Latest / Made of Stars / New York to Paris in Under an Hour?!

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New York to Paris in Under an Hour?! · Made of Stars

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Speaker 1: Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
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Speaker 1: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
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Speaker 1: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
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Speaker 1: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
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Speaker 1: that's your own risk.
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Speaker 2: Go ahead.
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Speaker 3: When made of stars, made them stars, made sizes. When
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Speaker 3: made of stars, you could be from high they would
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Speaker 3: New Mexicomus. Where a.
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Speaker 2: Stars? When we are made of stars.
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Speaker 4: I'm Wes Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
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Speaker 4: Cruiser from Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center.
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Speaker 3: Hey Sean, Hey, we's good to be here today.
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Speaker 4: I normally we talk when we record, We'll say morning
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Speaker 4: or afternoon or whatever, based on when we're recording. I'm
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Speaker 4: I'm on the other side of the planet from you
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Speaker 4: right now, So I don't know if it's daytime, nighttime,
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Speaker 4: I don't know. I just know we're getting the we're
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Speaker 4: getting the show recorded about when we normally do on
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Speaker 4: a Thursday, and then we'll release it at about the
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Speaker 4: same time that we normally release it. But I mentioned
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Speaker 4: being here on the other side of the planet. In Australia.
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Speaker 4: We've been here for a few weeks now and our
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Speaker 4: trip kind of starting to wind down. But one of
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Speaker 4: the things that I feel like is really relevant to
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Speaker 4: my trip is this story. And the story a couple
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Speaker 4: of months old now from back in May, but it's
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Speaker 4: pretty significant considering not only a few weeks ago did
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Speaker 4: like a you know, thirty something hour trip to get here,
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Speaker 4: but I've got to do another one of those next
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Speaker 4: week to get back home.
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Speaker 2: Oh boy.
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Speaker 4: But this is one of those cool stories where we
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Speaker 4: start looking at some of the when people talk about
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Speaker 4: things like, oh my gosh, it's rich people just launching
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Speaker 4: up to space so that they can say that they're
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Speaker 4: an astronaut, and all those sorts of things. We've talked
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Speaker 4: about how at one time just international travel or even
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Speaker 4: a domestic travel in an airplane wasn't something that the
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Speaker 4: average person could afford, and yes, the rich people did it,
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Speaker 4: and eventually that helped make it affordable for everyone else,
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Speaker 4: and then that certainly was true for you know, transatlantic
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Speaker 4: flight or so. One of the things that we hope
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Speaker 4: maybe that comes from some of the testing and things
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Speaker 4: that have been done with some of these missions, is
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Speaker 4: how do we shorten some of these flights and some
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Speaker 4: of the technology involved in doing that. Well, now we've
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Speaker 4: got a company that has had an achievement and accomplishment
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Speaker 4: that's as maybe we could get from one point on
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Speaker 4: the earth far far away in a really short amount
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Speaker 4: of time.
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Speaker 3: So you hit the nail on the head as far
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Speaker 3: as I'm concerned saying that we we don't necessarily have
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Speaker 3: wide distribution of technologies when they are first being developed
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Speaker 3: or they're first coming out. Like, not everybody had electricity.
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Speaker 3: It was only a very limited number of people who
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Speaker 3: can afford electricity at one time in the history of
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Speaker 3: our civilization, right, But then as we developed electricity and
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Speaker 3: saw how useful it was, it became more affordable as
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Speaker 3: we developed the technology. Right. That has occurred with well,
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Speaker 3: I mean even water was that way, right, And so
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Speaker 3: there are places in the world today that still we're
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Speaker 3: still working to try to get their water at standpoint.
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Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's a great point.
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Speaker 3: So water distributions, distribution, uh, or the ability to have
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Speaker 3: a sewer system, electricity.
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Speaker 4: Indoor plumbing, right, I mean, there's you would be amazed
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Speaker 4: at how many places around the world don't have indoor plumbing.
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Speaker 3: If you spend time in Haiti, you know how important
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Speaker 3: some of these ideas are. There are other countries. That's
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Speaker 3: just one that I've happened to visit a few times,
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Speaker 3: and they're working very diligently, diligently in Haiti to try
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Speaker 3: to get people clean and safe water.
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Speaker 4: For the record, for the record, here in Australia, indoor plumbing,
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Speaker 4: toilets and always a possibility of a snake being in
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Speaker 4: the toilet. I'm just I'm just saying, that's nothing to do.
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Speaker 4: That's nothing to do. That's just the reality of this country.
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Speaker 4: And it's just the way or you know, you open
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Speaker 4: the lid and there's a tree frog underneath the lid.
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Speaker 2: That's always a possibility.
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Speaker 4: I can speak firsthand of that and have to catch
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Speaker 4: it and then you know, take it outside and then
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Speaker 4: come back into the bathroom.
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Speaker 5: The wiles of Australia, friends, what you're facing right now,
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Speaker 5: that's right well anyway, So yeah, then if you consider
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Speaker 5: these technologies being advanced to things like telecommunications and radio and.
