May 7, 2019 • 44 mins
What are gamma ray bursts, and are they dangerous?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey, Jorge, do you worry much about things from space
coming to kill you? Not until right now? Why should I? Well,
it depends. It depends on what. Well, if there was
nothing you could do to prepare for or prevent it,
would you still want to know? Yeah? I think so.
It'd be nice to know. Um, so you can get
my things in order, and you know, get a couple
(00:29):
of finish that TV series I I've been watching. In
that case, I highly recommend you pay attention to this
episode of our podcast because it's going to prepare you.
Why should I listen to the episode or finish my
TV series? I'm confused? What should I do? Daniel? I imagine, Well,
we're recording this episode. You do sound this tracked sometimes? Well,
I say, she'd multitask exactly. There's a you know, death
(00:53):
from space is coming, so you've got to get stuff done.
I feel like the universe is huge and there's there's
a million things out there that can kills instantly at
any time. Are you saying there's something in particular I
should be worried about. Stay tuned find out. Hi. I'm Borhand.
(01:23):
I'm a cartoonist and the creator of the comic strip
piled Higher and Deeper or PhD comics. He's also a
shill for big banana corporations, but you'll hear more about
that later. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a
part time podcast host and amateur baker, and also a
shill for Marvel Comics and DC whatever. Man, I'm totally
(01:45):
a DC guy. That's why he sold out to Marvel,
because it's the most successful, more successful franchise. Well, I
am still waiting for that check, by the way, for
selling out to Marvel. I think I think they're waiting
for um Tony Stark design it. Yeah. Well I was
fact checking their Pin Particle episodes and I sent them
a long list of corrections and never heard back. So
(02:07):
maybe I'm maybe they don't want to hear from me anymore.
I know the scientific advisor of the at My Movies.
He's a buddy, so I could we could just have
the whole podcast with him, really, because I got a
few things to say about the pin particle and the
quantum realm. Now he's a quantum physicist. Are you sure
you're you're off for the for the challenge? Well, he's
(02:28):
either right or he's wrong. There's no in between, right, No,
he is, he's both. No, he's right and wrong at
the same time. That's right. Yeah. Anyway, this is our podcast,
Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I
Heart Radio, where we talk about all the amazing and
mysterious things are that are out there in the universe
that may or may not kill you instantly. That's right.
(02:49):
That Sometimes we talked about the real universe. Sometimes we
talk about the Marvel universe, or the DC universe, or
the Banana universe, whatever is interesting today. Yeah, and so
today on the podcast, we are going to talk about
a very interesting topic. That's right. Today's topic is gamma
(03:10):
ray bursts. A bunch of listeners wrote in and asked
us to explain gamma ray bursts. What are they? Can
they kill us? Can they really turned Bruce Banner into
the Hulk? What's going on? Please break it down? Wait,
gamma ray births. I thought we were talking about Billy
ray Cires. I thought, isn't that the weird thing from
space that we were No, Billy ray Cirus. His career
(03:30):
is based on getting irradiated by gamma ray bursts. That's
the connection. He used to be a mild mannered singer,
and then he got gamma rays and now he's like
crazy Billy ray Cirus, all right, and so gamma rays
are involved. I totally made that up. That is completely fabricated.
I apologize to Billy ray Cirius and all of his
(03:52):
fans for implying that the mere mortal could not have
written that music the hokey pokey. So he didn't write
the hokey pokey anyway. But but gamma rays do play
a big role in the Marvel universe, right, because back
when gamma rays were the crazy thing people were worried about.
It showed up in comic books all the time. And
(04:12):
that's how Bruce Banner got turned into the Hulk. That's right.
And I'm surprised you know this fact about the Marvel universe.
I thought you were a d C guy. Well, you know,
Marvel is not paying me, so I figured i'd do
some research. So yeah, so he he gets irradiated by
gamma rays and some kind of accident and that's what
turns him into the Hulk. And so these are like magic,
mysterious raise right, that's right. And you know, I gotta
(04:35):
wonder about this origin story the Hulk, Like, do you
think they're trying to make it seem like it's his fault?
Like crazy scientists just wants to learn about the universe,
doesn't care about the risks to humanity gets irradiated, Like
is that like a moral punishment like tisk tisk, You
shouldn't be playing with these forces you don't understand. Yeah,
for sure. Wait are you saying that comic books can
(04:56):
have like literary you know, secret mess it is and
thieves and they're definitely there's definitely literary. I don't know
if it's so secret though. I just wonder about like
how is interpreted at the time, you know, like our
scientists like the leading edge, they're bringing us into the
atomic age, look at all the wonderful things we're getting
out of science, or is it like I'm kind of
scared of science. Scientists don't seem trustworthy, look at all
(05:19):
the crazy stuff they're doing. I think it was a
It's supposed to be kind of a take on you
know Dr jackl and Mr Hyde, you know, the scientists
who's trying to understand things and playing maybe with things
he doesn't quite fully understand, and then he he gets
turned into a superhero and into a multiple near franchise
we kind of worked out for the scientists. Yeah, so
the lesson is everybody should do crazy radiation experiments in
(05:41):
their basement, right, you know what? Gamma rays do feature
a lot in comics from a long time ago, and
they are a real thing. Gamma rays really are a
real thing, and gamma ray bursts are a real thing,
and so we thought it'd be fun to do an
episode where we explain it. Um. It turns out that
they are quite a scientistic puzzle. Um. For a long time,
(06:02):
physicists have not understood where they came from and what's
generating them. And should we be worried about them? Yeah?
Should we worry about them exactly? And are we all
going to turn into the Hulk? And how do you
feel about that anyway? And should you watch your TV?
I don't, Well, you mean, what happens if you turn
into the Hulk and you have all those TV shows recorded?
Do you think the Hulk likes to watch the same
(06:22):
TV show as you do? Do you need like separate
tvrs for when you're in Hulk mode when you're not
in Hulk mode? You know, I don't think the Hulk
would get past, you know, the pilot episode of most
TV shows. You know, you'd probably smash the TV right away.
No stars from no unnecessary dialogue. That sounds like how
(06:45):
my son reviews in most television shows really pretty much
talking too much talking. Where is the action? Exactly exactly?
They sound pretty cool. Gamma rays, right, gamma rays. I
mean it sounds like some sort of new kind of
ray energy, Yeah, exactly. Does it have a positive connotation
to you, like, oh my god, look at this amazing
(07:06):
source of energy, all the good we can do for
the world, or does have a negative connotation like is
this a weapon that's gonna kill me? I think it
just sounds like something out of science fiction, you know,
like if you called it, like, um, puppy dog rays,
I'd be like, Oh, that's cute, it's safe. What you
called it? Like? You know whathero can I can't let
(07:27):
that go. I can't let it go. What if a
scientist is experimenting with puppy dog rays and gets irradiated,
what kind of superhero does he turn into? The UK puppy,
The hush puppy goes around licking everybody, snuggling with them.
The husky, the husky. There you go, husky exactly, the
(07:48):
green husky, which sounds pretty adorable. But no, yeah, they
sound mysterious. They sound revery sci fi, right, like gamma
Like all you have to just pick a Greek letter
and marry it to like a scientific physics term and
you have something sci fi. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now you're right.
It does stay fit. But the cool thing about it
is that it's actually also science e Like, there's are
a lot of really interesting science behind gamma ray bursts. Yeah,
(08:10):
and a big mystery, right, there was a big mystery
about them. Yeah. Yeah, So I was wondering what people
knew about gamma ray bursts. Were they worried about them?
Do they know what they mean? Do they know what
a gamma ray is at all? So, as usual, Daniel
went out there and asked people on the street, random strangers,
what they thought a gamma ray was. And these interviews
happened partially on the campus of you see, Irvine, and
(08:32):
also partially at the Irvine Spectrum. So you're gonna get
a selection of students and random people. What's the Irvine Spectrum?
What's the Irvine Spectrum? Oh my god, how do you
not know about that people like you in in Orange County?
Is it like the range from Dark Based Dark Baby.
(08:55):
I never realized the dramatic irony of Irvine calling anything
a spectrum because there is no spectrum. You're right, um, No,
it's a big mall here in Irvine. People actually like
fly here from Japan, stay in a hotel and just
shop of the mall and then like fly back. It's crazy. Really,
is it like a fancy or is it like a
mega Minnesota Malvey America's I'm not the right person to
(09:17):
evaluate malls. I spent as a little time in them
as possible. I was there because my kids were in
spring break and I took them to a movie, And
while they were in the movie, I interviewed people about
Gamma rays. You didn't go into the movie with them, No, No,
I stood outside looking like a weirdo, asking people weird
science questions. All right, well, those of you at home,
(09:38):
think about it for a second. If you if a
random physicist approach you outside of a movie theater in
a fancy mall and ask you, what is the gammerie,
what would you say? Good? Step away, ster, You'd say,
I didn't fly here from Japan, just to answer your
questions security security. One fascinating thing is that on campus
a U s I nine nine of people will answer
(10:01):
my questions, whereas it the spectrum, only like one in
ten are willing to answer questions. Really huh yeah, I
wonder whether that why that is. I don't know. So
here's what people had to say. First question is have
you ever heard about gamma ray burst? Do you know
what that is? No? No, I don't know, but I've
heard of it because they definitely has to do something
(10:22):
with UV light. It's like a sun ray. I'm assuming
it's just I know that it modifies like your DNA
or something. I could just blast your DNA and that
could cause some damage to you, like severely. Yeah. Yeah,
so that's about it, but not too into a Gamma
rebers a kind of game or I don't know. Yes,
(10:48):
but the star explodes and it will admit a lot
of frequency of photons and the country a large exposure
identific because it will be high. I will make Gamma
explosion something okay, and it's a something to worry about.
