Dahlia Wilde continues on her journey to better understand the universe and our place in it. She lands in London with her Wonder Dog and has a mind-blowing pep-talk with the incredible Dr. Mark C. Kruse, her particle physics mentor and friend from Duke University and CERN Large Hadron Collider. They’re joined by wonderful astrophysicists, Dr. Chris Lintott from Oxford University and the BBC “THE SKY AT NIGHT”, and Dr. Hannah Wakeford from Bristol University. Chris and Hannah co-wrote the excellent book “BANG!!” (The Complete History of the Universe) with legendary guitarist and astrophysicist Sir Brian May.
“OH MY GOD PARTICLE SHOW!” is Executive Produced by Dahlia Wilde and iHEART Media and is part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network.
Please follow me at @DahliaWildeOfficial
Thanks for tuning in! Keep looking up! We are the stars!
To order the great book “BANG!!” by Sir Brian May, Dr. Chris Lintott and Dr. Hannah Wakeford please visit www.banguniverse.com
Sound Design by Paul Mercier.
Music by Ivo Moring.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome nkommen yinvenido venu bnvenui ability. Welcome one and all.
Thank you for joining me. I'm Gallia Wild and this
is the Oh My God Particle Show where we talk
about science and art and music and good good good
vibrations and all matters near and far. So ready or not,
(00:33):
unpack your imaginations and get ready to rumble through the
universe that we are so so lucky to live in.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
We are the Stars removed liability. Due to its heavy matter,
this podcast could potentially warp the empty space surrounding it.
At this time, no significant health hazards are known to
be associated with this effect, except in Sacramento, Mondesko, Tarzan
and on certain streets of the nine O two one
oh zip code. Should your head fall off, please do
not consult.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
I Hi, I'm telling you Wild. I'm the host of
the Oh My God Particle Show. I love creating as
much as I can. I just love art and science
and where they meet. Thank you for being here. It's
awesome to have you here. So here's the deal. Me
and my dog Higgs Boson. We're on the way discern right,
(01:21):
but we have a really long layover in the UK.
But it's awesome because this gives us a chance to
drop into Oxford University to have a chat with some
super geniuses who can explain a few things about the
Big Bang and the birth of the universe. I have
some amazing memories of Oxford when I studied there as
a Truman scholar. Okay, so I really want to give
(01:43):
you guys the big picture of what we're dealing with
here on the Oh my God Particle Show. So we
got this gigantic universe of galaxies and planets and stars
and rocks and particles, and then back all the way
down to sub atomic particles. So I'm going right to
the source. We have doctor Mark Cruz, who has guided
(02:03):
me this whole time on my particle physics journey. He
took me a third of a mile underground into the
Large Hadron Collider. Mark is a brilliant particle physicist, a kind,
incredibly supportive teacher, and basically an all around great guy
who gets the spiritual and creative aspects of science and
the universe. He's from New Zealand, teaches at Duke University
(02:26):
in North Carolina, where I also went as an undergraduate,
and he's researcher at CERN will be joined by doctor
Chris Lin Todd, an astrophysicists at Oxford. He's a presenter
of the BBC show The Sky at Night. If that's
not enough for you, we also have doctor Hannah Wakeford,
an astrophysicist from Bristol University. She's a powerhouse investigating the
(02:49):
atmospheres of transiting exoplanets using space based telescopes. But wait,
there's more. Chris and Hannah co authored with Sir Brian,
the legendary guitarist of Queen, a very cool book called
Bang with two exclamation marks, Bang the Complete History of
the Universe. They're so enthusiastic and brilliant and especially inspiring.
(03:15):
All three of these Stellar guests are gonna tell us
more about the Big Bang, exoplanet citizens, science particles. I mean,
how cool is that? Art, science, music all rolled up
into one. See it's all connected. This is a great conversation.
I know you're gonna love it. Okay, hit it, genius people, Hi.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Hannah, Hi Hannah.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
That's Mark Cruz from Stern and from Duke and this
is Hannah the genius from Bristol.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
He was so helpful. I've asked him every dumb question
and no human kind and he always answers it.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
No dumb Christians. There's no dumb Christians, no dumb questions.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
That's never a dumb Thank you, Mark, we have Chris.
Thanks for joining you know, Hannah and Mark Cruz g
from Cern and Duke and New Zealand. It's kind of cool.
I was thinking that how we're all in different places
and hopefully the people who are interested in the world
and the universe. So I'm like, I was gonna say
I'm the normal person here. I mean, I'm the lay person.
(04:15):
I don't even though I went to Oxford, I was
a biologist and everything I've learned about particle physics was
from doctor Mark Cruz, who was kind enough he took
me a third of a mile underground into the large
Hadron Collider a few years ago before it was turned on,
and Mark helped me cook up a theater show called
the Oh My God Particle Show. And then this iHeart
(04:35):
series is, you know, based on those particle physics ideas.
But I think my mission is to try to help
make science cool and fun and also that just men
and women are all doing it together. It's a no
big deal. I mean, it is a huge deal what
you do, but I just wanted to know more about
like the awesome things you're doing with citizen science, about
(04:56):
your book Bang that you wrote with Sir Brian May
now and then just how you make it fun and
make a living, or I want to know about the zuniverse,
exo planets, everything cool.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
You should we should put out. We're probably both quite
sleep deprived. So the big deadline for proposals to use
the new JWST space telescope is tomorrow. So every astronomer
in the world is frazzled right now, kandah more than most,
so that's we should probably talk about that a bit
as well. Yes, I think that's deepening.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
People will make a pitch for you, so and what
you could tell us what you want to do with
the telescope and feel how can we help you because
you're thank you so much for showing up and helping us,
and because I feel like I know you said the
citizen science is a thing in the United States, but
for some reason I didn't know about it, and I
don't think most people know about it. So tell us
(05:48):
whatever you want, sleep deprived, just ramble on.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
I'll let Chris, take it first, I can collect my
brain to go for from pieces.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Across the Yeah, feel free, tell us how amazing you are,
but yet so approachable and cool, and now everybody should
know about this.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
In only four words. Yeah. So I'm Chris, and I
usually describe myself as a distractable astronomer. So I started
as a kid who looked up at the night sky
and wondered what might be up there. And I've had
the amazing fortune to spend my professional life looking up
at the sky and wondering what might be up there.
(06:25):
So I work on finding new ways to get information
out of telescopes. I care about galaxies like our own
Milky Way, but also distant galaxies in the early universe.
But I have a sideline in trying to find planets,
to find unusual things in the universe. And I've recently
got distracted by rocks that come to our Solar system
(06:46):
from distant stars, what we call interstellar objects. And so
I'm sort of interested everything. But lots of the work
that I do is done in collaboration with many millions
of members of Well flee your audience. So I run
a project called the Zuniverse, which asks people to help
sort through scientific data, through images of galaxies, through data
(07:09):
that might reveal the presence of other planets, but also
images of penguins in Antarctica which need counting, and even
some transcription projects looking through old historical records. And so
that's fueled my sense of caring about everything, but it's
also been a wonderful way to work. So we call
this citizen science, and it's a big part of what
(07:30):
I do.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
So, yeah, I'm Hannah Wakeford, and I really come from
a planetary science background, and that means that I kind
of started out studying the Earth Venus Solar System planets,
trying to look specifically at how the Sun impacts our
atmospheres and what that does to it. So I studied
in the Arctic looking at the Aurora Borealis, the Northern lights,
(07:55):
to try and understand the timelines from particles leaving this
and then hitting our upper atmosphere and causing them to
emit those beautiful lights. That really kind of took me
onto just really loving atmospheres and everything to do with them.
And I studied exoplanets and their atmospheres they had only
(08:17):
just really been discovered and started to be observed with
telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope, and we have spent
the last decade or so trying to understand what is
in the atmospheres of alien planets hundreds of light years away.
We can actually measure these worlds and what's in their
(08:40):
atmospheres better than we can the ones in our solar system.
So we're using now the brand new six and a
half meter JWST to get even more detail from these worlds,
and we are constantly discovering brand new things. I absolutely
(09:00):
love atmospheres of all kinds, so I have huge biases
towards various planets, and I just want to play with data.
So primarily I'm what we call an observational astronomer. This
means that I use instruments telescopes to measure the stars,
measure different objects, and that produces for us, essentially, instead
(09:23):
of those gorgeous pictures you see, we're actually collapsing all
of that down into a squiggle, and that squiggle, the
spectrum of the light, which is kind of the encoded
fingerprint of what that object is made of, can really
help us understand things about its formation and its evolution.
(09:45):
So we're really interested in looking at the spectrum of
all of these different molecules, and that actually takes us
from these planetary atmospheres to the gas that formed them.
So how did their star form from the disc? Wherein
the galaxy are there? What are these galaxies made of?
How old are they? And that chemistry of that spectrum
(10:06):
can take us all the way back through time. So
it's all about taking those gorgeous images that we see
and turning them into squiggles with ara bars. And that's
the bit that I really enjoy doing, is just really
playing with it.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
And Hannah's very very good at this and is the
world expert, so I should explain why we're both here.
I suppose that's okay. Yeah. Something that happened to me, gosh,
twenty years ago, nearly fifteen years ago, was that I
got involved in a BBC program called The Sky at Night,
which still exists. So The Sky Knight's been broadcasting since
(10:42):
nineteen fifty seven. It pre dates the space Age, so
it started before Sputnik, the first satellite was.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
Launched, and I want to make it clear it started
before Chris.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Thanks any Yeah, this is an old man role I
think I'm playing here. But the sky. There used to
be he broadcast every new moon because it was assumed
that people who were interested in astronomy would want to
look at the moon, and so if you do it
when the moon's not visible in the sky, then they
might watch television. The BBC lost track of the Moon
in the nineties, so now we're now a month We're
now a monthly show. But through this I met The
(11:18):
presenter who presented from nineteen fifty seven all the way
through to twenty twelve was Patrick Moore, who was a
sort of English eccentric. He had a monocle. He talked
very quickly and very seriously about all sorts of astronomical topics,
but he was the authority on everything. And he'd become
friends with Brian May, the guitarist from Queen and they'd
(11:41):
become friends because Brian May is an amateur astronomer. He
made famously He made his first guitar with his dad
in their workshop when he was a young boy, and
they also made a telescope. But having had a major
rock career and played Madison Square Guard of all the
rest of it, Brian had some downtime and so he
(12:02):
wanted a new telescope. And I think if you're a
rock star, you just go to advice in the right places.
