July 19, 2022 • 41 mins
Face it, supernovae are the most interesting phenomena in the universe. Black holes are cool, but did you know they sprout from a supernova? What could be cooler than a star exploding so powerfully, the flash it creates shines for months after?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's here lurking around like a weirdo,
and this is stuff you should know. That's right Interstellar dish. Yeah, absolutely,
(00:24):
And Chuck I was like, surely we've talked about this before,
and I'm sure we have, maybe in the Galaxy episode
or I think we did. It was the Black Holes. Okay, yeah,
that makes a lot of sense. Actually, um, but we've
never done when I double checked, we've never done one
on super Novay. That's a E on the end. That's
plural um episode before and we're going to now. And
(00:48):
I have to say, the reason we're going to know,
I think for my money, is that we will be
discussing probably the most interesting phenomenon in the universe. Are
you think? So? That's that's my bad. You know, I'm
not gonna try to sway you, persuade you if you
feel differently, But that's just how I feel. All right. Well,
I mean it's interesting timing because of the the new
(01:12):
images coming back from the James web Space telescope kind
of like right now, I mean it looks like this thing,
I mean, it's a it's a thousand times greater than
what Hubble can see. Yeah, and like Hubble is our
our gen x is superstar. Yeah, and it's nothing to
(01:33):
sneeze at. I mean, if it's produced some pretty amazing pictures,
you know, it's fine, but it's nothing compared to the
James Web. And what they're saying is that this thing
is potentially um going to be able to see through
space dust and you know, they're gonna be doing something
that we uh can often not do, which is c supernovay. Yeah,
(01:57):
which is a big deal because you know, space dust
can really the obscure supernova, which we'll talk about. But yeah,
have you seen that. I'm sure you've seen that. That
first picture they released, the Star Child amazing, Yeah, it is.
But at the same time, it's almost like it looks
like it was put together by a poorly trained graphic
designer who like really overdid it, you know, tried to
(02:17):
fit everything into one picture. But it just like really
goes to show you how not so full the universe is.
And yet imagine how spread out all that stuff is.
The distance between those things. Oh yeah, unbelievable. Uh, and
you know the core no uh no pun intended, But
(02:38):
the core of this research comes from our old, our
old website that we used to work for, how stuff
Works dot com and uh one of the the most
convoluted explanations of anything I've ever seen in my life. Yeah,
we're gonna, we're gonna pare it down to size, we're
gonna tame it. Okay, it's um And hey, listen, I
don't want to pick on somebody, but it almost seemed
(03:00):
like the goal was to see how much they could
confuse somebody about supernovaea clearly explain what it what's going
on there. So our goal is to wind our way
through this and lean into kids science websites like I
always do. Okay, Yeah, and they work big time, especially
for this kind of thing, because um, to me, one
(03:24):
of the reasons I find talking about supernova so attractive
is that it's really understandable when you kind of like
dig into it. But when you realize, like, oh I
get this stuff. You you you come to realize that,
like you understand like the most superficial understanding of of
(03:44):
what's actually going on, and it's still like generally the
nuts and bolts, the principle of it, but there's so
much more detail that people you know, um, dedicate their
entire careers to studying these things, and we're just gonna
go over it in less than an hour. How about that?
Well yeah, and if you uh, I say, far less
than an hour. But if you if you look at
(04:05):
what you're trying to understand, and even if you can understand,
like the tiniest concepts which you're also understanding, are the
tiniest building blocks of everything. Basically, because out of supernova
are born, are are heavy elements, and without heavy elements,
there is no life on Earth. Yeah. So like that
(04:25):
saying that we're all made of star dust, it feels
like a Sagan saying, Um, that's very true, and that
star dust comes in large part from supernovae. Um. Also
Steven stills it, Oh, yeah, you're right, but I think
he might have been smoking dubes with Carl Sagan at
the time. Dubes, Well that's what they called their words,
(04:45):
not mine, just to enshrine our generation next nous of
this whole thing. That's right. I didn't say split at least, right,
that would be genets. I guess dubes would be more boomer, right,
exactly so. So, but that's a I mean, that's a
really accurate statement, right, everything planets are made from it,
Other stars are made from it. Um, anything alive on
(05:05):
the planet in Earth, as far as we know, uh,
is made of that same stuff that gets ejected from
stars during supernovae. And if you if you study this,
what we're talking about really is the end stage of
the life cycle of a particular star. But if you
follow it back beyond that that endpoint and watch that
(05:26):
star dust and like kind of track it and trace it,
you'll see that it goes to onto four more stars.
So really what we're looking at is a part of
a cycle that very much resembles like the carbon cycle
here on Earth, a closed system that is self reinforcing
and self sustaining that goes over really really long periods
of time. But really it just keeps regenerating itself. Yeah.
(05:48):
And the other cool thing about this web telescope is
they're seeing already seeing just baby star factories out there. Uh,
it's really cool stuff. I guess before we get into
what is actually happening at the end life of a star,
we should talk a little bit probably about just sort
of how rare This is like if if you don't
(06:08):
know anything about supernova you may think that, um, this
kind of thing is happening all the time in the
Milky Way galaxy and we may not see it because
of space dust and stuff. But it is in fact
happening all over the place all the time, all over
many many galaxies. But in the Milky Way galaxy it
happens about every fifty years or so give or take. Uh.
(06:32):
They track about, you know, to every hundred years, and
by track, like I said, sometimes they don't see them.
And up until the mid two thousand's they thought that
the last one in the Milky Way was in the
sixteen hundreds. And then they realize, hey, wait a minute,
we've been following other things like this, this debris, this
interstellar debris, and that's actually the remnants of a supernova
(06:55):
just about a hundred and forty years old. We just
didn't know that's what it was exactly until later. The
one that they thought was the last one from the
sixteen hundreds was described by Johann Kepler, who spotted it,
and it's now called s N sixty sixteen O four
supernova sixteen O four because that's when it happened um
and that was discovered by Kepler because it was visible
(07:17):
to the to the naked eye. And there have only
been five recorded supernova in the last millennia that were
visible to the naked eye UM one in ten oh six,
one in ten fifty four, one one one in fifteen
seventy two, and then Kepler's in sixteen o four. So
the very ironic thing is that since we invented telescopes,
(07:40):
there hasn't been a supernova that was visible to the
naked eye, which is kind of funny. Yeah, but you
can't see them with uh telescope that you or I
could own. UM. In fact, the high powered telescope sometimes
they're so sensitive to this, you know, as you'll see
the supernova um emit a super bright light as you
(08:02):
would imagine when a star collapses and explodes upon itself.
And sometimes those telescopes, in fact, they're almost always overwhelmed
and not very useful for those purposes. So UH, they
count on regular people in their telescopes sometimes to see
these in neighboring galaxies, like that ten year old girl
inven that found one two and forty million light years
(08:26):
away uh in January. It's it's it's cool that they
actually uh kind of depend on amateur astronomers to find
these things to call them in to the the AI. Yeah,
that i AU Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams. Sounds like
something Dan Ackroyd would spit out in an infomercial, right,
(08:49):
and they only accept telegrams they that's right, get the
wire to them. Are you gonna tell me to stop again?
But you know, you can submit that and they will
take a look and they will use their uh spectrometers
to kind of see what radiation is being given off,
and then they can tell a lot about what's going on. Yeah,
(09:11):
big time. Um. And the reason that they there's a
couple of reasons they rely on those backyard astronomers. One,
amateur astronomers are no joke. They know what they're doing.
They also have plenty of very well documented star charts,
so they're exactly the kind of people who number one
are looking up at the skies in the first place.
And then number two are familiar enough with what the
(09:31):
sky is supposed to look like that they would actually
notice a new star. So it actually is a thing
that amateur astronomers are relied on by professional astronomers. And
the coolest thing about this too is, as we'll see,
like a supernova, when it shows up, it can it
can be a new star that shines for a day,
a couple of weeks, a few months, usually not much
longer than that, and then it just goes away again.
(09:54):
And what's really neat about this is what you're seeing
is an event that happened million years ago and finally
that light that's uh, you know, five million light years
away from us, that were it originated is finally reaching us.
I just find that so colossally awesome, and I know
(10:15):
that applies to every bit of starlight and even sunshine.