I don't think it will be that powerful that makes
us worry. It depends on how close the stories Honestly,
I couldn't tell you, all right, because I have something
(11:11):
with stars or m it's when the sun explodes or something, right,
something is it's something to worry about, I would seem
so yeah, alright, so pretty binary response. Right. Most people
didn't know or they knew all about it, Yeah, exactly
a lot of people have never heard about them, or
like it tickled something in their brain maybe, but they
(11:31):
were not able to say anything concrete about it. But
some folks clearly had done some reading. Yeah, but nobody
mentioned the Hulk. No, nobody mentioned the Hulk. Um though
you know, I've been bulking up recently, so I sort
of digging for compliments there. But no, I didn't get me.
Did you paid yourself green as well? Know that? And
you're not allowed to be green and irvine. It's only
(11:53):
beige allowed. Oh, the beige Hulk. That would be the
irvine version. So that's sound. They sound pretty mysterious. Gamma rays, um,
so what are they done? And let's break it down
for people? What are gamma rays? So in the end
of gamma ray is not as exotic as it sounds.
It's just a kind of photon. So remember photons are
(12:15):
the particle that carry electromagnetic radiation. So all light you know,
radio waves to visible light, to X rays and all
the way up to gamma rays, they're all just photons
of different frequencies. They're just light wiggling at different wavelengths.
And we called different parts of the spectrum different things
because they were discovered different times, and we treat them
(12:36):
differently or the qualitatively different. But in the end, they're
all just parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. So wait, did
they think before that they were different, like a different
kind of ray or particle or was this before they
even knew about particles. Yeah, before we even knew about particles,
and we knew about rays, like we had cathode rays
and stuff like that in X rays, and we didn't
(12:56):
understand for a long time that rays were particles. And
and later they unified a lot of these different things
um and understood them all just be parts of the
same thing. So they just thought it was like a
just like a different kind of ray, Yeah, like a
different kind of beam of something. Yeah, because particles at
different energy, photons at different energy act really different. You know,
photons that are the visible wavelength, you can see them.
(13:20):
They look green. For example, photons that are high enough
energy to penetrate through you and give you a picture
of your bones. You know, we call those X rays. Uh,
they're just photons of a higher energy. But qualitatively they
seem different, right, And so before we understood a lot
more about how things worked, they we treated them like
different things. But that's that's the whole goal of physics, right,
(13:40):
is to take a bunch of disparate phenomena, things that
don't seem related, and discover that they're actually connected. They're
all just different parts of the same thing, different sides
of the same die. I guess they thought there were
different things because they they're made differently, right, Like you
make cather raise one way and you make visible light
another way, and you make gamma rays different way, and
(14:01):
so they thought, hey, these are just different things that
come out when you do these other things. Yeah, you
make them differently, and they behave differently, Like one of
them can penetrate through the wall and the other one
can't write. And so if you don't have a microscopic
understanding of it, it makes sense to categorize them differently. Um,
so it's pretty cool later when you stitch it all
together and realize that these are all just different flavors
(14:21):
of the same thing, or different colors quite literally of
the same thing. And gamma rays specifically are the very
very high edge of that spectrum. So anything that's you know,
like a million times more energetic than a visible photon,
you call it a gamma ray. It's not like a
hard cut off and not like a little below and like, sorry,
you don't get to be a gamma ray. You know,
(14:42):
it's sort of a rough thing, um, but there's no
upper limit. It's like a it's like a soft definition. Yeah,
that's what point does it? And the photon become trying
from a regular photon to ama. Well, you know, I
think photons would be insalted be called regular photons. You know,
they're all special Okay, they all can do something that
no other photon can do. That's right. Sorry, they're all bright,
(15:05):
shining points of light. Yeah. I mean, is there's some
colors that you like more than others? Or hey are
you you know, are you a colorist? But I've worked
with a lot of colorists. Yeah, that's true. You are
a cartoonists. You should be pro color man um. Yeah,
so you got radio waves the very very low edge,
and then you got um infrared right just below what
(15:27):
we can see. Then you've got the visible spectrum. The
radio waves are the bottom. Radio waves are the very
longest wavelengths are the lowest energy. Exactly the way you
said at the bottom makes it sound judgmental. You know,
radio ways are awesome, they're super powerful and fantastic and
the reasons we can see black holes and stuff like that. Um,
But yeah, radio waves are at the bottom in terms
(15:48):
of energy. Then you get infrared, then you get the
visible spectrum. Then you get X rays, right, and then
you get there just above the ultra violet, you get
X rays and then you get gamma rays. So emorys
are the hardest, fastest, most energetic kind of photon you
can have. But they're all photons, Like, they're all the
same particle through just kind of vibrating differently or the
(16:11):
different wavelength or sizes. What's the difference. Yeah, they're all photons.
They all travel at the speed of light. But the
difference is the frequency, right, how often they are wiggling. Right. Remember,
photons are vibrations of the electromagnetic field, right, and they
oscillate and the speed at which they oscillate that gives
you the frequency. Right, how many times per second do
they go up and down? Does they let the magnetic
(16:32):
fields go up and down? And they're all moving at
the speed of light? One radio photons moving at the
same speed as a gamma ray photon. That's right. If
you had a race, and you had a source of
radio waves and a source of gamma rays, and you
shot them at each other, they would have different energies
but move at the same speed. They all travel at
(16:53):
the speed of light, even if they have different energies.
That feels kind of weird, right, because you're used to
thinking of energy and speed is closely connected. But this
is something different. They have no mass and they travel
at the speed of light. Um, they all have the
same speed, but they have different energies, which means they
have different frequencies and different wavelengths. Right. The wavelength and
the frequency are closely connected. Higher the frequency, the shorter
(17:14):
the wavelength. And uh yeah, let's talk about that a
little bit more. But first quick break. Okay, so gamma
rays are photons, but they have not just a little bit,
(17:37):
but a lot more energy than the regular photons that
we see every day. That's right, a million times, that's yeah,
that's a lot. It's a lot. If I shot gamma
rays at you, they would deposit a lot more energy
in you than normal light, right, And also they can
penetrate into you much further, like, well it would, they
would deliver a million times more energy. Right, You need
a million photons to be equal to one gamma ray
(17:59):
photon exactly. And so gamma rays are dangerous. They can't
turn you into the Hulk probably, but they could give
you cancer, right, they can shatter your DNA and and
all sorts of crazy stuff inside your body. You don't
want gamma rays, Okay, So they're just regular photons, but
they're they're just an upper spectrum of light, that's right,
they're the high ended spectrum. They are dangerous, much more
(18:20):
dangerous than normal light because they can damage your DNA, right,
they can. They can cause errors in DNA which get copied,
and that's a big source of cancer. So what they
are is not very mysterious, right, Like we can make
them here on Earth, that's right, Yeah, exactly, we can
make gamma rays here on Earth. Um and gamma rays
are produced by radioactive elements all the time, right, they're
(18:41):
just high energy photons from radioactive decays. So there are
gamma rays around one of them just hit you right now. Um. Yes,
So gamma rays themselves not mysterious. We know all about them.
We can make them. Um. The question is what out
there might be making gamma rays. And that's the fascinating
part of the story. That's um the interesting mystery, right
(19:03):
is that we know the gamma rays are produced when
we do experience with with nuclear weapons. Right, you do,
you blow up a nuclear bomb, You're gonna produce a
lot of gamma rays. So when in the Cold War,
when we had trees with with with the Russians saying
no testing or whatever, we sent up a bunch of
satellites to verify that they weren't testing trying to detect
gamma rays from nuclear explosions. And um, I don't know
(19:26):
if they found that. They haven't released that. But what
they did discover is a bunch of gamma rays not
coming from the Soviet Union, not coming from somewhere else
on Earth, not coming from the mountain volcano layer of
some evil villain, but instead coming from deep in space.
So the mysteries that we're getting bombarded by gamma rays,
(19:46):
but we don't know, we didn't know really came from. Yeah.
And the really fascinating thing about them is that it's
not like a continual source. It's not just like you know,
the solar wind where it's just like constantly coming. They
come in bursts. And that's really interesting because it you
think like something happened, something created this, like some big
event occurred and must have produced this burst, right, And
(20:08):
that's a clue. It's like, what's going on out there
seems feels like a message or a clue about something
fascinating that's happening somewhere else in the universe. So what
do you mean by a burst? Like we we suddenly, um,
suddenly we're washed by a bunch of gamma rays and
then it stops. Yeah, and it's exactly like a huge
pile them come all at once, you know, it's like
a big flash in the sky, like quite literally a
(20:30):
big flash in the sky. And then the other fascinating
thing is that there are two kinds is like short
gamma ray bursts. One that ones that last much less
than a second, like less than half a second, and
then there's ones that last like twenty or thirty seconds,
um and it's not like a continuous range. It's not
like you know, every gamma ray burst is you know, um,
some somewhere less than thirty seconds, and there's a smooth distribution.
(20:52):
There's like two bumps if you made histogram, like a
lot of them. A lot of them peak at like
zero point three seconds, and a lot of them peak
it like the earty seconds. So there's definitely two kinds
of bursts happening. It kind of sounds like Morse quote exactly,
some very slow message. That's the exciting thing, Right, you
don't know what's creating this. You don't know is out
(21:12):
there making it, and it could be anything. It could
be like some new kind of star you never saw before,
or it could be some bizarre galactic race sending you
messages over decades, right, who knows? Planet Hulk. Yeah, because
it's they're not very common. It's not like they're happening
all the time, you know. Um, these days are estimated
that we about what about one per day hits the Earth.