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Speaker 3: TV and then actual telephones two way communication and then
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Speaker 3: the Internet and all these kinds of things, right we're
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Speaker 3: developing technologies, so we are now going to talk about
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Speaker 3: a technology that we are at the cusp of investigating
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Speaker 3: a brand new technology in transportation. We've already gone through
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Speaker 3: you know, horse and buggies, self propelled vehicles, ships and
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Speaker 3: trains and balloons and zeppelins and all kinds of things.
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Speaker 3: And we don't typically do travel stories on this podcast,
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Speaker 3: but we're you know, you're traveling right now. So this
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Speaker 3: is a story that I found on a website called
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Speaker 3: luxury launches dot com. Not a site that we quote
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Speaker 3: a lot from, but okay, we're going to do it today.
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Speaker 3: Luxury launches dot com. You can find the story otherwhere
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Speaker 3: other places, by the way, But there's a company in Houston,
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Speaker 3: Texas called Venus Aerospace that recently, earlier the summer, had
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Speaker 3: something that sounds a bit like science fiction, but they
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Speaker 3: actually achieved it, which is, they achieved testing an engine
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Speaker 3: that's for a jet aircraft that could not only possibly
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Speaker 3: help the jet aircraft achieve supersonic speeds faster than the
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Speaker 3: speed of sound, but all the way up to pass
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Speaker 3: the line of something that we call hypersonics, which is
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Speaker 3: mock five or five times the speed of sound. They
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Speaker 3: didn't test the aircraft, but they did test the engine
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Speaker 3: and this was a successful test. Now, if this particular
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Speaker 3: engine reaches its full potential, you might be able to
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Speaker 3: take a hypersonic aircraft trip from New York to Paris
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Speaker 3: in fifty five five minutes. Real, it's amazing, not even
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Speaker 3: enough time to finish an entire episode of an hour
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Speaker 3: long national geographic show. Because that's I know, that's the
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Speaker 3: favorite of many of our listeners out there, and that's
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Speaker 3: what I watch when I'm traveling. Of course, that's nothing
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Speaker 3: quite sets the tone for that international flight, like watching
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Speaker 3: you know, binging a whole in National Geographic series. So
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Speaker 3: I was gonna say something about The Walking Dead, but
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Speaker 3: you know, I just thought, Wow, maybe I'll shift gears
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Speaker 3: and go to National Geo.
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Speaker 2: You know, that's that's fine.
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Speaker 3: That's fine too, you know, the the last of us.
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Speaker 3: I don't know, whatever you watch in an hour, you're
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Speaker 3: not gonna have enough time, even if you're flying from
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Speaker 3: New York to Paris, because your flight can only take
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Speaker 3: fifty five minutes. Friends, it's gonna take longer to get
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Speaker 3: on the plane than to cross the Atlantic. Okay, so
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Speaker 3: what kind of crazy futuristic technology could possibly allow for
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Speaker 3: that to happen? Well, it's a certain kind of engine
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Speaker 3: system that allows for an aircraft that can take off
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Speaker 3: from a runway the same way that some you know,
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Speaker 3: some number like seven thirty seven, you know, or seven
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Speaker 3: eighty seven or one of those kind of you know,
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Speaker 3: they take it off from a horizontal you know, paved
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Speaker 3: asphalt tarmac. Well, what if you could do that though,
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Speaker 3: But then a hybrid of a regular jet engine combined
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Speaker 3: with a rocket engine began to fire, and you reached
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Speaker 3: hypersonic speeds and then you shut it back off and
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Speaker 3: you came back down to land. That is the vision
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Speaker 3: of Venus Aerospace from Houston, Texas. That is the vision
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Speaker 3: of their vd R two engine, And they just fired
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Speaker 3: the first one successfully just a few weeks ago out
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Speaker 3: in the deserts of New Mexico at Spaceport America. It's
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Speaker 3: a special kind of engine called a rotating detonation rocket engine,
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Speaker 3: which again is a hybrid of a jet engine, but
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Speaker 3: then also it generates a massive amount of thrust. It
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Speaker 3: generates a massive amount of thrust. A little bit further back, Okay,
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Speaker 3: it's a combination of a rocket engine and jet engine,
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Speaker 3: but it actually has a rot rotating detonation system where
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Speaker 3: it generates a massive amount of thrust and can do
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Speaker 3: it in a continual fashion. And this hybrid engine is
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Speaker 3: capable of reaching speeds and mock six. But it didn't
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Speaker 3: do that in the short flight Spaceport America because it
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Speaker 3: only fired for seven seconds. Okay, yeah, I mean, you
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Speaker 3: know that flight at Kitty Hawk was fairly short too,
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Speaker 3: but you know that led to some good places, asked
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Speaker 3: Chuck Yeger. All right, so the notion is that we
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Speaker 3: have this engine system. Now, that's the kind of engine
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Speaker 3: that can make all these things happen. And it had
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Speaker 3: its first ever successful test flight. It went from the
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Speaker 3: imagination of rocket engine engineers and designers and people that
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Speaker 3: do really complex fluid dynamics imagining how it could work,
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Speaker 3: to know a company actually built it and fluid. The company,
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Speaker 3: Venus Aerospace, was founded by a married couple, Sarah and
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Speaker 3: Andrew Duggleby, and they both quit their jobs at other
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Speaker 3: places and went off to begin their dream company of
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Speaker 3: a rocket engine that can help jet aircraft achieve hypersonic flight.