It's not like it's instantaneous. It takes you know, light
years to to reach us, where it has to travel
across the light years to reach us. But for some reason,
the idea that that that that's the basis of a
supernova is really neat to me. Yeah. And in fact,
the very first one on record was about two thousand
(10:36):
years ago in China. There were astronomers there who um,
all of a sudden saw a new light like you
would today, and they started following it and making notes
and chronicling the you know what, this thing was doing
there and then I think it took about eight months
in that case, uh, which is pretty long, so maybe
(10:57):
I don't know, maybe they were off or something. I mean,
this is US two thousand years ago. No, I mean
they were the Chinese astronomers of the stage were pretty
they were pretty sharp, so they would have they would
have probably been pretty accurate. Well, at any rate, it disappeared,
and they quite didn't quite understand like what was going
right at the time, right, but they did write it
down in a book a couple of centuries later called
(11:18):
them the Book of the Later han As in the
Han dynasty. And I guess at some point somebody came
across this and realized that what they were describing was
a supernova. And what's even more mind blowing about it
is we've reached the point where, using things like spectrographs
and and other um like incredibly sensitive telescopes, we can
(11:41):
um look at the remnants and see what they're made of,
how hot they are, how fast they're traveling, and basically
reverse engineer their origin to determine how old something is.
And they've actually found that supernova supernova six that was
originally described in the by the Han astronomers. Yeah, and
we'll get to why it's useful to chart this stuff anyway,
(12:03):
because it's not I mean, you might think, you know,
it's a dead or dying and dead star like who cares.
But it can be very useful as far as mapping
the universe and uh, finding out what how things behave
in neighboring galaxies. And it's all super useful. And of
course we've already talked about the elemental factor, which is
(12:24):
why we're here. That's right, it's not us, right exactly. Um,
and I think the last one that was visible not
to the naked I think you had to use binoculars
was u S. And um, that one was outside of
our galaxy. It was technically it came from the Large
Magillianic Cloud, which is a dwarf satellite galaxy to the
(12:47):
Milky Way. So again it wasn't it wasn't one of
those fifty that happened every year in the Milky Way.
It was outside of it, but you could kind of
see it. And it was a big deal because by
about that time, we were starting to get just enough
at it's to like really start to make hay out
of the data that we were getting from it, so
it was pretty cool. But wasn't that one a two banger?
(13:07):
Didn't that one rear? It said again in um so
what they figured out and this will make more sense
once we explain with how like an actual supernova works.
But the the um initial, the secondary explosion, like you said,
the double banger, I think that's actually the technical term.
The second explosion caught up with the material from the
(13:30):
first explosion and interacted released a ton of energy and
it actually brightened. So yeah, just from tracking the stuff,
I think they were like, we didn't know that could
do that, and just from watching s they learned something new. Yeah,
twenty four years later, which is really interesting. Yeah, exactly
should we take a break? Uh? Yeah, I think so.
(13:51):
All right, you seem hesitant, Well, I do want to
throw him one more thing. Since we're talking about these
things and seeing him with the naked eye. One of
the reasons why you can see him with the naked
eyes because these things are so bright. Some of them
outshine entire galaxies for the time that they're shining, and
they they'd be brighter than the full moon here on
Earth and so bright that you could actually see them
(14:12):
during full daylight too, So that's pretty bright. That's quite bright. Okay,
now I'm ready, Chuck, all right, we're gonna take a break.
We're gonna come back. We're gonna talk about the types
of two types of supernova right after this and try
and make some sense out all of this stuff. Okay,
(15:03):
So if you want to break down the types of supernova,
you don't have to work very hard because there are
two types, uh, and then there are some sub types
will get into. But these were first classified by an
astronomy name Rudolph Minkowski. And like we said, they use
(15:23):
spectrographs to get a good picture of what is going
on inside of a burning star because they can look
at their their color lines, their absorption lines. And if
we start at the beginning, we have type one supernova
that have absorption lines that indicate that they don't have hydrogen,
and they are super super bright, but for a very
(15:46):
short amount of time Type one, right, and then type
two do have hydrogen full stop. That's right. But then
they started this is m Minkowski was working in the forties,
like you said. So as time went by and we
got better and better at observing the universe, by the eighties.
They're like, we could subdivide these even further. So you've
(16:07):
got the type one A, Type one B, Type one C,
and then type two and Type one A is totally
its own animal we'll talk about in a second. But
Type one B, one C and Type two they generally
undergo the same colossal kind of explosion. But the big
differences they have like different kinds of UM elements in
them or they don't UM. That's really the only different
(16:30):
difference that I can see, and it really doesn't make
much difference for what we're going to talk about, right.
Uh So, the one I was mentioning when I said
type one are very bright for very short amount of time,
it's actually one A more specifically, and they happen basically
when a white dwarf star orbits a bigger star, it's
(16:51):
got to be orbiting another star, because what it's gonna
do is suck matter off of that big star until
it gets to basically boom size exactly. And they actually
have figured out, well I should say Dr Chandra scar
figured it out, um the the exact amount and moment
(17:12):
where the mass and the matter that it sucked off
of the other star reaches that boom level, and it's
called the Chandra Scar limit, and it equals basically one
point four solar masses. And it will probably surprise no
one that a solar mass is a mass equal to
our Sun, and a white dwarf might start out as
less than that. But once it sucks enough matter off
(17:34):
of its twin star in that binary system, it will
hit that limit, and all of a sudden, a thermonuclear
reaction happens, a chain reaction exactly like the kind that
happens in a thermonuclear bomb um and that runaway chain
reaction actually blows the star to smithereens as you assume
Indy Sam would put it. Uh, that's right, And you know,
(17:56):
let me jump back a set because I think it's
helps to understand kind of what's going on at the
core of these stars anyway. Um, if you have a
massive star, it is burning just huge, huge amounts of
that nuclear fuel at the core, and that produces a
ton of energy and obviously it is going to be
really really hot. U. The same kind of thing like
(18:17):
when we talked about our nuclear fusion uh for nuclear
power and stuff like that, The same kind of thing
is going on. But that's gonna generate a ton of pressure,
and a star is basically a balancing act. You have
two forces that are kind of keeping one another in
check because the star always has this gravity that's trying
to squeeze it down to the smallest, you know, possible size.
(18:41):
But then you have this nuclear reaction going on, creating
all this pressure going out and it's that outward push
kind of battling against the inward squeeze of gravity that
keeps a star from that keeps this from happening all
the time. Uh. And when it finally does run out
of that fuel, which we'll talk about kind of how
that happens, it's gonna cool off, and that causes that
(19:02):
pressure to drop, gravity winds, and then you've got your
big bang, not the big bang, but a big bang,
right And that's that's the type two supernova that you
talked about. But both stars type one A and type
two they will they they burn um hydrogen and turn
it into healing. The same process goes. It's just what
(19:23):
happens after they run out of fuel is the big
difference between them, right? Well, yeah, but is the running
out of fuel basically is it working its way through
the elemental chart, right, creating all these different elements until
it gets to iron and nickel. Yeah, So so let's
talk about that stars burn hydrogen. They as they burn hydrogen,
it fuses into helium. Heliums have heavier, so it actually
(19:46):
starts to settle more towards the core because of that
um that gravity, because gravity can exert a stronger force
and something with more mass, and helium has more mass
than than hydrogen, So the hydrogen kind of stays in
the outer layers of the star and the core is
made up of helium. Well, as that hydrogen starts to
wear out, the core starts burning off the helium, like
(20:08):
using that to keep itself going as fuel, and then
eventually it starts fusing it into heavier and heavier elements
like you were saying. And it's all fine, it's all good.