(21:35):
So we first to take these with cold warp satellites. Yeah,
exactly what do people think, Like, did they think was
a glitch or at first they had no idea they're like,
what you know. First, I'm sure they thought, are the
Soviets testing and outer space? Maybe they're already at the
Moon or something. Right, Um, we could tell they were
coming from out of space. Yeah, we could tell they
were coming from outer space. Absolutely, we could tell the
(21:56):
direction of And you know, they didn't release a lot
of details because all this in nation comes from like
classified satellites. Um, as scientists, we sometimes wonder, like we
spend all this money trying to get satellites up in
space to answer scientists scientific questions, but the budget for
defense is much bigger, and there's a huge network of
(22:16):
defense satellites listening for stuff and telescopes and all sorts
of stuff, and we wonder sometimes like could we use
that network for science, Like it's so much bigger and
more powerful. Of course it's not designed to do science,
but sometimes it can accidentally do signs, and that's what
happened here. So we don't know a lot of details
about the technical capabilities of these Department of Defense satellites.
(22:37):
But after a few years, the d D realized, Okay,
this is not Russian's this is something weird and interesting
from outer space, and so they declassified this data and
shared it with the scientific community, and that's what they
used to discover what they were. Yeah, that was the
first hint. And then the scientists were like, we have
no idea, what is this. Let's study it some more
and there's a lesson. They're also folks like if the
government did discover aliens, they would probably turn it over
(23:00):
to the scientific community to help them figure it out. Right,
that's basically what happened here, right. Weird enough Hollywood movies, Daniel,
and they always try to cover it up. Yeah, I
should be a consultant in some of those Hollywood movies
because I have better ideas. So then the scientific community said, well, wow,
(23:21):
we have no idea what could make this And it
was really it was a puzzle for a long time.
So um, because it's it's uh, they knew it wasn't
coming from the sun, right, And these these weren't just
like a little small burst. These are really bright bursts, right,
that's right, They're really bright. And so the first thing
you do in astronomy when you see a signal you
don't know what it is, you try to figure out
where it's coming from. Right, you pointed in the sky,
(23:43):
if you can connect it with something in this in
the sky, then you think, oh, it's came from there, right,
pretty simple stuff. So they know it didn't come from
the Sun. They also didn't seem to be coming from
anything in our galaxy. Like we know where we are
relative to the galaxy, and so some signals being generated
by some like new kind of star or some activity
in our galaxy, it's going to be mostly coming from
(24:05):
the direction of the center of the galaxy or the
plane of the galaxy. Right, But these things were coming
from every direction, like random directions. So suggest that's not
something happening in our galaxy, but something coming to us
from other galaxies. Wow. So for something to be that
far away and for us to feel it and to
(24:26):
get so many of these photons, it's like at the source,
it must be huge, right, Like it must be like
a huge bright explosion. Yeah. Absolutely, It's kind of scary
to think about because these gamma ray bursts they're like
as powerful as like a star, you know, when when
they hit us, the light from the gamma ray burst
is about as much energy as the life from a
star in our galaxy. Right. But but if it but
(24:49):
if it came from really far away then, I mean
that must have and it probably sprayed that much in
all directions. Right, Well, we actually don't know about that.
We don't know um that much about how they're made,
So it could be like um like blaze oars and
pulsars that they're concentrated in in some directions, like along
the magnetic polls. But whatever it is, they're super bright
(25:11):
at the source because remember, other galaxies are crazy far away,
Like other stars are far away inside our galaxy, but
other galaxies are like an order of magnitude further away.
So to even see those galaxies as hard, you have
to add up all the hundreds of billions of stars
in those galaxies just to see them. So to see
one object from that galaxy being as bright as a
(25:33):
star in our galaxy, I mean you have to do
the math. That's crazy, Um no, you I think, yeah,
you were telling me earlier. You did the math, and
it's about one million trillion times brighter than the Sun exactly.
That's how far away these things are. In order for
us to see them as bright as a star in
our galaxy, they have to be a million trillion times
(25:54):
brighter than the sun. But that's a fun thing to say,
isn't it a million trillion? Like say axillion? You know,
I don't even bother. I don't even know how many zeros.
It is a lot like bony swoops of ice cream?
Would you like a million trillion? Just a whole bunch
more than more than a million. It's it's a million
(26:16):
times a trillion. It's a million times a trillion times
the Sun, which is already really bright. You know. That
means there's stuff going on in the universe out there
all the time. That's a million trillion times brighter than
the Sun. Yeah, exactly. And so we think they come
from other galaxies. But that's a bit of a puzzle, right,
Like why only from other galaxies and not from hours? Um,
(26:38):
how are they? What are these things that are making
these gamma ray bers? How can they be so crazy powerful?
You mean we should be if they were common in
our galaxy, we would be getting them a lot more
from the sides of the galaxy, right, like we would notice. Yeah, well,
either they don't happen very often, in which case it's
(26:58):
more likely to see them from other galaxies than from ours, right,
because there are more other galaxies than ours, right, um,
or our galaxy is different from other galaxies in some way,
which is why we don't see them from our galaxy. Well, well,
I was You were telling me also that there's more
energy in one second of these gamma ray burs than
possibly all the energy that our Sun will give in
(27:20):
its entire life. That's right, It's a huge amount of energy.
This is one of the funnest things about space and
about astronomy, right, it's just the crazy numbers, you know, like,
can you wrap your mind around how much energy is
going to be put out by the Sun over billions
of years. I don't think it's possible for humans to
grasp this kind of stuff. I mean, even just the
time scale billions of years. You know, it's hard for
(27:42):
humans that live for such a flicker to understand and
then integrate all the energy of this million earth ball
of fire and then focus that all into one second.
I mean, it's uh, it burns a hole in my mind.
It turns into the Hulk. Yeah, exactly. If you took
the Earth right and you collided it with the anti Earth,
like a antimatter version of the Earth, right, so you
(28:05):
converted all of the mass from the Earth into energy.
You know, it's it's it's crazy powerful. Right. For example,
if you collided to raisins out of raisin and an
anti raisin, it would have as much energy as a
nuclear weapon. Right, So it's a huge amount of energy
is stored in a raisin. Now imagine doing that for
the Earth. Right, You'd have to do that for a
hundred copies of the Earth to get as much energy
(28:27):
as is stored in these gamma ray bursts. What if
you collide a hulk in an anti hulk they both
get piste off. Yeah, dude's mash it's each each other
and and anti smash they would you know up as well?
I don't know, but you are generating a huge list
of great ideas for the next Marvel movies. I hope
you're you're patenting these? Yeah yeah, Mark Ruffo will call me.
(28:53):
But yeah, So okay, let's so let's get into what
could be generating these game ray bers and are they dangerous?
But let's take a quick break. All right, So we're
(29:15):
talking about gamma ray berths, which are different than Billy
ray shires. We've established that and that they're also just
regular photons but super highly energetic, and we're getting these
crazy births from out of space. So, Daniel, what could
be causing these births? What could be out there making
these that we were feeling them so so um energetic
(29:36):
here on Earth. Well, the short answer is we don't
really know very well. We have now recently some hypotheses
that might work, but the truth is we don't really
know um. And remember, there's two kinds of gamma ray bursus,
the short and the long. Short last less than a second,
and the long last like thirty seconds. And the best
guesses these days are that the short ones are due
(29:58):
to neutron stars that are in a binary system, so
they're orbiting each other, and when they do this, they
lose energy slowly so that they rotate around each other
and get closer and closer and closer and eventually collide.
And this is exciting stuff astronomically, because we recently saw
like gravitational waves coming from neutron star collisions and we
confirmed that like all of the gold in the universe
(30:19):
is probably made in neutron star collisions and all sorts
of crazy stuff. But the we think it might also
produce these gamma ray bursts because it's a huge amount
of energy and if you read the details about it,
it's crazy. That means that there's a short birth. Right,
there's their point three seconds long, and you're saying they generate, Like,
that's how fast these neutron stars are crashing into each other,
(30:40):
the whole thing that's about point three seconds. No, it's um.
The bursts itself, they think comes from the crust of
the neutron stars um being crushed by the gravitational pressure
from the other neutron stars. Remember, if you're close to
a really heavy object, you get these tidal forces because
gravity acts differently on things further away and closer up,
so you basically they get massaged. So two neutron stars
(31:02):
are like massaging each other just before they collide, which
is making the crust of them um basically shake and crack.
So you're getting these like earthquakes on the surface of
neutron stars just before they collide. That might be generating
these crazy fast bursts of gamma rays. I mean, it
sounds like science fiction, right. If I pitched that to Marvel,
they'd be like, that's sorry, that's too far out there,
(31:24):
But we think that's actually happening. It's really like you're
colliding to suns. Right, you're exactly. They get neutron star
taking a neutron star and used to smash them together
and in that point three seconds it explodes, right. Yeah,
But I have to remind you that our previous episode
about neutron stars, you complain that neutron stars aren't really stars.
They should just be called neutron balls because they don't glow. Okay,
(31:46):
so when you smash the balls together, that's where you
get there. And I have to say a lot of
our listeners on Twitter agreed with you that they should
be called balls. Yeah, exactly, they should be demoted from
starts to balls. Yeah. You sound surprised that people on
Twitter agree with me. I'm surprised that people it's on
Twitter agree with anybody. Congratulations, you've unified social media with overalls.
(32:08):
Yeah exactly. We have located a few of them, like
neutron star collisions. We can see in other ways. Right,
we can see them from their gravitational wave emissions that
that's pretty rare, but we can see them from the
bright flashes of visible light that they produce. And so
the Trick has been watching these things for years and
(32:29):
basically constructing dedicated satellites that are looking for these things.
And the key is that they don't last very long.
So what you want to do is as soon as
you see one, you've got to point all your good
telescopes at it. So the science community become much better
at that building dedicated telescopes that look for these things,
and then everybody swivels over to look at it at
the same time, which gives you a good review of it.
(32:50):
But you only have points three seconds, yeah, exactly. You
gotta be fast, um for these really fast ones. And
so some of these telescopes are all hooked up, like
the firm me tell lescope that's orbiting the Earth has
a gamma ray burst detector and when it's when it
finds something and it immediately sends a message. And then
telescopes on Earth point in that direction and try to capture, um,
you know, the last bits of the of the burst
(33:12):
before it disappears, and also to capture anything else coming
from that direction. And that's where we got these clues.