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Speaker 3: It's an interesting in comparison to say, you know, if
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Speaker 3: now that they've had a successful test, they're gonna be
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Speaker 3: working to build the actual functioning design for real aircraft.
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Speaker 3: Compare that to Concord right, that was we know Conquerwell,
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Speaker 3: I was a super fast you could you know, rock
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Speaker 3: stars and famous people rode this vehicle because you could
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Speaker 3: fly across the Atlantic in a very short time. Well,
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Speaker 3: that vehicle flew from nineteen seventy six to two thousand
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Speaker 3: and three. Its top speed was mock two, so it
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Speaker 3: still took three and a half hours. Granted a relatively
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Speaker 3: short time to cross the Atlantic, but that's not even
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Speaker 3: close to fifty five minutes mock two versus mock six.
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Speaker 3: Good luck and godspeed to Venus Aerospace. Congratulations on the
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Speaker 3: first ever test of the rotating detonation rocket engine, and
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Speaker 3: we hope there are bright things in the future of
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Speaker 3: this technology for all of us.
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Speaker 2: All Right.
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Speaker 4: So, something that we've always heard about magnetic rocks on
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Speaker 4: the Moon, and I've always wondered, and I don't never
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Speaker 4: asked you this question before, and I thought it was
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Speaker 4: great that we actually have a story from space dot
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Speaker 4: com this week that talks about this. There's no magnetic
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Speaker 4: field on the Moon, yet the Moon has magnetic rocks,
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Speaker 4: So how does that?
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Speaker 2: How does that happen? Exactly?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's clearly a conspiracy Wes, you know, it's.
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Speaker 4: I mean, I just assumed that there was a guy
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Speaker 4: up there with a with a magnet and and some
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Speaker 4: metal and he was just rubbing it together because that,
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Speaker 4: you know, it gives it just a little brief magnetic period, right,
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Speaker 4: you just rub it on there and then throw it
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Speaker 4: around and then I mean, that could be a way
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Speaker 4: that it happened. And you know, we did send a
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Speaker 4: bunch of monkeys up there at some point in the
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Speaker 4: in the past.
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Speaker 3: I like to point out during these moments that I
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Speaker 3: have no data to say that that didn't happen.
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Speaker 4: Well, I used to know a guy that it's firmly
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Speaker 4: believed that there are actively monkeys we send up there
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Speaker 4: on the Moon and on Mars looking for all of
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Speaker 4: the oil fields. So I mean, based on his logic,
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Speaker 4: that could have happened if those monkeys just started rubbing
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Speaker 4: the rocks on magnets. But that's unlikely at the very mean,
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Speaker 4: typically to.
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Speaker 3: Have fossil fuels, you first have to have fossils, you know, Okay,
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Speaker 3: you know, I mean I can't tell people what not
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Speaker 3: to believe. I don't really get into that. I can
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Speaker 3: tell them what what we have evidence for and we
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Speaker 3: have no evidence of fossil fuels either on the Moon
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Speaker 3: or Mars at this time.
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Speaker 4: It was one of those middle management guys that you
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Speaker 4: just kind of go, I probably should correct them, but
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Speaker 4: I'm not really comfortable doing that.
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Speaker 3: We don't Whereas the idea of monkeys on the Moon
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Speaker 3: might be very interesting. They probably would need to breathe,
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Speaker 3: unless they're special non breathing moon monkeys. I mean, it
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Speaker 3: could be a thing.
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Speaker 2: I don't know.
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Speaker 4: Well, we now have some more evidence to suggest that
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Speaker 4: maybe it wasn't someone or monkeys, you know, rubbing magnets
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Speaker 4: on rocks up there, that it was actually something else.