I mean, it's getting a little panicky. The stars like
got that cartoon sweat jumping off its forehead. But it's
still producing more energy than it's using, so it can
keep that that gravity at bay, although it's getting harder
(20:31):
and harder. Right, And then, like you said, once it
starts producing iron, it reaches the point where there's a
net energy loss because it takes more energy to combine
uh molecules into iron than the energy that's released from
that process. And that, my friend, is where the star
starts to go boom. Yeah. And here's the part I
(20:53):
don't quite get. Maybe you can help me, is I
know that's how a type two works. But does a
Type one A do the same thing? But just by
sucking in matter from its neighbor? No, no, no, Type
one A blows up like a nuclear bomb. Okay, I
got you. It just sets off that chain reaction and
(21:15):
it just blows itself up, all right. The other way
that a Type one A can go out is if
it has so it's got to reach that Chandra Scar
limit of one point four solar masses, and then that
chain reaction happens. If that star never reaches that limit, um,
but it runs out of fuel, it'll go from a
white dwarf to a black dwarf. And a black dwarf
(21:36):
is basically like a star that's a campfire that you
stopped adding would too, and it eventually just gets dimmer
and dimmer, and then it finally goes out on its own.
That's basically a black dwarf. Okay, all right, well that
makes that makes sense then, because it's basically uh fusing
all all of the carbon and everything like at that core,
(21:58):
and it just it can't handle that kind of load.
The type two you mean one, uh uh no, I
think it just runs out of fuel and becomes a
black dwarf. Or if it has enough fuel Okay, yeah,
it has it has enough fuel that Yes, I don't
know if it's carbon or if it's hydrogen or whatever,
(22:18):
but it has enough of whatever it needs to um
set off that runaway thermonuclear chain reaction and blow itself up.
I think it's carbon, Okay, so yeah, and that would
make sense. Um. But it so it turns into a
thermonuclear carbon bomb, a star sized version. That's what happens
with the type one A the Type two. Then this
(22:39):
is the whole reason it's different, Chuck, is the Type
two star starts out as much larger, much more massive
than this type UM one a star right X the sun, Yes, exactly,
and so it has to be at least that that
size or else it's not gonna work. It'll probably turn
into um the type one a kind of super ova UM.
(23:01):
So because it's eight times the size or the mass
of the Sun. It has a really strong gravitational force
working on it. And then that is what really plays
that major role in a type two supernova, that gravity
sucking everything in towards the core, and then the denser
and more massive the core is because more stuff is
(23:22):
getting sucked into it and more and more iron is
being put together. That that is what makes it implode
with such force that it actually explodes with I would
guess an equal amount of force. Yeah, Like it collapses
in on itself and once it gets to the center,
it has nowhere to go but back out right, Yeah, exactly.
(23:43):
And there's like a lot of details to it, where
like um as stuff is getting sucked into the center
that it hits that core and it's traveling. Those particles
are traveling so fast, like you know how um like
a piece of space dust can like go right through
a satellite. Okay, so that's that's this on steroids, um or,
this is that on steroids. It's pulling those particles towards
(24:05):
the core and when they hit it, they bounce off,
they release a shock wave and that actually explodes. It
starts exploding against itself, and then at the same time,
the pressure from gravity exerted on the core is so
great that those iron um atoms actually get squeezed together
so tightly that the protons and electrons get confused into neutrons,
(24:29):
and the the solar mask can go from something like
you know, five thousand miles in diameter down to twelve
miles in diameter. And again, this is something I don't
think we pointed out yet, so I probably shouldn't say again, Chuck,
all of this is happening in less than a second. Yeah,
the the end game happens very very fast after you know,
(24:54):
ten billion plus life basically uh, you know, you know,
really turning out instead of fading away. Not corny there,
but uh, if you look at a one A when
that thing explodes, it's gonna create a ton of iron
being blasted out because of that heat. It's gonna be
very symmetrical. And they actually use that because they're so
(25:17):
um sort of consistent and that they the one A
is all explode at the same time, uh, in their
death and they peak with that same brightness. They use
that and it's it's called a standard candle, and it's
I think it's just basically sort of like a baseline measurement, right, Yeah,
they can use it to as a measurement against um
(25:39):
other stuff in the neighborhood to figure out how bright
those things are, what they're made of, how old they are,
that kind of thing. Um. So yeah, that's it's pretty cool.
You wouldn't think about it, but it does make sense
that since they all follow the same process at the
same time. Totally. Are we due for a breaker now? Yeah,
I think we have chuck. All right, Uh, we're gonna
(25:59):
come back. I don't even know what we're going to
talk about, so that'll be very exciting for everybody. What's left? Actually,
(26:35):
there's a lot left, which is pretty neat. So, um,
we we've learned a lot from supernova and just by
studying them, we start finding things out that there's like
a lot of caveats to what we just said. Not
everything follows the exact same process, with the exception of
those Type one A that that becomes standard candles because
they follow such a a specific roadmap. But the type
(26:58):
two are a little more chaos dick um than than
what we thought before. And that's evidence from a supernova
that was discovered in two thousand six. That um is
named s N l S O three C three B B. Right.
Is that is that the one they nicknamed Champagne Supernova? Yes,
because it was two thousand six. Were you into Oasis
(27:22):
or Brit Pop at all? Yeah? I like Brit pop,
but I like more eighties Brit pop, like um that
whole uh like twenty four Party People era. Okay, all right, okay,
I'm not dogging on anything else. I'm holding my tongue,
holding my tongue. No, No, I wasn't. I wasn't an
Oasis fan, although there's a couple of the songs I
really liked, but that was an era for me where
(27:44):
I think I was just listening to other stuff. Um,
Emily was really into that era Brit pop though she was.
She she liked that stuff. And it's fine. Every time,
you know, she puts on a little Brit pop mix,
it's fine. What else is she listening to from the era? Uh? Uh?
Who verve that Bittersweet Symphony? Yeah? I think a little
(28:05):
bit of um early only cold Play. Uh It's it's
almost like it's and it seems very uncool to even
mentioned Cold Light. Now, Am I wrong? I did that?
But I think those first couple of albums she liked,
Uh who else? It seems like there were some other
Brit pop bands I'm just not thinking about. I'm sure
(28:26):
there's plenty of others for sure. I mean, we can
just talk about brit pop for the rest of the end. No, no, no,
We've got to go back to Supernova and specifically this
Champagne Supernova from two thousand six, right, Blur, that's another one, Okay, Yeah, yeah,
Blur's great. Sure, Absolutely the Doves she liked them. I
never Oh yeah, I like them too. Actually I didn't
(28:49):
realize they were Brit pop. Yeah I think, uh, I mean,
not not as Brit poppy as like Travis and stuff
like that. But okay, yeah, I like those Doves albums.
Those were good. Yeah, they really were good. Definitely an
overlook group. Alright, So they called this one the Champagne
Supernova in two thousand six s n L S zero three.
You already said it, but it's fun to say. But
(29:12):
this one was h This one kind of rocked everyone's
world because it was only not only it extended up
to two times solar mass and it exceeded that Shandra's
car limit, which was one point four previously. When we
thought that was that was it like it couldn't go
any higher than it turned it not to eleven but
to two. Yeah, and so it not only um contradicted
(29:36):
the then understanding of type one A supernova, it contradicted
something I said not ten minutes ago. Well, and does
that mean that's now just thrown out forever and like
anything can happen, or is it still generally one point four?
I would guess it's generally generally one point four because
I don't think they made it up. I think the
math suggested it. Probably just have to figure out, like
how to adjust the math to include this phenomenately. And
(30:00):
that's actually physicists love that stuff. Like the whole reason
they're running the Large Hadron Collider is because they're trying
to create stuff that they've never seen before so that
you can figure out how it works. Um, they've reached
the levels of of theory and now need like more data,
and that's what they're doing. So when they come across
more data like this in the field of astronomy, I'm
(30:20):
pretty sure it's the exact same thing, they're like, yes,
this is a total anomaly, and now we're going to
have a better understanding. Once we figure out how this
thing fits into our current understanding. Keene, that was another
brit pop band. They were Okay, yeah, yeah, that was
the They were the one from the Lake House with
Keanu and Sandra Bullock. That song, Oh I never saw that.
(30:41):
Emily watches that movie over and over just because of
the house. That it's a great house, but also the
tree part is really amazing too. I love it. She
will watch bad movies for architecture alone, over and over. Okay,
but I suspect she also probably likes that movie because
it's pretty good. Just bring your clean X if you
sit down and watch. All Right, it's a good one.
(31:05):
Anything Kanna reeves Us is great for sure. I love
that guy. Okay, hey, he's great. He's great and everything.
