Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What's going on with Przybylski's Star?

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What's going on with Przybylski's Star? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, hard things. Oh you know, I'm down in
0:10
Speaker 1: Irvine where nothing very exciting ever happens. Is there interesting
0:14
Speaker 1: stuff happening in your neighborhood? Yeah, everything's good in my neighborhood.
0:18
Speaker 1: I like my town, but I bet anything is better
0:21
Speaker 1: than an academic suburb where you live. Well, I imagine
0:24
Speaker 1: you must have some pretty cool neighbors, you know, like
0:27
Speaker 1: you have that one house that has like a million
0:29
Speaker 1: cactuses out front, or another one where the curtains are
0:32
Speaker 1: always drawn and the lights are on all night long.
0:35
Speaker 1: There is a weird house on our street, I have
0:37
Speaker 1: to say, a lot of strange noises. Oh yeah, what's
0:39
Speaker 1: so weird about it? My kids living in oh is
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Speaker 1: that the one with an accentric cartoonist who never leaves
0:44
Speaker 1: the house. I wouldn't know that one sometimes spotted eating
0:48
Speaker 1: cereal and his pajamas at six pm, and also nine
0:51
Speaker 1: pm and also three pm. Yea, I am rhemmy cartoonists
1:10
Speaker 1: and the co author of Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe. Hi,
1:13
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle of physicist and a professor
1:16
Speaker 1: at u C Irvine, and I think it's been more
1:18
Speaker 1: than a decade since I've had a bowl of cereal
1:20
Speaker 1: more than a decade. I feel so bad for you.
1:22
Speaker 1: Why do you deprive yourself of one of life's simplest
1:25
Speaker 1: and tastiest pleasures. Well, you know, I don't need breakfast anymore,
1:28
Speaker 1: and that's typically the time that normal humans eat cereal.
1:32
Speaker 1: Though I know you don't feel bound by those constraints.
1:35
Speaker 1: I do not feel bound by time zones now, So
1:37
Speaker 1: always breakfast time somewhere in the world. If you just
1:40
Speaker 1: think globally, you know, if you expand your mind a
1:42
Speaker 1: little bit, so you get to travel the world and
1:44
Speaker 1: your own kitchen, you're like, Oh, I'm having breakfast in Japan,
1:47
Speaker 1: or oh I'm having breakfast in Venezuela. Yeah, there's always
1:50
Speaker 1: somebody having breakfast right now. Somebody's having breakfast no matter
1:53
Speaker 1: what time you're listening, somebody is probably eating a bowl
1:56
Speaker 1: of cereal right now as they listen to this podcast. Yeah, crunch, crunch, crunch,
2:00
Speaker 1: or not. If it's soggy. I guess some people like
2:03
Speaker 1: it saggy. I don't know. We have a Danish exchange
2:05
Speaker 1: student living with us this year, and he tells me
2:07
Speaker 1: that in Denmark they don't eat their own meal cooked
2:09
Speaker 1: they eat just raw oats with milk on them. M. Yeah,
2:12
Speaker 1: don't they call like musically? I think they call that
2:15
Speaker 1: horse food over here? Did you just insult all Danish people?
2:20
Speaker 1: If you think being compared to a horse as an insult,
2:22
Speaker 1: and I think you just insulted horses. I think you're
2:24
Speaker 1: insulting the dictionary right now. I think I have to
2:27
Speaker 1: say nay to that one. But welcome to our podcast
2:31
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I
2:34
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in which we try not to spend too
2:36
Speaker 1: much time digressing about horses and cereal and died into
2:39
Speaker 1: the mysteries of the universe, because no matter what you're
2:43
Speaker 1: putting in your mouth, there are strange things going into
2:46
Speaker 1: your brain. All of these signals from photons traveling across
2:49
Speaker 1: the universe telling us that there are weird things happening
2:52
Speaker 1: out there, deep deep in the skies. Things blowing up, things, exploding, things, collapsing,
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Speaker 1: things swirling around, things glowing ways that we do not
3:01
Speaker 1: quite understand. On this podcast, we try to zoom you
3:04
Speaker 1: forward the very edge of human knowledge so you can
3:06
Speaker 1: understand all of the weird stuff that's out there in
3:09
Speaker 1: the universe. As because it is a weird universe, and
3:11
Speaker 1: we love to go out there, galloping out there to
3:14
Speaker 1: explore the things in it and trot along as we
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Speaker 1: discover amazing secrets about the universe and talk about them
3:20
Speaker 1: in this podcast until our voices are course. Wow, you
3:25
Speaker 1: get three stars for all those horse puns in one
3:28
Speaker 1: sentence to like that, that's really impressive. Yeah, well, how
3:31
Speaker 1: is your knowledge of horse speeds? Does it extend beyond galloping, trotting,
3:35
Speaker 1: and walking. Yes, there's also cantering, I think, and that's
3:40
Speaker 1: my main knowledge of it. I think loping is a
3:43
Speaker 1: thing also, isn't it. I don't know. You have a
3:45
Speaker 1: daughter who's an expert in horses, right, that's right. I
3:47
Speaker 1: hear her talking about loping and cantering and trotting. She
3:50
Speaker 1: doesn't horse around. She's quite serious about it, just as
3:53
Speaker 1: we are very serious about staying on topic on this podcast.
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Speaker 1: We try to rein in the puns. That's right, because
4:00
Speaker 1: I guess this is a podcast about physics. Although horses
4:02
Speaker 1: technically also follow the laws of physics. I'm not sure
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Speaker 1: how much that's been tested. One day we should do
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Speaker 1: an episode about the physics of horses. I'm sure we'll
4:10
Speaker 1: have a nice audience there with thirteen year old girls.
4:12
Speaker 1: But it is a pretty interesting universe full of mysteries,
4:15
Speaker 1: even today where people think that maybe science has everything
4:17
Speaker 1: figured out, but actually there are still interesting and amazing
4:20
Speaker 1: and perplexing mysteries out there for us to solve. And
4:24
Speaker 1: some of those are very accessible. If you are out
4:27
Speaker 1: camping or just out walking late at night and you
4:30
Speaker 1: turn your head up towards the night skies, you can
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Speaker 1: see the twinkling light that comes from huge flaming balls
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Speaker 1: of plasma that are zillions of miles away. It's incredible
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Speaker 1: that the photons make their way so far across enormous
4:43
Speaker 1: vast reaches of transparent space to hit your eyeballs. And
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Speaker 1: people have been looking up at those stars and wondering
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Speaker 1: what they are and how they work for thousands of years,
4:52
Speaker 1: maybe for hundreds of thousands of years, for at least
4:54
Speaker 1: as long as people have been looking up at the
4:56
Speaker 1: skies and asking questions. And we've made a lot of
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Speaker 1: progress and understanding what those things are and how far
5:03
Speaker 1: away they are, and how they work and what powers them,
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Speaker 1: and yet important questions still remain. That's right. We have
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Speaker 1: an amazing view of the entire universe, all forty billion
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Speaker 1: light years wide of it, full of trallians of stars,
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Speaker 1: and that's one of the main things we see when
5:17
Speaker 1: we look out into the universe stars and they bring
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Speaker 1: information about what kind of star they are, what kind
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Speaker 1: of planets they have around them, and how the whole
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Speaker 1: universe is arranged. One of the coolest things about these
5:28
Speaker 1: hot stars is that they tell us something about the
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Speaker 1: story of our neighborhood. They contain so many clues about
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Speaker 1: what has happened in the long, deep history of the
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Speaker 1: universe before we started paying attention, before we started looking
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Speaker 1: out into the cosmos and noticing things. We do know
5:44
Speaker 1: that the universe is very, very old, just as the
5:46
Speaker 1: ground under our feet is old. And by asking questions
5:50
Speaker 1: about how the Earth got to look this way or
5:52
Speaker 1: how stars got to glow in these particular patterns, we
5:55
Speaker 1: can start to understand how they form and understand the
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Speaker 1: story of our own universe, a context of our very lives, yeah,
6:02
Speaker 1: including how our star form. Because I guess when you
6:05
Speaker 1: look out into the university, Daniel, it sort of looks
6:07
Speaker 1: like a bunch of pinpoints. All the stars look the
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Speaker 1: same from our point of view, but actually stars are
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Speaker 1: really diverse. They go in all kinds of sizes and colors, right,
6:14
Speaker 1: and temperatures, absolutely, and they tend to resist our efforts
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Speaker 1: to categorize them. The human tendency is to put things
6:21
Speaker 1: in groups and say, oh, this is this kind of thing,
6:23
Speaker 1: this is that kind of thing. But the history of
6:26
Speaker 1: astronomy and cosmology is discovering maybe those definitions don't quite work.