So Brian just called the most famous astronomy in the
country and asked for advice on what telescope you should buy.
So those two became friends. Despite the fact that they
shared no musical taste whatsoever. They were both very musical
people and there's no overlap in the middle. Patrick could
(12:23):
have the idea of getting Brian to write a book
about astronomy because it would reach a wide audience. I
happened to be in the meeting, and both of them
turned around and went, Chris should help write this as well.
And so we wrote a book in the most ridiculous
way possible, because Brian said, I'd love to write book,
but I don't have time. I said, I don't know
(12:44):
how to write a book. I'm a PhD student. I've
got other things to be doing. And Perhaps said, don't
worry about that, and wrote a book in a week
and then sent it to both of us. And that's
not the book that got published, because what then happened
was we spent most of a year and a half
sitting at Patrick's on the weekends, the three of us
going through the book line by line and working out
how we could explain things. And the concept of the
(13:05):
book is that it tells the whole history of the
universe in order. So we start with the Big Bang,
and we keep going to the far future, so you know,
Earth forms about two thirds about a third of the
way through the book, Life appears somewhere in the middle,
and then we have the future. So yeah, it's an
interesting thing, and it was well received, and it's actually
(13:27):
got out of date, and so Patrick's no longer with us.
But Brian and I were talking and we wanted to
update the book. People were still buying it. We felt
that we needed to reflect all the amazing science that's
happened in the last fifteen years. And when we started
think about that, what's interesting is that the science of
the big the science of the grand scale of the universe,
(13:49):
the science of cosmology. You know, how did the Big
Bang happen? What's the universe made of? What will happen
to us in the end. Those things haven't changed in
the last twenty years or so. But the bit in
the middle, how do planets form? Are their planets out
in the galaxy? How likely is it that an earthlike
(14:09):
planet will form. All of those things have changed dramatically
because of the work by Hannah and her colleagues to
find and understand these exo planets, these planets around other stars.
So I realized we needed somebody who was an expert
in that middle section, you know, the stuff involving rocks
and atmospheres and that sort of stuff. Some things, yeah, yeah,
(14:33):
the complicated things. To a physicist, the early universe is easy, right.
It's when you start to worry about chemistry and atmospheres
and all the rest of it that it's hard. And
so I'd known Hannah for years and years. I'd interviewed
her for the Sky at night when she was a
PhD student, talking about atmospheres on other planets, and so
she was the perfect person to come in and talk. Sorry,
that's silly interrupting. If you had that, she was the
(14:54):
perfect person to come in and help us Rea think
this middle Siriki, are.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
You aging backwards? Hannah? You're so quite amazing, And I'm
so happy to have you here too, because we really
want to encourage more women to get into STEM, but
also that it's just natural to be extraordinary, you know,
So it becomes ordinary. And I love everyone just talking
about science together, so it's not men and women separate.
(15:23):
Scientists are serious about it. I love that you guys actually,
you know, have these great personalities and seem like we
might want to hang out with you, just like Mark, Mark,
How do you how does it fit in what you
do marketcern with what these two guys do.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Yeah, I think you know, both particle physicists and astrophysicists,
I mean we're asking the same questions, just in different ways.
I mean we're asking, you know, what the universe is
made of, how it's going to evolve, how did it start?
And you know, how are we even here to even
ask those questions?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Right?
Speaker 4 (15:57):
And so you know, astrophysicists tend to you know that
they look out and make observations of the earlier universe.
The further further way you look, the earlier you know,
the the universes that you're looking at, and so that
you know, they construct models of the universe by observations,
by looking out. In particle physics, we kind of do
the opposite. We look in. We've got you know, we
build these huge in some almost like huge microscopes where
(16:21):
we collide particles together with very high energies. Like at
the Large Hadron Collider, we're colliding you know, protons together
with enormous energies, and in some sense we're trying to
recreate what the very early universe look like. So when
we do these collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, we're
colliding particles with energies that naturally existed when the universe
was about a trillionth of a second old. So in
(16:43):
some sense, we're recreating the conditions of the universe it
was about when it has had an age of about
one trillionth of a second. So that means so we've
been able to observe all the particles you know, that
existed at that particular time. You know, we've discovered the
Higgs boson, for example, So now we understand that there
was this Higgs field that permeated the entire universe around
that time, and so you know, in some sense, you know,
(17:07):
we understand how the universe evolved from about a trillionth
of a second onwards. The unfortunate thing is, you know
a lot of really amazing things, and you know, without
which we wouldn't even be here. But it made a
lot of amazing things happened before that trillion of a second.
There was something called an inflationary period of the universe
at about ten to the minus thirty two seconds, which
is almost an indescribably small number, right, we can't get
(17:30):
our heads around how small that is. But the universe
expanded extremely rapidly at about ten to the minus thirty
two seconds in this sort of what's called an inflationary epoch.
We don't understand how or why that was initiated. And
then we don't know, you know, how why the Big
Bang even existed. We just we just label it as
the Big Bang, the start of our universe. We've got
no idea what exactly happened then, I mean, it's it's
(17:53):
completely speculative. So all our theories about what happened the
trillions of a second and younger for the universe a
purely speakulative theories. I mean, there's some interesting ones out there,
but I think we're probably a long long way from
really understanding.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
So I like that we can take this in sequence.
So Mark, you do the first trillidth of a second exactly,
which we don't understand. Then I take over because I'm
an observer, so I look out at the universe, and
the oldest light that we can see comes from a
period about four hundred thousand years into the history of
the universe. So that's the point where we actually have evidence.
(18:28):
We can inferse some things about what life was like
before that, or what the universe was like before that.
But from four hundred thousand years onwards, that's my domain,
and we think about how we got the structure we
see around us, how galaxies formed, you know, how do
And really that's the epoch where it's gravity that matters,
at least early on things we're now probing with the
(18:50):
new telescope like JWST. Gravity acts to sort of pull
material together to form galaxies, to form clusters of galaxies.
This is grand dance that happened across the universe to
form the structure. But it's not too long. Maybe we
could argue it when the first planets are but you
get the first stars. The first stars are made out
(19:12):
of almost completely hydrogen and helium. They produce carbon, oxygen,
and all the other elements that we know about, and
so once the first stars are done, we then have
the raw materials so the planets can form, and at
that point things get complicated, and so I hand over
to Hannah.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:28):
So taking over from that, that's when we enter the
really big realm of the chemistry. How is the chemistry interacting,
How are we forming materials that are combining those elements
that are made in the stars together to create these
more complex areas that we see in space. And that
really starts out from these big cold dust clouds where
(19:49):
our stars and our planetary systems are forming, all the
way down through that evolutionary period till we've got these
fully formed planets orbiting around their star and trying to
understand whether or not there's a relationship between what's in
the star and the environment around it and what's in
(20:10):
the planet's atmosphere, how it formed, where it formed, and
if it stayed there over time. So one of the
really big things that we're learning by looking at these exoplanets,
these planets beyond our soul system, is that the planets
in our soul system didn't form where we see them today.
They move around over time, Their orbits lengthen and shorten
(20:34):
as they move closer and further from the Sun, and
that motion, that migration, as we call it, influences lots
of different things within those systems. And we've seen from
these exoplanets that there are planets as big as Jupiter,
so eleven times the size of the Earth, eleven times
the radius of our planet, three hundred times its mass.
(20:59):
But instead of being where Jupiter is five times the
distance from the Sun as we are, these are twenty
times closer, even closer than mercury. They're on orbits of
four or five days around their star. They're locked into
this kind of dance where one side is permanently heated
to thousands of degrees and the other is in permanent darkness.
(21:23):
And it's all then about the dynamics and the chemistry
of what's happening on those timescales. So we're going from
the smallest particles and things that we really don't understand,
to the biggest things in our universe galaxies, clusters of galaxies,
all the way back down to looking at the atoms
in these atmospheres.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Amazing. Why did they say that we're made of the stars?
How did that all work out?
Speaker 5 (21:47):
That's a Chris question.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Okay, yeah, so we have this. We actually had this.
It was Brian innovative. So we have this as the
quote at the start of the first version of Bang.
Yeahs Mitchell's quote that we're all stardust. So when the
universe forms, Mark forms the universe, but he only managed
it with his particle physics and his cosmogy. He only
(22:09):
manages to make a universe that contains two elements. It
only contains hydrogen and helium. That's what the Big Bang
leaves us with. To be fair, there's a sprinkling of lithium,
but like only the tiniest amount. And if you look
round you right now, you're not going to see much hygien.
You're not going to see much helium, and you there's
not even a sprinkling of lithium. Doesn't do much when
(22:29):
you want, you know, a kitchen and a table and
some living beings to share the world with. And so
those elements are all created in stars. So once you
form stars, stars are powered by nuclear fusion. They convert
elements to heavier elements and release energy along the way.