I'll say that. How about that, I mean just a
great human. I like that guy. Sure? Yeah? Um, all right,
So where are we? I've wasted enough time. Okay, here's
where we get to another really interesting part. Okay. The
type two supernova can produce a couple of different outcomes,
(31:29):
and it depends on the size of the star when
it's at its main sequence, which is that those billions
of years that it's burnings it reaches its adult size.
And if a type two star has a size that's
greater than forty solar masses, has a mass forty times
our own son or more, when that thing goes off,
(31:51):
when it reaches the end of its life and that
core collapse happens, it will um actually turn into a
black hole. It gets sucks so thoroughly into itself that
it basically goes pupe and becomes a black hole. Well
that's another reason we might not see it right. Yes,
but that's why some supernova kind of like flicker for
(32:12):
a second then go out, and that you just you
know that it was a greater than for forty solar
bodies um mass star that just underwent supernova. Um. Yeah,
And that's and that amazing because all that same stuff
that's going on that creates that collapse doesn't let the
explosion happen. The force of gravity is so great because
(32:33):
this thing is so massive that it doesn't let it
escape and it eventually just sucks itself into a black hole.
The other way it can go, which for my money,
is equally interesting, is if it has a mass of
less than forty solar bodies, it will become a neutron star,
so that core sticks around. Remember I said it can
(32:54):
go from a five thousand mile diameter star down to
a twelve mile diameter in a second. That twelve mile
diameter core can stick around. And that's what's called the
neutron star. And one of the cool things about neutron
stars is that sometimes they spin, and when they spin,
they're putting off so much energy that they release a
flash of light on a really regular schedule. And those
(33:16):
are what's called pulsars. That's right, and that's I know
we've talked about pulsars before. Surely we have before too.
But there's one in particular. Did you see that one
that's the fastest spinning pulsar in the universe? But do
you mean psr J eight dash to four four six
a d the one and only. Do they have a
(33:37):
cool name for that one? I don't think so I
didn't see it. I think they think that's a cool
name for it. Dah boy, it's that the kind of
people were dealing with. It is sixteen kilometers in diameter, which, uh,
it sounds big, but as far as stars go, is
not that big, right? No? Because I mean, like it's
the size of an American city, you know, the downtown
(33:58):
part of it. And then but it's the same mass
or greater of our own son, up to forty times
the mass of our own sun. But in that small
of the package, that's dense. Baby it Uh, this thing
is really cooking though. It's spinning at about seven hundred
and sixteen times per second, which is an equivalent of
(34:20):
close to forty three RPMs. Yeah, so imagine downtown Los
Angeles spinning seven hundred and sixteen times per second out
there in outer space. Sometimes it feels like that, am
I right? Yeah, especially after a long night. Uh. If
all this sounds potentially dangerous, you know as far as
(34:42):
us here on Earth, Um, it would be super dangerous
if there was one that exploded close to Earth, it
would be very huge. First of all, there would be
all kinds of the gnarly radiation that would not be
good for us. However, Um, it has to be a
really really really big star are too explode as a supernova,
(35:02):
And we know what's out there right now, and there
aren't any stars that are nearly close enough. It would
be millions of years uh for a start close enough
to us to be big enough to become a supernova
so you don't have to worry about it. But there
it has happened in the past. There are traces a
past supernova here on Earth, uh, in particular radioactive iron sixty,
(35:26):
which I don't think it's an open and shut case,
but it's a it's a really good indicator that that
was there's supernova debris um just buried down there on
the sea floor. Yeah, And they're trying to correlate it
with some of the mass extinctions that took place in
Earth's history, and they think that maybe you know, just
like blow you know, the mastodon off of its feet
and put it in extinction. But instead it might have
(35:49):
had a real effect on the ozone layer which allowed
more UV than normal through, which could have triggered a
climate change that led to a mass extinction. Well, they
say it does at least correspond close to the beginning
of the plies to see an ice age, So I
don't think they've said like that's the cause. But I
don't know. I couldn't couldn't have helped for it to
(36:11):
be like a genuinely planet sterilizing event, though it would
have to be within a hundred two hundred and fifty
light years um or no fifty light years and the
closest one that could go supernova is one K Pegasus
and it's a hundred and fifty light years away. So,
like you said, we're not We're not in any kind
of danger. And our son will never go supernova because
(36:31):
it's not um eight solar masses and it's not going
to reach one point four solar masses because it's not
a part of a binary star, and obviously it's one
solar mass because the solar mass is equal to our
son's mass. I think Planet Sterilizing Event should be our
Brit pop album title. I think yes. I couldn't agree more.
(36:51):
It's not very Brit poppy, but we could push the boundaries. Sure,
as long as like we're wearing white jeans that are
pegged with black patent leather shoes on the cover, doesn't
matter what we name it. Did we do this one
one more thing? There's such things as zombie stars. This
is a new thing that they figured out in the
last few years. That's an an anomaly that we don't understand.
(37:12):
But they're basically stars that undergo supernova multiple times. Doesn't
really make much sense, but they are starting to figure
that out. And it's not the case of uh like
the one in two thousand eleven, not that I know of, no,
because it would it would only hit it's you know,
ejecta once. As far as I can tell, this is
(37:34):
like like at least five or six times that they've
found this one zombie Star to have gone supernova. Interesting. Yeah,
I think so too. And maybe that's the name of
our brit pop band. What zombie Star? Yeah, that Zombie
Star Planet Sterilizing Event, I think, yeah, right, yeah, totally.
(37:55):
Although Diarrhea Planet could use Planet Sterilizing Event. That would
be a great album for them. I'm sure if this
has gotten back to those guys are like, why didn't
you talk about us this much while we were still together?
Maybe we can get a reunion going stadium tour, I
would go totally, um, but yeah, zombie Star is a
great name for our britt pop band. And green all right, Well,
(38:17):
if we accomplished anything, it's that. Yeah, I think we
accomplished more than that, chuck. And since I said that,
I want to direct everybody to the House stuff works
article how a supernova works. Clearly they hedged it, didn't
just call it how supernova work. Um, and uh, there's
plenty of other stuff that's really interesting all over the
internet to read about it. And as I said that,
(38:39):
like I said, it's time for listener mail. H Yeah,
I watched some I watched some cool kid videos on YouTube. Uh,
they're they're they're always just very instructive. I know we
say it a lot, but if you haven't caught it
in the past, if they are difficult scientific concepts for
you to understand as an adult, or if you're a kid,
(39:00):
that these kids websites they break it down like adult website.
Should you know they'd really do it right, It's good? Um,
all right, I'm gonna call this Apparently we're we've been
patronizing for a long time about the Dark Ages. We've
been called out about this before, have we really? Yeah?
(39:21):
We just never all right, well, I'm gonna do it again.
This is from Greg. I know you get a lot
of emails, so you'll probably never even read this. Um.
I also know Josh hates correction emails. That's not true
at all, true, right, but for the love of God,
could you stop referring to the medieval era as the
Dark Ages as you did in your latest May episode.
(39:44):
It's an outdated Victorian concept that implies medieval people were
stupid and ignorant, that nothing happened for several hundred years
until the Renaissance magically appeared. It's patronizing and devalues the
progress made because of great medieval thinkers, as well as
supposing that the everyday person in between the tenth and
fifteen centuries was a moron who bungled through life with
(40:04):
no meaningful contribution. I would hope that your years of
research into our progress as a species would have shown
that this is not how people evolved. So if you
could stop using such an insulting term for a significant
period of human history would benefit all concerned. And then
it's from Greg. And for me, Greg, I just say
(40:26):
dark Ages because people know what we're generally talking about,
as far as an arror goes. I never mean that
nothing good came from the Dark Ages. But I don't know,
Maybe maybe I should rethink he've been saying that. I
don't know. I I think Gregg's beef is with society
in general, and he's really picking on us and taking
it out on us because it's exactly like you said
(40:47):
that we're using that so people know what we're talking about.
That's like saying, can you please stop saying Enlightenment like
everything they did was so great? There were there were
plenty of morons in the Enlightenment that aren't getting their due.