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Speaker 3: It's a statistically unlikely scenario, I would say, monkeys rubbing
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Speaker 3: magnets on rocks. No, here's what really happened. We really
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Speaker 3: have something came in and slammed into the Moon so
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Speaker 3: hard that it turned the surface into plasma because of
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Speaker 3: the generated heat, and that plasma can then align magnetically
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Speaker 3: because it's a plasma, right, and so that's what that's
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Speaker 3: what's likely to have happened. So for decades, scientists have
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Speaker 3: been trying to understand why some rocks on the Moon
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Speaker 3: seem to have stronger magnetization than others, even though the
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Speaker 3: Moon has no magnetic field today at least right so,
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Speaker 3: these moon rocks have been brought back to Earth from
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Speaker 3: the NASA Apollo missions. There's also been some sample and
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Speaker 3: return from the Chinese Space Agency, so particularly from the
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Speaker 3: far side, there seem to have some rocks that are
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Speaker 3: surprisingly strong magnetic signatures as measured from space. So all
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Speaker 3: these things are interesting, right well, so, some new computer
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Speaker 3: simulations have been run. By the way, this is a
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Speaker 3: story from space dot com. You can check out more
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Speaker 3: on the space dot com website about this story. New
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Speaker 3: computer simulations have been run suggesting that a massive asteroid
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Speaker 3: impact billions of years ago. They have briefly amplified the
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Speaker 3: Moon's old weak magnetic field in certain geographic locations where
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Speaker 3: the surface was turned to plasma. So this impact could
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Speaker 3: have left behind a magnetic imprint that's still detectable in
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Speaker 3: lunar rocks today. There's a graduate student at MIT's Department
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Speaker 3: of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences that led the study.
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Speaker 3: His name is Isaac Nerrett, and here's a quote from
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Speaker 3: Isaac Nerrett quote. The majority of the strong magnetic fields
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Speaker 3: that are measurable by orbiting spacecraft can be explained by
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Speaker 3: this process, especially on the far side of the Moon.
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Speaker 3: All right, here's the weird thing. The far side of
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Speaker 3: the moon. We don't see any evidence of major impacts
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Speaker 3: on the far side of the moon, but we see
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Speaker 3: some really big impact sites on the near side, or
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Speaker 3: the Earth facing side of the Moon. Let's stay away
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Speaker 3: from the terms dark side and light side because that's
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Speaker 3: even though I love that album, that really isn't a
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Speaker 3: physical thing. Right, both sides are light and dark at
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Speaker 3: different times during the month. Okay, so it's the near
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Speaker 3: side far side. Well, on the near side or Earth
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Speaker 3: facing side of the Moon, there's a gigantic impact basin
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Speaker 3: called the mare Imbrium. Mara is a word that means sea,
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Speaker 3: and so there's a sea called the mare Imbrium. Is
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Speaker 3: it really a seed? No, it's what we thought were
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Speaker 3: bodies of water when our telescopes weren't very good several
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Speaker 3: hundred years ago. But we now realize they are lava
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Speaker 3: filled impact basins on the Moon. That means that something
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Speaker 3: big had to hit on this near side of the
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Speaker 3: Moon and make this gigantic basin called the mare Imbrium.
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Speaker 3: It turns out that such a large object hitting the
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Speaker 3: Moon would have sent vibrational shock waves and plat and
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Speaker 3: liquefied in turning into a plasma all the way through
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Speaker 3: to the other side of the Moon. So how do
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Speaker 3: you get magnetized rocks on the far side of the
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Speaker 3: Moon from an impact on the near side or Earth
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Speaker 3: facing side of the Moon. You do it because the
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Speaker 3: energy is transferred entirely through the middle of the Moon
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Speaker 3: all the way to the other side. Such an impact
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Speaker 3: would have vaporized surface material, created a cloud of superheated
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Speaker 3: electrically charged particles known as a plasma, and this would
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Speaker 3: have temporarily amplified the Moon's magnetic field in that region.
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Speaker 3: So rocks in that area would have captured short lived
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Speaker 3: magnetic surge before the field faded away and magnetized those rocks,
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Speaker 3: according to this new study out of MIT from HAD
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Speaker 3: student Isaac Narrett. So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen,
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Speaker 3: how do you get magnetized rocks on the Moon? You
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Speaker 3: have to punch the Moon really really hard with a
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Speaker 3: giant asteroid. That's how you do it.
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Speaker 4: Coming up after a quick break, we got two stories
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Speaker 4: that take a look back in time. One of them
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Speaker 4: goes way back in time. We'll do that next. We've
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Speaker 4: talked quite a bit since we've been doing this show
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Speaker 4: for a long time now about whenever there is some
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Speaker 4: sort of a solar storm or a chronal mass ejection,
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Speaker 4: or some sort of a solar event worth noting, there
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Speaker 4: have been some notable ones that we have talked about
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Speaker 4: from the past that were certainly things that get our attention.
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Speaker 4: Talk about the Carrington event back in the eighteen fifties,
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Speaker 4: and we talk about how if something of that strength
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Speaker 4: were to happen today, how much chaos it could create
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Speaker 4: for us here, especially with all of our technology, and
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Speaker 4: you know, people using things like Starlink for their Internet
19:20
Speaker 4: and other companies, but that being one of the more
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Speaker 4: notable ones, and I know people that use starlink for
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Speaker 4: their Internet. So there's a another solar event that took
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Speaker 4: place much much farther back back in the old BC
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Speaker 4: or BCE whatever they call it now, Way back then,
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Speaker 4: fourteen three hundred years ago, approximately the most powerful solar
19:51
Speaker 4: storm ever recorded took place. And I guess if we
19:55
Speaker 4: could talk about that and how they came to that conclusion,
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Speaker 4: and then what that kind of storm could mean for
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Speaker 4: us if that were to happen today.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, you did a great job teeing it up. Let
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Speaker 3: me let me just mention a couple of other storms.