We started watching the guy more carefully and seeing what
else was coming from the direction of the gamma ray bursts,
and that gave people ideas about what could be happening
that could be causing them. So you get an idea like, oh,
maybe it's neutron stars, in which case we should see
this and that and the other thing also, And then
(33:33):
they started to pick those things up. Okay, so that's
the short birds, that's where they we think they come from.
What about the long burst, the thirty second ones? Yeah,
the long bursts come from super duper supernova's right? Um? Yeah,
super duper supernovas. Is that the technical that like a
million trillion supernovas, that's a super duper ice cream sunday.
(33:56):
You know, the technical term is a hypernova hypernova? Yeah,
oh man, but I prefer superduper supernova because it sounds
better than supernova. So they're not just a supernova. They're
like extra special, the extra special, extra big big implosions.
And this is still something that's not very well understood. Um,
you know, why do some supernovas produce gamma ray bursts
(34:17):
and some don't. But they did this modeling and they said, Okay,
if there is a big supernova, then we expect that
after the gamma ray bursts, we should see a bunch
of X rays because the gas nearby the supernova is
going to collide and then emit, and so they did
some complicated modeling and made predictions, and in fact they
see this afterglow, after the after these long gamma ray bursts,
(34:38):
they see X rays. So those are slightly lower energy
photons in the spectrum that they expect if it was
a supernova. So it partially answers the question because it
tells us these long gamma ray bursts probably come from
these crazy hypernovas. But we have hypernovas in the Milky Way,
and there's lots of hypernovas and not that many gamma
ray birsts. So is it like a special kind of
(34:59):
hypernova or only in some cases, or that's the kind
of thing. They're still trying to figure out what you're saying,
we need another term special super duper supernova, all hypernovas
are special or he I don't know why you have
to be so judgmental today. What's next? Or you can
have to call go for like hyper special, extra cool,
(35:19):
super califragilistic on top super dupernova. Yeah, so it's it's
still a puzzle. We don't understand it, right, we don't
understand why they made Sometimes um, some people think that
that if a supernova collapses like in a certain way,
then it creates this cloud of stuff around it which
absorbs the gamma rays and other times the gamma rays
poked through and then shoot out everywhere else. But it
(35:42):
would make sense that a supernova or killernova or hypernova
or whatever could generate this much energy because that's a
huge event, right, these massive stars imploding, So that that
definitely could explain it. I feel like next time you
should start a little bit more modestly so that you
have room to grow. You known, you discover something big
is called like a modest nova or like a just
(36:03):
a regular note, you have room to grow. No, I
like going the way McDonald's went for their drink sizes.
You know, you start with medium, which is already huge,
and then you escalate. Um. Yeah, exactly, And so that's
a that's probably what's causing it, but we don't really
understand it in detail, and it's important that we understand
(36:24):
it because we want to understand, like, is one of
these things going to happen in the middleky way? How
often are these things going to be hitting us? Do
we have to worry? So it's important to understand this stuff. Yeah,
it's weird that there would be things that were not
we can't quite explain out there. Yeah, exactly, especially things
that could kill us. Right, So it's like, I think
it's worth funding politicians out there with the purse strings,
(36:46):
you know, maybe by one less fighter jet and to
pay for another telescope to look at gamma rays. Wait,
so could these things kill us? Or I think you're
telling me earlier that you know, if the right concentration
hits us at the right moment, it could really fried
and turns into toast. Yeah, exactly. The key is how
far away it happens, right, So, gamma ray bursts from
(37:08):
other galaxies, we're far enough away that by the time
it gets here, you know, those gamma rays are filling
out a sphere that's the size of the distance between galaxies.
So it's a huge number of gamma rays, a lot
of energy, but it's spread out over a huge sphere.
If a gamma ray burst happens nearby, yikes, you know,
a gamma ray burst could basically sterilize an entire solar system.
(37:31):
If it happened nearby, that would be pretty we would
literally be toast. We would what what would the Earth
look like? Well, it would be like a flash sunburn,
wouldn't it Like half the Earth would be okay, but
the other half would be toast. Yeah, exactly half the
Earth would be totally fried and the other half would
be okay. Um, yeah, that that's exactly what happened. And
it depends again on the intensity. If it's really really intense,
(37:53):
you know, then it's going to get down to the
atmosphere and we're all gonna either get fried or get
cancer or die pretty quick. Um. If it's slightly less intense, right,
our atmosphere does protect us. The ozone and the atmosphere
and stuff like that protects us from gamma rays. Like
focus you out there wondering, we're getting hit once per
day from these gamma rays from other galaxies. Why don't
we all have cancer already? Well, some of us do
(38:15):
have cancer, and some of that is because of gamma rays,
but mostly the atmosphere protects us. And so if it's
not too close, then our atmosphere will protect us. But
the atmosphere has a limit, like the gamma rays they
use up the ozone. So if you have a really
big burst of gamma rays from pretty nearby, not not
close enough, that it's going to fry you instantly, but
(38:35):
it might use up a lot of the ozone and
the atmosphere and they will be sort of left unprotected
for a while until the ozone builds back up. So, um,
that could be a bad situation. Well, I think it was.
It's interesting to think that maybe you were saying that
maybe these these could be the limiting factors in in
how life how widespread life could be in the universe, right,
Like these are basically kind of a like a check
(38:58):
on life in the universe. Like, if we didn't have
gamma ray burst, maybe there would be more life out
there in the universe. Yeah, it's actually interesting because it
goes both ways, right, Like some galaxies, if they have
a lot of these stars that are going supernova and
making these gamma ray bursts, then it's pretty hard to
get life started because it's just so much crazy radiation.
On the other hand, you also need a bit of radiation, right, Remember,
(39:22):
like having a particle fly through and change your DNA
is a key element to evolution. It allows us to
explore the evolutionary landscape by adding random mutations. So if
you had zero radiation, then you wouldn't then evolution wouldn't
be as effective. Really, Yeah, you need some amount of
revolution depends on gamma ray bursts. Well, you know, how
(39:42):
does evolution work, right? You need your children to be
slightly different from you. Right, they're not just a combination
of units that happened randomly through biological processes like it.
Really you're saying really needs radiation from out of space. Well,
you know there's two main sources there. This transcription errors,
like when the DNA gets copied there there are mistakes
that are made. But also, yeah, radiation plays a role
as well, and so, um, you have a slower rate
(40:06):
of mutation if you didn't have gamma rays, if you
didn't have radiation, and so you could explore different evolutionary paths. Um,
not as quickly if you didn't have radiation. So you
want just the right amount of radiation, right. So I
think what you're saying is a physicist here is making
a statement that basically we're we're all hulk. That kind
of what you're exactly like every human being is kind
(40:28):
of like the Hulk. It's not about being the Hulk,
it's about the radiation you absorbed along the way. Yeah. Um,
but so far, the closest gamma ray burst we've ever
seen is like a hundred and thirty million light years away,
which is still really really far away, which is in
another galaxy. Right, Yeah, that's in another galaxy, and if
one happened in our galaxy, that would be tough. But
(40:51):
we think, I mean, the current estimacies are all really
really rough. But is that there's like one gamma ray
burst per galaxy per thousand years. I remember, there's a
lot of stars in the galaxy, right, hundreds of billions
of stars, so for one of them to give a
gama ray burst every thousand years means it's a pretty
rare event. And that makes sense. So the reason we
haven't seen any from our Milky Way is probably just
(41:13):
that hasn't happened yet. So wait, if we get an
extra special super duper supernova in the Milky Way, that's it, right,
we're toast. Well, it depends. The Milky Way is a
big place, so if it happens in the other side
of the Milky Way, it's a big difference than if
it happens like next door. Um. Also, we think that
these gamma ray bursts are directional, that they happened, that
(41:34):
they fly out in jets from the supernova, just like
from the pulsars and quasars we talked about. So it
might not even be aimed at us. It could happen
next door and we could be fine, or it could
fry us. Like it it's abused these gamma rays in
one direction and we might get lucky. Exactly. We're basically
playing cosmic Russian roulette all the time. So we brought
(41:57):
it back to Russias crazy. We brought crazy Russian led exactly. So, Um,
so we don't really know the details of how gamma
ray birsts are formed that we have a lot better
understand than we did a few decades ago. Um, we
don't know how often they happened. We just sort of
hoping that one doesn't happen. But to me, the crazy
thing is that gamma ray bursts travel at the speed
(42:19):
of light, and that is an important consequence. Yeah, because
you wouldn't see it coming right Exactly. You can't possibly
have any warning, right unless you can predict that a
star is going to go super new but and give
off a gamma ray burst. You're not gonna watch every
single star and try to predict which one. Um, there's
no advanced notice right. The first thing you hear about
a gamer ray burst is when it's washing over you
(42:41):
and frying your DNA, So there could be one on
its way right now. How does that make you feel?
Makes me feel a little crazy toasty? Well, I think
you know, it seems like, um, there are many surprises
out there in the universe, and we should be ready
for them, and we should be excited for them, and
we should appreciate the being here in the life we
(43:04):
have because you know, it could really literally be snuffed
out in a second at any time. That's true. And
you know, most of these cosmic mysteries just help us
understand what a beautiful and crazy place this universe is.
Very few of them are actually going to kill us,
and so don't worry about it too much, folks. And
there's nothing you can do anyway, So don't worry about it,
(43:25):
that's right. Just relax, lower your heart rate, the sun
is coming down. Just be at peace, like Bruce Bank.