Nice work, Chuck Man. You just pick Greg up and
put them in a health Nelson body slammed him. No, Greg,
(41:08):
I hug you. We're going to get another email from
Greg for this one. If you want to be like
Greg and call us out about something that really gets
under your skin, stuck in your craw gums in your hair,
that kind of thing, uh, you can email to us
at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff You
(41:29):
Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more
podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's here lurking around like a weirdo,
and this is stuff you should know. That's right Interstellar dish. Yeah, absolutely,
(00:24):
And Chuck I was like, surely we've talked about this before,
and I'm sure we have, maybe in the Galaxy episode
or I think we did. It was the Black Holes. Okay, yeah,
that makes a lot of sense. Actually, um, but we've
never done when I double checked, we've never done one
on super Novay. That's a E on the end. That's
plural um episode before and we're going to now. And
(00:48):
I have to say, the reason we're going to know,
I think for my money, is that we will be
discussing probably the most interesting phenomenon in the universe. Are
you think? So? That's that's my bad. You know, I'm
not gonna try to sway you, persuade you if you
feel differently, But that's just how I feel. All right. Well,
I mean it's interesting timing because of the the new
(01:12):
images coming back from the James web Space telescope kind
of like right now, I mean it looks like this thing,
I mean, it's a it's a thousand times greater than
what Hubble can see. Yeah, and like Hubble is our
our gen x is superstar. Yeah, and it's nothing to
(01:33):
sneeze at. I mean, if it's produced some pretty amazing pictures,
you know, it's fine, but it's nothing compared to the
James Web. And what they're saying is that this thing
is potentially um going to be able to see through
space dust and you know, they're gonna be doing something
that we uh can often not do, which is c supernovay. Yeah,
(01:57):
which is a big deal because you know, space dust
can really the obscure supernova, which we'll talk about. But yeah,
have you seen that. I'm sure you've seen that. That
first picture they released, the Star Child amazing, Yeah, it is.
But at the same time, it's almost like it looks
like it was put together by a poorly trained graphic
designer who like really overdid it, you know, tried to
(02:17):
fit everything into one picture. But it just like really
goes to show you how not so full the universe is.
And yet imagine how spread out all that stuff is.
The distance between those things. Oh yeah, unbelievable. Uh, and
you know the core no uh no pun intended, But
(02:38):
the core of this research comes from our old, our
old website that we used to work for, how stuff
Works dot com and uh one of the the most
convoluted explanations of anything I've ever seen in my life. Yeah,
we're gonna, we're gonna pare it down to size, we're
gonna tame it. Okay, it's um And hey, listen, I
don't want to pick on somebody, but it almost seemed
(03:00):
like the goal was to see how much they could
confuse somebody about supernovaea clearly explain what it what's going
on there. So our goal is to wind our way
through this and lean into kids science websites like I
always do. Okay, Yeah, and they work big time, especially
for this kind of thing, because um, to me, one
(03:24):
of the reasons I find talking about supernova so attractive
is that it's really understandable when you kind of like
dig into it. But when you realize, like, oh I
get this stuff. You you you come to realize that,
like you understand like the most superficial understanding of of
(03:44):
what's actually going on, and it's still like generally the
nuts and bolts, the principle of it, but there's so
much more detail that people you know, um, dedicate their
entire careers to studying these things, and we're just gonna
go over it in less than an hour. How about that?
Well yeah, and if you uh, I say, far less
than an hour. But if you if you look at
(04:05):
what you're trying to understand, and even if you can understand,
like the tiniest concepts which you're also understanding, are the
tiniest building blocks of everything. Basically, because out of supernova
are born, are are heavy elements, and without heavy elements,
there is no life on Earth. Yeah. So like that
(04:25):
saying that we're all made of star dust, it feels
like a Sagan saying, Um, that's very true, and that
star dust comes in large part from supernovae. Um. Also
Steven stills it, Oh, yeah, you're right, but I think
he might have been smoking dubes with Carl Sagan at
the time. Dubes, Well that's what they called their words,
(04:45):
not mine, just to enshrine our generation next nous of
this whole thing. That's right. I didn't say split at least, right,
that would be genets. I guess dubes would be more boomer, right,
exactly so. So, but that's a I mean, that's a
really accurate statement, right, everything planets are made from it,
Other stars are made from it. Um, anything alive on
(05:05):
the planet in Earth, as far as we know, uh,
is made of that same stuff that gets ejected from
stars during supernovae. And if you if you study this,
what we're talking about really is the end stage of
the life cycle of a particular star. But if you
follow it back beyond that that endpoint and watch that
(05:26):
star dust and like kind of track it and trace it,
you'll see that it goes to onto four more stars.
So really what we're looking at is a part of
a cycle that very much resembles like the carbon cycle
here on Earth, a closed system that is self reinforcing
and self sustaining that goes over really really long periods
of time. But really it just keeps regenerating itself. Yeah.
(05:48):
And the other cool thing about this web telescope is
they're seeing already seeing just baby star factories out there. Uh,
it's really cool stuff. I guess before we get into
what is actually happening at the end life of a star,
we should talk a little bit probably about just sort
of how rare This is like if if you don't
(06:08):
know anything about supernova you may think that, um, this
kind of thing is happening all the time in the
Milky Way galaxy and we may not see it because
of space dust and stuff. But it is in fact
happening all over the place all the time, all over
many many galaxies. But in the Milky Way galaxy it
happens about every fifty years or so give or take. Uh.
(06:32):
They track about, you know, to every hundred years, and
by track, like I said, sometimes they don't see them.
And up until the mid two thousand's they thought that
the last one in the Milky Way was in the
sixteen hundreds. And then they realize, hey, wait a minute,
we've been following other things like this, this debris, this
interstellar debris, and that's actually the remnants of a supernova
(06:55):
just about a hundred and forty years old. We just
didn't know that's what it was exactly until later. The
one that they thought was the last one from the
sixteen hundreds was described by Johann Kepler, who spotted it,
and it's now called s N sixty sixteen O four
supernova sixteen O four because that's when it happened um
and that was discovered by Kepler because it was visible
(07:17):
to the to the naked eye. And there have only
been five recorded supernova in the last millennia that were
visible to the naked eye UM one in ten oh six,
one in ten fifty four, one one one in fifteen
seventy two, and then Kepler's in sixteen o four. So
the very ironic thing is that since we invented telescopes,
(07:40):
there hasn't been a supernova that was visible to the
naked eye, which is kind of funny. Yeah, but you
can't see them with uh telescope that you or I
could own. UM. In fact, the high powered telescope sometimes
they're so sensitive to this, you know, as you'll see
the supernova um emit a super bright light as you
(08:02):
would imagine when a star collapses and explodes upon itself.
And sometimes those telescopes, in fact, they're almost always overwhelmed
and not very useful for those purposes. So UH, they
count on regular people in their telescopes sometimes to see
these in neighboring galaxies, like that ten year old girl
inven that found one two and forty million light years
(08:26):
away uh in January. It's it's it's cool that they
actually uh kind of depend on amateur astronomers to find
these things to call them in to the the AI. Yeah,
that i AU Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams. Sounds like
something Dan Ackroyd would spit out in an infomercial, right,
(08:49):
and they only accept telegrams they that's right, get the
wire to them. Are you gonna tell me to stop again?
But you know, you can submit that and they will
take a look and they will use their uh spectrometers
to kind of see what radiation is being given off,
and then they can tell a lot about what's going on. Yeah,
(09:11):
big time. Um. And the reason that they there's a
couple of reasons they rely on those backyard astronomers. One,
amateur astronomers are no joke. They know what they're doing.
They also have plenty of very well documented star charts,
so they're exactly the kind of people who number one
are looking up at the skies in the first place.
And then number two are familiar enough with what the
(09:31):
sky is supposed to look like that they would actually
notice a new star. So it actually is a thing
that amateur astronomers are relied on by professional astronomers. And
the coolest thing about this too is, as we'll see,
like a supernova, when it shows up, it can it
can be a new star that shines for a day,
a couple of weeks, a few months, usually not much
longer than that, and then it just goes away again.
(09:54):
And what's really neat about this is what you're seeing
is an event that happened million years ago and finally
that light that's uh, you know, five million light years
away from us, that were it originated is finally reaching us.
I just find that so colossally awesome, and I know
(10:15):
that applies to every bit of starlight and even sunshine.
