August 2, 2023 • 50 mins
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.
Please come see my live theatre version of "OH MY GOD PARTICLE SHOW!" at the Edinburgh Festival August 2-27 at Gilded Balloon - produced by Dahlia Wilde and Mick Perrin Worldwide.
https://www.mickperrin.com/edinburgh/dahlia-wilde-oh-my-god-particle-show/
“OH MY GOD PARTICLE SHOW!” podcast is Executive Produced by Dahlia Wilde and iHEART Media.
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.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome when you commen yinvenido venu bnvenuti 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
(00:32):
ready or not, unpack your imaginations and get ready to
rumble through the universe that we are so so lucky
to live in. We are the Stars.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
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. I.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Hi, I'm dall you Wild. I'm the host of the
Oh My God Particles 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. Thanks for listening to my podcast,
and please come see my play. The Oh My God
(01:22):
Particle Show running from August seconds to twenty seventh except
August fifteenth at Gilded Balloons at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
twenty twenty three. I'm gonna be posting all the information
on my Instagram at doll you Wild Official. Stay tuned
for more details about more OMGPS live theater shows in London, Geneva,
(01:42):
New York City, La, Outer Space, who Knows. Thank you
for all your support. So here's the deal. Me and
my dog Higgs Boson. We're on the way discern right,
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
(02:03):
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
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
(02:27):
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
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,
(02:48):
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
and North cam where I also went as an undergraduate,
and he's researcher at CERN. Will be joined by doctor
Chris Lin Todd and astrophysicists at Oxford. He's a presenter
(03:11):
of the BBC show The Sky at Night. If that's
not enough for you, we also have doctor Hannah Wakeford,
an astrophysicists from Bristol University. She's a powerhouse investigating the
atmospheres of transiting exoplanets using space based telescopes. But wait,
there's more. Chris and Hannah co authored with Sir Brian May,
(03:33):
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.
All three of these stellar guests are gonna tell us
more about the Big Bang, exoplanets, citizen science particles. I mean,
(03:56):
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.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Hi, Hannah, Hi Hannah.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
That's Mark Cruz from a Stern and from Duke, And
this is Hannah the genius from Bristol.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
He was so helpful. I've asked him every dumb question
and human kind and he always answers it.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
No dumb questions. There's no dumb christ, no dumb questions.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Thank you, Mark, we have Chris. Thanks for joining you know,
Hannah and Mark Cruz genius from Cern and Duke in
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. I don't even though
(04:49):
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 had 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 series is, you know,
(05:10):
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 no big deal. I mean, it's
a huge deal what you do. But I just wanted
to know more about like awesome things you're doing with
Citizen Science, about your book Bang that you wrote with
(05:32):
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 (05:41):
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. Yeah, because I think that's deep Pele'll make
(06:01):
a pitch for you.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So, and what you could tell us what you want
to do with the telescope, and 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 whatever you want. Sleep deprived, just ramble on.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
I'll let Chris take it first. I can collect my
brain to go for from pieces.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
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 (06:38):
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.
(06:58):
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
(07:19):
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 hopefully 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
(07:42):
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. It's also
been a wonderful way to work. So we call this
citizen science, and it's a big part of what I do.
Speaker 5 (08:05):
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,
(08:29):
to try and understand the timelines from particles leaving the
Sun and then hitting our upper atmosphere and causing them
to emit those beautiful lights. That really kind of took
me on to just really loving atmospheres and everything to
do with them. And I studied exoplanets and their atmospheres.
(08:50):
They had only 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
(09:13):
and what's in their 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. And I absolutely love atmospheres of
(09:35):
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 of those gorgeous
(09:57):
pictures you see, 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. So we're really interested
(10:20):
in looking at the spectrum of all of these different molecules,
and that actually takes us from these planetry atmospheres to
the gas that formed them. So how did their staff
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 can take us all the
(10:40):
way back through time. So it's all about taking those
gorgeous images that we see and turning them into squiggles
with aer bars. And that's the bit that I really
enjoy doing, is just really playing with it.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
And Hannah's very very good at this and the world
why we're both here, 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
(11:15):
nineteen fifty seven. It pre dates the space Age, so
it started before Sputnik, the first satellite was launched, and.