There you go, exactly. We're all Bruce Banner, see you
next time. If you still have a question after listening
(43:47):
to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd
love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or
email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe is a production I Heart Radio. For more
podcast for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
(44:10):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, Jorge, do you worry much about things from space
coming to kill you? Not until right now? Why should I? Well,
it depends. It depends on what. Well, if there was
nothing you could do to prepare for or prevent it,
would you still want to know? Yeah? I think so.
It'd be nice to know. Um, so you can get
my things in order, and you know, get a couple
(00:29):
of finish that TV series I I've been watching. In
that case, I highly recommend you pay attention to this
episode of our podcast because it's going to prepare you.
Why should I listen to the episode or finish my
TV series? I'm confused? What should I do? Daniel? I imagine, Well,
we're recording this episode. You do sound this tracked sometimes? Well,
I say, she'd multitask exactly. There's a you know, death
(00:53):
from space is coming, so you've got to get stuff done.
I feel like the universe is huge and there's there's
a million things out there that can kills instantly at
any time. Are you saying there's something in particular I
should be worried about. Stay tuned find out. Hi. I'm Borhand.
(01:23):
I'm a cartoonist and the creator of the comic strip
piled Higher and Deeper or PhD comics. He's also a
shill for big banana corporations, but you'll hear more about
that later. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a
part time podcast host and amateur baker, and also a
shill for Marvel Comics and DC whatever. Man, I'm totally
(01:45):
a DC guy. That's why he sold out to Marvel,
because it's the most successful, more successful franchise. Well, I
am still waiting for that check, by the way, for
selling out to Marvel. I think I think they're waiting
for um Tony Stark design it. Yeah. Well I was
fact checking their Pin Particle episodes and I sent them
a long list of corrections and never heard back. So
(02:07):
maybe I'm maybe they don't want to hear from me anymore.
I know the scientific advisor of the at My Movies.
He's a buddy, so I could we could just have
the whole podcast with him, really, because I got a
few things to say about the pin particle and the
quantum realm. Now he's a quantum physicist. Are you sure
you're you're off for the for the challenge? Well, he's
(02:28):
either right or he's wrong. There's no in between, right, No,
he is, he's both. No, he's right and wrong at
the same time. That's right. Yeah. Anyway, this is our podcast,
Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I
Heart Radio, where we talk about all the amazing and
mysterious things are that are out there in the universe
that may or may not kill you instantly. That's right.
(02:49):
That Sometimes we talked about the real universe. Sometimes we
talk about the Marvel universe, or the DC universe, or
the Banana universe, whatever is interesting today. Yeah, and so
today on the podcast, we are going to talk about
a very interesting topic. That's right. Today's topic is gamma
(03:10):
ray bursts. A bunch of listeners wrote in and asked
us to explain gamma ray bursts. What are they? Can
they kill us? Can they really turned Bruce Banner into
the Hulk? What's going on? Please break it down? Wait,
gamma ray births. I thought we were talking about Billy
ray Cires. I thought, isn't that the weird thing from
space that we were No, Billy ray Cirus. His career
(03:30):
is based on getting irradiated by gamma ray bursts. That's
the connection. He used to be a mild mannered singer,
and then he got gamma rays and now he's like
crazy Billy ray Cirus, all right, and so gamma rays
are involved. I totally made that up. That is completely fabricated.
I apologize to Billy ray Cirius and all of his
(03:52):
fans for implying that the mere mortal could not have
written that music the hokey pokey. So he didn't write
the hokey pokey anyway. But but gamma rays do play
a big role in the Marvel universe, right, because back
when gamma rays were the crazy thing people were worried about.
It showed up in comic books all the time. And
(04:12):
that's how Bruce Banner got turned into the Hulk. That's right.
And I'm surprised you know this fact about the Marvel universe.
I thought you were a d C guy. Well, you know,
Marvel is not paying me, so I figured i'd do
some research. So yeah, so he he gets irradiated by
gamma rays and some kind of accident and that's what
turns him into the Hulk. And so these are like magic,
mysterious raise right, that's right. And you know, I gotta
(04:35):
wonder about this origin story the Hulk, Like, do you
think they're trying to make it seem like it's his fault?
Like crazy scientists just wants to learn about the universe,
doesn't care about the risks to humanity gets irradiated, Like
is that like a moral punishment like tisk tisk, You
shouldn't be playing with these forces you don't understand. Yeah,
for sure. Wait are you saying that comic books can
(04:56):
have like literary you know, secret mess it is and
thieves and they're definitely there's definitely literary. I don't know
if it's so secret though. I just wonder about like
how is interpreted at the time, you know, like our
scientists like the leading edge, they're bringing us into the
atomic age, look at all the wonderful things we're getting
out of science, or is it like I'm kind of
scared of science. Scientists don't seem trustworthy, look at all
(05:19):
the crazy stuff they're doing. I think it was a
It's supposed to be kind of a take on you
know Dr jackl and Mr Hyde, you know, the scientists
who's trying to understand things and playing maybe with things
he doesn't quite fully understand, and then he he gets
turned into a superhero and into a multiple near franchise
we kind of worked out for the scientists. Yeah, so
the lesson is everybody should do crazy radiation experiments in
(05:41):
their basement, right, you know what? Gamma rays do feature
a lot in comics from a long time ago, and
they are a real thing. Gamma rays really are a
real thing, and gamma ray bursts are a real thing,
and so we thought it'd be fun to do an
episode where we explain it. Um. It turns out that
they are quite a scientistic puzzle. Um. For a long time,
(06:02):
physicists have not understood where they came from and what's
generating them. And should we be worried about them? Yeah?
Should we worry about them exactly? And are we all
going to turn into the Hulk? And how do you
feel about that anyway? And should you watch your TV?
I don't, Well, you mean, what happens if you turn
into the Hulk and you have all those TV shows recorded?
Do you think the Hulk likes to watch the same
(06:22):
TV show as you do? Do you need like separate
tvrs for when you're in Hulk mode when you're not
in Hulk mode? You know, I don't think the Hulk
would get past, you know, the pilot episode of most
TV shows. You know, you'd probably smash the TV right away.
No stars from no unnecessary dialogue. That sounds like how
(06:45):
my son reviews in most television shows really pretty much
talking too much talking. Where is the action? Exactly exactly?
They sound pretty cool. Gamma rays, right, gamma rays. I
mean it sounds like some sort of new kind of
ray energy, Yeah, exactly. Does it have a positive connotation
to you, like, oh my god, look at this amazing
(07:06):
source of energy, all the good we can do for
the world, or does have a negative connotation like is
this a weapon that's gonna kill me? I think it
just sounds like something out of science fiction, you know,
like if you called it, like, um, puppy dog rays,
I'd be like, Oh, that's cute, it's safe. What you
called it? Like? You know whathero can I can't let
(07:27):
that go. I can't let it go. What if a
scientist is experimenting with puppy dog rays and gets irradiated,
what kind of superhero does he turn into? The UK puppy,
The hush puppy goes around licking everybody, snuggling with them.
The husky, the husky. There you go, husky exactly, the
(07:48):
green husky, which sounds pretty adorable. But no, yeah, they
sound mysterious. They sound revery sci fi, right, like gamma
Like all you have to just pick a Greek letter
and marry it to like a scientific physics term and
you have something sci fi. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now you're right.
It does stay fit. But the cool thing about it
is that it's actually also science e Like, there's are
a lot of really interesting science behind gamma ray bursts. Yeah,
(08:10):
and a big mystery, right, there was a big mystery
about them. Yeah. Yeah, So I was wondering what people
knew about gamma ray bursts. Were they worried about them?
Do they know what they mean? Do they know what
a gamma ray is at all? So, as usual, Daniel
went out there and asked people on the street, random strangers,
what they thought a gamma ray was. And these interviews
happened partially on the campus of you see, Irvine, and
(08:32):
also partially at the Irvine Spectrum. So you're gonna get
a selection of students and random people. What's the Irvine Spectrum?
What's the Irvine Spectrum? Oh my god, how do you
not know about that people like you in in Orange County?
Is it like the range from Dark Based Dark Baby.
(08:55):
I never realized the dramatic irony of Irvine calling anything
a spectrum because there is no spectrum. You're right, um, No,
it's a big mall here in Irvine. People actually like
fly here from Japan, stay in a hotel and just
shop of the mall and then like fly back. It's crazy. Really,
is it like a fancy or is it like a
mega Minnesota Malvey America's I'm not the right person to
(09:17):
evaluate malls. I spent as a little time in them
as possible. I was there because my kids were in
spring break and I took them to a movie, And
while they were in the movie, I interviewed people about
Gamma rays. You didn't go into the movie with them, No, No,
I stood outside looking like a weirdo, asking people weird
science questions. All right, well, those of you at home,
(09:38):
think about it for a second. If you if a
random physicist approach you outside of a movie theater in
a fancy mall and ask you, what is the gammerie,
what would you say? Good? Step away, ster, You'd say,
I didn't fly here from Japan, just to answer your
questions security security. One fascinating thing is that on campus
a U s I nine nine of people will answer
(10:01):
my questions, whereas it the spectrum, only like one in
ten are willing to answer questions. Really huh yeah, I
wonder whether that why that is. I don't know. So
here's what people had to say. First question is have
you ever heard about gamma ray burst? Do you know
what that is? No? No, I don't know, but I've
heard of it because they definitely has to do something
(10:22):
with UV light. It's like a sun ray. I'm assuming
it's just I know that it modifies like your DNA
or something. I could just blast your DNA and that
could cause some damage to you, like severely. Yeah. Yeah,
so that's about it, but not too into a Gamma
rebers a kind of game or I don't know. Yes,
(10:48):
but the star explodes and it will admit a lot
of frequency of photons and the country a large exposure
identific because it will be high. I will make Gamma
explosion something okay, and it's a something to worry about.