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Speaker 3: So Wes mentioned the Carrington Event, which is a giant
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Speaker 3: solar flare in eighteen fifty nine that actually set telegraph
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Speaker 3: wires on fire all around the world. Now, again, our
20:21
Speaker 3: electronic technology at the time was fairly rudimentary in eighteen
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Speaker 3: fifty nine compared to today's standards. But even that technology
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Speaker 3: was severely disrupted. Okay. Then there was another big storm
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Speaker 3: that was only about one tenth the strength of the
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Speaker 3: Carrington event that happened back in two thousand and three.
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Speaker 3: It happened on Halloween. Interestingly enough, we captured images of
20:46
Speaker 3: that event from the Coca Cola Space Science Center and
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Speaker 3: our Solar Observatory, which is pretty cool. So the Halloween
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Speaker 3: Store of two thousand and three was strong enough that
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Speaker 3: it caused chaos in Earth's orbit as satellite trajectories changed predictably,
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Speaker 3: and we even lost a couple of satellites during that event.
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Speaker 3: Then there was a storm known as the Gannon Storm.
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Speaker 3: It happened back in twenty twenty four. It was similar
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Speaker 3: strength to the Halloween storm. And something really weird happened.
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Speaker 3: Now in twenty twenty four, we have so many more
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Speaker 3: satellites in orbit. The satellites are more sophisticated than they
21:24
Speaker 3: were in two thousand and three, so they have on
21:26
Speaker 3: board systems that detect when they're losing altitude, and then
21:30
Speaker 3: the satellites have a system inside that is automatically triggered
21:34
Speaker 3: to boost them back up to their proper orbit. Well,
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Speaker 3: when the Gannon Storm of twenty twenty four occurred, the
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Speaker 3: Sun shot a plasma or charge wave of charged particles
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Speaker 3: at the Earth that caused the atmosphere of the Earth
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Speaker 3: to swell, and then all of these satellites by the
21:51
Speaker 3: thousand started experiencing drag of the atmosphere and all of
21:57
Speaker 3: their little thrusters began to fire simultaneously, and so we
22:01
Speaker 3: had a mass firing of thousands of satellites thruster systems
22:07
Speaker 3: for them to readjust their altitude, which caused well what
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Speaker 3: it causes a lot of satellites to lose a lot
22:14
Speaker 3: of their fuel necessary to sustain them in orbit. So
22:17
Speaker 3: when we're in an era of things like starlink that
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Speaker 3: Wes mentioned earlier, which is a lower overting satellite and
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Speaker 3: we need to have them for a ground based services
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Speaker 3: like internet and telephone potentially are telecommunication systems. And suddenly
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Speaker 3: a storm like this happens back in twenty twenty four,
22:36
Speaker 3: the Gannon event, and all of these satellites have to
22:39
Speaker 3: try to swim upstream to even stay in orbit. You
22:43
Speaker 3: begin to wonder about the sustainability of space based platforms.
22:48
Speaker 3: Right okay, Now, let me just make it clear that
22:51
Speaker 3: if the Carrington event, that eighteen to fifty nine storm
22:55
Speaker 3: occurred today, you wouldn't just be worrying about satellite orbits.
23:00
Speaker 3: You could be worrying about electrical outages and other communications
23:07
Speaker 3: systems that are earth based being down for as long
23:10
Speaker 3: as up to six months. That according to the National
23:13
Speaker 3: Academy of Sciences. So yeah, Carrington event bad, all right,
23:19
Speaker 3: But then we have to talk about what happened in
23:23
Speaker 3: twelve three point fifty BC twelve thousand, three hundred and
23:29
Speaker 3: fifty years BC, in about fourteen thousand years ago. Right
23:35
Speaker 3: in that year, apparently there was such a strong solar
23:41
Speaker 3: storm that it has now been considered to be the
23:45
Speaker 3: strongest solar storm ever to occur. It's fifty times more
23:51
Speaker 3: powerful than the Carrington event of eighteen fifty nine and
23:55
Speaker 3: five hundred times more powerful than the Halloween Storm of
23:59
Speaker 3: two thousand and three. So how do we know that, Well,
24:04
Speaker 3: it was a long time ago, none of us were there.
24:07
Speaker 3: But it turns out that events of that magnitude cause
24:12
Speaker 3: a chain of chemical reactions that can actually cause a
24:17
Speaker 3: spike in the carbon fourteen isotope to exist and that
24:23
Speaker 3: gets embedded in trees. And so a group of scientists
24:28
Speaker 3: out of Oulu University in Finland have done some chemistry
24:34
Speaker 3: climate modeling based on the carbon fourteen isotope spikes that
24:39
Speaker 3: they're finding in fossilized tree rings, and they are finding
24:43
Speaker 3: based on that that sometime in the last Ice Age,
24:48
Speaker 3: a massive, massive solar flare impacted the Earth. This event
24:56
Speaker 3: was so powerful that it is now considered the strongest
25:01
Speaker 3: flare in recorded history, and now it's recorded in actual
25:06
Speaker 3: tree rings with carbon fourteen data. Right, So, this, according
25:10
Speaker 3: to the team, establishes a new worst case scenario for
25:14
Speaker 3: the most powerful flares to ever occur, something even far
25:19
Speaker 3: more damaging than the Carrington event, which we call the
25:21
Speaker 3: Great Solar Flare of eighteen fifty nine. It's just a possibility, right.
