker 3: some kind of a sports car.
19:09
Speaker 1: Yeah.
19:09
Speaker 3: I thought it was Don Johnson. But it's no, it's
19:11
Speaker 3: Donald Johansson. Donald Johansson, friends, is the paleontologist who who
19:16
Speaker 3: first discovered the lucy fossil. And the lucy fossil if
19:21
Speaker 3: you don't know what that is. The lucy fossil is
19:23
Speaker 3: a special fossil that it traces back some of our ancestry.
19:27
Speaker 3: All Right, so it's a very important fossil in human evolution.
19:31
Speaker 3: And so Donald Johansson got an asteroid named after him
19:36
Speaker 3: because it's by the Lucy Mission, and Lucy's named after
19:39
Speaker 3: the asteroid, and Lucy is looking for the fossil remnants
19:43
Speaker 3: of the evolution of the planets. See the connection there
19:47
Speaker 3: there it is, So this was named This asteroid was
19:52
Speaker 3: named by the folks at the Lucy Mission in honor
19:55
Speaker 3: of Donald Johnson, the discoverer of the Lucy fossil.
19:58
Speaker 5: Well makes sense, So the the craft is named after
20:01
Speaker 5: the fossil So it makes sense that they would give
20:04
Speaker 5: the peanut name. That's good. I like that. That's a
20:07
Speaker 5: very nice touch.
20:08
Speaker 3: So Hal Levison is the principal investigator for the Lucy
20:11
Speaker 3: Mission at the Southwest Research Institute, and the Lucy spacecraft
20:16
Speaker 3: just flew by this giant peanut shaped asteroid. We know
20:19
Speaker 3: that peanut shaped asteroids are not all that unusual. We've
20:21
Speaker 3: run across a couple of other other ones across the way
20:24
Speaker 3: on this show. But this one lies in the main
20:26
Speaker 3: asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and Lucy got a
20:29
Speaker 3: really good look at it because it flew within six
20:31
Speaker 3: hundred miles of this asteroid, which is close enough with
20:35
Speaker 3: the lenses aboard the Lucy Spacecraft to get really good,
20:38
Speaker 3: accurate detailed images of the surface of Donald Johansson, the asteroid,
20:43
Speaker 3: not the paleontologist.
20:45
Speaker 1: All right. So in a.
20:47
Speaker 3: Quote from Hal Levison, the principal investigator for Lucy, he said,
20:50
Speaker 3: asteroid Donald Johansson has strikingly complicated geology, continuing the quote,
20:56
Speaker 3: as we study the complex structures in detail, they will
20:59
Speaker 3: reveal important information about the building blocks and collisional processes
21:04
Speaker 3: that form the planets in our Solar system unquote. Check
21:08
Speaker 3: this article out on cbsnews dot com. At the mission,
21:14
Speaker 3: Lucy is heading out to the Trojan asteroids, a group
21:17
Speaker 3: of asteroids near the orbit of Jupiter, and it's expected
21:21
Speaker 3: to be identifying those Trojan asteroids or studying them through
21:24
Speaker 3: the year twenty twenty three, twenty thirty three, two zero
21:27
Speaker 3: three three.
21:28
Speaker 5: I might have been tempted, if it's a peanut shaped
21:31
Speaker 5: asteroid and it's the Lucy spacecraft, to go Charlie Brown
21:35
Speaker 5: or Linus something like that. But nice. They did a
21:38
Speaker 5: better job of their naming than what it would have done.
21:40
Speaker 5: Certainly more made of stars. Right after this, we talked
22:04
Speaker 5: about James Webb, We talked about Lucy Spacecraft, let's talk
22:06
Speaker 5: about Hubble, because they say Hubble's doing pretty well for
22:10
Speaker 5: a thirty five year old.
22:11
Speaker 1: Happy birthday to Hubble.
22:14
Speaker 3: If you know a thirty five year old out there
22:17
Speaker 3: and today's their birthday, they share the birthday with the
22:20
Speaker 3: Hubble Space Telescope friends, because this the whole space telescope
22:23
Speaker 3: launched thirty five years ago today. And the cool thing
22:27
Speaker 3: about it is this celebrating this thirty fifth anniversary.