6:30
Speaker 1: There's always a fuzzy thing right at the boundary that's like,
6:33
Speaker 1: I'm kind of like this one. I'm kind of like
6:34
Speaker 1: that one. Are break all the rules that you thought
6:37
Speaker 1: were true about stars or planets. Just look at our
6:40
Speaker 1: solar system. You know, there's a sun, there's planets, but
6:42
Speaker 1: then there are dwarf planets, and then there are asteroids
6:45
Speaker 1: and their comets, and there's things called centaurs. It's right
6:47
Speaker 1: at the edge between asteroids and comets. It's a whole
6:50
Speaker 1: huge spectrum of craziness out there. And every time we
6:53
Speaker 1: look deep and carefully into the universe, we always find
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Speaker 1: something out there that surprises us, that doesn't fall neatly
6:59
Speaker 1: into any of the categories. Yeah, and that happens even
7:02
Speaker 1: with stars. We have all these categories for stars. We
7:05
Speaker 1: know pretty well what happens to stars as they grow older,
7:08
Speaker 1: as they get bigger, what kinds of stars and depending
7:11
Speaker 1: on how big they started. Stars are pretty well studied,
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Speaker 1: but there are still mysteries about stars the scientists are
7:17
Speaker 1: wondering about. That's right. At the same time, we do
7:19
Speaker 1: know a lot about stars, and we have looked at
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Speaker 1: a lot of them and understood many things, there are
7:23
Speaker 1: basic questions about them. We still don't understand our own son,
7:27
Speaker 1: for example, even though it's nearby and very bright and
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Speaker 1: fairly accessible, resists our understanding. We still don't really understand
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Speaker 1: how it generates its incredible magnetic field, and why it
7:37
Speaker 1: flips every eleven years, and why it has so many
7:39
Speaker 1: weird cycles, and why it sometimes spits out enormous quantities
7:43
Speaker 1: of plasma in our direction. So the sort of basic
7:46
Speaker 1: component of the universe, stars, the thing that light up
7:49
Speaker 1: the universe and make it visible, are something we still
7:51
Speaker 1: have to understand more deeply. Did you say our son
7:54
Speaker 1: is spitting at us? That's not very nice in the
7:56
Speaker 1: same way the cloud spit at us. Absolutely, the Sun
7:59
Speaker 1: causes so older weather. You know, it has a solar
8:01
Speaker 1: wind made of particles that zoom out super high speeds,
8:04
Speaker 1: and sometimes the solar weather gets stormy and creates these
8:08
Speaker 1: coronal mass ejections. Yes, so we're still trying to even
8:11
Speaker 1: understand our star here in our Solar system. But there
8:14
Speaker 1: are also really extra odd stars out there in space,
8:18
Speaker 1: out there in the universe exactly. Not all stars out
8:20
Speaker 1: there are like our sun, as you said. They're ones
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Speaker 1: that are much bigger, some that are much hotter, some
8:25
Speaker 1: of that are more magnetic, some that spin faster or slower,
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Speaker 1: and then there are some that seem to be impossible.
8:30
Speaker 1: So to day on the podcast will be tackling the
8:32
Speaker 1: question what's going on which she builds ki Star. I
8:42
Speaker 1: was nervous about pronouncing that. How many letters are on
8:45
Speaker 1: this twelve letters, only one fowl. Yeah, it's a pretty
8:48
Speaker 1: amazing name. I love the way it's spelled. It's p
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Speaker 1: r z y b l y s k I. So yeah,
8:54
Speaker 1: if you don't count wise, then it's all consonants and
8:57
Speaker 1: then a vowel at the end. It feels like a
9:00
Speaker 1: classic Superman villain Mr Mix bit look at all, but
9:04
Speaker 1: you just make that up. It's classic Superman villas like Lex,
9:08
Speaker 1: Luthor and Bizarro, And then there's Mr Look, which is
9:12
Speaker 1: a huge name also without any vols. But this one
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Speaker 1: about the star does have at least one vowel. It
9:16
Speaker 1: certainly does. And it's got a silent z in it.
9:19
Speaker 1: I mean, it's got a Z in the name, but
9:20
Speaker 1: you say it, push Bilski starts, you don't ever say
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Speaker 1: a Z sound to it. I feel like it has
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Speaker 1: a silent z, a sneaky y steal the z. Also,
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Speaker 1: I think part of it comes from transliteration from Polish.
9:32
Speaker 1: You know, Polish has a bunch of consonants that we
9:34
Speaker 1: just don't have. Like there's an L with a line
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Speaker 1: through it that sounds very different from our L. Maybe
9:40
Speaker 1: that's a topic for a different podcast. But this is
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Speaker 1: an interesting start out there in the universe because it's
9:45
Speaker 1: still kind of a mystery to physicists. Yeah, it's not
9:48
Speaker 1: one that we understand. It's doing things that we think
9:50
Speaker 1: are impossible, and it's generated a lot of controversy and
9:53
Speaker 1: a lot of really out there explanations involving potentially aliens. Yeah,
9:59
Speaker 1: and this is not just about its name. It's more
10:01
Speaker 1: about its physics. So it's usually we were wondering how
10:03
Speaker 1: many people out there had heard of this star and
10:06
Speaker 1: maybe even had heard of its deep mysteries. So thank
10:10
Speaker 1: you very much to everybody who participates in these questions.
10:13
Speaker 1: If you'd like to hear your voice on the podcast,
10:15
Speaker 1: please don't be shy. Right to us two questions at
10:18
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com to think about it for
10:20
Speaker 1: a second. Do you know what's going on with Shibilski
10:23
Speaker 1: Star with Tustatch? Maybe it's going to put another because
10:33
Speaker 1: of the name. I don't know what Prizk Star is,
10:36
Speaker 1: so I can't even begin to him agine what's going
10:39
Speaker 1: on with it. What's going on with Posiabilisky's Star? I
10:46
Speaker 1: don't know which star is that? And I'm also don't
10:50
Speaker 1: know how to pronounce that name, despite the fact that
10:54
Speaker 1: my wife is Polish. What is this? This sounds like
10:58
Speaker 1: a guy from football team? Uh, probably Chicago Bears. I
11:07
Speaker 1: don't know. Prison Bilsky Star is a star where the
11:11
Speaker 1: gravitational pressure is so great that all the vowels have
11:15
Speaker 1: been forced out and it is made up of almost
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Speaker 1: nothing but consonants. Alright, not a lot of name recognition.
11:21
Speaker 1: I like the person who said it sounds like a
11:23
Speaker 1: Chicago Bears football player. Maybe it is made to long
11:26
Speaker 1: lost descendant of the original billy. Yeah, maybe he's a
11:30
Speaker 1: star in his local high school football team. Now, yeah,
11:32
Speaker 1: maybe he's one of those physicists m m. Or maybe
11:35
Speaker 1: he's a star horseback rider. To bring it all in
11:38
Speaker 1: a full circle. Oh my goodness. But not a lot
11:40
Speaker 1: of people seem to have heard of this start. I
11:42
Speaker 1: guess it's not dominating the headline. Yeah, I was surprised.
11:45
Speaker 1: I thought it should be more famous. And it's actually
11:47
Speaker 1: not as well known as it should be in scientific
11:50
Speaker 1: circles either, because when he published his paper, originally the
11:53
Speaker 1: journal misspelled his name, so people who went searching for
11:57
Speaker 1: this paper weren't able to find it. Wait, they miss
12:00
Speaker 1: spilled his name. How is that possible? I mean there
12:03
Speaker 1: are so many z s wise and lack of vowels
12:05
Speaker 1: in it. Yes, this, so you know, things were being
12:08
Speaker 1: typed manually and somebody swapped a couple of letters, and
12:11
Speaker 1: so for a long time it was harder to find
12:14
Speaker 1: this paper than it should have been. I guess it's
12:16
Speaker 1: not a very catchy name, you know. Maybe that's a
12:18
Speaker 1: lesson if you do discover something one day, Daniel, maybe
12:22
Speaker 1: using easy to remember name or easy to spell at
12:24
Speaker 1: least so people can google it, right, yeah, I suppose.
12:27
Speaker 1: You know, my family was Polish and they changed their name.
12:29
Speaker 1: It used to be Golschewski on my mother's side, and
12:31
Speaker 1: they changed it to Gail, just to make it easier
12:34
Speaker 1: to spell and explain. Well, it's an interesting star because
12:38
Speaker 1: there are still a lot of big mysteries about it,
12:40
Speaker 1: and one of those mysteries might even lead us to
12:43
Speaker 1: believe there are aliens out there in the universe. That's
12:45
Speaker 1: a big claim. Yeah, this is a really fun start.
12:47
Speaker 1: You're not horsing around here, No, I'm trotting out all
12:50
Speaker 1: the craziest ideas that are out there. Well, you better
12:53
Speaker 1: pointing up with some interesting facts here, Daniel, and explain
12:55
Speaker 1: it to us. Well, my favorite thing about this whole
12:57
Speaker 1: topic is just that we're trying to understand all of
13:00
Speaker 1: the stars. You know, it's a basic idea in physics,
13:02
Speaker 1: like let's build a model for what we think is
13:04
Speaker 1: happening inside stars, and then let's compare it to what's
13:07
Speaker 1: out there. And every time you do that, you always
13:10
Speaker 1: find an outlier. You find something which breaks your model
13:12
Speaker 1: that says there's something else going on that you don't understand.
13:16
Speaker 1: And that's the whole process of physics. Right, develop a
13:18
Speaker 1: simplified view of the universe in our minds and try
13:21
Speaker 1: to use it to describe what we see outside of
13:23
Speaker 1: our skulls. And if we were right the first time,
13:25
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be very exciting. So it's always really fun
13:28
Speaker 1: to see something unexplained, something which makes us stretch our models.
13:32
Speaker 1: And this one is super exciting because we don't really
13:34
Speaker 1: even know how to stretch our models to describe it. Yeah,
13:38
Speaker 1: so maybe step us through this, Daniel, What is Shebilsky Star?