It's not like it's instantaneous. It takes you know, light
years to to reach us, where it has to travel
across the light years to reach us. But for some reason,
the idea that that that that's the basis of a
supernova is really neat to me. Yeah. And in fact,
the very first one on record was about two thousand
(10:36):
years ago in China. There were astronomers there who um,
all of a sudden saw a new light like you
would today, and they started following it and making notes
and chronicling the you know what, this thing was doing
there and then I think it took about eight months
in that case, uh, which is pretty long, so maybe
(10:57):
I don't know, maybe they were off or something. I mean,
this is US two thousand years ago. No, I mean
they were the Chinese astronomers of the stage were pretty
they were pretty sharp, so they would have they would
have probably been pretty accurate. Well, at any rate, it disappeared,
and they quite didn't quite understand like what was going
right at the time, right, but they did write it
down in a book a couple of centuries later called
(11:18):
them the Book of the Later han As in the
Han dynasty. And I guess at some point somebody came
across this and realized that what they were describing was
a supernova. And what's even more mind blowing about it
is we've reached the point where, using things like spectrographs
and and other um like incredibly sensitive telescopes, we can
(11:41):
um look at the remnants and see what they're made of,
how hot they are, how fast they're traveling, and basically
reverse engineer their origin to determine how old something is.
And they've actually found that supernova supernova six that was
originally described in the by the Han astronomers. Yeah, and
we'll get to why it's useful to chart this stuff anyway,
(12:03):
because it's not I mean, you might think, you know,
it's a dead or dying and dead star like who cares.
But it can be very useful as far as mapping
the universe and uh, finding out what how things behave
in neighboring galaxies. And it's all super useful. And of
course we've already talked about the elemental factor, which is
(12:24):
why we're here. That's right, it's not us, right exactly. Um,
and I think the last one that was visible not
to the naked I think you had to use binoculars
was u S. And um, that one was outside of
our galaxy. It was technically it came from the Large
Magillianic Cloud, which is a dwarf satellite galaxy to the
(12:47):
Milky Way. So again it wasn't it wasn't one of
those fifty that happened every year in the Milky Way.
It was outside of it, but you could kind of
see it. And it was a big deal because by
about that time, we were starting to get just enough
at it's to like really start to make hay out
of the data that we were getting from it, so
it was pretty cool. But wasn't that one a two banger?
(13:07):
Didn't that one rear? It said again in um so
what they figured out and this will make more sense
once we explain with how like an actual supernova works.
But the the um initial, the secondary explosion, like you said,
the double banger, I think that's actually the technical term.
The second explosion caught up with the material from the
(13:30):
first explosion and interacted released a ton of energy and
it actually brightened. So yeah, just from tracking the stuff,
I think they were like, we didn't know that could
do that, and just from watching s they learned something new. Yeah,
twenty four years later, which is really interesting. Yeah, exactly
should we take a break? Uh? Yeah, I think so.
(13:51):
All right, you seem hesitant, Well, I do want to
throw him one more thing. Since we're talking about these
things and seeing him with the naked eye. One of
the reasons why you can see him with the naked
eyes because these things are so bright. Some of them
outshine entire galaxies for the time that they're shining, and
they they'd be brighter than the full moon here on
Earth and so bright that you could actually see them
(14:12):
during full daylight too, So that's pretty bright. That's quite bright. Okay,
now I'm ready, Chuck, all right, we're gonna take a break.
We're gonna come back. We're gonna talk about the types
of two types of supernova right after this and try
and make some sense out all of this stuff. Okay,
(15:03):
So if you want to break down the types of supernova,
you don't have to work very hard because there are
two types, uh, and then there are some sub types
will get into. But these were first classified by an
astronomy name Rudolph Minkowski. And like we said, they use
(15:23):
spectrographs to get a good picture of what is going
on inside of a burning star because they can look
at their their color lines, their absorption lines. And if
we start at the beginning, we have type one supernova
that have absorption lines that indicate that they don't have hydrogen,
and they are super super bright, but for a very
(15:46):
short amount of time Type one, right, and then type
two do have hydrogen full stop. That's right. But then
they started this is m Minkowski was working in the forties,
like you said. So as time went by and we
got better and better at observing the universe, by the eighties.
They're like, we could subdivide these even further. So you've
(16:07):
got the type one A, Type one B, Type one C,
and then type two and Type one A is totally
its own animal we'll talk about in a second. But
Type one B, one C and Type two they generally
undergo the same colossal kind of explosion. But the big
differences they have like different kinds of UM elements in
them or they don't UM. That's really the only different
(16:30):
difference that I can see, and it really doesn't make
much difference for what we're going to talk about, right.
Uh So, the one I was mentioning when I said
type one are very bright for very short amount of time,
it's actually one A more specifically, and they happen basically
when a white dwarf star orbits a bigger star, it's
(16:51):
got to be orbiting another star, because what it's gonna
do is suck matter off of that big star until
it gets to basically boom size exactly. And they actually
have figured out, well I should say Dr Chandra scar
figured it out, um the the exact amount and moment
(17:12):
where the mass and the matter that it sucked off
of the other star reaches that boom level, and it's
called the Chandra Scar limit, and it equals basically one
point four solar masses. And it will probably surprise no
one that a solar mass is a mass equal to
our Sun, and a white dwarf might start out as
less than that. But once it sucks enough matter off
(17:34):
of its twin star in that binary system, it will
hit that limit, and all of a sudden, a thermonuclear
reaction happens, a chain reaction exactly like the kind that
happens in a thermonuclear bomb um and that runaway chain
reaction actually blows the star to smithereens as you assume
Indy Sam would put it. Uh, that's right, And you know,
(17:56):
let me jump back a set because I think it's
helps to understand kind of what's going on at the
core of these stars anyway. Um, if you have a
massive star, it is burning just huge, huge amounts of
that nuclear fuel at the core, and that produces a
ton of energy and obviously it is going to be
really really hot. U. The same kind of thing like
(18:17):
when we talked about our nuclear fusion uh for nuclear
power and stuff like that, The same kind of thing
is going on. But that's gonna generate a ton of pressure,
and a star is basically a balancing act. You have
two forces that are kind of keeping one another in
check because the star always has this gravity that's trying
to squeeze it down to the smallest, you know, possible size.
(18:41):
But then you have this nuclear reaction going on, creating
all this pressure going out and it's that outward push
kind of battling against the inward squeeze of gravity that
keeps a star from that keeps this from happening all
the time. Uh. And when it finally does run out
of that fuel, which we'll talk about kind of how
that happens, it's gonna cool off, and that causes that
(19:02):
pressure to drop, gravity winds, and then you've got your
big bang, not the big bang, but a big bang,
right And that's that's the type two supernova that you
talked about. But both stars type one A and type
two they will they they burn um hydrogen and turn
it into healing. The same process goes. It's just what
(19:23):
happens after they run out of fuel is the big
difference between them, right? Well, yeah, but is the running
out of fuel basically is it working its way through
the elemental chart, right, creating all these different elements until
it gets to iron and nickel. Yeah, So so let's
talk about that stars burn hydrogen. They as they burn hydrogen,
it fuses into helium. Heliums have heavier, so it actually
(19:46):
starts to settle more towards the core because of that
um that gravity, because gravity can exert a stronger force
and something with more mass, and helium has more mass
than than hydrogen, So the hydrogen kind of stays in
the outer layers of the star and the core is
made up of helium. Well, as that hydrogen starts to
wear out, the core starts burning off the helium, like
(20:08):
using that to keep itself going as fuel, and then
eventually it starts fusing it into heavier and heavier elements
like you were saying. And it's all fine, it's all good.
I mean, it's getting a little panicky. The stars like
got that cartoon sweat jumping off its forehead. But it's
still producing more energy than it's using, so it can
keep that that gravity at bay, although it's getting harder
(20:31):
and harder. Right, And then, like you said, once it
starts producing iron, it reaches the point where there's a
net energy loss because it takes more energy to combine
uh molecules into iron than the energy that's released from
that process. And that, my friend, is where the star
starts to go boom. Yeah. And here's the part I
(20:53):
don't quite get. Maybe you can help me, is I
know that's how a type two works. But does a
Type one A do the same thing? But just by
sucking in matter from its neighbor? No, no, no, Type
one A blows up like a nuclear bomb. Okay, I
got you. It just sets off that chain reaction and
(21:15):
it just blows itself up, all right. The other way
that a Type one A can go out is if
it has so it's got to reach that Chandra Scar
limit of one point four solar masses, and then that
chain reaction happens. If that star never reaches that limit, um,
but it runs out of fuel, it'll go from a
white dwarf to a black dwarf. And a black dwarf
(21:36):
is basically like a star that's a campfire that you
stopped adding would too, and it eventually just gets dimmer
and dimmer, and then it finally goes out on its own.