So our sun is essentially a machine for turning hydrogen
(22:53):
into helium. Bigger stars, all stars near their ends of
their lives sometimes can turn helium into heavier elements, and
so they produce the carbon and the oxygen the nitrogen,
the phosphorus, all the other elements that the things around
you that the Earth is made of. And so we
think that the first generation of stars in the universe
(23:14):
came quickly and burned through their fuel very quickly and
exploded in dramatic supernov which maybe one day we'll see,
and those explosions spread material, heavier material through the galaxy
and enabled a formation of a second generation of star
(23:34):
that could have planets made out of this extra stuff
that we've created. Our Sun, we know is from looking
at the pattern of elements that are contained within it
and that we see in the Solar System. We know
our Sun is a third generation star. So the stuff
that you're made of has already been through two different
generations of star to get to this point. And so
(23:58):
you know, we are starts in the sense that the
atoms that make up our bodies have already existed in
two stars. And it's really part of this story. I
think one of the fun things about BANG was that
we set out to tell the story in order, because
stories are telled in order, you have a beginning, of middle,
and an end, you know, so this seems sensible. But
(24:20):
what happened was that the story. The universe becomes more
complex over time, more interesting things happen over time. I
don't think I quite realized that. You know, Mark and
I can argue about it, but we can probably write
down the equations that explain the first few seconds on
the back of an envelope and do a good job
(24:42):
of describing the universe. You want to describe the atmosphere
of the Earth or the way that planets form, we
need computer code and a headache and at least a
few years. And so Hannah's science is a science of complexity.
I live in the middle of just looking at things.
A mark of the particle visits of a simple thing.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Yeah, it's quite remarkable that, you know. You know, in
particle physics, our goal really is to understand the fundamental
nature of the universe, like what you know, the fundamental components,
that what it's made of, the fundamental interactions which then
you know, are used to make more complex structures. But
that understanding will never be able to explain emergent behavior
like you know atmospheres, and you know, everything in some
(25:25):
sense is just made of two things. I mean, you know,
fundamental quarks that make up protons and neutrons and electrons,
and together they make up all the atoms. And so
you know, where does all this emergent behavior come from?
Let alone, you know, the emergence of consciousness. I mean
that still our brains are just made up of those
two things. But somehow there's these other emergent sort of
(25:45):
complex systems that exist. And it doesn't matter, you know,
I don't think it doesn't matter how well and understanding
we have of fundamentally what the universe is made of.
There's this big gap between different complexities that no theory
can really really bridge right now, and so it's really
kind of fascinating. I mean, it's I don't think we've
(26:07):
come to crossroads yet, but it is a limitation of
our models. Our models are really restricted in some sense,
and I think explaining emergent behavior, emergent complex behavior is
a real, real challenge. And right now we don't have
a theory like you know, atmosphere is. We can't predict
the weather. We don't have an equation that can predict
(26:28):
the weather. We've got to run very sophisticated computer models.
Does that mean that you know, equations don't exist. I've
been using even the right languages in order to form
these equations. There's lots of open questions.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
I think, well, I like to say that when we
were looking at that history of the universe and how
our knowledge on it has changed over the last fifteen years.
The universe is thirteen point seven billion years old, but
in the last fifteen years, we've rewritten nine billion years
of that in our knowledge that we've actually learned, you know,
(27:02):
the whole middle section of bang had to be completely
reshuffled and understood. So where the complexity of forming our
stars and forming our planets and understanding what that means
and how they compare to other ones, that complex set
of systems. What we can learn from our own planet
through those models are things like the weather. So using
(27:24):
these really grand models to make predictions, they make those
predictions based on running millions and millions and millions of
the same model with a different starting point and asking
the question, how often does this one thing occur? What
is the probability of it raining in this ten kilometers
squared in the next hour. And it's all about having
(27:45):
the numbers and being able to run that to get
and understanding of the statistical probability of an occurrence and
that's really where we're at. And we're looking at these
different places, and we're looking across the universe. We're asking
what is the statistical probability of this being a representative
of what we're looking at? Is this galaxy a good
(28:07):
representation of all galaxies that look like this? Do all
galaxies look like this? The answer is no. There's a
whole range of different kind of types. And that's exactly
the same for planets. There's a whole range of different
kind of categories of planets, and we can keep dividing
that down. There's whole ranges of different kinds of stars,
and it's about understanding the relationship between all of those
(28:29):
really complex systems.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
And Chris, you had mentioned getting a headache, and I
was wondering, how do you conceive of this massiveness right
without getting a headache? Or I know Mark and I
had talked about that some particle physicists can get kind
of upset when they get to the bottom and they
find nothing's there. But it is also kind of strange
(28:55):
to imagine such vastness.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
It really is. I think there's a sort of sense
of looking out into the universe that can boggle the mind.
And I think it's very easy as somebody who talks
about astronomy in all sorts of audiences, it's something I
can use very effectively. You know, I can tell you that,
(29:18):
you know, the Sun is just a star, that it's
one of maybe a few hundred billion stars in the
Milky Way galaxy, and that the Milky Way Galaxy we
now know is one of only a few hundred billion
galaxies in the observable universe alone. And so what that
means is that there are probably more stars in the
(29:39):
observable universe than there are grains of sand on the Earth.
And you know, you can get people into this headspace
where they feel awed by all of this. Now, there
are a couple of things that I want to say
about that. Firstly, we don't actually know how many grains
of sand there are on the Earth. Turns out that
(30:00):
some much harder problems, so that that's difficult, and geologists
should work on that so that I can pin down.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
I mean that depends on what you call a grain.
Where does start becoming a grain?
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Right?
Speaker 5 (30:13):
When does it become gravel or a pebble? When does
it become just an atom or a molecule. You've got
to ask, is what is that range?
Speaker 3 (30:21):
But before we get distracted by that, I think, yeah,
so that's the first thing. But I think the second
thing is that I think when we do that, I
think what I'm doing is giving the impression that I,
as an astronomer, have some deeper understanding of what it
means to be a being on a planet around a
star that's one of a few hundred billion in a
(30:42):
galaxy that's one of you. I have no idea. We
get used to saying the words for sure, so I
can say, you know, we are one of a we're
orbiting a star that's one of a few hundred billion,
hundred billion, and not get distracted by it and ruin
my Tuesday. But I don't actually have an understanding what
(31:06):
it is. But I think there is something about looking
at the universe. If the universe is this fast, I
think very seriously that as far as we know for now,
we are the only beings in that universe that we
know of that are capable of contemplating it, that are
capable of looking up at the universe and trying to
understand the behaviors of particles that Mark worries about, of
(31:29):
thinking about whether there are other planets, and even asking
the question whether there are other beings like us out there,
and I think there's something really important that therefore we
do that. It may be that, you know, next door,
there's an alien civilization that's way further ahead than we are,
and then we can relax and goof off a bit.
(31:49):
But for now, I think, you know, we are the
bit of the universe that thinks about itself, and that
I think is the thing that gives not a headache,
but makes me sort of stop for a second and
think deep thoughts before I go back to my email
or whatever else.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
It's exciting, though that you mentioned that about all that
uncertainty or but honestly saying that you might not know anything,
but I was interested in that. Via Ruben, she said
she got such pleasure from looking at things and try
and understand them, and I will.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
It's about understanding. I think it's about relaxing that you
don't know. I think I think we do a bad
job in both of our countries of teaching teaching science
as a set of received facts exactly not approached to
I mean, Hannah, you were talking about being in the
artic and trying to understand the atmosphere. That must be
an exercise in realizing how much we don't know. I
(32:44):
assume you've gone through your life without thinking about the
fact that we don't understand the Earth's atmosphere, and suddenly
you're there and confronting it. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:51):
I mean, one of the hardest things that we do
when we're teaching is get the students to realize it's
okay that we don't I don't know the answer to something,
so that there isn't a definitive yes or no, or
there isn't an equation that we can solve for absolutely
every single process that we've got, or if there is,
(33:12):
sometimes it's not something that we can put an exam
for them. We can't solve that. You'll need a computer,
I'm afraid. So getting the transition from understanding these principles
or even just being able to think about them and
going okay, but that can mean any one of these
(33:32):
things is a whole different way of looking at things,
and it's a really hard thing to get around.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
That's why I love where music and art and science,
where it all connects, because that accessing that not knowing
and really helps with learning, doesn't it Because I mean,
I went to a lot of great schools, and I
still get so freaked out that there's one right answer
or you know, And I think it's really important to
(34:00):
encourage people to well, just to you know, explore. That's
so exciting.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
Yeah, I think encouraging failure is a good thing. I mean,
it's you know, failure is not a bad thing. And
you know, I teach both particle physics and astrophysics courses here,
but you can you know, the first thing I say
when i'm you know, when I when I start, is
that you know everything I'm going to teach you. You know,
especially in particle physics, you know, and even in astrophysics
we're talking about the stars and the galaxies. You know, everything,
(34:26):
This is everything I'm going to teach you is just
essentially five percent of the universe. In fact, we're teaching
you all about observable matter, things that we're able to
see and things that we're able to measure. But that's
only five percent of our universe. I mean, so you know,
there's there's twenty five percent that's something we have no idea.
It has some gravitational effect that we call dark matter.
We call it dark matter because we have no clue
(34:47):
what it is. We believe it is a form of matter,
but we don't. We have no idea. And then there's
a more mysterious sort of entity in the universe. That's
most of the universe, you know today, it's about seventy
percent of the universe. We have no idea what that is.
We call it our energy because basically we have no
idea what it is. It's presumably becomes some kind of field,
but it has it's having this anti gravitational, anti pressure
(35:10):
effect on the universe causing it to expand at an
accelerating rate, so you know, and we we so really
we have absolutely no idea what ninety five percent of
the universe even is, and so you know, it's you know,
that's our starting point.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
So we should just have fun. So it would be
cool to look at all this and no, no, I
know nothing. You carry on.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Well, I was just going to say in astronomy we
have this other uncertity as well, and that we don't
get to go and reach and manipulate what we're studying.
So I'm I would love to know more. We've got
a neighboring galaxy to the Milky Way called the Andromeda Galaxy,
which we will in about four and a half billion
years collide with. It'll be fine, be safe, but I'd
love to know more about Andromeda. But unfortunately it's a
pancake and it's almost edge on to us, so we
(35:57):
don't get a proper view of its disk and the
number of days where I wish we could just fly
over and have a quick look down. That would solve
a lot of by but we can't do that. And Hannah,
you can only see particular exoplanets, right.
Speaker 5 (36:09):
Yeah, So we've just got these what we call transiting planets.