13:41
Speaker 1: Why is it weird? So this is a star discovered
13:44
Speaker 1: in nine by Anthony Shebilski, and it's weird in a
13:48
Speaker 1: couple of ways. First, it's weird because it's both hot
13:51
Speaker 1: and magnetic, which is unusual. And then it's also weird
13:54
Speaker 1: because it has some very strange, very unusual elements in
13:58
Speaker 1: it that we don't understand. How they out there? M
14:01
Speaker 1: What do you mean? Well, first let's talk about how
14:02
Speaker 1: it's hot and magnetic. So stars, of course are all hot, right,
14:06
Speaker 1: they're all out there in space. They have enough mass
14:08
Speaker 1: to ignite fusion at their cores and to give off light.
14:11
Speaker 1: That's how we know they're out there. Otherwise it would
14:13
Speaker 1: be like failed stars, and just like big jupiters that
14:16
Speaker 1: didn't quite have enough pressure, they did the temperature going
14:18
Speaker 1: for fusion. But the bigger stars are hotter, and they
14:21
Speaker 1: tend to glow at different temperatures. So we classify stars
14:24
Speaker 1: based on their temperature according to the light that we
14:26
Speaker 1: get from them. Hotter things tend to glow and higher frequencies,
14:30
Speaker 1: and cooler things tend to glow in lower frequencies in
14:33
Speaker 1: longer wavelengths. So the whole spectrum of different temperature stars
14:36
Speaker 1: out there from sort of cooler too hot, although all
14:39
Speaker 1: of them are uncomfortably hot on our standards, right, And
14:42
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting that the blue stars are the
14:45
Speaker 1: ones that are hotter, but the red stars are actually cooler, right,
14:48
Speaker 1: A little unintuitive to meet. Blue is more intense. It's
14:51
Speaker 1: like the ultra violet. But I guess here on Earth
14:53
Speaker 1: we usually use you know, blue for cold and red
14:56
Speaker 1: for hot. Oh, I guess that's true. Yeah, like icy blue,
15:00
Speaker 1: but it's the opposite. And I guess what the term
15:02
Speaker 1: is the temperature of a star. Well, it's mostly just
15:04
Speaker 1: the mass. As you have more mass, you have more gravity,
15:07
Speaker 1: which makes more pressure at the core, which increases the temperature,
15:11
Speaker 1: and that temperature drives fusion. The higher the temperature, the
15:14
Speaker 1: more effective fusion is and it burns faster. So really
15:18
Speaker 1: big stars are hotter in their core, which give off
15:21
Speaker 1: more blue light. And they also don't last very long,
15:24
Speaker 1: so blue stars tend to be young stars, whereas red
15:27
Speaker 1: stars can last much much longer because they burn cooler,
15:30
Speaker 1: so it takes them longer to burn through their fuel.
15:33
Speaker 1: They're cooler and I guess not it's excited and they
15:36
Speaker 1: don't feel loud like the hot stars. It's also an
15:38
Speaker 1: interesting connection between how hot stars are and their magnetic field,
15:42
Speaker 1: which also is connected to how fast they spin. And
15:46
Speaker 1: we don't really understand exactly how magnetic fields are made
15:49
Speaker 1: inside all of stars. We think it has to do
15:52
Speaker 1: with like currents of plasma. Most of the star is
15:55
Speaker 1: a big ball of plasma, but we think that in
15:57
Speaker 1: cooler stars are probably current of plasma, like there's convection,
16:02
Speaker 1: you know, layers of plasma moving this way and then
16:04
Speaker 1: sinking and then rising, and that those spinning currents can
16:07
Speaker 1: generate magnetic fields. Magnetic fields typically come from moving charges.
16:12
Speaker 1: Charges moving in a circle, for example, will generate a
16:15
Speaker 1: magnetic field. If you have electricity moving in a circle
16:18
Speaker 1: on Earth, you can generate a magnetic field. We think
16:21
Speaker 1: the same thing is happening inside the Earth, and probably
16:23
Speaker 1: the same thing is happening inside the Sun and inside
16:26
Speaker 1: cooler stars. Yeah, like our Sun is filled with turmoil, right, Like,
16:31
Speaker 1: it's got all kinds of things flowing and churning inside
16:34
Speaker 1: of it. And in fact, it's magnetic field is flipped
16:36
Speaker 1: a few times, right, Yeah, it actually flips every eleven years,
16:40
Speaker 1: which is kind of bonkers. The Earth's magnetic field flips also,
16:43
Speaker 1: but it's much less predictable, and it flips on much
16:45
Speaker 1: longer time scales, hundreds of thousands of years or millions
16:48
Speaker 1: of years. We don't even really understand it. Sun's magnetic
16:52
Speaker 1: field flips very regularly every eleven years, and it's not
16:55
Speaker 1: something that we understand. We think again, it comes from
16:58
Speaker 1: how these plasma currents are flowing inside the Sun. But
17:01
Speaker 1: it's not easy to see. It's easy to see the
17:03
Speaker 1: outside of the Sun, but to penetry deeper into the
17:05
Speaker 1: Sun and see what's going on inside it is quite tricky, right.
17:08
Speaker 1: I guess it kind of depends on the overall spin
17:11
Speaker 1: of the stuff inside the Sun, right, Like, everything sort
17:14
Speaker 1: of spinning one direction clockwise than the overall magnetic fields.
17:18
Speaker 1: You can point one way, but if the things inside
17:20
Speaker 1: of it are turning the other way, then the overall
17:22
Speaker 1: magnetic field would flip right. Yeah, And so for the
17:24
Speaker 1: field to flip, that means things have to like change direction.
17:28
Speaker 1: Imagine some like huge pot of sauce that's bubbling and
17:31
Speaker 1: like some bubble like comes up and flips everything around
17:34
Speaker 1: every eleven years. It's a very regular process. But this
17:38
Speaker 1: is different than the sun spinning because the Sun is
17:39
Speaker 1: also spinning at the same time. Yeah, the Sun is
17:41
Speaker 1: spinning at the same time, and it's still spinning the
17:43
Speaker 1: same direction. It's always been spinning. Now. Something that's interesting
17:47
Speaker 1: is that stars that are hotter tend to not have
17:50
Speaker 1: as strong magnetic fields as stars that are cooler. Started
17:53
Speaker 1: are hotter have more fusion happening, and they're hotter inside,
17:56
Speaker 1: and the energy transfer tends to be more radiative than convective.
18:00
Speaker 1: Instead of like sheets of plasma current moving against each other,
18:04
Speaker 1: the energy transfer tends to be more through photons passing
18:08
Speaker 1: that energy. It's radiative energy, and so it's just sort
18:10
Speaker 1: of like more turbulent and less organized, and so the
18:14
Speaker 1: theory is that that tends to give weaker magnetic fields
18:16
Speaker 1: in the hotter stars than in the cooler stars. Do
18:19
Speaker 1: we know that for sure or is that just kind
18:21
Speaker 1: of based on how we think the stars work or
18:24
Speaker 1: or simulations. We definitely do not know that for sure.
18:27
Speaker 1: And also that's a very simplified picture. Even this classification
18:31
Speaker 1: of stars by temperature and their magnetic fields excludes a
18:34
Speaker 1: lot of examples that break these rules. And we don't
18:37
Speaker 1: understand turbulence well enough, Like we can't even model turbulence
18:40
Speaker 1: like in sewer systems. We have tried, but it's a
18:43
Speaker 1: chaotic process. You know, turbulence is very difficult. One little
18:47
Speaker 1: ripple here or there can really change the way you know,
18:50
Speaker 1: your sewer system functions. So if everybody's flushing the toilet
18:53
Speaker 1: at the wrong time, you can get unpredictable results. You
18:56
Speaker 1: gotta throw it all in the toilet. And so turbulence
18:59
Speaker 1: is something that's always been a challenge to model scientifically,
19:01
Speaker 1: and lots of people are working on that. You know,
19:03
Speaker 1: air turbulence, water turbulence. It's a hard problem. And now
19:06
Speaker 1: you're talking about a star sized turbulence and everything has
19:09
Speaker 1: electric charges on it, so it's not just like forces
19:12
Speaker 1: of compression, but there's also the magnetic fields and electrical fields.
19:15
Speaker 1: It's a really complicated problem. We can't control plasmas in
19:19
Speaker 1: tocomax here on Earth for that reason, because they tend
19:21
Speaker 1: to go unstable. We lose control them, and our simulations
19:24
Speaker 1: are not great at predicting how that happens. We had
19:26
Speaker 1: a better understanding of it, we could probably solve fusion, right,
19:29
Speaker 1: we could reverse engineer exactly how to keep a plasma
19:32
Speaker 1: from getting too turbulent. But we don't understand it. But
19:35
Speaker 1: we do see this trend that hotter stars tend to
19:38
Speaker 1: be less magnetic, and we think it might be because
19:41
Speaker 1: it's just more chaos going on inside the star. You
19:43
Speaker 1: don't have these organized tubes of plasma because things are
19:46
Speaker 1: too hot for that. Right. There may be a little
19:48
Speaker 1: too explosive in the middle for things to kind of
19:51
Speaker 1: flow around. They're just too busy getting exploded. I guess, yeah, exactly.