I don't think it will be that powerful that makes
us worry. It depends on how close the stories Honestly,
I couldn't tell you, all right, because I have something
(11:11):
with stars or m it's when the sun explodes or something, right,
something is it's something to worry about, I would seem
so yeah, alright, so pretty binary response. Right. Most people
didn't know or they knew all about it, Yeah, exactly
a lot of people have never heard about them, or
like it tickled something in their brain maybe, but they
(11:31):
were not able to say anything concrete about it. But
some folks clearly had done some reading. Yeah, but nobody
mentioned the Hulk. No, nobody mentioned the Hulk. Um though
you know, I've been bulking up recently, so I sort
of digging for compliments there. But no, I didn't get me.
Did you paid yourself green as well? Know that? And
you're not allowed to be green and irvine. It's only
(11:53):
beige allowed. Oh, the beige Hulk. That would be the
irvine version. So that's sound. They sound pretty mysterious. Gamma rays, um,
so what are they done? And let's break it down
for people? What are gamma rays? So in the end
of gamma ray is not as exotic as it sounds.
It's just a kind of photon. So remember photons are
(12:15):
the particle that carry electromagnetic radiation. So all light you know,
radio waves to visible light, to X rays and all
the way up to gamma rays, they're all just photons
of different frequencies. They're just light wiggling at different wavelengths.
And we called different parts of the spectrum different things
because they were discovered different times, and we treat them
(12:36):
differently or the qualitatively different. But in the end, they're
all just parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. So wait, did
they think before that they were different, like a different
kind of ray or particle or was this before they
even knew about particles. Yeah, before we even knew about particles,
and we knew about rays, like we had cathode rays
and stuff like that in X rays, and we didn't
(12:56):
understand for a long time that rays were particles. And
and later they unified a lot of these different things
um and understood them all just be parts of the
same thing. So they just thought it was like a
just like a different kind of ray, Yeah, like a
different kind of beam of something. Yeah, because particles at
different energy, photons at different energy act really different. You know,
photons that are the visible wavelength, you can see them.
(13:20):
They look green. For example, photons that are high enough
energy to penetrate through you and give you a picture
of your bones. You know, we call those X rays. Uh,
they're just photons of a higher energy. But qualitatively they
seem different, right, And so before we understood a lot
more about how things worked, they we treated them like
different things. But that's that's the whole goal of physics, right,
(13:40):
is to take a bunch of disparate phenomena, things that
don't seem related, and discover that they're actually connected. They're
all just different parts of the same thing, different sides
of the same die. I guess they thought there were
different things because they they're made differently, right, Like you
make cather raise one way and you make visible light
another way, and you make gamma rays different way, and
(14:01):
so they thought, hey, these are just different things that
come out when you do these other things. Yeah, you
make them differently, and they behave differently, Like one of
them can penetrate through the wall and the other one
can't write. And so if you don't have a microscopic
understanding of it, it makes sense to categorize them differently. Um,
so it's pretty cool later when you stitch it all
together and realize that these are all just different flavors
(14:21):
of the same thing, or different colors quite literally of
the same thing. And gamma rays specifically are the very
very high edge of that spectrum. So anything that's you know,
like a million times more energetic than a visible photon,
you call it a gamma ray. It's not like a
hard cut off and not like a little below and like, sorry,
you don't get to be a gamma ray. You know,
(14:42):
it's sort of a rough thing, um, but there's no
upper limit. It's like a it's like a soft definition. Yeah,
that's what point does it? And the photon become trying
from a regular photon to ama. Well, you know, I
think photons would be insalted be called regular photons. You know,
they're all special Okay, they all can do something that
no other photon can do. That's right. Sorry, they're all bright,
(15:05):
shining points of light. Yeah. I mean, is there's some
colors that you like more than others? Or hey are
you you know, are you a colorist? But I've worked
with a lot of colorists. Yeah, that's true. You are
a cartoonists. You should be pro color man um. Yeah,
so you got radio waves the very very low edge,
and then you got um infrared right just below what
(15:27):
we can see. Then you've got the visible spectrum. The
radio waves are the bottom. Radio waves are the very
longest wavelengths are the lowest energy. Exactly the way you
said at the bottom makes it sound judgmental. You know,
radio ways are awesome, they're super powerful and fantastic and
the reasons we can see black holes and stuff like that. Um,
But yeah, radio waves are at the bottom in terms
(15:48):
of energy. Then you get infrared, then you get the
visible spectrum. Then you get X rays, right, and then
you get there just above the ultra violet, you get
X rays and then you get gamma rays. So emorys
are the hardest, fastest, most energetic kind of photon you
can have. But they're all photons, Like, they're all the
same particle through just kind of vibrating differently or the
(16:11):
different wavelength or sizes. What's the difference. Yeah, they're all photons.
They all travel at the speed of light. But the
difference is the frequency, right, how often they are wiggling. Right. Remember,
photons are vibrations of the electromagnetic field, right, and they
oscillate and the speed at which they oscillate that gives
you the frequency. Right, how many times per second do
they go up and down? Does they let the magnetic
(16:32):
fields go up and down? And they're all moving at
the speed of light? One radio photons moving at the
same speed as a gamma ray photon. That's right. If
you had a race, and you had a source of
radio waves and a source of gamma rays, and you
shot them at each other, they would have different energies
but move at the same speed. They all travel at
(16:53):
the speed of light, even if they have different energies.
That feels kind of weird, right, because you're used to
thinking of energy and speed is closely connected. But this
is something different. They have no mass and they travel
at the speed of light. Um, they all have the
same speed, but they have different energies, which means they
have different frequencies and different wavelengths. Right. The wavelength and
the frequency are closely connected. Higher the frequency, the shorter
(17:14):
the wavelength. And uh yeah, let's talk about that a
little bit more. But first quick break. Okay, so gamma
rays are photons, but they have not just a little bit,
(17:37):
but a lot more energy than the regular photons that
we see every day. That's right, a million times, that's yeah,
that's a lot. It's a lot. If I shot gamma
rays at you, they would deposit a lot more energy
in you than normal light, right, And also they can
penetrate into you much further, like, well it would, they
would deliver a million times more energy. Right, You need
a million photons to be equal to one gamma ray
(17:59):
photon exactly. And so gamma rays are dangerous. They can't
turn you into the Hulk probably, but they could give
you cancer, right, they can shatter your DNA and and
all sorts of crazy stuff inside your body. You don't
want gamma rays, Okay, So they're just regular photons, but
they're they're just an upper spectrum of light, that's right,
they're the high ended spectrum. They are dangerous, much more
(18:20):
dangerous than normal light because they can damage your DNA, right,
they can. They can cause errors in DNA which get copied,
and that's a big source of cancer. So what they
are is not very mysterious, right, Like we can make
them here on Earth, that's right, Yeah, exactly, we can
make gamma rays here on Earth. Um and gamma rays
are produced by radioactive elements all the time, right, they're
(18:41):
just high energy photons from radioactive decays. So there are
gamma rays around one of them just hit you right now. Um. Yes,
So gamma rays themselves not mysterious. We know all about them.
We can make them. Um. The question is what out
there might be making gamma rays. And that's the fascinating
part of the story. That's um the interesting mystery, right
(19:03):
is that we know the gamma rays are produced when
we do experience with with nuclear weapons. Right, you do,
you blow up a nuclear bomb, You're gonna produce a
lot of gamma rays. So when in the Cold War,
when we had trees with with with the Russians saying
no testing or whatever, we sent up a bunch of
satellites to verify that they weren't testing trying to detect
gamma rays from nuclear explosions. And um, I don't know
(19:26):
if they found that. They haven't released that. But what
they did discover is a bunch of gamma rays not
coming from the Soviet Union, not coming from somewhere else
on Earth, not coming from the mountain volcano layer of
some evil villain, but instead coming from deep in space.
So the mysteries that we're getting bombarded by gamma rays,
(19:46):
but we don't know, we didn't know really came from. Yeah.
And the really fascinating thing about them is that it's
not like a continual source. It's not just like you know,
the solar wind where it's just like constantly coming. They
come in bursts. And that's really interesting because it you
think like something happened, something created this, like some big
event occurred and must have produced this burst, right, And
(20:08):
that's a clue. It's like, what's going on out there
seems feels like a message or a clue about something
fascinating that's happening somewhere else in the universe. So what
do you mean by a burst? Like we we suddenly, um,
suddenly we're washed by a bunch of gamma rays and
then it stops. Yeah, and it's exactly like a huge
pile them come all at once, you know, it's like
a big flash in the sky, like quite literally a
(20:30):
big flash in the sky. And then the other fascinating
thing is that there are two kinds is like short
gamma ray bursts. One that ones that last much less
than a second, like less than half a second, and
then there's ones that last like twenty or thirty seconds,
um and it's not like a continuous range. It's not
like you know, every gamma ray burst is you know, um,
some somewhere less than thirty seconds, and there's a smooth distribution.
(20:52):
There's like two bumps if you made histogram, like a
lot of them. A lot of them peak at like
zero point three seconds, and a lot of them peak
it like the earty seconds. So there's definitely two kinds
of bursts happening. It kind of sounds like Morse quote exactly,
some very slow message. That's the exciting thing, Right, you
don't know what's creating this. You don't know is out
(21:12):
there making it, and it could be anything. It could
be like some new kind of star you never saw before,
or it could be some bizarre galactic race sending you
messages over decades, right, who knows? Planet Hulk. Yeah, because
it's they're not very common. It's not like they're happening
all the time, you know. Um, these days are estimated
that we about what about one per day hits the Earth.