These are planets that pass in front of their star
from our point of view, so they have to be
edge onto us from us looking out from the Earth,
that star has to be orbiting around. That planet has
to be orbiting around its star in such a way
that it blocks out some of that star's light. Only
(36:31):
about ten percent of existing planets will do this will
be at the perfect orientation, and it actually restricts us
in terms of how far away we can look as well.
We've discovered over five thousand exoplanets and they are all,
in astronomy terms, right next door. They're really close by
(36:52):
to us. Because it's so difficult for us to look
even further away. But there are some methods where we
can look directly at these planets, and that is, you know,
calorfully called direct imaging. Astronomy is a say what you
see kind of subject. We are quite simple in that
all of the things that we name things, they are
based on just what they look like. So these directly
(37:16):
imaged planets, we can get information straight from the planets
themselves by blocking out the light from the stars. But
that means that we're looking at these very different populations
of worlds. Worlds that are passing in front of their
stars are normally very very close in they have short
orbital periods, very much unlike our Solar System planets. And
then we've got these direct imaging ones which are really
(37:38):
really far away from their stars because we can see
them separate from their stars, again very much unlike our
Solar System planets. So getting an understanding of where we
come from and what are our Solar System where it
fits in this kind of grand galaxy filled with planets,
more planets than stars, more stars than grains of sand.
(37:58):
So imagine how many planets there are and how can
we really frame that how can we piece all of
these things together. And it's all about interpreting the invisible,
interpreting these indirect measurements of what is there.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
And hennah, you can actually tell if a planets as
an atmosphere in some of these methods.
Speaker 5 (38:23):
Yeah, So when we're looking at these transiting planets, for example,
as the planet passes in front of the star, some
of that star shines through the planet's atmosphere before it
reaches our telescopes, so we can pull apart that information
and if we look at the spectrum of the planet
as it passes in front of the star, we can
(38:43):
see changes in the amount of light being blocked. So
if you've got something like water vapor in the atmosphere,
water vapor likes to block light in the infrared. It's
one of the reasons why our planet's nice and toasty.
The Earth's atmosphere has a lot of water close to
itself that absorbs infra red light, it absorbs heat. So
we can actually look for these fingerprints of water vapor
(39:06):
in these planetary atmospheres by seeing how the planet appears
to change size as a function of wave and through
its colors. So from that we can build up all
the fingerprints of different materials in the atmosphere, and not
only can we measure what is there, but we can
actually get understanding of how much is there as well
(39:27):
by looking at how much water there is compared to
carbon dioxide, or to methane, or to sodium and these
other materials in the atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
You guys are so fun. I feel like I want
to come to all of your classes and so what
do you I don't want to delay you with getting
out those telescope proposals. What are do you want to
give us a good tell us a little bit about
what you're going to be doing, and then feel free
to escape. And I hope you'll come visit with us again,
or we'll have to come to England to okay, we should.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Do the road trip. We'll show you some old observatories
and some new data, which is always the fun big
of being here. So, Hannah's so, I think we said
earlier that we're looking at putting in proposals to try
and bid to use this new brilliant space telescope that
we've got, the JWST, which is a NASA led project,
but it's also a European project in the Canadian one
(40:21):
as well, so it's an international thing and anyone in
the world can kind of ask for time. I think
I like talking about the stuff because I think people
have the impression that scientists sit around waiting to have
an idea, and then when we have a good idea,
we go and do it. Actually, we have too many ideas,
and so we do. Actually know this is the first
proper big call for proposals. But the Hubble Space Telescope,
(40:42):
which has been around for a while, gets seven to
eight times as many proposals as can be carried out.
And so we're all sitting here trying to write. Actually,
Hannah and I arrivals, I suspect because we want time.
Speaker 5 (40:53):
On the telescope to actually so.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Yeah, No, I have a instead of galaxies that have
been found by volunteers on our Galaxy Zoo citizen science projects.
So people who've gone to Galaxy Zoo to or classified
galaxies have found a particularly unusual set of galaxies where
we think that the black hole at the center of
the galaxy has recently switched from a mode in which
(41:18):
lots of materials falling down onto it, the black hole
is feeding that creates energy and you get these jets
of material that shoot out at nearly the speed of lights,
a very dramatic phase of a galaxy evolution. And we
used to think that there were galaxies that did this
all the time with active black holes, so there were nice,
quiet galaxies like the Milky Way. And now we think
that galaxies switch quickly between these two and we're trying
(41:40):
to prove that, and we need to take a closer
look at the material that's being affected by the black hole.
So that's the pitch, and we only did a little
bit of time. They're quite bright galaxies, right, all right,
all right, before Hannah takes over, And what we want
are beautiful images, So.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Well, what I want is lots and lots of beautiful,
exquisitely measured squiggles, and we've got these. There's a couple
of theories that might sound absurd. Did you know that
planets are three dimensional? That is something that we actually
(42:25):
haven't been able to deal with yet because of how
complex these systems are. We have to collapse them down
into this one dimensional Okay, everything's the same everywhere, because
it's the only way that we can really bring all
the physics, the chemistry, the dynamics together to make sense
of it. But our models and our observations are much
(42:46):
much better than they previously were. So these new observations
with the JWST, because it's a bigger telescope that can
look over lots and lots of different wavelengths, and it's
really really precise in how it does that, we can
actually measure the three dimensional effects of the planetary atmospheres.
So not only can we measure what it's made of,
(43:09):
how much there is of those materials, but we can
measure where in the planet's atmosphere those materials are. So
we're proposing to use this nice new technique to try
and spatially map where clouds are in the atmosphere, where
the water vapor is in the atmosphere, and how as
you go from these super heated day sides, which are
(43:30):
hotter than a rocket taking off over the top of
your head, to these really cool night sides, how does
the transport of that material change what it's made of,
how does the chemistry change as you go around the planet.
So we're trying to take these distant one dimensional squiggles
and understand these full three dimensional worlds and turn these exoplanets.
(43:55):
These dips in the light from the star into these
real strange A planets amazing.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
Hena, this is a question, you know, is there anything
from these atmospheric measurements that would indicate what kind of
life they might be on the actual planet? You know,
some more complex you know, like for example, amino acids
are and I'm not sure they would get into the atmosphere,
but are there is some indication that you might.
Speaker 5 (44:25):
So if we look at astrochemistry, we actually found amino
acids in star formation regions, in really really cold clouds
of gas and dust. In our universe. Some of those
most beautiful images you've seen from the Hubble Space Telescope
and now we're seeing from the JWST in those images
are amino acids. So we know they're out there in
(44:47):
the universe. Measuring them in the atmospheres is a different thing, though.
So one of the key goals of looking at some
of these exoplanets is pushing to these smaller and smaller worlds.
I said, the ones. We'll looking at these Jupiter sized planets,
but we can also look at things that are rocky.
So rocky worlds, so density is similar to the Earth
(45:08):
or to Venus or to Mars, and try and ask
the question fundamentally, does that planet have an atmosphere? So
before we can start looking for what it's made of,
we need to ask a question does it even have one?
So the first thing we're doing with JWST is trying
to detect these atmospheres, and then the next question is
what are those atmosphere made of? What does that tell
(45:31):
us about the environment on the surface of these planets,
What might the surface be made of, and how might
that interact with the atmosphere to change what it's made of.
So the Earth's atmosphere is not in what we call equilibrium.
It's not balanced, and it's not balanced because we have volcanoes,
we have an ocean which interacts with the atmosphere. We
(45:55):
have life, which also interacts with the atmosphere. So looking
for these different unbalanced materials that shouldn't exist together is
a really key way of going. But the hardest question
is asking is that cause naturally or does it fundamentally
require the presence of life to exist? And that's a
(46:18):
whole area of a science called astrobiology, trying to understand
what is it unique about life that can change and
modify an atmosphere that can't be created by any natural means.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
You guys are mind blowing. I'm gonna have to take
a I'm gonna have to have a lie down. I
want you to get those those proposals out. So you
you are so awesome, all three of you. Thank you
for being so inspiring and really showing that it's fun.
Anyone can do science. We don't have to know anything,
we just look up, look into.
Speaker 5 (46:53):
It, just be curious.
Speaker 4 (46:54):
Yeah, that's the main thing.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
Curious and fun. You made my day. Thank you so much.
I'm sure you inspired so many of our listeners to
And I'll make sure everyone sees your zuniverse, your bang
universe dot com and what was the other one, Hannah
Star or something like that. I'll make sure I include
them all concern and I hope we'll all be meeting
(47:18):
up in person soon. So thank you for all your
inspiration and really making it absolutely fun and cool.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
That would be great. Can we plug two podcasts? You know, podcast?
But so Hannah runs an amazing podcast called Exocast, which
talks about the variety of planets are the fun that
her and her colleagues are having. And I've got a
new podcast in which I try and explain the night
sky to my dog, which is dog Stars Pod on
Twitter and elsewhere. So I think your listeners would enjoy
(47:48):
both of those. I'm sure, in their very different.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Ways, we would.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
I listened to it exactly all right. Well, you guys
are fantastic, So hopefully you'll get some sleep tonight and
get those proposals out on time. And Mark, I will
be discussing many more things with you and hopefully not
giving you a headache. So have a great night and
afternoon to you, Mark. Thank you for joining. Bye, thank you. Wow,
(48:20):
that was so inspiring. I mean my mind is blown.
We got universes, galaxies, stars, planets, exoplanets, rocks, pebbles, grains
of sand, particles, subatomic particles. I mean, get so much
to dream about. Thank you for being part of the
OMGPS Club. It's a pleasure to have you here. Make
(48:41):
sure to check out Chris and Hannah's book bang Co,
written with Sir Brianmay banguniverse dot com and watch Chris
on the great BBC show The Sky at Night. Remember,
keep looking up, stay positively charged. We are the stars.
Goodbye for now, audios A Rivederci, Abfeedersen Haabiento. Join us
(49:05):
next week on the O My God Particle Show for
more adventures with mind blowing creative scientists and on inspiring
scientific artists. We've got two geniuses from the Large Hadron
Collider at the Center for Research Nuclear in Geneva, Switzerland.