Speaker 5 (11:23):
I want to make it clear it started before Chris.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Thanks any Yeah, this is an old man role. I
think I'm playing here. But the Sky there used to
be 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 presenter
(11:52):
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
(12:15):
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 Garden and all the
rest of it, Brian had some downtime and so he
(12:36):
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 astronomer in the
country and asked for advice on what telescope he should buy.
So those two became friends. Despite the fact that they
shared no musical taste whatsoever. They're both very musical people
and there's no overlap in the middle. Patrick had had
(12:56):
the idea of getting Brian to write a book about
me 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 a book,
but I don't have time. I said, I don't know
(13:17):
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
(13:38):
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 it's
(14:00):
actually 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,
and we felt that we needed to reflect all the
amazing science that's happened in the last fifteen years. And
when we started thinking about that, what's interesting is that
the science of the big the science of the grand
(14:21):
scale of the universe, 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
(14:42):
that an earthlike planet will form? All of those things
have changed dramatically because of the work by Hannah and
her colleagues to find and understand these exoplanets, these planets
around other stars. So I realized we needed somebody who
was an expert in that middle section. You know, the stuff,
the stuff involving rocks and atmospheres and that sort of stuff.
(15:05):
Some things, yeah, yeah, 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.
(15:27):
If you had that, she was the perfect person to
come in and help us rethink this middle sectary?
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Are 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
(15:56):
scientists or 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 market scern with what these two guys do.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
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? Right? And so you know, astrophysicists tend
(16:33):
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, and particle physics we
kind of do the opposite. We look in. We've got
you know, we build these huge and some almost like
huge microscopes where we collide particles together with very high energies,
(16:57):
like at the Large Hadron Collider, we're colliding protons together
with enormous energies, and in some sense we're trying to
recreate what the very early universe looked like. So when
we do these collisions at the Large Adron Collider, we're
colliding particles with energies that naturally existed when the universe
was about a trillionth of a second old. So in
some sense, we're recreating the condition of the universe it
(17:19):
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, we
(17:40):
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
(18:03):
heads around how small that is. But the universe expanded
extremely rapidly at about tenth of 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
(18:27):
completely speculative. So all our theories about what happened. The
trillionth of a second and younger for the universe are
purely speculative theories. I mean, there's some interesting ones out there,
but I think we're probably a long long way from
really understanding that.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
So I like that we can take this in secret.
So Mark, you do the first trillianth of a second exactly. Yes,
we don't understand. Then I take over because I'm an observer.
So I look out 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. We can
(19:03):
infer 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 new telescope like JWST.
(19:25):
Gravity acts to sort of pull material together to form galaxies,
to form clusters of galaxies. This is grand dance that
happens across the universe to form the structure. But it's
not too long maybe, and we could argue about when
the first planets are but you get the first stars.
The first stars are made out of almost completely hydrogen
(19:48):
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
that planets can form. And at that point things get
complicated and so to hena.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
Yeah, 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 our stars and our planetary systems are forming,
(20:25):
all the way down through that evolutionary period till we've
got these fully formed planets orbiting around their stars 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 the planet's atmosphere, how it formed, where it formed,
(20:48):
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 for where we
see them today. They move around over time, their orbits
lengthen and shorten as they move closer and further from
(21:09):
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
(21:31):
its mass. 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 five days around their sar. They're locked
into this kind of dance where one side is permanently
(21:51):
heated to thousands of degrees and the other is in
permanent darkness. And it's all then about the dynamics and
the chemistry of what's happening on those time scales. 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
(22:13):
at the atoms in these atmospheres.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Amazing. Why did they say that we're made of the stars?
How did that all work out?
Speaker 5 (22:20):
That's a Chris question.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Okay, yeah, so we have this. We actually had this.
It was Brian Innovator. So we have this as the
quote at the start of the first version of Bangs.
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 manages to
(22:43):
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 mu helium. And there's not even
a sprinkling of lithium. Doesn't do much when you want,
(23:03):
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 into helium.
(23:28):
Bigger stars or stars near their ends of their lives
sometimes can turn helium into heavier elements, and so they
produce the carbon, 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 came quickly and
(23:50):
burned through their fuel very quickly and exploded in dramatic supernova,
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 that could have planets made
out of this extra stuff that we've created. Our sun
(24:13):
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 son 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 you know, we are stardust
(24:33):
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've set out to tell
the story in order, because stories are telled in order.