19:55
Speaker 1: There's always fresh photons coming out from the interior breaking
19:58
Speaker 1: things up, and so that will We think that's trend, right,
20:01
Speaker 1: although we can measure I mean, we had our sun,
20:03
Speaker 1: which is one data point, but the rest we think
20:05
Speaker 1: it's from the theories and simulations. Well, we can measure
20:08
Speaker 1: the temperature stars, and we can also measure their magnetic fields.
20:11
Speaker 1: So we've measure the magnetic fields of other stars, not
20:14
Speaker 1: just our own, and we do see these kinds of trends.
20:16
Speaker 1: You can measure the magnetic fields of other stars by
20:19
Speaker 1: seeing the effect of the magnetic field on the radiation
20:22
Speaker 1: from that star. Like if there's a magnetic field, then
20:25
Speaker 1: atoms tend to have different lines of excitation. The light
20:28
Speaker 1: that we get from other stars comes from eating the
20:31
Speaker 1: outer layers of the star and then having them glow
20:34
Speaker 1: based on that temperature. And atoms can only glow at
20:36
Speaker 1: certain wavelengths due to their quantum mechanical nature, and if
20:39
Speaker 1: there's a strong magnetic field, some of those wavelengths gets split,
20:42
Speaker 1: like the spin up and the spin down version of
20:44
Speaker 1: the electron glow, it's slightly different wavelengths. So we can
20:47
Speaker 1: measure the magnetic fields by seeing the small effects on
20:51
Speaker 1: those wavelengths of the glow of the star. So we
20:53
Speaker 1: can measure the magnetic fields of other stars. Interesting, Okay, Well,
20:58
Speaker 1: then it seems like shability are has a weird combination
21:02
Speaker 1: of both heat and a magnetic field. And so let's
21:05
Speaker 1: get into that mystery. But first let's take a quick break.
21:20
Speaker 1: All right, we're talking about the mysteries of Sabilsky Star.
21:24
Speaker 1: Where is the star Daniel? Is it really far away
21:26
Speaker 1: from us or is it closed by? It's about three
21:28
Speaker 1: seventy light years away, so it's not super close, but
21:31
Speaker 1: it's not super far. You definitely can't go there on
21:34
Speaker 1: a day trip. And it's in our Milky Way galaxy, right, Yeah,
21:37
Speaker 1: Almost all the stars that we can study in any
21:38
Speaker 1: detail are in the Milky Way because other galaxies are
21:41
Speaker 1: just so far away millions of light years away, that
21:44
Speaker 1: the stars are much dimmer and it's harder to resolve
21:47
Speaker 1: individual stars. And can you see this star in the
21:50
Speaker 1: night sky or do you need like a super good telescope.
21:53
Speaker 1: It's in the constellation of Centauris, so yeah, you can
21:55
Speaker 1: look up in the night sky and see it, especially
21:57
Speaker 1: if you're in the Southern hemisphere, especially or only you're
22:00
Speaker 1: in the Southern hemisphere. Yeah, I don't know. It's a
22:02
Speaker 1: bright constellation in the southern sky. I'm not sure exactly
22:06
Speaker 1: where it's visible. All right, Well, there is a big
22:08
Speaker 1: mystery about this star, enough that people have in papers
22:11
Speaker 1: about this mystery. Right, Yeah, there are a couple of
22:13
Speaker 1: exciting mysteries. One is one we were just talking about,
22:16
Speaker 1: which is this combination of the star's temperature and its
22:19
Speaker 1: magnetic field. We were saying that hot stars tend to
22:21
Speaker 1: not have a very strong magnetic field. But Shebilsky Star
22:24
Speaker 1: is a very hot star. It's called an A star,
22:27
Speaker 1: which means it's one of the hotter stars that are
22:29
Speaker 1: out there are stars. A G star is arbitrary classification.
22:33
Speaker 1: What we're not even on the B list. We're on
22:35
Speaker 1: the G list. We're cool, man, We're not hot. We're
22:39
Speaker 1: so uncool. We're cool is everything? Yeah, exactly. Well, No,
22:43
Speaker 1: our star is not one of the hotter stars or
22:45
Speaker 1: the bigger stars. It's kind of a boring star in
22:47
Speaker 1: the Solar system. But Shebilsky Star is an A star,
22:50
Speaker 1: which means it's very hot. But it also, we think
22:52
Speaker 1: has a very strong magnetic field, and so this is
22:55
Speaker 1: an unusual combination when it comes to stars. It's a
22:59
Speaker 1: hot star, that means it's a really massive star. How
23:01
Speaker 1: big are or massive is it? So it is a
23:03
Speaker 1: more massive star. It's only like one and a half
23:06
Speaker 1: times the mass of the Sun. It's on the hotter
23:08
Speaker 1: edge of the spectrum. So it's just hotter because it's
23:12
Speaker 1: at that point in its life. A cycle or just
23:15
Speaker 1: that extra half of a solar mass makes it that
23:17
Speaker 1: much hotter to make the dai having one and a
23:20
Speaker 1: half solar masses definitely makes it hotter for sure. And
23:22
Speaker 1: we've measured it's magnetic field. We can do that from here. Yeah,
23:25
Speaker 1: we can measure the magnetic field because, as we were
23:27
Speaker 1: saying before, the magnetic field affects the atoms inside the star.
23:31
Speaker 1: It changes how they glow. What do you mean, Well,
23:33
Speaker 1: electrons are whizzing around the atoms, and the reason that
23:36
Speaker 1: a star glows is not directly because of photons made
23:39
Speaker 1: from the fusion. The energy produced by fusion gets transmitted
23:42
Speaker 1: to the outer layers of the star and they get
23:44
Speaker 1: hot and they glow. Everything in the universe glows as
23:48
Speaker 1: it gets hot because getting hot means that things are
23:50
Speaker 1: moving around. They have a lot of speed. For example,
23:53
Speaker 1: electrons can move up in energy levels around the atom.
23:56
Speaker 1: Remember that electrons are not little classical objects that are
23:59
Speaker 1: in orbit around the atom the where the Earth is
24:01
Speaker 1: in orbit around the Sun. There have a few quantum
24:04
Speaker 1: states that they can sit in. It's more like a
24:06
Speaker 1: ladder than a hill. And so if you give them energy,
24:08
Speaker 1: they can step up the ladder, but then they like
24:10
Speaker 1: to step back down the ladder because the universe likes
24:12
Speaker 1: to spread its energy out and when they step back
24:15
Speaker 1: down the ladder, they give off that amount of energy.
24:17
Speaker 1: So every atom has like these levels of energy you
24:20
Speaker 1: can be at, and if you add a magnetic field,
24:22
Speaker 1: it changes those energy levels a little bit, which changes
24:25
Speaker 1: the energy of the light that's emitted by those atoms.
24:28
Speaker 1: And we can see that here on Earth. Do we
24:30
Speaker 1: see it brighter or dimmer or only in certain frequencies?
24:33
Speaker 1: Thinks shift, what's the evidence for the magnetic field? We
24:36
Speaker 1: see a split. So if you have like hydrogen gas
24:38
Speaker 1: and you heat it up, they'll tend to emit a
24:40
Speaker 1: certain frequencies. Now, if you add a magnetic field, then
24:43
Speaker 1: like the spin up electrons and the spin down electrons
24:45
Speaker 1: are now slightly different energies. So instead of having a
24:48
Speaker 1: single line from those electrons, you'll split it into two lines.
24:52
Speaker 1: And by lines you mean like how much of certain
24:55
Speaker 1: frequency the light has that comes from let star, right,
24:58
Speaker 1: Like if it has a lot of energy as frequent
25:00
Speaker 1: see it then you know that comes from a storing
25:01
Speaker 1: atton in that star, and you're saying, if that spike
25:05
Speaker 1: splits into two, that means there's a strong whitetic field. Exactly.
25:08
Speaker 1: We can't go and measure these things directly. Almost all
25:10
Speaker 1: the information we have about these stars comes from their lights,
25:13
Speaker 1: so we have to try to suck out as much
25:15
Speaker 1: information as possible from this limited stream of data. And
25:18
Speaker 1: so one thing we do a lot of is not
25:20
Speaker 1: just count the number of photons we see from the star,
25:23
Speaker 1: but we measure all of their frequencies and we make
25:25
Speaker 1: a spectrograph which says what frequencies are we seeing light
25:28
Speaker 1: from this star. And we don't see light at every
25:30
Speaker 1: frequency from the stars. It depends on what the star
25:33
Speaker 1: is made out of and how hot it is, and
25:35
Speaker 1: also the magnetic field. So it's incredible how much information
25:39
Speaker 1: is stored and just the spectrum of light that comes
25:41
Speaker 1: from a star, it really tells you a lot about
25:43
Speaker 1: what's going on inside. Yeah, it's pretty wild because when
25:46
Speaker 1: you get light from a star, you're getting like a
25:48
Speaker 1: single stream of photons, right, It's not like you're getting
25:51
Speaker 1: like a huge beam of light. You're just getting like
25:53
Speaker 1: one photon at a time, and you have to get
25:55
Speaker 1: all this frequency information from those photons, right, Yeah, although
25:58
Speaker 1: every beam of light is really just one photon at
26:01
Speaker 1: a time. Even from our sun, you're still just getting
26:03
Speaker 1: one photon at a time. All though's just a lot
26:05
Speaker 1: more photons per second, And so you can measure the
26:07
Speaker 1: frequency of each photon, and that's what we do, and
26:10
Speaker 1: then they pile up. They tend to be in certain
26:12
Speaker 1: frequencies and that tells us this one must have been
26:15
Speaker 1: emitted from an atom and this energy level. The electron
26:18
Speaker 1: jumped down to a lower energy level and give us
26:20
Speaker 1: this photon. So iron has a characteristic frequency at which
26:23
Speaker 1: it glows, and helium has a characteristic frequency at which
26:26
Speaker 1: it glows. And these lines all get split by the
26:29
Speaker 1: magnetic field. So the photons go at higher or lower
26:31
Speaker 1: frequencies based on the spin of the electron because the
26:34
Speaker 1: spin interacts with a magnetic field. All right, So then
26:37
Speaker 1: the mystery about this Sabilsky star, or at least one mystery,
26:40
Speaker 1: is that it's both hot and highly magnetic. Is it
26:44
Speaker 1: rare to see that or is it physically impossible to
26:47
Speaker 1: do that? It's rare, it's not impossible, and it's also
26:49
Speaker 1: not the only example of a hot magnetic star, but
26:52
Speaker 1: it's not something that we understand. It's weird. It just
26:55
Speaker 1: sort of like adds to the weirdness of this star.