It's gotta be a blast. Note this podcast may actually
be nine dimensional or more, but if this is the case,
(49:25):
to the best of our knowledge, vibrational functionality should not
be affected by the extra six or more dimensions. As
required by our legal department. No money back guarantee exists
that covers additional dimensions, and there as yet unknown quantities
and realities. The Oh My God Particle Show is part
of Seneca Women Podcast Network and is produced by Dahlia
Wilde and iHeartRadio, with sound designed by Paul Mercia.
Welcome nkommen yinvenido venu bnvenui ability. Welcome one and all.
Thank you for joining me. I'm Gallia Wild and this
is the Oh My God Particle Show where we talk
about science and art and music and good good good
vibrations and all matters near and far. So ready or not,
(00:33):
unpack your imaginations and get ready to rumble through the
universe that we are so so lucky to live in.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
We are the Stars removed liability. Due to its heavy matter,
this podcast could potentially warp the empty space surrounding it.
At this time, no significant health hazards are known to
be associated with this effect, except in Sacramento, Mondesko, Tarzan
and on certain streets of the nine O two one
oh zip code. Should your head fall off, please do
not consult.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
I Hi, I'm telling you Wild. I'm the host of
the Oh My God Particle Show. I love creating as
much as I can. I just love art and science
and where they meet. Thank you for being here. It's
awesome to have you here. So here's the deal. Me
and my dog Higgs Boson. We're on the way discern right,
(01:21):
but we have a really long layover in the UK.
But it's awesome because this gives us a chance to
drop into Oxford University to have a chat with some
super geniuses who can explain a few things about the
Big Bang and the birth of the universe. I have
some amazing memories of Oxford when I studied there as
a Truman scholar. Okay, so I really want to give
(01:43):
you guys the big picture of what we're dealing with
here on the Oh my God Particle Show. So we
got this gigantic universe of galaxies and planets and stars
and rocks and particles, and then back all the way
down to sub atomic particles. So I'm going right to
the source. We have doctor Mark Cruz, who has guided
(02:03):
me this whole time on my particle physics journey. He
took me a third of a mile underground into the
Large Hadron Collider. Mark is a brilliant particle physicist, a kind,
incredibly supportive teacher, and basically an all around great guy
who gets the spiritual and creative aspects of science and
the universe. He's from New Zealand, teaches at Duke University
(02:26):
in North Carolina, where I also went as an undergraduate,
and he's researcher at CERN will be joined by doctor
Chris Lin Todd, an astrophysicists at Oxford. He's a presenter
of the BBC show The Sky at Night. If that's
not enough for you, we also have doctor Hannah Wakeford,
an astrophysicist from Bristol University. She's a powerhouse investigating the
(02:49):
atmospheres of transiting exoplanets using space based telescopes. But wait,
there's more. Chris and Hannah co authored with Sir Brian,
the legendary guitarist of Queen, a very cool book called
Bang with two exclamation marks, Bang the Complete History of
the Universe. They're so enthusiastic and brilliant and especially inspiring.
(03:15):
All three of these Stellar guests are gonna tell us
more about the Big Bang, exoplanet citizens, science particles. I mean,
how cool is that? Art, science, music all rolled up
into one. See it's all connected. This is a great conversation.
I know you're gonna love it. Okay, hit it, genius people, Hi.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Hannah, Hi Hannah.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
That's Mark Cruz from Stern and from Duke and this
is Hannah the genius from Bristol.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
He was so helpful. I've asked him every dumb question
and no human kind and he always answers it.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
No dumb Christians. There's no dumb Christians, no dumb questions.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
That's never a dumb Thank you, Mark, we have Chris.
Thanks for joining you know, Hannah and Mark Cruz g
from Cern and Duke and New Zealand. It's kind of cool.
I was thinking that how we're all in different places
and hopefully the people who are interested in the world
and the universe. So I'm like, I was gonna say
I'm the normal person here. I mean, I'm the lay person.
(04:15):
I don't even though I went to Oxford, I was
a biologist and everything I've learned about particle physics was
from doctor Mark Cruz, who was kind enough he took
me a third of a mile underground into the large
Hadron Collider a few years ago before it was turned on,
and Mark helped me cook up a theater show called
the Oh My God Particle Show. And then this iHeart
(04:35):
series is, you know, based on those particle physics ideas.
But I think my mission is to try to help
make science cool and fun and also that just men
and women are all doing it together. It's a no
big deal. I mean, it is a huge deal what
you do, but I just wanted to know more about
like the awesome things you're doing with citizen science, about
(04:56):
your book Bang that you wrote with Sir Brian May
now and then just how you make it fun and
make a living, or I want to know about the zuniverse,
exo planets, everything cool.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
You should we should put out. We're probably both quite
sleep deprived. So the big deadline for proposals to use
the new JWST space telescope is tomorrow. So every astronomer
in the world is frazzled right now, kandah more than most,
so that's we should probably talk about that a bit
as well. Yes, I think that's deepening.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
People will make a pitch for you, so and what
you could tell us what you want to do with
the telescope and feel how can we help you because
you're thank you so much for showing up and helping us,
and because I feel like I know you said the
citizen science is a thing in the United States, but
for some reason I didn't know about it, and I
don't think most people know about it. So tell us
(05:48):
whatever you want, sleep deprived, just ramble on.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
I'll let Chris, take it first, I can collect my
brain to go for from pieces.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Across the Yeah, feel free, tell us how amazing you are,
but yet so approachable and cool, and now everybody should
know about this.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
In only four words. Yeah. So I'm Chris, and I
usually describe myself as a distractable astronomer. So I started
as a kid who looked up at the night sky
and wondered what might be up there. And I've had
the amazing fortune to spend my professional life looking up
at the sky and wondering what might be up there.
(06:25):
So I work on finding new ways to get information
out of telescopes. I care about galaxies like our own
Milky Way, but also distant galaxies in the early universe.
But I have a sideline in trying to find planets,
to find unusual things in the universe. And I've recently
got distracted by rocks that come to our Solar system
(06:46):
from distant stars, what we call interstellar objects. And so
I'm sort of interested everything. But lots of the work
that I do is done in collaboration with many millions
of members of Well flee your audience. So I run
a project called the Zuniverse, which asks people to help
sort through scientific data, through images of galaxies, through data
(07:09):
that might reveal the presence of other planets, but also
images of penguins in Antarctica which need counting, and even
some transcription projects looking through old historical records. And so
that's fueled my sense of caring about everything, but it's
also been a wonderful way to work. So we call
this citizen science, and it's a big part of what
(07:30):
I do.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
So, yeah, I'm Hannah Wakeford, and I really come from
a planetary science background, and that means that I kind
of started out studying the Earth Venus Solar System planets,
trying to look specifically at how the Sun impacts our
atmospheres and what that does to it. So I studied
in the Arctic looking at the Aurora Borealis, the Northern lights,
(07:55):
to try and understand the timelines from particles leaving this
and then hitting our upper atmosphere and causing them to
emit those beautiful lights. That really kind of took me
onto just really loving atmospheres and everything to do with them.
And I studied exoplanets and their atmospheres they had only
(08:17):
just really been discovered and started to be observed with
telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope, and we have spent
the last decade or so trying to understand what is
in the atmospheres of alien planets hundreds of light years away.
We can actually measure these worlds and what's in their
(08:40):
atmospheres better than we can the ones in our solar system.
So we're using now the brand new six and a
half meter JWST to get even more detail from these worlds,
and we are constantly discovering brand new things. I absolutely
(09:00):
love atmospheres of all kinds, so I have huge biases
towards various planets, and I just want to play with data.
So primarily I'm what we call an observational astronomer. This
means that I use instruments telescopes to measure the stars,
measure different objects, and that produces for us, essentially, instead
(09:23):
of those gorgeous pictures you see, we're actually collapsing all
of that down into a squiggle, and that squiggle, the
spectrum of the light, which is kind of the encoded
fingerprint of what that object is made of, can really
help us understand things about its formation and its evolution.
(09:45):
So we're really interested in looking at the spectrum of
all of these different molecules, and that actually takes us
from these planetary atmospheres to the gas that formed them.
So how did their star form from the disc? Wherein
the galaxy are there? What are these galaxies made of?
How old are they? And that chemistry of that spectrum
(10:06):
can take us all the way back through time. So
it's all about taking those gorgeous images that we see
and turning them into squiggles with ara bars. And that's
the bit that I really enjoy doing, is just really
playing with it.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
And Hannah's very very good at this and is the
world expert, so I should explain why we're both here.
I suppose that's okay. Yeah. Something that happened to me, gosh,
twenty years ago, nearly fifteen years ago, was that I
got involved in a BBC program called The Sky at Night,
which still exists. So The Sky Knight's been broadcasting since
(10:42):
nineteen fifty seven. It pre dates the space Age, so
it started before Sputnik, the first satellite was.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
Launched, and I want to make it clear it started
before Chris.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Thanks any Yeah, this is an old man role I
think I'm playing here. But the sky. There used to
be he broadcast every new moon because it was assumed
that people who were interested in astronomy would want to
look at the moon, and so if you do it
when the moon's not visible in the sky, then they
might watch television. The BBC lost track of the Moon
in the nineties, so now we're now a month We're
now a monthly show. But through this I met The
(11:18):
presenter who presented from nineteen fifty seven all the way
through to twenty twelve was Patrick Moore, who was a
sort of English eccentric. He had a monocle. He talked
very quickly and very seriously about all sorts of astronomical topics,
but he was the authority on everything. And he'd become
friends with Brian May, the guitarist from Queen and they'd
(11:41):
become friends because Brian May is an amateur astronomer. He
made famously He made his first guitar with his dad
in their workshop when he was a young boy, and
they also made a telescope. But having had a major
rock career and played Madison Square Guard of all the
rest of it, Brian had some downtime and so he
(12:02):
wanted a new telescope. And I think if you're a
rock star, you just go to advice in the right places.