25:27
Speaker 3: A storm is ferocious as the twelve three point fifty
25:29
Speaker 3: BC event would likely cause complete mayhem if it were
25:34
Speaker 3: to occur and strike Earth today, not just with space
25:38
Speaker 3: based systems, but actually all ground based electronics. Something on
25:44
Speaker 3: par with what we have talked about in society as
25:49
Speaker 3: an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse, so something on that scale, right,
25:56
Speaker 3: but globally, not locally, a global EMP. So this study
26:00
Speaker 3: was published in the Journal of Earth and Planetary Sciences
26:04
Speaker 3: back in May Bay fifteenth of this year, and so
26:07
Speaker 3: interesting story out of Finland. The strongest ever solar storm,
26:13
Speaker 3: at least in the records that we can find, both
26:17
Speaker 3: electronically and in the Earth itself.
26:20
Speaker 4: Another reason that it's important that we talk about solar
26:23
Speaker 4: activity on the show because we try to give you
26:25
Speaker 4: those heads up.
26:26
Speaker 2: When things are happening.
26:28
Speaker 4: And obviously that is a worst case scenario that could
26:31
Speaker 4: play out for all of us. With all of that,
26:34
Speaker 4: all right, let's talk about it was going further back
26:36
Speaker 4: in time, even much further back, and talk about the
26:42
Speaker 4: beginning of time. And this is some new data that's
26:45
Speaker 4: come in complements of the James Web Space Telescope as
26:49
Speaker 4: well as Hubble.
26:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's this is literally a story about
26:54
Speaker 3: the starting of the universe, the genesis of the cosmos,
26:59
Speaker 3: the Great Beginning, often referred to as the Big Bang.
27:04
Speaker 3: It's funny to know that that was a derogatory term
27:06
Speaker 3: by somebody who didn't believe in the Big Bang. And
27:08
Speaker 3: when I say somebody was an astrophysicist who did not
27:10
Speaker 3: believe in the beginning of the universe, that they believed
27:14
Speaker 3: in the steady state model at that time, guy by
27:16
Speaker 3: the name of Fred Hoyle said, WHOA, what do you
27:18
Speaker 3: mean it all started some kind of big bang? Anyway,
27:22
Speaker 3: that term is stuck. So anyway, all right, so we're
27:24
Speaker 3: really talking about the genesis of the space time continuum
27:28
Speaker 3: itself from nothing to something. And in the early minutes
27:39
Speaker 3: past the beginning of that event, it was very hard
27:45
Speaker 3: for light to travel through the material that was on
27:51
Speaker 3: hand at that time, and so there was a period
27:55
Speaker 3: of time in the very early part of the universe
27:58
Speaker 3: where light could not travel with out being encumbered by
28:01
Speaker 3: running into little charged particles of protons and electrons that
28:06
Speaker 3: would later become hydrogen. This is ionized hydrogen plasma. So
28:11
Speaker 3: at the beginning of the universe, within just a few
28:13
Speaker 3: minutes of the Big Bang, what little light there was
28:17
Speaker 3: couldn't have penetrated this kind of hot, dense fog of
28:21
Speaker 3: ionized plasma. Okay, well, then something caused the universe to
28:27
Speaker 3: become transparent, right, the universe went from opaque to transparent.