26:58
Speaker 1: I guess why would it be rare or weird. Maybe
27:01
Speaker 1: it's just a really hot star with a lot of
27:03
Speaker 1: turmoil inside, so it has that extra it factor that
27:06
Speaker 1: makes it both hot and magnetic. Yeah, well, it means
27:08
Speaker 1: that's something that is going on inside the star that
27:10
Speaker 1: we don't understand, because we don't understand how a really
27:13
Speaker 1: hot star can have the sort of convection necessary in
27:16
Speaker 1: order to generate the magnetic field. It's just not something
27:18
Speaker 1: that we understand. We don't have a model for it.
27:20
Speaker 1: And we do see that it's rare. That's just an observation.
27:23
Speaker 1: We don't see a lot of hot stars with strong
27:25
Speaker 1: magnetic fields. Tends to be colder stars that have these
27:28
Speaker 1: magnetic fields. But again, it's a sort of a forefront
27:30
Speaker 1: of human knowledge here. We don't really understand magnetic fields
27:33
Speaker 1: inside stars kind of at all, and so it's a
27:36
Speaker 1: it's a big area of investigation, just kind of a
27:38
Speaker 1: rare matchup of both temperature and magnetic field. Is there
27:41
Speaker 1: the opposite like have we seen any cool stars with
27:44
Speaker 1: little magnetic field? There's a huge population of stars out there,
27:47
Speaker 1: so there's always something on the tail whenever we're talking
27:50
Speaker 1: about these things. Were are we just talking about trends
27:52
Speaker 1: or we're trying to describe a vast population of billions
27:55
Speaker 1: of stars? And they never follow these things exactly. There's
27:57
Speaker 1: always variation and fuzz So they're definitely are some cool
28:01
Speaker 1: stars out there without strong magnetic fields, and also kind
28:04
Speaker 1: of a mystery. All right, So that's one mystery about
28:07
Speaker 1: bills Ki Star. What's the other mystery? The other mystery
28:10
Speaker 1: is how it glows. We were talking about how the
28:13
Speaker 1: different atoms in the atmosphere of a star make it
28:16
Speaker 1: glow differently, and we can use that to tell sort
28:18
Speaker 1: of what a star is made out of. Like we
28:21
Speaker 1: can look at our sun and we can say, what's
28:23
Speaker 1: our sun made out of? How would we figure it out? Well,
28:26
Speaker 1: one thing you can do is go and take a
28:27
Speaker 1: scoop of it and you can bring it back to
28:28
Speaker 1: Earth and like study this stuff. But that's not very
28:31
Speaker 1: practical because taking a scoop out of the sun is
28:33
Speaker 1: pretty dangerous. But you can study the sun without actually
28:36
Speaker 1: going there. You can just look at the light that
28:38
Speaker 1: comes from the star and say what frequencies is it
28:41
Speaker 1: coming at, and what stuff do I need to mix
28:44
Speaker 1: at what temperature to get this spectrum? Can I reverse
28:47
Speaker 1: engineer the spectrum and say I need to add a
28:49
Speaker 1: certain amount of hydrogen, a certain amount of helium and
28:51
Speaker 1: heat it all up to a certain temperature, and then
28:53
Speaker 1: I should expect to see the spectrum that I'm seeing
28:56
Speaker 1: from the sun. So that's sort of the general strategy
28:59
Speaker 1: for how you can tell what a star is made
29:01
Speaker 1: out of. Don't you see the lines in the spectrum
29:03
Speaker 1: to like if it if it has certain lines in
29:05
Speaker 1: a certain frecuncy that tells you, oh there's iron here.
29:08
Speaker 1: Oh it's got some carbon too, yeah exactly. And it's
29:10
Speaker 1: sort of like a fingerprint, yeah exactly, because every element
29:13
Speaker 1: has a different set of lines that tend to glow
29:15
Speaker 1: at different levels because they're constructed differently. In the solutions
29:18
Speaker 1: to the Shorteninger equation for iron are different than they
29:21
Speaker 1: are for helium and for hydrogen, So each element has
29:23
Speaker 1: its own fingerprint. So you can look at the spectrum
29:26
Speaker 1: of star and reverse engineer and say to explain this spectrum,
29:29
Speaker 1: I need a bunch of hydrogen and a little bit
29:31
Speaker 1: of helium and some iron and some nickels. So, for example,
29:33
Speaker 1: we can look at our star and we can tell
29:35
Speaker 1: it's about by mass seventy percent hydrogen and like almost
29:39
Speaker 1: thirty percent helium, So that's almost the entire star. And
29:42
Speaker 1: there's like a percent or so that's heavier stuff carbon, nitrogen,
29:46
Speaker 1: oxygen all the way up, like iron and nickel and
29:49
Speaker 1: a few other things. So we can tell what's in
29:51
Speaker 1: our star by looking at the light that comes from it.
29:53
Speaker 1: And the cool thing is, because you don't have to
29:55
Speaker 1: go to the Sun to use this technique, you can
29:57
Speaker 1: also apply the same technique two stars that are really
29:59
Speaker 1: really fall are away that you could never visit. Yeah,
30:02
Speaker 1: you can look at expectrum and actually it's the opposite
30:04
Speaker 1: that tells you what's in it, right, Like if you
30:06
Speaker 1: see light comes in and all frequencies except a certain frequency,
30:09
Speaker 1: that's how you know that there's a certain element there, right,
30:12
Speaker 1: because the element absorbs that bite. Right, So when you're
30:15
Speaker 1: analyzing the light from a real star, it does get complicated.
30:17
Speaker 1: You have like a whole spectrum. You see photons that
30:19
Speaker 1: basically every wavelength, and then there are some spikes some
30:23
Speaker 1: places where the atmosphere of the star has been excited
30:26
Speaker 1: to emit just at that frequency, and there are also
30:29
Speaker 1: dips there, dips when the atmosphere of the star is
30:31
Speaker 1: absorbing light just at that frequency. So like photons that
30:34
Speaker 1: come from inside the star get absorbed by the atmosphere
30:37
Speaker 1: of that star. That's similar to like how we model
30:40
Speaker 1: the atmosphere of an exoplanet. We can see the light
30:43
Speaker 1: coming from the star behind it, and we can see
30:45
Speaker 1: what frequencies the light of that atmosphere gets absorbed, and
30:48
Speaker 1: so it's both lines and dips in that spectrum that
30:51
Speaker 1: tell you something interesting is going on. Yeah, and that's
30:54
Speaker 1: how we know what the star is made out of,
30:56
Speaker 1: which is amazing, right. It's like we're getting this drip
30:58
Speaker 1: of data from a pinpoint in the sky and we
31:01
Speaker 1: can tell hey, it's got a little bit of this
31:03
Speaker 1: and a little bit of that. Right. It's really incredible,
31:05
Speaker 1: and it requires developing this model of saying we think
31:08
Speaker 1: we know what's going on inside a star, and different
31:10
Speaker 1: models should generate different fingerprints, and so we can reverse
31:12
Speaker 1: engineer and say this fingerprint means this is going on
31:15
Speaker 1: inside that distant object. It's really quite incredible, And when
31:19
Speaker 1: we look at Shebilsky Star, we see a spectrum that
31:22
Speaker 1: we really just do not understand. Interesting, what do you
31:25
Speaker 1: mean what do we see in Shebilsky Star? Well, we
31:27
Speaker 1: both see things missing and we see weird things that
31:30
Speaker 1: we don't think should be there. We expect that most
31:33
Speaker 1: stars will have some iron and some nickel in them,
31:35
Speaker 1: Like even the Sun has iron and nickel in it,
31:37
Speaker 1: even though it's not capable of making iron and nickel.