So Brian just called the most famous astronomy in the
country and asked for advice on what telescope you should buy.
So those two became friends. Despite the fact that they
shared no musical taste whatsoever. They were both very musical
people and there's no overlap in the middle. Patrick could
(12:23):
have the idea of getting Brian to write a book
about astronomy because it would reach a wide audience. I
happened to be in the meeting, and both of them
turned around and went, Chris should help write this as well.
And so we wrote a book in the most ridiculous
way possible, because Brian said, I'd love to write book,
but I don't have time. I said, I don't know
(12:44):
how to write a book. I'm a PhD student. I've
got other things to be doing. And Perhaps said, don't
worry about that, and wrote a book in a week
and then sent it to both of us. And that's
not the book that got published, because what then happened
was we spent most of a year and a half
sitting at Patrick's on the weekends, the three of us
going through the book line by line and working out
how we could explain things. And the concept of the
(13:05):
book is that it tells the whole history of the
universe in order. So we start with the Big Bang,
and we keep going to the far future, so you know,
Earth forms about two thirds about a third of the
way through the book, Life appears somewhere in the middle,
and then we have the future. So yeah, it's an
interesting thing, and it was well received, and it's actually
(13:27):
got out of date, and so Patrick's no longer with us.
But Brian and I were talking and we wanted to
update the book. People were still buying it. We felt
that we needed to reflect all the amazing science that's
happened in the last fifteen years. And when we started
think about that, what's interesting is that the science of
the big the science of the grand scale of the universe,
(13:49):
the science of cosmology. You know, how did the Big
Bang happen? What's the universe made of? What will happen
to us in the end. Those things haven't changed in
the last twenty years or so. But the bit in
the middle, how do planets form? Are their planets out
in the galaxy? How likely is it that an earthlike
(14:09):
planet will form. All of those things have changed dramatically
because of the work by Hannah and her colleagues to
find and understand these exo planets, these planets around other stars.
So I realized we needed somebody who was an expert
in that middle section, you know, the stuff involving rocks
and atmospheres and that sort of stuff. Some things, yeah, yeah,
(14:33):
the complicated things. To a physicist, the early universe is easy, right.
It's when you start to worry about chemistry and atmospheres
and all the rest of it that it's hard. And
so I'd known Hannah for years and years. I'd interviewed
her for the Sky at night when she was a
PhD student, talking about atmospheres on other planets, and so
she was the perfect person to come in and talk. Sorry,
that's silly interrupting. If you had that, she was the
(14:54):
perfect person to come in and help us Rea think
this middle Siriki, are.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
You aging backwards? Hannah? You're so quite amazing, And I'm
so happy to have you here too, because we really
want to encourage more women to get into STEM, but
also that it's just natural to be extraordinary, you know,
So it becomes ordinary. And I love everyone just talking
about science together, so it's not men and women separate.
(15:23):
Scientists are serious about it. I love that you guys actually,
you know, have these great personalities and seem like we
might want to hang out with you, just like Mark, Mark,
How do you how does it fit in what you
do marketcern with what these two guys do.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Yeah, I think you know, both particle physicists and astrophysicists,
I mean we're asking the same questions, just in different ways.
I mean we're asking, you know, what the universe is
made of, how it's going to evolve, how did it start?
And you know, how are we even here to even
ask those questions?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Right?
Speaker 4 (15:57):
And so you know, astrophysicists tend to you know that
they look out and make observations of the earlier universe.
The further further way you look, the earlier you know,
the the universes that you're looking at, and so that
you know, they construct models of the universe by observations,
by looking out. In particle physics, we kind of do
the opposite. We look in. We've got you know, we
build these huge in some almost like huge microscopes where
(16:21):
we collide particles together with very high energies. Like at
the Large Hadron Collider, we're colliding you know, protons together
with enormous energies, and in some sense we're trying to
recreate what the very early universe look like. So when
we do these collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, we're
colliding particles with energies that naturally existed when the universe
was about a trillionth of a second old. So in
(16:43):
some sense, we're recreating the conditions of the universe it
was about when it has had an age of about
one trillionth of a second. So that means so we've
been able to observe all the particles you know, that
existed at that particular time. You know, we've discovered the
Higgs boson, for example, So now we understand that there
was this Higgs field that permeated the entire universe around
that time, and so you know, in some sense, you know,
(17:07):
we understand how the universe evolved from about a trillionth
of a second onwards. The unfortunate thing is, you know
a lot of really amazing things, and you know, without
which we wouldn't even be here. But it made a
lot of amazing things happened before that trillion of a second.
There was something called an inflationary period of the universe
at about ten to the minus thirty two seconds, which
is almost an indescribably small number, right, we can't get
(17:30):
our heads around how small that is. But the universe
expanded extremely rapidly at about ten to the minus thirty
two seconds in this sort of what's called an inflationary epoch.
We don't understand how or why that was initiated. And
then we don't know, you know, how why the Big
Bang even existed. We just we just label it as
the Big Bang, the start of our universe. We've got
no idea what exactly happened then, I mean, it's it's
(17:53):
completely speculative. So all our theories about what happened the
trillions of a second and younger for the universe a
purely speakulative theories. I mean, there's some interesting ones out there,
but I think we're probably a long long way from
really understanding.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
So I like that we can take this in sequence.
So Mark, you do the first trillidth of a second exactly,
which we don't understand. Then I take over because I'm
an observer, so I look out at the universe, and
the oldest light that we can see comes from a
period about four hundred thousand years into the history of
the universe. So that's the point where we actually have evidence.
(18:28):
We can inferse some things about what life was like
before that, or what the universe was like before that.
But from four hundred thousand years onwards, that's my domain,
and we think about how we got the structure we
see around us, how galaxies formed, you know, how do
And really that's the epoch where it's gravity that matters,
at least early on things we're now probing with the
(18:50):
new telescope like JWST. Gravity acts to sort of pull
material together to form galaxies, to form clusters of galaxies.
This is grand dance that happened across the universe to
form the structure. But it's not too long. Maybe we
could argue it when the first planets are but you
get the first stars. The first stars are made out
(19:12):
of almost completely hydrogen and helium. They produce carbon, oxygen,
and all the other elements that we know about, and
so once the first stars are done, we then have
the raw materials so the planets can form, and at
that point things get complicated, and so I hand over
to Hannah.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:28):
So taking over from that, that's when we enter the
really big realm of the chemistry. How is the chemistry interacting,
How are we forming materials that are combining those elements
that are made in the stars together to create these
more complex areas that we see in space. And that
really starts out from these big cold dust clouds where
(19:49):
our stars and our planetary systems are forming, all the
way down through that evolutionary period till we've got these
fully formed planets orbiting around their star and trying to
understand whether or not there's a relationship between what's in
the star and the environment around it and what's in
(20:10):
the planet's atmosphere, how it formed, where it formed, and
if it stayed there over time. So one of the
really big things that we're learning by looking at these exoplanets,
these planets beyond our soul system, is that the planets
in our soul system didn't form where we see them today.
They move around over time, Their orbits lengthen and shorten
(20:34):
as they move closer and further from the Sun, and
that motion, that migration, as we call it, influences lots
of different things within those systems. And we've seen from
these exoplanets that there are planets as big as Jupiter,
so eleven times the size of the Earth, eleven times
the radius of our planet, three hundred times its mass.
(20:59):
But instead of being where Jupiter is five times the
distance from the Sun as we are, these are twenty
times closer, even closer than mercury. They're on orbits of
four or five days around their star. They're locked into
this kind of dance where one side is permanently heated
to thousands of degrees and the other is in permanent darkness.
(21:23):
And it's all then about the dynamics and the chemistry
of what's happening on those timescales. So we're going from
the smallest particles and things that we really don't understand,
to the biggest things in our universe galaxies, clusters of galaxies,
all the way back down to looking at the atoms
in these atmospheres.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Amazing. Why did they say that we're made of the stars?
How did that all work out?
Speaker 5 (21:47):
That's a Chris question.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Okay, yeah, so we have this. We actually had this.
It was Brian innovative. So we have this as the
quote at the start of the first version of Bang.
Yeahs Mitchell's quote that we're all stardust. So when the
universe forms, Mark forms the universe, but he only managed
it with his particle physics and his cosmogy. He only
(22:09):
manages to make a universe that contains two elements. It
only contains hydrogen and helium. That's what the Big Bang
leaves us with. To be fair, there's a sprinkling of lithium,
but like only the tiniest amount. And if you look
round you right now, you're not going to see much hygien.
You're not going to see much helium, and you there's
not even a sprinkling of lithium. Doesn't do much when
(22:29):
you want, you know, a kitchen and a table and
some living beings to share the world with. And so
those elements are all created in stars. So once you
form stars, stars are powered by nuclear fusion. They convert
elements to heavier elements and release energy along the way.
So our sun is essentially a machine for turning hydrogen
(22:53):
into helium. Bigger stars, all stars near their ends of
their lives sometimes can turn helium into heavier elements, and
so they produce the carbon and the oxygen the nitrogen,
the phosphorus, all the other elements that the things around
you that the Earth is made of. And so we
think that the first generation of stars in the universe
(23:14):
came quickly and burned through their fuel very quickly and
exploded in dramatic supernov which maybe one day we'll see,
and those explosions spread material, heavier material through the galaxy
and enabled a formation of a second generation of star
(23:34):
that could have planets made out of this extra stuff
that we've created. Our Sun, we know is from looking
at the pattern of elements that are contained within it
and that we see in the Solar System. We know
our Sun is a third generation star. So the stuff
that you're made of has already been through two different
generations of star to get to this point. And so
(23:58):
you know, we are starts in the sense that the
atoms that make up our bodies have already existed in
two stars. And it's really part of this story. I
think one of the fun things about BANG was that
we set out to tell the story in order, because
stories are telled in order, you have a beginning, of middle,
and an end, you know, so this seems sensible. But
(24:20):
what happened was that the story. The universe becomes more
complex over time, more interesting things happen over time. I
don't think I quite realized that. You know, Mark and
I can argue about it, but we can probably write
down the equations that explain the first few seconds on
the back of an envelope and do a good job
(24:42):
of describing the universe. You want to describe the atmosphere
of the Earth or the way that planets form, we
need computer code and a headache and at least a
few years. And so Hannah's science is a science of complexity.