22:31
Speaker 1: It's still working.
22:32
Speaker 3: The Hubble Space Telescope is still going. According to Jennifer Wiseman,
22:36
Speaker 3: the senior project scientist for Hubble at Goddard Space Flight Center,
22:40
Speaker 3: she said, this Hubble is more scientifically productive now than
22:44
Speaker 3: ever before, which is kind of mind blowing. Yes, Jennifer Weisman,
22:48
Speaker 3: it is mind blowing because.
22:51
Speaker 5: Space environment it's a harsh place it is, and these
22:53
Speaker 5: are old computers that are doing. I mean, imagine a
22:57
Speaker 5: thirty five year old computer in your house. It would
23:00
Speaker 5: probably not be able to do much of anything, if
23:03
Speaker 5: anything at all.
23:05
Speaker 3: And you know, there was a servicing mission back in
23:07
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine. John Grunsfeld as well as some
23:10
Speaker 3: other astronauts went up there and worked on the Hubble
23:12
Speaker 3: Space Telescope.
23:13
Speaker 1: So but even two thousand and nine is pretty.
23:15
Speaker 3: Old computer these days, right, And so you're right, some
23:18
Speaker 3: of the mechanics and some of the electronics.
23:20
Speaker 1: Are certainly aging. Hubble is getting well.
23:23
Speaker 3: It's having more malfunctions along the way.
23:25
Speaker 1: It requires at least.
23:27
Speaker 3: Three gyroscopes on board to be functioning to point the thing.
23:32
Speaker 3: It only has two left that are working fully. They
23:37
Speaker 3: had to shut one of them off because it was
23:39
Speaker 3: bumping around a little bit, probably started to become mechanically unhinged,
23:43
Speaker 3: and so it was actually vibrating the images enough that
23:47
Speaker 3: they couldn't use it anymore. But the people on the
23:50
Speaker 3: ground who are smart, right, these engineers are smart right,
23:54
Speaker 3: They can figure out things. So they figured out how
23:56
Speaker 3: to go into a mode of pointing Hubble Space Telescope
24:00
Speaker 3: with just one gyro, and the one gyro method seems
24:04
Speaker 3: to be working again. From Jennifer Weisman, our brilliant technical
24:08
Speaker 3: team came up with an ingenious way of honing Hubble's
24:11
Speaker 3: point and control system so that it only needs one
24:15
Speaker 3: working gyroscope. This one gyro mode is now working very well,
24:20
Speaker 3: so they're still able to use Hubble with one gyro.
24:23
Speaker 3: It's still got two gyros left, so it looks like
24:26
Speaker 3: Hubble is going to survive through its thirty fifth birthday
24:29
Speaker 3: still doing science three and a half decades after going
24:32
Speaker 3: to space. What an incredible success story the Hubble Space Telescope.
24:37
Speaker 5: We talked about the fact that the Jared Isaacman, who
24:41
Speaker 5: is set to become the next head of NASA, wanted
24:44
Speaker 5: to do a mission where he would said, we could
24:47
Speaker 5: go back up and do some service work on this
24:50
Speaker 5: thing and you know, really update it and get it
24:53
Speaker 5: ready to go. And then NASA then said, no, we
24:56
Speaker 5: can't do that. And now I suppose at point where
25:00
Speaker 5: he ends up becoming the head of NASA, were he
25:04
Speaker 5: to propose this to the head of NASA, he could
25:07
Speaker 5: probably get it approved just a discussion in the mirror,
25:11
Speaker 5: I don't know, have that quick little chat with himself,
25:15
Speaker 5: maybe in a closed closed door meeting. So yeah, this
25:19
Speaker 5: could obviously extend the life even more.
25:23
Speaker 3: The closed door meeting could happen in his own bathroom
25:27
Speaker 3: in a stall, So it's just weird how that could
25:32
Speaker 3: happen that way.
25:32
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's right.
25:33
Speaker 3: So Jared Isagman very likely to be the agency's next chief.
25:38
Speaker 3: He was an original champion of the idea of going
25:40
Speaker 3: up with a commercial space mission and servicing the Hubble
25:44
Speaker 3: space Telescope. NASA denied him at the time, but they
25:47
Speaker 3: didn't really shut the door to that possibility, and now
25:51
Speaker 3: he's very likely to become the next director of NASA.