31:40
Speaker 1: There's iron nickel in it from like the last generation
31:42
Speaker 1: of stars that made that and blew up and then
31:44
Speaker 1: gathered together. Just like there's iron and nickel inside the Earth,
31:48
Speaker 1: even though the Earth is not capable of using hydrogen
31:50
Speaker 1: together into iron and nickel. But Shebilsky Star has like
31:54
Speaker 1: very very little iron and nickel, is like a tenth
31:57
Speaker 1: of the iron that we would expect of a star
31:59
Speaker 1: of its hype. Interesting, I guess why would we expect
32:02
Speaker 1: there to be more iron because we don't really know
32:05
Speaker 1: the history of this star or star system. Right, We're like,
32:08
Speaker 1: we don't know what kinds of stars exploited before then, Right, Yeah,
32:12
Speaker 1: that's true. You know, why do you expect any star
32:13
Speaker 1: to have iron in it. It just comes from the
32:15
Speaker 1: history of the stuff that formed that solar system. So
32:18
Speaker 1: you have mostly hydrogen and then some helium and heavier stuff.
32:21
Speaker 1: But that stuff we think is pretty well mixed around.
32:24
Speaker 1: We've been studying like the stuff in the universe, and
32:27
Speaker 1: mostly everywhere there's about the same amount of iron. So
32:30
Speaker 1: any arbitrary star that you form, you don't expect a
32:33
Speaker 1: huge variation in how much heavy metal it should have
32:36
Speaker 1: inside of it. So to find a star with a
32:38
Speaker 1: very very tiny amount of iron in it is weird.
32:40
Speaker 1: It's like very far out there. Most stars have a
32:43
Speaker 1: certain fraction of iron in them, and this is like
32:45
Speaker 1: way out on the tails. So it's got some iron deficiency.
32:49
Speaker 1: Maybe it just needs to eat more lentils or something,
32:51
Speaker 1: or more cereal, right, aren't those iron fortified? Yeah, that's right. Yeah,
32:55
Speaker 1: And it's the star, so it can eat sial all
32:58
Speaker 1: day because every day is a day for a sun, right,
33:00
Speaker 1: that's right. And maybe it has been eating weird stuff
33:03
Speaker 1: because the star also has fingerprints of really strange, very
33:06
Speaker 1: heavy stuff like strontium and caesium and new dymium has
33:11
Speaker 1: even weirder stuff things we call actinides, like einsteinium, and
33:15
Speaker 1: other weird elements high up on the periodic table. And
33:18
Speaker 1: that's weird because these are super heavy elements, right, Usually
33:22
Speaker 1: you only see these heavy elements when they're produced by supernovas. Yeah,
33:26
Speaker 1: so these things are very heavy. They're heavier than it
33:28
Speaker 1: can be produced by any star. Stars can only make
33:31
Speaker 1: up to iron. We think that the really heavy elements
33:33
Speaker 1: plutonium and platinum and uranium are made by supernovas or
33:37
Speaker 1: by the collisions of neutron stars, etcetera. Now you do
33:40
Speaker 1: expect to see them still in stars, Like our Sun
33:43
Speaker 1: has elements inside of it that are heavier than it
33:45
Speaker 1: can make. Again, they're just debris left over from previous stuff,
33:49
Speaker 1: Like we see uranium in the Earth, right, it is
33:51
Speaker 1: not made by the Earth or in our Solar system,
33:54
Speaker 1: is made by a star long time ago. The thing
33:56
Speaker 1: that's really weird about finding these elements inside a star
34:00
Speaker 1: is that they have short half lives, like they do
34:02
Speaker 1: not last for very long. Einsteinium lasts for four hundred
34:05
Speaker 1: and seventy two days. So like, what's making einsteinium in
34:09
Speaker 1: this star? Because if you see it in the star,
34:11
Speaker 1: it must have been made in the last year or so.
34:14
Speaker 1: But we think that all the heavy elements that are
34:17
Speaker 1: inside of star must have come from before the star
34:20
Speaker 1: was born, so it sort of doesn't add up. The
34:22
Speaker 1: story doesn't make sense. You're saying these heavy elements themselves
34:26
Speaker 1: aren't around along, they're still heavy that they break apart
34:29
Speaker 1: by themselves. Yeah, they have very short half lives, so
34:31
Speaker 1: they're very rare in the universe. Even if they are
34:34
Speaker 1: made inside special reactors here on Earth or inside neutron
34:38
Speaker 1: star collisions, they do not last for very long. So
34:41
Speaker 1: you don't expect to see them in old stuff. Right,
34:43
Speaker 1: This star itself not capable of making einsteinium. This star
34:47
Speaker 1: is millions of years old. Einsteinium should only last for
34:50
Speaker 1: a year or so, So why is there still einsteinium
34:53
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere of this star or even like a
34:56
Speaker 1: year ago? Right, Like, if you look at it over
34:59
Speaker 1: the course of a couple of year, you should see
35:00
Speaker 1: the amount of einsteinium decaying or decreasing, right, Yeah, exactly.
35:04
Speaker 1: And we've been studying the star for six decades now
35:07
Speaker 1: and it seems to be pretty stable. And it's not
35:09
Speaker 1: just einsteinium. There are other weird isotopes in this star.
35:12
Speaker 1: There's technidium, there's prometheum, and none of these have very
35:15
Speaker 1: long half lives. This is the core mystery of Pushpilski stars,
35:19
Speaker 1: Like how does it have these apparently impossible, short lived
35:22
Speaker 1: heavy metals inside of it? Right? Right? And you forgot
35:25
Speaker 1: horsinium also, Okay, so that's maybe even the bigger mystery
35:29
Speaker 1: about this star, right, it's why does it have so
35:31
Speaker 1: many heavy elements it shouldn't have or that it should
35:34
Speaker 1: have run out of by now? Yeah, that's really the
35:36
Speaker 1: core mystery. It's also really hot and strangely magnetic and
35:40
Speaker 1: spinning really slowly. It takes like two hundred years to
35:43
Speaker 1: rotate one time. So there's lots of things about the star,
35:46
Speaker 1: and it's pulsating and oscillating in all sorts of crazy ways.
35:50
Speaker 1: So this star is like an outlier basically every way
35:52
Speaker 1: that you can measure it. But definitely the weirdest thing,
35:54
Speaker 1: the best clue that the right we can pull on
35:57
Speaker 1: easiest is this question about why it has so many
36:00
Speaker 1: heavy things inside of it. But you're saying, our star
36:03
Speaker 1: also has these heavy elements, but shouldn't our stars also
36:06
Speaker 1: have decayed them? By now? Our star has some heavy elements, right, Look,
36:09
Speaker 1: it has iron, has nickel, probably some uranium in it also,
36:13
Speaker 1: But those things do decay for sure. But these things
36:15
Speaker 1: are short lived, right, so if they existed inside our
36:18
Speaker 1: star ear beyond, they would have decayed away by now,
36:20
Speaker 1: so we don't see evidence for these things inside our star.
36:25
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's get into what might be possible
36:28
Speaker 1: explanations of these mysteries about Shebilsky Star, including maybe that
36:32
Speaker 1: it could be aliens, which is Daniel's favorite topic to
36:35
Speaker 1: talk about. But first, let's take another quick break. We're
36:50
Speaker 1: talking about a mysterious star out there in space called
36:52
Speaker 1: Shebilsky Star, and it's weird and mysterious because first of all,
36:56
Speaker 1: it's hot and magnetic, you know, that's pretty rare for
36:59
Speaker 1: even Hollywood stars. And it's also has a lot of
37:02
Speaker 1: heavy elements, and it's pretty heavy metal, which is also
37:05
Speaker 1: rare for Hollywood stars. I guess to be that much
37:08
Speaker 1: into heavy metal, we haven't had good heavy metal stars
37:11
Speaker 1: in a couple of decades, you know, Motley Crue than
37:13
Speaker 1: all these guys. What's the next generation of heavy metal?
37:16
Speaker 1: I guess Azzi Osborne made a comeback. He's sort of
37:19
Speaker 1: more heavy physically and less heavy metal. You know, he's
37:21
Speaker 1: definitely passes half life. But there are deep mysteries about
37:25
Speaker 1: the star. It's hot and magnetic, and it's got heavier elements,
37:28
Speaker 1: and it should have What are some possible explanations, Daniel, Well,
37:31
Speaker 1: let's go from the most boring explanation to the most exciting.
37:34
Speaker 1: So the most boring explanation is that it's a mistake
37:37
Speaker 1: that we're wrong about interpreting this spectrum to say that
37:41
Speaker 1: there are heavy metals in it, because it's not an
37:43
Speaker 1: easy thing to do. It's not like a very clear
37:46
Speaker 1: smoking gun signature of einsteinium. What do you mean it's
37:49
Speaker 1: not clear. Well, it's hard to do these analyzes. You know,
37:52
Speaker 1: einsteinium if it exists in this star, it's not like
37:55
Speaker 1: it's fifty percent einstein um. It would be like point
37:58
Speaker 1: one percent einsteinium. So it's a mall signal. Doesn't like
38:01
Speaker 1: jump out at you. It would be like a very
38:03
Speaker 1: faint dip or spike in the spectrum of the star, right,
38:06
Speaker 1: which might get mixed up with the noise exactly, might
38:09
Speaker 1: get mixed up with the noise. And also we're not
38:11
Speaker 1: very confident in understanding what einsteini Um should look like.
38:15
Speaker 1: Einsteini Um, just as an example, for many of these
38:17
Speaker 1: short lived isotopes are not things that are well studied
38:20
Speaker 1: here on Earth in the laboratory, like hydrogen. We know
38:23
Speaker 1: how hydrogen glows. It's not hard to study. We have
38:26
Speaker 1: lots of examples of it. Hydrogen is very common einsteini um, emersium, paramythium, technetium.