You have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
You know.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
So this seems sensible. But what happened was that they
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 in on the back of an envelope
(25:14):
and do a good job 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 few years. And so
Hannah's science is a science of complexity. I live in
the middle of just looking at things and marking the
(25:34):
particle visits a simple thing.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
Yeah, it's quite remarkable that, you know. In 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 directions,
which then you know, are used to make more complex structures.
But the understanding will never be able to explain emergent
behavior like you know, atmospheres, and you know everything in
(25:58):
some things 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 complex systems that exist. And it doesn't matter,
(26:22):
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 come to you know, crossroads yet, but it
(26:45):
is a limitation of our models. Models are really restricted
in some sense and I think explaining emergent behavior emergent
you know, 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 whether. We've got to run
very sophisticated computer models. Does that mean that you know,
(27:07):
equations don't exist. I've be using even the right languages
in order to form these equations. There's lots of open questions.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
I think.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
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,
(27:36):
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
(27:58):
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
(28:19):
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
(28:41):
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 stuff,
and it's about understanding the relationship between all of those
(29:03):
really complex systems.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
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
(29:28):
to imagine such vastness.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
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,
(29:52):
you know, the Sun is just a start, 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
(30:12):
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. First thing, we don't actually know how many
grains of sand there are on the Earth. Turns out
(30:33):
that's a much harder problem, so that that's difficult and
geologists should work on that so that I can pin down.
Speaker 5 (30:41):
I mean that depends on what you call a grain.
Where does start becoming a grain?
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Right?
Speaker 5 (30:46):
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 (30:55):
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
(31:16):
galaxy that's one of a few, and 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
(31:39):
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 and the behaviors of particles that mark worries about,
(32:02):
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.
(32:23):
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 (32:39):
I'm yeah, 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 (32:56):
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 approcessed. 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 assume you've gone
(33:19):
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 (33:24):
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 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, sometimes
(33:46):
it's not something that we can put an exam for,
then we can't solve that. You'll need a computer. I'm afraid.
So getting the transition from understanding these principles or even
and just being able to think about them and going okay,
but that can mean any one of these things is
(34:08):
a whole different way of looking at things, and it's
a really hard thing to get around.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
That's why I love where music and art and science,
where it all connects, because that accessing that not knowing
or and 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
(34:33):
important to encourage people to well just to you know, explore.
That's so exciting.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
Yeah, I think encouraging failure is a good thing. I mean,
it's you know, failure is not a bad thing. And yeah,
you know, I teach both particle physics and astrophysics courses here.
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 an astrophysics
we're talking about the stars and the galaxies. You know everything.
(35:00):
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 this 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
(35:20):
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 dark energy because basically we have no
idea what it is. It's presumably come some kind of field,
but it has it's having this anti gravitational, anti pressure
(35:43):
effects on the universe, causing it to expand at an
accelerating rate. So you know, 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, and
that's our starting point.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
So we should just have fun cool to look at
all this. I know nothing you carry.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Well, I was just going to say, in astronomy we
have this other uncertity as well, in that we don't
get to go and reach in manipulate what we're studying.
So I'm I would love to know more. We've got
a neighboring galaxy to the Milky Away called the Andromeda Galaxy,
which we will in about four and a half billion
years collide with. But it'll be fine, it'll be safe.
But I'd love to know more about Agomeda. But unfortunately
it's a pancake and it's almost edge on to us,
(36:30):
so we 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 (36:43):
Yeah, So we've just got these what we call transiting planets.
These are planets that pass in front of their staff
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 star in such a way that
it blocks out some of that star's light. Only about
(37:04):
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
(37:25):
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,
colorfully 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
(37:49):
image 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
(38:12):
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.
(38:32):
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 (38:52):
And hennah, you can actually tell if a planet as
an atmosphere in some of these methods.
Speaker 5 (38:56):
Yeah, So when we're looking at these transfing planets, for example,
as the planet passes in front of the star, some
of that starlight 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
(39:17):
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
its surface that absorbs infrared light, it absorbs heat. So
we can actually look for these fingerprints of water vapor
(39:40):
in these planetary atmospheres by seeing how the planet appears
to change size as a function of waver 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,
(40:01):
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 (40:10):
You guys are so fun. I feel like I want
to come to all of your classes and so what
are you? I don't want to delay you with getting
out those telescope proposals. What are do?