I live in the middle of just looking at things.
A mark of the particle visits of a simple thing.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Yeah, it's quite remarkable that, you know. You know, in
particle physics, our goal really is to understand the fundamental
nature of the universe, like what you know, the fundamental components,
that what it's made of, the fundamental interactions which then
you know, are used to make more complex structures. But
that understanding will never be able to explain emergent behavior
like you know atmospheres, and you know, everything in some
(25:25):
sense is just made of two things. I mean, you know,
fundamental quarks that make up protons and neutrons and electrons,
and together they make up all the atoms. And so
you know, where does all this emergent behavior come from?
Let alone, you know, the emergence of consciousness. I mean
that still our brains are just made up of those
two things. But somehow there's these other emergent sort of
(25:45):
complex systems that exist. And it doesn't matter, you know,
I don't think it doesn't matter how well and understanding
we have of fundamentally what the universe is made of.
There's this big gap between different complexities that no theory
can really really bridge right now, and so it's really
kind of fascinating. I mean, it's I don't think we've
(26:07):
come to crossroads yet, but it is a limitation of
our models. Our models are really restricted in some sense,
and I think explaining emergent behavior, emergent complex behavior is
a real, real challenge. And right now we don't have
a theory like you know, atmosphere is. We can't predict
the weather. We don't have an equation that can predict
(26:28):
the weather. We've got to run very sophisticated computer models.
Does that mean that you know, equations don't exist. I've
been using even the right languages in order to form
these equations. There's lots of open questions.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
I think, well, I like to say that when we
were looking at that history of the universe and how
our knowledge on it has changed over the last fifteen years.
The universe is thirteen point seven billion years old, but
in the last fifteen years, we've rewritten nine billion years
of that in our knowledge that we've actually learned, you know,
(27:02):
the whole middle section of bang had to be completely
reshuffled and understood. So where the complexity of forming our
stars and forming our planets and understanding what that means
and how they compare to other ones, that complex set
of systems. What we can learn from our own planet
through those models are things like the weather. So using
(27:24):
these really grand models to make predictions, they make those
predictions based on running millions and millions and millions of
the same model with a different starting point and asking
the question, how often does this one thing occur? What
is the probability of it raining in this ten kilometers
squared in the next hour. And it's all about having
(27:45):
the numbers and being able to run that to get
and understanding of the statistical probability of an occurrence and
that's really where we're at. And we're looking at these
different places, and we're looking across the universe. We're asking
what is the statistical probability of this being a representative
of what we're looking at? Is this galaxy a good
(28:07):
representation of all galaxies that look like this? Do all
galaxies look like this? The answer is no. There's a
whole range of different kind of types. And that's exactly
the same for planets. There's a whole range of different
kind of categories of planets, and we can keep dividing
that down. There's whole ranges of different kinds of stars,
and it's about understanding the relationship between all of those
(28:29):
really complex systems.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
And Chris, you had mentioned getting a headache, and I
was wondering, how do you conceive of this massiveness right
without getting a headache? Or I know Mark and I
had talked about that some particle physicists can get kind
of upset when they get to the bottom and they
find nothing's there. But it is also kind of strange
(28:55):
to imagine such vastness.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
It really is. I think there's a sort of sense
of looking out into the universe that can boggle the mind.
And I think it's very easy as somebody who talks
about astronomy in all sorts of audiences, it's something I
can use very effectively. You know, I can tell you that,
(29:18):
you know, the Sun is just a star, that it's
one of maybe a few hundred billion stars in the
Milky Way galaxy, and that the Milky Way Galaxy we
now know is one of only a few hundred billion
galaxies in the observable universe alone. And so what that
means is that there are probably more stars in the
(29:39):
observable universe than there are grains of sand on the Earth.
And you know, you can get people into this headspace
where they feel awed by all of this. Now, there
are a couple of things that I want to say
about that. Firstly, we don't actually know how many grains
of sand there are on the Earth. Turns out that
(30:00):
some much harder problems, so that that's difficult, and geologists
should work on that so that I can pin down.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
I mean that depends on what you call a grain.
Where does start becoming a grain?
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Right?
Speaker 5 (30:13):
When does it become gravel or a pebble? When does
it become just an atom or a molecule. You've got
to ask, is what is that range?
Speaker 3 (30:21):
But before we get distracted by that, I think, yeah,
so that's the first thing. But I think the second
thing is that I think when we do that, I
think what I'm doing is giving the impression that I,
as an astronomer, have some deeper understanding of what it
means to be a being on a planet around a
star that's one of a few hundred billion in a
(30:42):
galaxy that's one of you. I have no idea. We
get used to saying the words for sure, so I
can say, you know, we are one of a we're
orbiting a star that's one of a few hundred billion,
hundred billion, and not get distracted by it and ruin
my Tuesday. But I don't actually have an understanding what
(31:06):
it is. But I think there is something about looking
at the universe. If the universe is this fast, I
think very seriously that as far as we know for now,
we are the only beings in that universe that we
know of that are capable of contemplating it, that are
capable of looking up at the universe and trying to
understand the behaviors of particles that Mark worries about, of
(31:29):
thinking about whether there are other planets, and even asking
the question whether there are other beings like us out there,
and I think there's something really important that therefore we
do that. It may be that, you know, next door,
there's an alien civilization that's way further ahead than we are,
and then we can relax and goof off a bit.
(31:49):
But for now, I think, you know, we are the
bit of the universe that thinks about itself, and that
I think is the thing that gives not a headache,
but makes me sort of stop for a second and
think deep thoughts before I go back to my email
or whatever else.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
It's exciting, though that you mentioned that about all that
uncertainty or but honestly saying that you might not know anything,
but I was interested in that. Via Ruben, she said
she got such pleasure from looking at things and try
and understand them, and I will.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
It's about understanding. I think it's about relaxing that you
don't know. I think I think we do a bad
job in both of our countries of teaching teaching science
as a set of received facts exactly not approached to
I mean, Hannah, you were talking about being in the
artic and trying to understand the atmosphere. That must be
an exercise in realizing how much we don't know. I
(32:44):
assume you've gone through your life without thinking about the
fact that we don't understand the Earth's atmosphere, and suddenly
you're there and confronting it. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:51):
I mean, one of the hardest things that we do
when we're teaching is get the students to realize it's
okay that we don't I don't know the answer to something,
so that there isn't a definitive yes or no, or
there isn't an equation that we can solve for absolutely
every single process that we've got, or if there is,
(33:12):
sometimes it's not something that we can put an exam
for them. We can't solve that. You'll need a computer,
I'm afraid. So getting the transition from understanding these principles
or even just being able to think about them and
going okay, but that can mean any one of these
(33:32):
things is a whole different way of looking at things,
and it's a really hard thing to get around.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
That's why I love where music and art and science,
where it all connects, because that accessing that not knowing
and really helps with learning, doesn't it Because I mean,
I went to a lot of great schools, and I
still get so freaked out that there's one right answer
or you know, And I think it's really important to
(34:00):
encourage people to well, just to you know, explore. That's
so exciting.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
Yeah, I think encouraging failure is a good thing. I mean,
it's you know, failure is not a bad thing. And
you know, I teach both particle physics and astrophysics courses here,
but you can you know, the first thing I say
when i'm you know, when I when I start, is
that you know everything I'm going to teach you. You know,
especially in particle physics, you know, and even in astrophysics
we're talking about the stars and the galaxies. You know, everything,
(34:26):
This is everything I'm going to teach you is just
essentially five percent of the universe. In fact, we're teaching
you all about observable matter, things that we're able to
see and things that we're able to measure. But that's
only five percent of our universe. I mean, so you know,
there's there's twenty five percent that's something we have no idea.
It has some gravitational effect that we call dark matter.
We call it dark matter because we have no clue
(34:47):
what it is. We believe it is a form of matter,
but we don't. We have no idea. And then there's
a more mysterious sort of entity in the universe. That's
most of the universe, you know today, it's about seventy
percent of the universe. We have no idea what that is.
We call it our energy because basically we have no
idea what it is. It's presumably becomes some kind of field,
but it has it's having this anti gravitational, anti pressure
(35:10):
effect on the universe causing it to expand at an
accelerating rate, so you know, and we we so really
we have absolutely no idea what ninety five percent of
the universe even is, and so you know, it's you know,
that's our starting point.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
So we should just have fun. So it would be
cool to look at all this and no, no, I
know nothing. You carry on.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Well, I was just going to say in astronomy we
have this other uncertity as well, and that we don't
get to go and reach and manipulate what we're studying.
So I'm I would love to know more. We've got
a neighboring galaxy to the Milky Way called the Andromeda Galaxy,
which we will in about four and a half billion
years collide with. It'll be fine, be safe, but I'd
love to know more about Andromeda. But unfortunately it's a
pancake and it's almost edge on to us, so we
(35:57):
don't get a proper view of its disk and the
number of days where I wish we could just fly
over and have a quick look down. That would solve
a lot of by but we can't do that. And Hannah,
you can only see particular exoplanets, right.
Speaker 5 (36:09):
Yeah, So we've just got these what we call transiting planets.
These are planets that pass in front of their star
from our point of view, so they have to be
edge onto us from us looking out from the Earth,
that star has to be orbiting around. That planet has
to be orbiting around its star in such a way
that it blocks out some of that star's light. Only
(36:31):
about ten percent of existing planets will do this will
be at the perfect orientation, and it actually restricts us
in terms of how far away we can look as well.