38:32
Speaker 1: We don't make these things in large quantities. We can't
38:34
Speaker 1: just like order a bunch of it on Amazon and
38:37
Speaker 1: study it in your laboratory. So we're not even exactly
38:40
Speaker 1: sure what the spectrum of these things are. So interpreting
38:43
Speaker 1: the spectrum of a distant star in terms of a
38:46
Speaker 1: very faint line of rare elements that are not well
38:49
Speaker 1: understood is not always conclusive. Oh you're saying, we're not
38:52
Speaker 1: even ensure what a star with a lot of einsteinium
38:55
Speaker 1: might look like because we don't know if it's going
38:57
Speaker 1: to be blocking the light or glowing a certain frequencies
39:00
Speaker 1: the way we think it might be exactly because it's difficult,
39:03
Speaker 1: and we have models. We have calculations that suggest what
39:06
Speaker 1: einsteinium should look like when you heat up a bunch
39:09
Speaker 1: of it, just like we have models for what hydrogen
39:11
Speaker 1: should look like. But we haven't tested those very well
39:13
Speaker 1: in the lab to really be confident. Some of these things,
39:16
Speaker 1: like promethium and technetium. People have been able to do
39:19
Speaker 1: studies to verify what these things should look like. But
39:21
Speaker 1: the sort of weirder things we see in Prishbilsky Star,
39:25
Speaker 1: we're not certain what they should look like when they
39:27
Speaker 1: do get heated up. I see, Okay, So then one possibility,
39:31
Speaker 1: the most boring possibility, is that Bilsky Star is just
39:34
Speaker 1: a weird hot and magnetic star that we think has
39:36
Speaker 1: a lot of heavy metals, but maybe it just doesn't
39:38
Speaker 1: have that many heavy metals. We're just may be wrong
39:40
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, and there's a possibility that we're wrong
39:42
Speaker 1: about the crazier ones Einstein, Eum, etcetera. But the identification
39:46
Speaker 1: of like technetium and permethium, those are pretty solid. Those
39:49
Speaker 1: we do understand, and the lines there are easier to
39:52
Speaker 1: pick apart. So I read one paper that said the
39:54
Speaker 1: spectroscopic evidence is strong enough that we would declare promethium
39:57
Speaker 1: to be present without hesitation. So there's a lot of
40:00
Speaker 1: confidence that prometheum is there. And prometheum has a half
40:02
Speaker 1: life of like twenty years, so it's still a mystery.
40:05
Speaker 1: It's hard to brush this under the rug of saying
40:08
Speaker 1: we're not sure about the spectroscopy of it. I think
40:10
Speaker 1: you just made those names up. Then there was really
40:13
Speaker 1: an element called promethea. There really is technetium. Horstium is
40:18
Speaker 1: made up, but prometheum is not. How about Gideon gide
40:22
Speaker 1: from gidium. You know, I'm gidium with excitement about this?
40:25
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we could be a mistake, but some
40:27
Speaker 1: people are pretty confident about at least some of these
40:29
Speaker 1: heavy metal measurements. What else could it be that explains
40:32
Speaker 1: Chibilski star. So you need a source of these heavy elements.
40:34
Speaker 1: One way to make them in the university is to
40:36
Speaker 1: collide neutron stars, because we think that these things might
40:39
Speaker 1: be made at the heart of neutron stars or during
40:41
Speaker 1: those collisions. So one idea was like, maybe there's a
40:44
Speaker 1: neutron star nearby and it's somehow leaking this stuff into
40:48
Speaker 1: Pshbielski star album. There is like, well, we don't see
40:51
Speaker 1: any neutron stars nearby. We can measure the velocity of
40:55
Speaker 1: Pushpilski star and we don't think it's part of a
40:58
Speaker 1: binary star system like we would see a wiggle in
41:01
Speaker 1: the frequencies that come from it if it was orbiting
41:03
Speaker 1: some invisible, very massive object like a neutron star. So
41:07
Speaker 1: we don't think that there's like a neutron star nearby
41:09
Speaker 1: that's like spilling its guts into this star as the
41:12
Speaker 1: source of these short lived heavy elements. Interesting, So a
41:15
Speaker 1: neutron star can make these heavier elements, but I would
41:19
Speaker 1: it give up its elements? Like that is, if it's
41:21
Speaker 1: a neutron star, would be pretty intense and heavy. It
41:23
Speaker 1: would suck. Actually the other star wouldn't. Why would it
41:26
Speaker 1: give up its material? Yeah, it's not a great explanation.
41:29
Speaker 1: You at, a neutron star has very strong gravity, and
41:31
Speaker 1: so it's just as likely to pull things out of
41:33
Speaker 1: Pushpilsky Star as to dump stuff in it. Another crazy
41:37
Speaker 1: idea is like maybe Pushpielski Star passed through the remnants
41:41
Speaker 1: of a neutron star collision and like accidentally gathered up
41:44
Speaker 1: some of this stuff fairly recently, just before we started
41:48
Speaker 1: observing it, and sort of just sort of like covered
41:50
Speaker 1: in gunk from a neutron star collision that has all
41:53
Speaker 1: these crazy things in it. That's like one other wacky idea. Oh,
41:57
Speaker 1: I see, because when two neutron stars collide, they basically
42:00
Speaker 1: kind of explode and spill out all their guts, right,
42:03
Speaker 1: including these heavy elements that it made. Yeah, so that's
42:06
Speaker 1: one idea, but we don't see any evidence for that.
42:08
Speaker 1: There's no like other remnants of a neutron star, which
42:10
Speaker 1: are pretty typical, you can identify these things, there's no
42:13
Speaker 1: evidence for that as an explanation for what's going on
42:16
Speaker 1: inside this star. Could it have a neutron star inside.
42:19
Speaker 1: That's a really cool idea. We talked about that once.
42:21
Speaker 1: It's possible for a red giant to absorb a neutron
42:24
Speaker 1: star and to have it inside of it. It tends
42:26
Speaker 1: to collapse the red giant and it wouldn't again spill
42:29
Speaker 1: the materials and the neutron star out from inside the
42:31
Speaker 1: neutron star. All right, So maybe it's not a neutron star.
42:35
Speaker 1: What else could it be? So now we're getting into
42:36
Speaker 1: the crazier ideas. It might be evidence of super heavy
42:41
Speaker 1: elements that we've never identified before. Once we talked to
42:44
Speaker 1: the podcast about how elements beyond the ones we know
42:48
Speaker 1: might exist and might be stable, like we've seen elements
42:51
Speaker 1: up to atomic number like one fourteen, one fifteen and
42:54
Speaker 1: just beyond, it's possible that in neutron star collisions and
42:58
Speaker 1: in other processes in the universe, you can make even
43:00
Speaker 1: heavier elements, super heavy elements that might live a long
43:04
Speaker 1: time and then decay into these other things. Oh, I see, like,
43:08
Speaker 1: maybe it has the ingredients for some of these heavier metals,
43:11
Speaker 1: but we can't see those because they're too heavy to see.
43:14
Speaker 1: So maybe the source of these heavier elements are just
43:17
Speaker 1: even heavier stuff breaking down exactly. We suspect that the
43:20
Speaker 1: universe might be capable of making these ultra heavy isotopes,
43:24
Speaker 1: that they could be formed in the collision of neutron
43:26
Speaker 1: stars or other weird things, but they might not be
43:28
Speaker 1: totally stable, so they might then break down and be
43:31
Speaker 1: a source for these shorter lived isotopes like einstein um,
43:34
Speaker 1: which are easier to see, right, because I guess the
43:36
Speaker 1: heavier the element is, the harder it is to see it, right,
43:40
Speaker 1: Like it's the further up into the spectrum. It isn't
43:43
Speaker 1: the rarer. It is definitely the rarer it is. And
43:45
Speaker 1: we don't know at all how these things would glow,
43:47
Speaker 1: so we wouldn't even be able to identify them in
43:49
Speaker 1: order to identify an element in the spectrum, you basically
43:52
Speaker 1: have to know what it's going to glow like olthowise,
43:54
Speaker 1: it's hard to disentangle. Remember, these spectra are messies, all
43:57
Speaker 1: sorts of photons in them, and to pull anything out
43:59
Speaker 1: of them basically have to know what the fingerprint looks like.
44:02
Speaker 1: And so these super duper extra heavy elements would have
44:05
Speaker 1: been made in like a supernova, right, Perhaps a supernova,
44:08
Speaker 1: perhaps a neutron star collision, perhaps some other process that
44:11
Speaker 1: we don't even understand. We have a whole fun episode
44:13
Speaker 1: about the Island of stability, this hypothesis that there might
44:17
Speaker 1: be stable or semi stable, very healthy elements that could
44:20
Speaker 1: exist in the universe. And so that would be a
44:22
Speaker 1: really cool explanation because that would be evidence for something
44:25
Speaker 1: we've never seen before, right right, Yeah, the island of
44:29
Speaker 1: stability sounds like a great place to go, sounds better
44:31
Speaker 1: than our current state canal of chaos. So then what's
44:35
Speaker 1: the most fantastical possibility that would explain Shibilsky star. So
44:38
Speaker 1: the most ridiculous and funnest, but maybe also most plausible
44:42
Speaker 1: explanation is, of course aliens. We're talking about natural processes
44:47
Speaker 1: to create these short lived isotopes. But there are also
44:50
Speaker 1: artificial processes to create these things. We can create these
44:53
Speaker 1: things here on Earth using our laboratories. What if there
44:56
Speaker 1: are aliens out there and they have some crazy process us.