28:32
Speaker 3: One of the things that cosmologists try to figure out
28:34
Speaker 3: is what could have possibly caused that era to occur
28:40
Speaker 3: in the early universe. And as it turns out that
28:43
Speaker 3: if you just bombard these plasmas with massive amounts of photons,
28:47
Speaker 3: you can actually cause that plasma to become transparent by
28:52
Speaker 3: the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with these charge particles. So
28:57
Speaker 3: the question has long been Okay, well, what then generated
29:02
Speaker 3: enough light to photoionize the early universe? This has been
29:07
Speaker 3: one of the big questions in cosmology. Some ideas have
29:11
Speaker 3: been thrown out, things like super massive black holes that
29:14
Speaker 3: may have formed very quickly after the beginning of the
29:17
Speaker 3: universe and had interactions with the plasma. Maybe they could
29:19
Speaker 3: have put off enough electromagnetic radiation to kind of ionize everything,
29:25
Speaker 3: but that model has difficulties. Other mechanisms have been suggested,
29:30
Speaker 3: but now we are finding a new mechanism with some
29:34
Speaker 3: evidence that's backing it up from data from the James
29:37
Speaker 3: Web Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope working together,
29:43
Speaker 3: So using data from James Webb and Hubble. By the way,
29:45
Speaker 3: what's different about James Web than Hubble. James Webb can
29:49
Speaker 3: see in the dark now, James Web can see in
29:50
Speaker 3: the infrared part of the spectrum. Right. The Hubble Space
29:54
Speaker 3: Telescope does not have infrared capability, but the James Web's
29:57
Speaker 3: infrared capability allows it to be able to see through clouds,
30:02
Speaker 3: seeing back further into the ancient universe as well. All right,
30:07
Speaker 3: So this interesting capability combining Hubble images with James Webspace
30:11
Speaker 3: Telescope images has caused us to look at some of
30:14
Speaker 3: the very earliest parts of our universe, very far back
30:19
Speaker 3: in time, and be able to penetrate those early locales
30:23
Speaker 3: with infrared observing technologies. And it turns out what scientists
30:29
Speaker 3: are finding in greater numbers than ever before are something
30:33
Speaker 3: called dwarf galaxies, little baby sized galaxies that aren't really
30:40
Speaker 3: going to grow up to be bigger galaxies. They're just
30:42
Speaker 3: a whole different species of galaxy. We see dwarf galaxies today.
30:46
Speaker 3: In fact, around our own Milky Way, we have the
30:48
Speaker 3: large Magulanic Cloud and the small Magellanic Cloud, which by
30:52
Speaker 3: the way west, they're visible from Australia. You can check
30:54
Speaker 3: them out while you're down there. They are two little
30:56
Speaker 3: dwarf companions to the Milky Way Galaxy, and the Milky
31:00
Speaker 3: Way Galaxy is a large spiral. So what the scientists
31:05
Speaker 3: are finding is that there were just a huge number
31:08
Speaker 3: of these little dwarf galaxies. But that's only part of
31:10
Speaker 3: the story, because here's something else. It turns out that
31:15
Speaker 3: dwarf galaxies in the early part of the universe, has
31:18
Speaker 3: measured from these James Webspace telescope data sets, it looks
31:23
Speaker 3: like they were way brighter than dwarf galaxies today. In
31:28
Speaker 3: other words, they were inhabited by massive stars that were
31:33
Speaker 3: putting off far more light than the typical stars in
31:36
Speaker 3: dwarf galaxies today, as much as four times the amount
31:41
Speaker 3: of ionizing radiation that would be necessary to cause this
31:46
Speaker 3: photoionization of the early universe by big galaxies. This is
31:51
Speaker 3: a really cool story. It's being led by a team
31:55
Speaker 3: from the Institute the Astrophysique de Paris. That's my best
31:59
Speaker 3: French friends.
32:00
Speaker 2: That's pretty boy. Yeah, that was pretty pretty darn good.
32:04
Speaker 3: I never study foreign language. But anyway, so anyway, so uh,
32:08
Speaker 3: Irena Kimrinska, Irena Kimriinska, I didn't study that name well enough.
32:14
Speaker 1: Anyway.
32:14
Speaker 3: Irena Kimriinska is one of the scientists on this Here's
32:18
Speaker 3: a quote from Irena Kimriinska. This discovery unveils the crucial
32:22
Speaker 3: role played by ultra faint galaxies. Because they're small ultra
32:27
Speaker 3: faint galaxies in the early universe, right, they produce ionizing
32:32
Speaker 3: photons that transform neutral hydrogen into ionized plasma during cosmic reionization.
32:38
Speaker 3: This discovery highlights the importance of understanding low mass galaxies
32:42
Speaker 3: in shaping the universe's history. Irena Kimerinska institute the Astrophysique.
32:49
Speaker 2: De Peli Right.
32:51
Speaker 3: Another scientist from the same place, don't make me say
32:54
Speaker 3: it again, from the same place, the team lead, Hakeem
32:57
Speaker 3: Atech has this quote. Despite their tiny size, these low
33:00
Speaker 3: mass galaxies are prolific producers of energetic radiation, and their
33:06
Speaker 3: abundance during this period is so substantial that their collective
33:10
Speaker 3: influence can transform the entire state of the universe. Unbelievable
33:16
Speaker 3: new discovery. If you don't follow cosmology, you may go
33:20
Speaker 3: while that was a lot of mumbo jumble mouthfuls. But
33:23
Speaker 3: if you're a person like me who spent the vast
33:26
Speaker 3: majority of my career thinking about the early cosmological environments
33:31
Speaker 3: of the universe, this is a huge story because it's
33:34
Speaker 3: offering a brand new mechanism for an unexplained behavior of
33:38
Speaker 3: the early universe. Friends, there you.
33:40
Speaker 2: Have it all right.
33:42
Speaker 4: I can't say that I've driven a car on the Moon.