That's basically a black dwarf. Okay, all right, well that
makes that makes sense then, because it's basically uh fusing
all all of the carbon and everything like at that core,
(21:58):
and it just it can't handle that kind of load.
The type two you mean one, uh uh no, I
think it just runs out of fuel and becomes a
black dwarf. Or if it has enough fuel Okay, yeah,
it has it has enough fuel that Yes, I don't
know if it's carbon or if it's hydrogen or whatever,
(22:18):
but it has enough of whatever it needs to um
set off that runaway thermonuclear chain reaction and blow itself up.
I think it's carbon, Okay, so yeah, and that would
make sense. Um. But it so it turns into a
thermonuclear carbon bomb, a star sized version. That's what happens
with the type one A the Type two. Then this
(22:39):
is the whole reason it's different, Chuck, is the Type
two star starts out as much larger, much more massive
than this type UM one a star right X the sun, Yes, exactly,
and so it has to be at least that that
size or else it's not gonna work. It'll probably turn
into um the type one a kind of super ova UM.
(23:01):
So because it's eight times the size or the mass
of the Sun. It has a really strong gravitational force
working on it. And then that is what really plays
that major role in a type two supernova, that gravity
sucking everything in towards the core, and then the denser
and more massive the core is because more stuff is
(23:22):
getting sucked into it and more and more iron is
being put together. That that is what makes it implode
with such force that it actually explodes with I would
guess an equal amount of force. Yeah, Like it collapses
in on itself and once it gets to the center,
it has nowhere to go but back out right, Yeah, exactly.
(23:43):
And there's like a lot of details to it, where
like um as stuff is getting sucked into the center
that it hits that core and it's traveling. Those particles
are traveling so fast, like you know how um like
a piece of space dust can like go right through
a satellite. Okay, so that's that's this on steroids, um or,
this is that on steroids. It's pulling those particles towards
(24:05):
the core and when they hit it, they bounce off,
they release a shock wave and that actually explodes. It
starts exploding against itself, and then at the same time,
the pressure from gravity exerted on the core is so
great that those iron um atoms actually get squeezed together
so tightly that the protons and electrons get confused into neutrons,
(24:29):
and the the solar mask can go from something like
you know, five thousand miles in diameter down to twelve
miles in diameter. And again, this is something I don't
think we pointed out yet, so I probably shouldn't say again, Chuck,
all of this is happening in less than a second. Yeah,
the the end game happens very very fast after you know,
(24:54):
ten billion plus life basically uh, you know, you know,
really turning out instead of fading away. Not corny there,
but uh, if you look at a one A when
that thing explodes, it's gonna create a ton of iron
being blasted out because of that heat. It's gonna be
very symmetrical. And they actually use that because they're so
(25:17):
um sort of consistent and that they the one A
is all explode at the same time, uh, in their
death and they peak with that same brightness. They use
that and it's it's called a standard candle, and it's
I think it's just basically sort of like a baseline measurement, right, Yeah,
they can use it to as a measurement against um
(25:39):
other stuff in the neighborhood to figure out how bright
those things are, what they're made of, how old they are,
that kind of thing. Um. So yeah, that's it's pretty cool.
You wouldn't think about it, but it does make sense
that since they all follow the same process at the
same time. Totally. Are we due for a breaker now? Yeah,
I think we have chuck. All right, Uh, we're gonna
(25:59):
come back. I don't even know what we're going to
talk about, so that'll be very exciting for everybody. What's left? Actually,
(26:35):
there's a lot left, which is pretty neat. So, um,
we we've learned a lot from supernova and just by
studying them, we start finding things out that there's like
a lot of caveats to what we just said. Not
everything follows the exact same process, with the exception of
those Type one A that that becomes standard candles because
they follow such a a specific roadmap. But the type
(26:58):
two are a little more chaos dick um than than
what we thought before. And that's evidence from a supernova
that was discovered in two thousand six. That um is
named s N l S O three C three B B. Right.
Is that is that the one they nicknamed Champagne Supernova? Yes,
because it was two thousand six. Were you into Oasis
(27:22):
or Brit Pop at all? Yeah? I like Brit pop,
but I like more eighties Brit pop, like um that
whole uh like twenty four Party People era. Okay, all right, okay,
I'm not dogging on anything else. I'm holding my tongue,
holding my tongue. No, No, I wasn't. I wasn't an
Oasis fan, although there's a couple of the songs I
really liked, but that was an era for me where
(27:44):
I think I was just listening to other stuff. Um,
Emily was really into that era Brit pop though she was.
She she liked that stuff. And it's fine. Every time,
you know, she puts on a little Brit pop mix,
it's fine. What else is she listening to from the era? Uh? Uh?
Who verve that Bittersweet Symphony? Yeah? I think a little
(28:05):
bit of um early only cold Play. Uh It's it's
almost like it's and it seems very uncool to even
mentioned Cold Light. Now, Am I wrong? I did that?
But I think those first couple of albums she liked,
Uh who else? It seems like there were some other
Brit pop bands I'm just not thinking about. I'm sure
(28:26):
there's plenty of others for sure. I mean, we can
just talk about brit pop for the rest of the end. No, no, no,
We've got to go back to Supernova and specifically this
Champagne Supernova from two thousand six, right, Blur, that's another one, Okay, Yeah, yeah,
Blur's great. Sure, Absolutely the Doves she liked them. I
never Oh yeah, I like them too. Actually I didn't
(28:49):
realize they were Brit pop. Yeah I think, uh, I mean,
not not as Brit poppy as like Travis and stuff
like that. But okay, yeah, I like those Doves albums.
Those were good. Yeah, they really were good. Definitely an
overlook group. Alright, So they called this one the Champagne
Supernova in two thousand six s n L S zero three.
You already said it, but it's fun to say. But
(29:12):
this one was h This one kind of rocked everyone's
world because it was only not only it extended up
to two times solar mass and it exceeded that Shandra's
car limit, which was one point four previously. When we
thought that was that was it like it couldn't go
any higher than it turned it not to eleven but
to two. Yeah, and so it not only um contradicted
(29:36):
the then understanding of type one A supernova, it contradicted
something I said not ten minutes ago. Well, and does
that mean that's now just thrown out forever and like
anything can happen, or is it still generally one point four?
I would guess it's generally generally one point four because
I don't think they made it up. I think the
math suggested it. Probably just have to figure out, like
how to adjust the math to include this phenomenately. And
(30:00):
that's actually physicists love that stuff. Like the whole reason
they're running the Large Hadron Collider is because they're trying
to create stuff that they've never seen before so that
you can figure out how it works. Um, they've reached
the levels of of theory and now need like more data,
and that's what they're doing. So when they come across
more data like this in the field of astronomy, I'm
(30:20):
pretty sure it's the exact same thing, they're like, yes,
this is a total anomaly, and now we're going to
have a better understanding. Once we figure out how this
thing fits into our current understanding. Keene, that was another
brit pop band. They were Okay, yeah, yeah, that was
the They were the one from the Lake House with
Keanu and Sandra Bullock. That song, Oh I never saw that.
(30:41):
Emily watches that movie over and over just because of
the house. That it's a great house, but also the
tree part is really amazing too. I love it. She
will watch bad movies for architecture alone, over and over. Okay,
but I suspect she also probably likes that movie because
it's pretty good. Just bring your clean X if you
sit down and watch. All Right, it's a good one.
(31:05):
Anything Kanna reeves Us is great for sure. I love
that guy. Okay, hey, he's great. He's great and everything.
I'll say that. How about that, I mean just a
great human. I like that guy. Sure? Yeah? Um, all right,
So where are we? I've wasted enough time. Okay, here's
where we get to another really interesting part. Okay. The
type two supernova can produce a couple of different outcomes,
(31:29):
and it depends on the size of the star when
it's at its main sequence, which is that those billions
of years that it's burnings it reaches its adult size.