(21:35):
So we first to take these with cold warp satellites. Yeah,
exactly what do people think, Like, did they think was
a glitch or at first they had no idea they're like,
what you know. First, I'm sure they thought, are the
Soviets testing and outer space? Maybe they're already at the
Moon or something. Right, Um, we could tell they were
coming from out of space. Yeah, we could tell they
were coming from outer space. Absolutely, we could tell the
(21:56):
direction of And you know, they didn't release a lot
of details because all this in nation comes from like
classified satellites. Um, as scientists, we sometimes wonder, like we
spend all this money trying to get satellites up in
space to answer scientists scientific questions, but the budget for
defense is much bigger, and there's a huge network of
(22:16):
defense satellites listening for stuff and telescopes and all sorts
of stuff, and we wonder sometimes like could we use
that network for science, Like it's so much bigger and
more powerful. Of course it's not designed to do science,
but sometimes it can accidentally do signs, and that's what
happened here. So we don't know a lot of details
about the technical capabilities of these Department of Defense satellites.
(22:37):
But after a few years, the d D realized, Okay,
this is not Russian's this is something weird and interesting
from outer space, and so they declassified this data and
shared it with the scientific community, and that's what they
used to discover what they were. Yeah, that was the
first hint. And then the scientists were like, we have
no idea, what is this. Let's study it some more
and there's a lesson. They're also folks like if the
government did discover aliens, they would probably turn it over
(23:00):
to the scientific community to help them figure it out. Right,
that's basically what happened here, right. Weird enough Hollywood movies, Daniel,
and they always try to cover it up. Yeah, I
should be a consultant in some of those Hollywood movies
because I have better ideas. So then the scientific community said, well, wow,
(23:21):
we have no idea what could make this And it
was really it was a puzzle for a long time.
So um, because it's it's uh, they knew it wasn't
coming from the sun, right, And these these weren't just
like a little small burst. These are really bright bursts, right,
that's right, They're really bright. And so the first thing
you do in astronomy when you see a signal you
don't know what it is, you try to figure out
where it's coming from. Right, you pointed in the sky,
(23:43):
if you can connect it with something in this in
the sky, then you think, oh, it's came from there, right,
pretty simple stuff. So they know it didn't come from
the Sun. They also didn't seem to be coming from
anything in our galaxy. Like we know where we are
relative to the galaxy, and so some signals being generated
by some like new kind of star or some activity
in our galaxy, it's going to be mostly coming from
(24:05):
the direction of the center of the galaxy or the
plane of the galaxy. Right, But these things were coming
from every direction, like random directions. So suggest that's not
something happening in our galaxy, but something coming to us
from other galaxies. Wow. So for something to be that
far away and for us to feel it and to
(24:26):
get so many of these photons, it's like at the source,
it must be huge, right, Like it must be like
a huge bright explosion. Yeah. Absolutely, It's kind of scary
to think about because these gamma ray bursts they're like
as powerful as like a star, you know, when when
they hit us, the light from the gamma ray burst
is about as much energy as the life from a
star in our galaxy. Right. But but if it but
(24:49):
if it came from really far away then, I mean
that must have and it probably sprayed that much in
all directions. Right, Well, we actually don't know about that.
We don't know um that much about how they're made,
So it could be like um like blaze oars and
pulsars that they're concentrated in in some directions, like along
the magnetic polls. But whatever it is, they're super bright
(25:11):
at the source because remember, other galaxies are crazy far away,
Like other stars are far away inside our galaxy, but
other galaxies are like an order of magnitude further away.
So to even see those galaxies as hard, you have
to add up all the hundreds of billions of stars
in those galaxies just to see them. So to see
one object from that galaxy being as bright as a
(25:33):
star in our galaxy, I mean you have to do
the math. That's crazy, Um no, you I think, yeah,
you were telling me earlier. You did the math, and
it's about one million trillion times brighter than the Sun exactly.
That's how far away these things are. In order for
us to see them as bright as a star in
our galaxy, they have to be a million trillion times
(25:54):
brighter than the sun. But that's a fun thing to say,
isn't it a million trillion? Like say axillion? You know,
I don't even bother. I don't even know how many zeros.
It is a lot like bony swoops of ice cream?
Would you like a million trillion? Just a whole bunch
more than more than a million. It's it's a million
(26:16):
times a trillion. It's a million times a trillion times
the Sun, which is already really bright. You know. That
means there's stuff going on in the universe out there
all the time. That's a million trillion times brighter than
the Sun. Yeah, exactly. And so we think they come
from other galaxies. But that's a bit of a puzzle, right,
Like why only from other galaxies and not from hours? Um,
(26:38):
how are they? What are these things that are making
these gamma ray bers? How can they be so crazy powerful?
You mean we should be if they were common in
our galaxy, we would be getting them a lot more
from the sides of the galaxy, right, like we would notice. Yeah, well,
either they don't happen very often, in which case it's
(26:58):
more likely to see them from other galaxies than from ours, right,
because there are more other galaxies than ours, right, um,
or our galaxy is different from other galaxies in some way,
which is why we don't see them from our galaxy. Well, well,
I was You were telling me also that there's more
energy in one second of these gamma ray burs than
possibly all the energy that our Sun will give in
(27:20):
its entire life. That's right, It's a huge amount of energy.
This is one of the funnest things about space and
about astronomy, right, it's just the crazy numbers, you know, like,
can you wrap your mind around how much energy is
going to be put out by the Sun over billions
of years. I don't think it's possible for humans to
grasp this kind of stuff. I mean, even just the
time scale billions of years. You know, it's hard for
(27:42):
humans that live for such a flicker to understand and
then integrate all the energy of this million earth ball
of fire and then focus that all into one second.
I mean, it's uh, it burns a hole in my mind.
It turns into the Hulk. Yeah, exactly. If you took
the Earth right and you collided it with the anti Earth,
like a antimatter version of the Earth, right, so you
(28:05):
converted all of the mass from the Earth into energy.
You know, it's it's it's crazy powerful. Right. For example,
if you collided to raisins out of raisin and an
anti raisin, it would have as much energy as a
nuclear weapon. Right, So it's a huge amount of energy
is stored in a raisin. Now imagine doing that for
the Earth. Right, You'd have to do that for a
hundred copies of the Earth to get as much energy
(28:27):
as is stored in these gamma ray bursts. What if
you collide a hulk in an anti hulk they both
get piste off. Yeah, dude's mash it's each each other
and and anti smash they would you know up as well?
I don't know, but you are generating a huge list
of great ideas for the next Marvel movies. I hope
you're you're patenting these? Yeah yeah, Mark Ruffo will call me.
(28:53):
But yeah, So okay, let's so let's get into what
could be generating these game ray bers and are they dangerous?
But let's take a quick break. All right, So we're
(29:15):
talking about gamma ray berths, which are different than Billy
ray shires. We've established that and that they're also just
regular photons but super highly energetic, and we're getting these
crazy births from out of space. So, Daniel, what could
be causing these births? What could be out there making
these that we were feeling them so so um energetic
(29:36):
here on Earth. Well, the short answer is we don't
really know very well. We have now recently some hypotheses
that might work, but the truth is we don't really
know um. And remember, there's two kinds of gamma ray bursus,
the short and the long. Short last less than a second,
and the long last like thirty seconds. And the best
guesses these days are that the short ones are due
(29:58):
to neutron stars that are in a binary system, so
they're orbiting each other, and when they do this, they
lose energy slowly so that they rotate around each other
and get closer and closer and closer and eventually collide.
And this is exciting stuff astronomically, because we recently saw
like gravitational waves coming from neutron star collisions and we
confirmed that like all of the gold in the universe
(30:19):
is probably made in neutron star collisions and all sorts
of crazy stuff. But the we think it might also
produce these gamma ray bursts because it's a huge amount
of energy and if you read the details about it,
it's crazy. That means that there's a short birth. Right,
there's their point three seconds long, and you're saying they generate, Like,
that's how fast these neutron stars are crashing into each other,
(30:40):
the whole thing that's about point three seconds. No, it's um.
The bursts itself, they think comes from the crust of
the neutron stars um being crushed by the gravitational pressure
from the other neutron stars. Remember, if you're close to
a really heavy object, you get these tidal forces because
gravity acts differently on things further away and closer up,
so you basically they get massaged. So two neutron stars
(31:02):
are like massaging each other just before they collide, which
is making the crust of them um basically shake and crack.
So you're getting these like earthquakes on the surface of
neutron stars just before they collide. That might be generating
these crazy fast bursts of gamma rays. I mean, it
sounds like science fiction, right. If I pitched that to Marvel,
they'd be like, that's sorry, that's too far out there,
(31:24):
But we think that's actually happening. It's really like you're
colliding to suns. Right, you're exactly. They get neutron star
taking a neutron star and used to smash them together
and in that point three seconds it explodes, right. Yeah,
But I have to remind you that our previous episode
about neutron stars, you complain that neutron stars aren't really stars.
They should just be called neutron balls because they don't glow. Okay,
(31:46):
so when you smash the balls together, that's where you
get there. And I have to say a lot of
our listeners on Twitter agreed with you that they should
be called balls. Yeah, exactly, they should be demoted from
starts to balls. Yeah. You sound surprised that people on
Twitter agree with me. I'm surprised that people it's on
Twitter agree with anybody. Congratulations, you've unified social media with overalls.
(32:08):
Yeah exactly. We have located a few of them, like
neutron star collisions. We can see in other ways. Right,
we can see them from their gravitational wave emissions that
that's pretty rare, but we can see them from the
bright flashes of visible light that they produce. And so
the Trick has been watching these things for years and
(32:29):
basically constructing dedicated satellites that are looking for these things.
And the key is that they don't last very long.
So what you want to do is as soon as
you see one, you've got to point all your good
telescopes at it. So the science community become much better
at that building dedicated telescopes that look for these things,
and then everybody swivels over to look at it at
the same time, which gives you a good review of it.
(32:50):
But you only have points three seconds, yeah, exactly. You
gotta be fast, um for these really fast ones. And
so some of these telescopes are all hooked up, like
the firm me tell lescope that's orbiting the Earth has
a gamma ray burst detector and when it's when it
finds something and it immediately sends a message. And then
telescopes on Earth point in that direction and try to capture, um,
you know, the last bits of the of the burst
(33:12):
before it disappears, and also to capture anything else coming
from that direction. And that's where we got these clues.