33:46
Speaker 4: I can say that I have driven a car many
33:48
Speaker 4: times in Australia on the other side of the road,
33:52
Speaker 4: and at the moment it kind of almost makes more
33:54
Speaker 4: sense than driving it on the correct side of the road,
33:57
Speaker 4: as we like to call it. But at the Coca
34:03
Speaker 4: Cola Space Science Center and at the Bow Bartlett Center,
34:08
Speaker 4: you guys have plenty of opportunities for folks to see
34:11
Speaker 4: some artifacts donated by the family of a guy who
34:14
Speaker 4: did drive a car on the Moon.
34:16
Speaker 3: The first guy to drive a car.
34:17
Speaker 4: On the Moon, the first guy to drive a car.
34:20
Speaker 4: I love Jerry Seinfeld's a bit about that. He's like,
34:22
Speaker 4: as if it weren't far enough, we went all the
34:25
Speaker 4: way to the Moon, then what we had to do
34:26
Speaker 4: when we got there, we had to drive around in
34:28
Speaker 4: a little car. That's the most male activity you can do.
34:34
Speaker 4: You go all the way to the moon and then
34:36
Speaker 4: you drive around in a car.
34:39
Speaker 3: As comedian Brian Reagan says, I was really worried about
34:42
Speaker 3: the speed of it, but then I realized we're the
34:44
Speaker 3: only ones here, all right. Yeah. So Commander David Scott
34:49
Speaker 3: from Apollo fifteen was the first person to ever drive
34:52
Speaker 3: a car on the surface.
34:53
Speaker 2: Of the Moon.
34:54
Speaker 3: And I don't know if he was on the right
34:56
Speaker 3: or left hand side. Wes, I'm confused about this, but
35:00
Speaker 3: I guess he got to decide. That's like, sure's the
35:02
Speaker 3: person that said, up here, we're driving on the you know,
35:05
Speaker 3: fill in the blank.
35:06
Speaker 2: It was a virtual Autobahn.
35:07
Speaker 4: He could just do whatever, any speed, any side of
35:10
Speaker 4: the road, just avoid the potholes.
35:13
Speaker 2: As a lot of potholes.
35:15
Speaker 3: Well, even though I don't know what side of the
35:17
Speaker 3: road Dave drove on on the Moon, I do know
35:19
Speaker 3: his brother Tom, and his brother Tom was a very
35:22
Speaker 3: good friend to Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science
35:25
Speaker 3: Center and has facilitated the donation of many artifacts and
35:28
Speaker 3: pieces of memorabilia from Dave Scops three trips to the
35:32
Speaker 3: Moon his brother Dave three trips to the moon Gemini eight,
35:35
Speaker 3: Apollo nine, and Apollo fifteen, and we have artifacts from
35:39
Speaker 3: all three of those trips. In fact, we have so
35:42
Speaker 3: many now that we can't even we don't even have
35:44
Speaker 3: enough room in our own gallery to put him up.
35:47
Speaker 3: So we made a special arrangement with our friends down
35:49
Speaker 3: at the Bow Bartlett Center, the art gallery at Columbustate
35:52
Speaker 3: University that's just down the street from us, about three
35:54
Speaker 3: blocks and my good friend Mike McFall down there is
35:57
Speaker 3: the director of the bo Bartlett Center, has agreed to
36:00
Speaker 3: put up these beautiful pieces from the David Scott collection
36:05
Speaker 3: on display this summer. We began that back on June third,
36:08
Speaker 3: and it's going to be on display through August the second.
36:11
Speaker 3: If you would like to come down and see original
36:15
Speaker 3: collection pieces from the collection of astronaut David Scott on display,
36:20
Speaker 3: you can visit the Bow Bartlet Center and then while
36:23
Speaker 3: you're there, get a great tour of these artifacts. But
36:27
Speaker 3: then you can take a selfie next to an astronaut
36:31
Speaker 3: and you can use that selfie with the astronaut to
36:33
Speaker 3: get a discounted admission here to the Space Science Center,
36:36
Speaker 3: and we'll give you a five dollars ticket to come
36:39
Speaker 3: in and see us that day, so you can have
36:40
Speaker 3: a two facility space adventure with your family for a
36:44
Speaker 3: very reasonable price free at the Bow Bartlet Center five
36:49
Speaker 3: dollars per person here at Space Science Center. Got to
36:52
Speaker 3: take that selfie down at Bow Bartlett first, but then
36:54
Speaker 3: you show that at the front desk here Space Science Center.
36:56
Speaker 3: Get a discounted amission here and have a day of
36:59
Speaker 3: space friends. Find out all about Dave Scott and as
37:03
Speaker 3: many trips to outer space, including driving a car on
37:05
Speaker 3: the Moon. And come see this here and enjoy the atmosphere, theater,
37:09
Speaker 3: the space Shuttle, otysy, and the many exhibits we have
37:12
Speaker 3: in our exhibit gallery here at the Coca Cola Space
37:15
Speaker 3: Signed Center, all at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia.
37:19
Speaker 4: Seawann and I thank you for listening, and we'll do
37:22
Speaker 4: this again. I'll be very jet lagged, but we'll do
37:25
Speaker 4: this again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbus has
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