We've discovered over five thousand exoplanets and they are all,
in astronomy terms, right next door. They're really close by
(36:52):
to us. Because it's so difficult for us to look
even further away. But there are some methods where we
can look directly at these planets, and that is, you know,
calorfully called direct imaging. Astronomy is a say what you
see kind of subject. We are quite simple in that
all of the things that we name things, they are
based on just what they look like. So these directly
(37:16):
imaged planets, we can get information straight from the planets
themselves by blocking out the light from the stars. But
that means that we're looking at these very different populations
of worlds. Worlds that are passing in front of their
stars are normally very very close in they have short
orbital periods, very much unlike our Solar System planets. And
then we've got these direct imaging ones which are really
(37:38):
really far away from their stars because we can see
them separate from their stars, again very much unlike our
Solar System planets. So getting an understanding of where we
come from and what are our Solar System where it
fits in this kind of grand galaxy filled with planets,
more planets than stars, more stars than grains of sand.
(37:58):
So imagine how many planets there are and how can
we really frame that how can we piece all of
these things together. And it's all about interpreting the invisible,
interpreting these indirect measurements of what is there.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
And hennah, you can actually tell if a planets as
an atmosphere in some of these methods.
Speaker 5 (38:23):
Yeah, So when we're looking at these transiting planets, for example,
as the planet passes in front of the star, some
of that star shines through the planet's atmosphere before it
reaches our telescopes, so we can pull apart that information
and if we look at the spectrum of the planet
as it passes in front of the star, we can
(38:43):
see changes in the amount of light being blocked. So
if you've got something like water vapor in the atmosphere,
water vapor likes to block light in the infrared. It's
one of the reasons why our planet's nice and toasty.
The Earth's atmosphere has a lot of water close to
itself that absorbs infra red light, it absorbs heat. So
we can actually look for these fingerprints of water vapor
(39:06):
in these planetary atmospheres by seeing how the planet appears
to change size as a function of wave and through
its colors. So from that we can build up all
the fingerprints of different materials in the atmosphere, and not
only can we measure what is there, but we can
actually get understanding of how much is there as well
(39:27):
by looking at how much water there is compared to
carbon dioxide, or to methane, or to sodium and these
other materials in the atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
You guys are so fun. I feel like I want
to come to all of your classes and so what
do you I don't want to delay you with getting
out those telescope proposals. What are do you want to
give us a good tell us a little bit about
what you're going to be doing, and then feel free
to escape. And I hope you'll come visit with us again,
or we'll have to come to England to okay, we should.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Do the road trip. We'll show you some old observatories
and some new data, which is always the fun big
of being here. So, Hannah's so, I think we said
earlier that we're looking at putting in proposals to try
and bid to use this new brilliant space telescope that
we've got, the JWST, which is a NASA led project,
but it's also a European project in the Canadian one
(40:21):
as well, so it's an international thing and anyone in
the world can kind of ask for time. I think
I like talking about the stuff because I think people
have the impression that scientists sit around waiting to have
an idea, and then when we have a good idea,
we go and do it. Actually, we have too many ideas,
and so we do. Actually know this is the first
proper big call for proposals. But the Hubble Space Telescope,
(40:42):
which has been around for a while, gets seven to
eight times as many proposals as can be carried out.
And so we're all sitting here trying to write. Actually,
Hannah and I arrivals, I suspect because we want time.
Speaker 5 (40:53):
On the telescope to actually so.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Yeah, No, I have a instead of galaxies that have
been found by volunteers on our Galaxy Zoo citizen science projects.
So people who've gone to Galaxy Zoo to or classified
galaxies have found a particularly unusual set of galaxies where
we think that the black hole at the center of
the galaxy has recently switched from a mode in which
(41:18):
lots of materials falling down onto it, the black hole
is feeding that creates energy and you get these jets
of material that shoot out at nearly the speed of lights,
a very dramatic phase of a galaxy evolution. And we
used to think that there were galaxies that did this
all the time with active black holes, so there were nice,
quiet galaxies like the Milky Way. And now we think
that galaxies switch quickly between these two and we're trying
(41:40):
to prove that, and we need to take a closer
look at the material that's being affected by the black hole.
So that's the pitch, and we only did a little
bit of time. They're quite bright galaxies, right, all right,
all right, before Hannah takes over, And what we want
are beautiful images, So.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Well, what I want is lots and lots of beautiful,
exquisitely measured squiggles, and we've got these. There's a couple
of theories that might sound absurd. Did you know that
planets are three dimensional? That is something that we actually
(42:25):
haven't been able to deal with yet because of how
complex these systems are. We have to collapse them down
into this one dimensional Okay, everything's the same everywhere, because
it's the only way that we can really bring all
the physics, the chemistry, the dynamics together to make sense
of it. But our models and our observations are much
(42:46):
much better than they previously were. So these new observations
with the JWST, because it's a bigger telescope that can
look over lots and lots of different wavelengths, and it's
really really precise in how it does that, we can
actually measure the three dimensional effects of the planetary atmospheres.
So not only can we measure what it's made of,
(43:09):
how much there is of those materials, but we can
measure where in the planet's atmosphere those materials are. So
we're proposing to use this nice new technique to try
and spatially map where clouds are in the atmosphere, where
the water vapor is in the atmosphere, and how as
you go from these super heated day sides, which are
(43:30):
hotter than a rocket taking off over the top of
your head, to these really cool night sides, how does
the transport of that material change what it's made of,
how does the chemistry change as you go around the planet.
So we're trying to take these distant one dimensional squiggles
and understand these full three dimensional worlds and turn these exoplanets.
(43:55):
These dips in the light from the star into these
real strange A planets amazing.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
Hena, this is a question, you know, is there anything
from these atmospheric measurements that would indicate what kind of
life they might be on the actual planet? You know,
some more complex you know, like for example, amino acids
are and I'm not sure they would get into the atmosphere,
but are there is some indication that you might.
Speaker 5 (44:25):
So if we look at astrochemistry, we actually found amino
acids in star formation regions, in really really cold clouds
of gas and dust. In our universe. Some of those
most beautiful images you've seen from the Hubble Space Telescope
and now we're seeing from the JWST in those images
are amino acids. So we know they're out there in
(44:47):
the universe. Measuring them in the atmospheres is a different thing, though.
So one of the key goals of looking at some
of these exoplanets is pushing to these smaller and smaller worlds.
I said, the ones. We'll looking at these Jupiter sized planets,
but we can also look at things that are rocky.
So rocky worlds, so density is similar to the Earth
(45:08):
or to Venus or to Mars, and try and ask
the question fundamentally, does that planet have an atmosphere? So
before we can start looking for what it's made of,
we need to ask a question does it even have one?
So the first thing we're doing with JWST is trying
to detect these atmospheres, and then the next question is
what are those atmosphere made of? What does that tell
(45:31):
us about the environment on the surface of these planets,
What might the surface be made of, and how might
that interact with the atmosphere to change what it's made of.
So the Earth's atmosphere is not in what we call equilibrium.
It's not balanced, and it's not balanced because we have volcanoes,
we have an ocean which interacts with the atmosphere. We
(45:55):
have life, which also interacts with the atmosphere. So looking
for these different unbalanced materials that shouldn't exist together is
a really key way of going. But the hardest question
is asking is that cause naturally or does it fundamentally
require the presence of life to exist? And that's a
(46:18):
whole area of a science called astrobiology, trying to understand
what is it unique about life that can change and
modify an atmosphere that can't be created by any natural means.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
You guys are mind blowing. I'm gonna have to take
a I'm gonna have to have a lie down. I
want you to get those those proposals out. So you
you are so awesome, all three of you. Thank you
for being so inspiring and really showing that it's fun.
Anyone can do science. We don't have to know anything,
we just look up, look into.
Speaker 5 (46:53):
It, just be curious.
Speaker 4 (46:54):
Yeah, that's the main thing.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
Curious and fun. You made my day. Thank you so much.
I'm sure you inspired so many of our listeners to
And I'll make sure everyone sees your zuniverse, your bang
universe dot com and what was the other one, Hannah
Star or something like that. I'll make sure I include
them all concern and I hope we'll all be meeting
(47:18):
up in person soon. So thank you for all your
inspiration and really making it absolutely fun and cool.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
That would be great. Can we plug two podcasts? You know, podcast?
But so Hannah runs an amazing podcast called Exocast, which
talks about the variety of planets are the fun that
her and her colleagues are having. And I've got a
new podcast in which I try and explain the night
sky to my dog, which is dog Stars Pod on
Twitter and elsewhere. So I think your listeners would enjoy
(47:48):
both of those. I'm sure, in their very different.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Ways, we would.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
I listened to it exactly all right. Well, you guys
are fantastic, So hopefully you'll get some sleep tonight and
get those proposals out on time. And Mark, I will
be discussing many more things with you and hopefully not
giving you a headache. So have a great night and
afternoon to you, Mark. Thank you for joining. Bye, thank you. Wow,
(48:20):
that was so inspiring. I mean my mind is blown.
We got universes, galaxies, stars, planets, exoplanets, rocks, pebbles, grains
of sand, particles, subatomic particles. I mean, get so much
to dream about. Thank you for being part of the
OMGPS Club. It's a pleasure to have you here. Make
(48:41):
sure to check out Chris and Hannah's book bang Co,
written with Sir Brianmay banguniverse dot com and watch Chris
on the great BBC show The Sky at Night. Remember,
keep looking up, stay positively charged. We are the stars.
Goodbye for now, audios A Rivederci, Abfeedersen Haabiento. Join us
(49:05):
next week on the O My God Particle Show for
more adventures with mind blowing creative scientists and on inspiring
scientific artists. We've got two geniuses from the Large Hadron
Collider at the Center for Research Nuclear in Geneva, Switzerland.
It's gotta be a blast. Note this podcast may actually
be nine dimensional or more, but if this is the case,
(49:25):
to the best of our knowledge, vibrational functionality should not
be affected by the extra six or more dimensions. As
required by our legal department. No money back guarantee exists
that covers additional dimensions, and there as yet unknown quantities
and realities. The Oh My God Particle Show is part
of Seneca Women Podcast Network and is produced by Dahlia
Wilde and iHeartRadio, with sound designed by Paul Mercia.
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