We started watching the guy more carefully and seeing what
else was coming from the direction of the gamma ray bursts,
and that gave people ideas about what could be happening
that could be causing them. So you get an idea like, oh,
maybe it's neutron stars, in which case we should see
this and that and the other thing also, And then
(33:33):
they started to pick those things up. Okay, so that's
the short birds, that's where they we think they come from.
What about the long burst, the thirty second ones? Yeah,
the long bursts come from super duper supernova's right? Um? Yeah,
super duper supernovas. Is that the technical that like a
million trillion supernovas, that's a super duper ice cream sunday.
(33:56):
You know, the technical term is a hypernova hypernova? Yeah,
oh man, but I prefer superduper supernova because it sounds
better than supernova. So they're not just a supernova. They're
like extra special, the extra special, extra big big implosions.
And this is still something that's not very well understood. Um,
you know, why do some supernovas produce gamma ray bursts
(34:17):
and some don't. But they did this modeling and they said, Okay,
if there is a big supernova, then we expect that
after the gamma ray bursts, we should see a bunch
of X rays because the gas nearby the supernova is
going to collide and then emit, and so they did
some complicated modeling and made predictions, and in fact they
see this afterglow, after the after these long gamma ray bursts,
(34:38):
they see X rays. So those are slightly lower energy
photons in the spectrum that they expect if it was
a supernova. So it partially answers the question because it
tells us these long gamma ray bursts probably come from
these crazy hypernovas. But we have hypernovas in the Milky Way,
and there's lots of hypernovas and not that many gamma
ray birsts. So is it like a special kind of
(34:59):
hypernova or only in some cases, or that's the kind
of thing. They're still trying to figure out what you're saying,
we need another term special super duper supernova, all hypernovas
are special or he I don't know why you have
to be so judgmental today. What's next? Or you can
have to call go for like hyper special, extra cool,
(35:19):
super califragilistic on top super dupernova. Yeah, so it's it's
still a puzzle. We don't understand it, right, we don't
understand why they made Sometimes um, some people think that
that if a supernova collapses like in a certain way,
then it creates this cloud of stuff around it which
absorbs the gamma rays and other times the gamma rays
poked through and then shoot out everywhere else. But it
(35:42):
would make sense that a supernova or killernova or hypernova
or whatever could generate this much energy because that's a
huge event, right, these massive stars imploding, So that that
definitely could explain it. I feel like next time you
should start a little bit more modestly so that you
have room to grow. You known, you discover something big
is called like a modest nova or like a just
(36:03):
a regular note, you have room to grow. No, I
like going the way McDonald's went for their drink sizes.
You know, you start with medium, which is already huge,
and then you escalate. Um. Yeah, exactly, And so that's
a that's probably what's causing it, but we don't really
understand it in detail, and it's important that we understand
(36:24):
it because we want to understand, like, is one of
these things going to happen in the middleky way? How
often are these things going to be hitting us? Do
we have to worry? So it's important to understand this stuff. Yeah,
it's weird that there would be things that were not
we can't quite explain out there. Yeah, exactly, especially things
that could kill us. Right, So it's like, I think
it's worth funding politicians out there with the purse strings,
(36:46):
you know, maybe by one less fighter jet and to
pay for another telescope to look at gamma rays. Wait,
so could these things kill us? Or I think you're
telling me earlier that you know, if the right concentration
hits us at the right moment, it could really fried
and turns into toast. Yeah, exactly. The key is how
far away it happens, right, So, gamma ray bursts from
(37:08):
other galaxies, we're far enough away that by the time
it gets here, you know, those gamma rays are filling
out a sphere that's the size of the distance between galaxies.
So it's a huge number of gamma rays, a lot
of energy, but it's spread out over a huge sphere.
If a gamma ray burst happens nearby, yikes, you know,
a gamma ray burst could basically sterilize an entire solar system.
(37:31):
If it happened nearby, that would be pretty we would
literally be toast. We would what what would the Earth
look like? Well, it would be like a flash sunburn,
wouldn't it Like half the Earth would be okay, but
the other half would be toast. Yeah, exactly half the
Earth would be totally fried and the other half would
be okay. Um, yeah, that that's exactly what happened. And
it depends again on the intensity. If it's really really intense,
(37:53):
you know, then it's going to get down to the
atmosphere and we're all gonna either get fried or get
cancer or die pretty quick. Um. If it's slightly less intense, right,
our atmosphere does protect us. The ozone and the atmosphere
and stuff like that protects us from gamma rays. Like
focus you out there wondering, we're getting hit once per
day from these gamma rays from other galaxies. Why don't
we all have cancer already? Well, some of us do
(38:15):
have cancer, and some of that is because of gamma rays,
but mostly the atmosphere protects us. And so if it's
not too close, then our atmosphere will protect us. But
the atmosphere has a limit, like the gamma rays they
use up the ozone. So if you have a really
big burst of gamma rays from pretty nearby, not not
close enough, that it's going to fry you instantly, but
(38:35):
it might use up a lot of the ozone and
the atmosphere and they will be sort of left unprotected
for a while until the ozone builds back up. So, um,
that could be a bad situation. Well, I think it was.
It's interesting to think that maybe you were saying that
maybe these these could be the limiting factors in in
how life how widespread life could be in the universe, right,
Like these are basically kind of a like a check
(38:58):
on life in the universe. Like, if we didn't have
gamma ray burst, maybe there would be more life out
there in the universe. Yeah, it's actually interesting because it
goes both ways, right, Like some galaxies, if they have
a lot of these stars that are going supernova and
making these gamma ray bursts, then it's pretty hard to
get life started because it's just so much crazy radiation.
On the other hand, you also need a bit of radiation, right, Remember,
(39:22):
like having a particle fly through and change your DNA
is a key element to evolution. It allows us to
explore the evolutionary landscape by adding random mutations. So if
you had zero radiation, then you wouldn't then evolution wouldn't
be as effective. Really, Yeah, you need some amount of
revolution depends on gamma ray bursts. Well, you know, how
(39:42):
does evolution work, right? You need your children to be
slightly different from you. Right, they're not just a combination
of units that happened randomly through biological processes like it.
Really you're saying really needs radiation from out of space. Well,
you know there's two main sources there. This transcription errors,
like when the DNA gets copied there there are mistakes
that are made. But also, yeah, radiation plays a role
as well, and so, um, you have a slower rate
(40:06):
of mutation if you didn't have gamma rays, if you
didn't have radiation, and so you could explore different evolutionary paths. Um,
not as quickly if you didn't have radiation. So you
want just the right amount of radiation, right. So I
think what you're saying is a physicist here is making
a statement that basically we're we're all hulk. That kind
of what you're exactly like every human being is kind
(40:28):
of like the Hulk. It's not about being the Hulk,
it's about the radiation you absorbed along the way. Yeah. Um,
but so far, the closest gamma ray burst we've ever
seen is like a hundred and thirty million light years away,
which is still really really far away, which is in
another galaxy. Right, Yeah, that's in another galaxy, and if
one happened in our galaxy, that would be tough. But
(40:51):
we think, I mean, the current estimacies are all really
really rough. But is that there's like one gamma ray
burst per galaxy per thousand years. I remember, there's a
lot of stars in the galaxy, right, hundreds of billions
of stars, so for one of them to give a
gama ray burst every thousand years means it's a pretty
rare event. And that makes sense. So the reason we
haven't seen any from our Milky Way is probably just
(41:13):
that hasn't happened yet. So wait, if we get an
extra special super duper supernova in the Milky Way, that's it, right,
we're toast. Well, it depends. The Milky Way is a
big place, so if it happens in the other side
of the Milky Way, it's a big difference than if
it happens like next door. Um. Also, we think that
these gamma ray bursts are directional, that they happened, that
(41:34):
they fly out in jets from the supernova, just like
from the pulsars and quasars we talked about. So it
might not even be aimed at us. It could happen
next door and we could be fine, or it could
fry us. Like it it's abused these gamma rays in
one direction and we might get lucky. Exactly. We're basically
playing cosmic Russian roulette all the time. So we brought
(41:57):
it back to Russias crazy. We brought crazy Russian led exactly. So, Um,
so we don't really know the details of how gamma
ray birsts are formed that we have a lot better
understand than we did a few decades ago. Um, we
don't know how often they happened. We just sort of
hoping that one doesn't happen. But to me, the crazy
thing is that gamma ray bursts travel at the speed
(42:19):
of light, and that is an important consequence. Yeah, because
you wouldn't see it coming right Exactly. You can't possibly
have any warning, right unless you can predict that a
star is going to go super new but and give
off a gamma ray burst. You're not gonna watch every
single star and try to predict which one. Um, there's
no advanced notice right. The first thing you hear about
a gamer ray burst is when it's washing over you
(42:41):
and frying your DNA, So there could be one on
its way right now. How does that make you feel?
Makes me feel a little crazy toasty? Well, I think
you know, it seems like, um, there are many surprises
out there in the universe, and we should be ready
for them, and we should be excited for them, and
we should appreciate the being here in the life we
(43:04):
have because you know, it could really literally be snuffed
out in a second at any time. That's true. And
you know, most of these cosmic mysteries just help us
understand what a beautiful and crazy place this universe is.
Very few of them are actually going to kill us,
and so don't worry about it too much, folks. And
there's nothing you can do anyway, So don't worry about it,
(43:25):
that's right. Just relax, lower your heart rate, the sun
is coming down. Just be at peace, like Bruce Bank.
There you go, exactly. We're all Bruce Banner, see you
next time. If you still have a question after listening
(43:47):
to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd
love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or
email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe is a production I Heart Radio. For more
podcast for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
(44:10):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Daniel Whiteson
Kelly Weinersmith
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