And if a type two star has a size that's
greater than forty solar masses, has a mass forty times
our own son or more, when that thing goes off,
(31:51):
when it reaches the end of its life and that
core collapse happens, it will um actually turn into a
black hole. It gets sucks so thoroughly into itself that
it basically goes pupe and becomes a black hole. Well
that's another reason we might not see it right. Yes,
but that's why some supernova kind of like flicker for
(32:12):
a second then go out, and that you just you
know that it was a greater than for forty solar
bodies um mass star that just underwent supernova. Um. Yeah,
And that's and that amazing because all that same stuff
that's going on that creates that collapse doesn't let the
explosion happen. The force of gravity is so great because
(32:33):
this thing is so massive that it doesn't let it
escape and it eventually just sucks itself into a black hole.
The other way it can go, which for my money,
is equally interesting, is if it has a mass of
less than forty solar bodies, it will become a neutron star,
so that core sticks around. Remember I said it can
(32:54):
go from a five thousand mile diameter star down to
a twelve mile diameter in a second. That twelve mile
diameter core can stick around. And that's what's called the
neutron star. And one of the cool things about neutron
stars is that sometimes they spin, and when they spin,
they're putting off so much energy that they release a
flash of light on a really regular schedule. And those
(33:16):
are what's called pulsars. That's right, and that's I know
we've talked about pulsars before. Surely we have before too.
But there's one in particular. Did you see that one
that's the fastest spinning pulsar in the universe? But do
you mean psr J eight dash to four four six
a d the one and only. Do they have a
(33:37):
cool name for that one? I don't think so I
didn't see it. I think they think that's a cool
name for it. Dah boy, it's that the kind of
people were dealing with. It is sixteen kilometers in diameter, which, uh,
it sounds big, but as far as stars go, is
not that big, right? No? Because I mean, like it's
the size of an American city, you know, the downtown
(33:58):
part of it. And then but it's the same mass
or greater of our own son, up to forty times
the mass of our own sun. But in that small
of the package, that's dense. Baby it Uh, this thing
is really cooking though. It's spinning at about seven hundred
and sixteen times per second, which is an equivalent of
(34:20):
close to forty three RPMs. Yeah, so imagine downtown Los
Angeles spinning seven hundred and sixteen times per second out
there in outer space. Sometimes it feels like that, am
I right? Yeah, especially after a long night. Uh. If
all this sounds potentially dangerous, you know as far as
(34:42):
us here on Earth, Um, it would be super dangerous
if there was one that exploded close to Earth, it
would be very huge. First of all, there would be
all kinds of the gnarly radiation that would not be
good for us. However, Um, it has to be a
really really really big star are too explode as a supernova,
(35:02):
And we know what's out there right now, and there
aren't any stars that are nearly close enough. It would
be millions of years uh for a start close enough
to us to be big enough to become a supernova
so you don't have to worry about it. But there
it has happened in the past. There are traces a
past supernova here on Earth, uh, in particular radioactive iron sixty,
(35:26):
which I don't think it's an open and shut case,
but it's a it's a really good indicator that that
was there's supernova debris um just buried down there on
the sea floor. Yeah, And they're trying to correlate it
with some of the mass extinctions that took place in
Earth's history, and they think that maybe you know, just
like blow you know, the mastodon off of its feet
and put it in extinction. But instead it might have
(35:49):
had a real effect on the ozone layer which allowed
more UV than normal through, which could have triggered a
climate change that led to a mass extinction. Well, they
say it does at least correspond close to the beginning
of the plies to see an ice age, So I
don't think they've said like that's the cause. But I
don't know. I couldn't couldn't have helped for it to
(36:11):
be like a genuinely planet sterilizing event, though it would
have to be within a hundred two hundred and fifty
light years um or no fifty light years and the
closest one that could go supernova is one K Pegasus
and it's a hundred and fifty light years away. So,
like you said, we're not We're not in any kind
of danger. And our son will never go supernova because
(36:31):
it's not um eight solar masses and it's not going
to reach one point four solar masses because it's not
a part of a binary star, and obviously it's one
solar mass because the solar mass is equal to our
son's mass. I think Planet Sterilizing Event should be our
Brit pop album title. I think yes. I couldn't agree more.
(36:51):
It's not very Brit poppy, but we could push the boundaries. Sure,
as long as like we're wearing white jeans that are
pegged with black patent leather shoes on the cover, doesn't
matter what we name it. Did we do this one
one more thing? There's such things as zombie stars. This
is a new thing that they figured out in the
last few years. That's an an anomaly that we don't understand.
(37:12):
But they're basically stars that undergo supernova multiple times. Doesn't
really make much sense, but they are starting to figure
that out. And it's not the case of uh like
the one in two thousand eleven, not that I know of, no,
because it would it would only hit it's you know,
ejecta once. As far as I can tell, this is
(37:34):
like like at least five or six times that they've
found this one zombie Star to have gone supernova. Interesting. Yeah,
I think so too. And maybe that's the name of
our brit pop band. What zombie Star? Yeah, that Zombie
Star Planet Sterilizing Event, I think, yeah, right, yeah, totally.
(37:55):
Although Diarrhea Planet could use Planet Sterilizing Event. That would
be a great album for them. I'm sure if this
has gotten back to those guys are like, why didn't
you talk about us this much while we were still together?
Maybe we can get a reunion going stadium tour, I
would go totally, um, but yeah, zombie Star is a
great name for our britt pop band. And green all right, Well,
(38:17):
if we accomplished anything, it's that. Yeah, I think we
accomplished more than that, chuck. And since I said that,
I want to direct everybody to the House stuff works
article how a supernova works. Clearly they hedged it, didn't
just call it how supernova work. Um, and uh, there's
plenty of other stuff that's really interesting all over the
internet to read about it. And as I said that,
(38:39):
like I said, it's time for listener mail. H Yeah,
I watched some I watched some cool kid videos on YouTube. Uh,
they're they're they're always just very instructive. I know we
say it a lot, but if you haven't caught it
in the past, if they are difficult scientific concepts for
you to understand as an adult, or if you're a kid,
(39:00):
that these kids websites they break it down like adult website.
Should you know they'd really do it right, It's good? Um,
all right, I'm gonna call this Apparently we're we've been
patronizing for a long time about the Dark Ages. We've
been called out about this before, have we really? Yeah?
(39:21):
We just never all right, well, I'm gonna do it again.
This is from Greg. I know you get a lot
of emails, so you'll probably never even read this. Um.
I also know Josh hates correction emails. That's not true
at all, true, right, but for the love of God,
could you stop referring to the medieval era as the
Dark Ages as you did in your latest May episode.
(39:44):
It's an outdated Victorian concept that implies medieval people were
stupid and ignorant, that nothing happened for several hundred years
until the Renaissance magically appeared. It's patronizing and devalues the
progress made because of great medieval thinkers, as well as
supposing that the everyday person in between the tenth and
fifteen centuries was a moron who bungled through life with
(40:04):
no meaningful contribution. I would hope that your years of
research into our progress as a species would have shown
that this is not how people evolved. So if you
could stop using such an insulting term for a significant
period of human history would benefit all concerned. And then
it's from Greg. And for me, Greg, I just say
(40:26):
dark Ages because people know what we're generally talking about,
as far as an arror goes. I never mean that
nothing good came from the Dark Ages. But I don't know,
Maybe maybe I should rethink he've been saying that. I
don't know. I I think Gregg's beef is with society
in general, and he's really picking on us and taking
it out on us because it's exactly like you said
(40:47):
that we're using that so people know what we're talking about.
That's like saying, can you please stop saying Enlightenment like
everything they did was so great? There were there were
plenty of morons in the Enlightenment that aren't getting their due.
Nice work, Chuck Man. You just pick Greg up and
put them in a health Nelson body slammed him. No, Greg,
(41:08):
I hug you. We're going to get another email from
Greg for this one. If you want to be like
Greg and call us out about something that really gets
under your skin, stuck in your craw gums in your hair,
that kind of thing, uh, you can email to us
at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff You
(41:29):
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