25:54
Speaker 3: Could this happen where Jared Isagman puts together a SpaceX
25:58
Speaker 3: mission using a SpaceX Dragon capsule and a Falcon nine
26:02
Speaker 3: rocket to go up and visit Hubble and service it,
26:05
Speaker 3: replace its gyros, replace its cameras, and perhaps Hubble could
26:09
Speaker 3: be an extended mission, you know, into the next couple
26:13
Speaker 3: of decades. Right, So it's an interesting idea given the
26:16
Speaker 3: fact that Hubble is still working and still producing good science.
26:20
Speaker 5: A couple of stories that took place Easter Sunday.
26:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the next one's a lot of fun. Check
26:27
Speaker 3: this one out on today's edition of spaceweather dot com.
26:31
Speaker 3: If you don't hear the podcast today, go back and
26:33
Speaker 3: look at the April twenty fourth edition of the of
26:35
Speaker 3: the website spaceweather dot com. Because apparently many farmers on
26:41
Speaker 3: Easter Sunday reported that their tractors were dancing. Now, I
26:48
Speaker 3: don't know why they didn't jump to a miracle of
26:50
Speaker 3: Holy Week straight to that. You know, I'm if I
26:54
Speaker 3: go outside in my automobile is suddenly performing dance moves
26:58
Speaker 3: in my front yard, and no one's seems to be
27:00
Speaker 3: driving it, and it happens to be Easter Sunday, I
27:03
Speaker 3: don't know.
27:04
Speaker 1: I might make certain connections.
27:06
Speaker 5: I certainly would. I would think something was going on,
27:09
Speaker 5: or maybe it's exactly maybe it's the fish aliens controlling
27:12
Speaker 5: it from one hundred and twenty four light years away.
27:14
Speaker 5: I don't know.
27:15
Speaker 3: Well, so that if I add to the fact that
27:17
Speaker 3: my tractor out in the field has a GPS guidance system,
27:22
Speaker 3: then I might say, oh, what's going on with the
27:25
Speaker 3: GPS guidance system. This is what space weather is investigating. So,
27:29
Speaker 3: according to spaceweather dot com, last weekend, farmers reported that
27:33
Speaker 3: their vehicles were veering off course and dancing in the fields.
27:38
Speaker 1: That's a quote from space weather.
27:39
Speaker 3: On Easter Sunday, the tracker ballet was apparently due to
27:43
Speaker 3: unusual GPS behavior. All right, so the GPS system was
27:48
Speaker 3: having some sort of a problem. Now, the interesting thing
27:50
Speaker 3: that space weather reports is that the same thing happened
27:53
Speaker 3: on hundreds of farms last May during a severe geomagnetic storm.
27:59
Speaker 3: But there was no geomagnetic storm on April twentieth, twenty
28:03
Speaker 3: twenty five, on Easter Sunday. So spaceweather dot com is
28:08
Speaker 3: looking for confirmation that number one this happened and explanation
28:13
Speaker 3: number two that they can figure out why this happened. Right, So,
28:17
Speaker 3: if you if you aren't a farmer listening to our show,
28:20
Speaker 3: first of all, thank you for listening. Second of all,
28:22
Speaker 3: if your tractor went nuts on Easter, report that to
28:25
Speaker 3: space Weather because they're looking for other stories of the
28:29
Speaker 3: same kind of circumstance taking place. Also, if you know
28:34
Speaker 3: anybody who's farm tractor started misbehaving because of a GPS
28:38
Speaker 3: guidance issue, please let spaceweather dot com know about this,
28:41
Speaker 3: because seriously, folks, they are trying to figure out if
28:45
Speaker 3: some other kind of hidden solar disturbance took place on
28:48
Speaker 3: Easter Sunday and investigate the effects of Earth electronics because
28:52
Speaker 3: of that system.
28:54
Speaker 5: Easter Sunday also marked the return from space on a
28:58
Speaker 5: significant milestone birth day.
29:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, a veteran of the American Space program, certainly many
29:05
Speaker 3: would consider a hero of the American Space Program, Don
29:09
Speaker 3: Pettitt Don Pettit spent about two hundred and twenty days
29:12
Speaker 3: aboard the International Space Station as part of a Russian crew.
29:15
Speaker 3: Even though he's a NASA astronaut. Don Pettit came back
29:19
Speaker 3: to Earth on Easter Sunday, but it also happened to
29:21
Speaker 3: be his own seventieth birthday, So there you go. That's
29:24
Speaker 3: a pretty good seventieth birthday present. You get to return
29:27
Speaker 3: from space aboard a soy use and basically crash land
29:32
Speaker 3: out in some field and pack and Kazakhstan somewhere and
29:36
Speaker 3: so and then they, you know, make you sit in
29:37
Speaker 3: a chair for a while and you smile for the
29:39
Speaker 3: camera and.
29:40
Speaker 1: Say, yeah, we made it back.
29:41
Speaker 3: So anyway, that congratulations Don Pettitt. He has now spent
29:44
Speaker 3: a cumulative time of more than eighteen months in space,
29:47
Speaker 3: so he's one of America's longest serving astronauts and we
29:52
Speaker 3: just really appreciate him and all the contributions he's made.
29:55
Speaker 3: And happy seventieth birthday to Don Pettit's space travel returning
30:00
Speaker 3: aboard a sol use on his seventieth birthday.
30:04
Speaker 5: The final music under the dome for this.
30:09
Speaker 1: Cycle.
30:09
Speaker 5: Because you guys go by the school year. You don't
30:11
Speaker 5: go by the calendar year. So we're getting ready to
30:13
Speaker 5: wrap down, wrap up the season, and wind things down
30:17
Speaker 5: coming up with the final show coming up the first
30:19
Speaker 5: Tuesday of May.
30:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're really excited about this show. It's a different
30:24
Speaker 3: kind of music under the Dome. So for those of
30:26
Speaker 3: you who don't know about music under the Dome, Music
30:29
Speaker 3: End of the Dome is a concert series held here
30:31
Speaker 3: at Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center. The
30:35
Speaker 3: students and faculty from our Schwobes School of Music at
30:37
Speaker 3: Columbus State come in and perform in our planetarium and
30:42
Speaker 3: we have custom graphics that are choreographed to their music
30:45
Speaker 3: that are shown on the dome. That's the standard mode.
30:49
Speaker 3: But this particular concert is going to be a little
30:51
Speaker 3: bit different because that giant piano, it's a nine foot
30:55
Speaker 3: concert grand that sits inside our planetarium, is actually a
30:58
Speaker 3: Yamaha disc levie, and a disc lavier is a instrument
31:03
Speaker 3: that is a beautiful concert grand piano that it also
31:06
Speaker 3: has a digital interface so that it can communicate with other, uh,
31:10
Speaker 3: you know, electronic devices that can interface with the Internet
31:15
Speaker 3: of Things, maybe like tractors. I don't know, maybe maybe
31:18
Speaker 3: there's tractors that you could control with a disclavier. We
31:21
Speaker 3: should find that out, but that's not what's going to
31:23
Speaker 3: happen this the first.
31:25
Speaker 1: Tuesday in May.
31:26
Speaker 3: What's going to happen is a gentleman by the name
31:27
Speaker 3: of Dan Tepfer, who is an expert in interfacing planetarium
31:31
Speaker 3: systems or large format theaters with these disclaverer pianos. He's
31:35
Speaker 3: going to come in and perform a concert in our
31:37
Speaker 3: space and we'll be controlling the visuals on the dome
31:42
Speaker 3: from the keyboard of the piano. It's going to be
31:45
Speaker 3: a live performance both graphically and musically simultaneously from the
31:51
Speaker 3: same keyboard control system. Friends, It's an unprecedented concert in
31:56
Speaker 3: the entire history of the Coca Cola Space Science Center.
32:00
Speaker 3: Come in and see it on that first Tuesday in May,
32:03
Speaker 3: and for ticket information check out our website go to
32:06
Speaker 3: www dot cc SSC dot org. Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot.
32:13
Speaker 5: Org, Shan and I thank you for listening, and we'll
32:15
Speaker 5: do this again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbus
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