45:00
Speaker 1: Maybe they are generating energy from fission, or they have
45:03
Speaker 1: some insane fusion process or they're just doing a bunch
45:05
Speaker 1: of experiments to understand the universe, and in doing so
45:08
Speaker 1: they create dangerous garbage. And this stuff is very radioactive.
45:12
Speaker 1: What should you do with it? Well, maybe they decided
45:14
Speaker 1: to like head it into the Sun, and so they
45:17
Speaker 1: dumped it into their star. So maybe what we're seeing
45:20
Speaker 1: is a glowing alien trash heap. Whoa wait, So so
45:24
Speaker 1: you can make these elements without needing a neutron star
45:28
Speaker 1: collision or supernova like we can make some of these
45:31
Speaker 1: crazy super duper heavy metals here. Yeah, that's how we
45:34
Speaker 1: verified that they can exist. We shoot protons or neutrons
45:37
Speaker 1: into lighter elements at just the right speed so they
45:39
Speaker 1: get absorbed into the nucleus. We can create these heavier
45:42
Speaker 1: elements here on Earth. Can't create many of them, sometimes
45:45
Speaker 1: just a few atoms, but that's how we've proven that
45:47
Speaker 1: they exist. But you can imagine aliens might be able
45:50
Speaker 1: to do it at larger scale for who knows what reason. Yeah,
45:53
Speaker 1: I guess that's the question. Why why would they do that?
45:55
Speaker 1: Is it kind of energy efficient like fusion? Could that
45:58
Speaker 1: be their source of energy? These are very heavy elements,
46:00
Speaker 1: so it's more likely to be fishing, like the waste products,
46:03
Speaker 1: And people even here in our solar system have suggested
46:06
Speaker 1: this idea, like what to do with nuclear waste? Well,
46:08
Speaker 1: why not just dump it into the sun? Right, throw
46:11
Speaker 1: out into space and it will eventually drift into the Sun.
46:13
Speaker 1: It's like a real proposal people have made here in
46:16
Speaker 1: our solar system for getting rid of nuclear waste. It's
46:19
Speaker 1: not a great idea because it's very expensive, and launching
46:22
Speaker 1: dangerous waste on top of an exploding rocket has its
46:25
Speaker 1: own dangers. Also, you might miss and if you miss
46:28
Speaker 1: the Sun, it will come back around back to you. Right,
46:31
Speaker 1: there's a reason why we haven't pursued this. But you know,
46:33
Speaker 1: maybe aliens are doing their experiments already out in space
46:37
Speaker 1: and they have a reason to dump their stuff into
46:39
Speaker 1: their sun. And it's really expensive, right, Like to get
46:42
Speaker 1: anything to the Sun takes a huge amount of energy. Well,
46:44
Speaker 1: to get things off of Earth takes a huge amount
46:46
Speaker 1: of energy. Once you're in space, it doesn't take that
46:48
Speaker 1: much energy to fall into the Sun. You just need
46:50
Speaker 1: like a gentle push in that direction and the Sun
46:52
Speaker 1: will take over. Well, you've got to slow it down
46:54
Speaker 1: enough to fall into the Sun, right otherwise it's just
46:56
Speaker 1: gonna shoot pass it. It depends, I guess on the
46:58
Speaker 1: time scale you're interested. In Ventually, everything does fall into
47:01
Speaker 1: the Sun. Comets, for example, whizz around the Sun, but
47:04
Speaker 1: they do lose a little bit of speed, and every
47:05
Speaker 1: time they come around they get a little bit closer
47:07
Speaker 1: and closer to the Sun. So it's possible yet to
47:10
Speaker 1: shoot something towards the Sun and just miss and have
47:12
Speaker 1: it whizz around the other side, which you probably wouldn't want. Yeah. Well,
47:17
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it's like their bonfire and they're just
47:19
Speaker 1: you know, roasting marshmallows, giant planet size marshmallows, and they're
47:23
Speaker 1: just feeding you know, some high energy stuff into the
47:26
Speaker 1: Sun to make it last longer. Yeah, or maybe they're
47:29
Speaker 1: using it to message us. Carl Sagan suggested that aliens
47:33
Speaker 1: might do this kind of thing on purpose to their
47:35
Speaker 1: own star as a way to indicate to other species
47:39
Speaker 1: out there in the galaxy that they are there make
47:41
Speaker 1: their star weird, So there's no other explanation for it
47:45
Speaker 1: other than there's some technological civilization they're capable of doing that. Wow,
47:51
Speaker 1: it sounds like they're very attention needy species, availing to
47:55
Speaker 1: the extreme, like, Hey, let's spend all this money to
47:57
Speaker 1: make our sun glow a little extra in this spectrum
48:00
Speaker 1: so that people know we're here. Yeah. Well, it's a
48:02
Speaker 1: pretty fun idea, you know. When challenge to that is
48:04
Speaker 1: to understand that this star can't be made by natural processes.
48:08
Speaker 1: You have to really really understand natural processes super well.
48:12
Speaker 1: You have to understand exactly the probability of having this
48:14
Speaker 1: start actually appear through all the normal processes. And so
48:18
Speaker 1: it's not a great way to signal that you exist.
48:20
Speaker 1: Because there's so many stars out there that are weird,
48:23
Speaker 1: so hard to describe them. So to make one that
48:25
Speaker 1: really stands out compared to all the other stars is
48:27
Speaker 1: a challenge. Another hand, Sabielski star is a pretty weird one. Yeah,
48:31
Speaker 1: I guess if everyone's weird, it's hard to stand out
48:33
Speaker 1: as a weird person. You've got to be the weirdest.
48:37
Speaker 1: But it's kind of wild. It's pretty interesting that the
48:39
Speaker 1: most plausible explanation are aliens doing some weird things for
48:44
Speaker 1: some unknown reason. Yeah, it's pretty fun to think about.
48:46
Speaker 1: It's a reason this star has been weird for a
48:49
Speaker 1: long time. People have been thinking about it. And in
48:51
Speaker 1: the future, as we keep taking more data on this
48:53
Speaker 1: star will get better and better measurements to see whether
48:55
Speaker 1: those heavy elements really are there in its atmosphere. Now,
48:58
Speaker 1: this is something that's actually than the paper like this
49:01
Speaker 1: is actually write this in their conclusions at the end
49:03
Speaker 1: of the paper, like or it could be aliens. I
49:05
Speaker 1: don't know. I've seen it in blog posts and in conversations.
49:10
Speaker 1: Were actually seen it in a paper suggesting aliens as
49:13
Speaker 1: an explanation. It's just usually sort of left as a question.
49:16
Speaker 1: The spectrum remains unexplained. I see you leave it for
49:19
Speaker 1: the comment session. The internet will fill in those gaps
49:23
Speaker 1: for you. Yeah, or Daniel, I feel like you're alien
49:26
Speaker 1: triggers really light, You're like mystery aliens done. At least
49:30
Speaker 1: we're trying to explain actual cosmic mysteries, not like the pyramids,
49:34
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of aliens, what do you mean?
49:38
Speaker 1: Don't get me started on that. They're also mysteries, aren't they.
49:41
Speaker 1: What's more likely that a bunch of people were really
49:43
Speaker 1: clever thousands of years ago and figured out how to
49:45
Speaker 1: build the pyramids, or that aliens did it, or that
49:47
Speaker 1: aliens are throwing some weird materials into the star just
49:50
Speaker 1: to get attention. I don't know, man, I think Einstein
49:55
Speaker 1: in this star is harder to build than pyramids. And
49:57
Speaker 1: I don't think the Egyptians could be responsible for Einsteiny
50:00
Speaker 1: in Shebilsky star, though I do give them credit for
50:03
Speaker 1: the pyramids. Right well, I guess the end lesson here
50:05
Speaker 1: is that there are still big mysteries out there in
50:07
Speaker 1: the universe, and we should be, you know, kind of
50:10
Speaker 1: thankful for stars like Sabilsky stars for delivering us weird
50:13
Speaker 1: examples of things that can happen in the universe, because
50:16
Speaker 1: that lets us understand more about the universe. Right. Yeah,
50:18
Speaker 1: It pushes our envelope of understanding and forces us to
50:21
Speaker 1: come up with ways to describe things that we do
50:24
Speaker 1: not understand. Yeah, and maybe we shouldn't think too much
50:26
Speaker 1: into it because you know, as they say, never look
50:28
Speaker 1: at gift horse in amount might have dangerous radio active
50:31
Speaker 1: medals in it. Yeah, it might have Einsteinium braces or
50:34
Speaker 1: something or giddy up and braces. We'll stay tuned, I
50:37
Speaker 1: guess as we learn more about stars like Shebilski and
50:40
Speaker 1: we form a better understanding of how stars work in
50:42
Speaker 1: this universe. Do you hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for
50:45
Speaker 1: joining us, See you next time. Thanks for listening, and
50:55
Speaker 1: remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a
50:58
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast For my
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Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H