Speaker 3 (40:21):
You?
Speaker 1 (40:21):
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.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Yeah, you should do the road trip. We'll show you
some old observatories and some new data, which is always
the fun big 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
lead project, but it's also a European project in the
(40:54):
Canadian one 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 actually know this is
the first proper big call for proposals. But the Hubble
(41:15):
Space Telescope, 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
on the scope to do and so yeah, no, I
have a set of galaxies that have been found by
(41:35):
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 lots of
materials falling down onto it. The black hole is feeding
(41:55):
that creates energy, and you get these jets of material
that shoot out and 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 to
prove that, and we need to take a closer look
(42:16):
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.
Speaker 5 (42:25):
Right all right, all right.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
Before it takes over. And what we want a beautiful images,
so we will get galaxies.
Speaker 5 (42:38):
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
(42:58):
haven't been able to do with yet because of how
complex the 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
(43:20):
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,
(43:42):
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
(44:03):
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,
(44:28):
these dips in the light from the star into these real,
strange alien planets.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
He 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 (44:58):
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
(45:20):
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're looking at
these Jupiter sized planets, but we can also look at
things that are rocky, so rocky worlds, so densities similar
(45:41):
to the Earth 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 the question does
it even have one? So the first thing we're doing
with JWST is trying to detect these apples spheres, and
then the next question is what are those atmosphere made of?
(46:03):
What does that tell 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
(46:25):
which interacts with the atmosphere, we 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
(46:49):
life to exist? And that's a 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 (47:07):
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 it.
Speaker 5 (47:27):
Just be curious.
Speaker 4 (47:28):
That's the main.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Thing, curious and fun. And you made my day. Thank
you so much. I'm sure you inspired so many of
our listeners too. 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 and concern and and I hope we'll
(47:51):
all be meeting up in person soon, so thank you
for all your inspiration and really making it absolutely fun
and cool.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
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
(48:21):
enjoy both of those. I'm sure in their very different.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Ways, we would. 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 me. Bye,
(48:50):
Thank you. Wow, that was so inspiring. I mean my
mind is blown. We got universe's galaxy, stars, planets, exoplanets, rocks, pebbles,
grains of sand, particles, subatomic particles. Let me get so
much to dream about. Thank you for being part of
(49:10):
the OMGPS Club. It's a pleasure to have you here.
Make 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.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
We are the stars.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Goodbye for now. Adios a Rivederci, ab Petersen Aabiento. Join
us next week on the Oh 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.
(49:53):
It's gotta be a blast. Nope, this podcast may actually
be nine dimensional or more. But if this is the case,
to the best of our non 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
Welcome when you commen yinvenido venu bnvenuti 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
(00:32):
ready or not, unpack your imaginations and get ready to
rumble through the universe that we are so so lucky
to live in. We are the Stars.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
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. I.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Hi, I'm dall you Wild. I'm the host of the
Oh My God Particles 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. Thanks for listening to my podcast,
and please come see my play. The Oh My God
(01:22):
Particle Show running from August seconds to twenty seventh except
August fifteenth at Gilded Balloons at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
twenty twenty three. I'm gonna be posting all the information
on my Instagram at doll you Wild Official. Stay tuned
for more details about more OMGPS live theater shows in London, Geneva,
(01:42):
New York City, La, Outer Space, who Knows. Thank you
for all your support. So here's the deal. Me and
my dog Higgs Boson. We're on the way discern right,
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
(02:03):
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
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
(02:27):
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
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,
(02:48):
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
and North cam where I also went as an undergraduate,
and he's researcher at CERN. Will be joined by doctor
Chris Lin Todd and astrophysicists at Oxford. He's a presenter
(03:11):
of the BBC show The Sky at Night. If that's
not enough for you, we also have doctor Hannah Wakeford,
an astrophysicists from Bristol University. She's a powerhouse investigating the
atmospheres of transiting exoplanets using space based telescopes. But wait,
there's more. Chris and Hannah co authored with Sir Brian May,
(03:33):
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.
All three of these stellar guests are gonna tell us
more about the Big Bang, exoplanets, citizen science particles. I mean,
(03:56):
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.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Hi, Hannah, Hi Hannah.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
That's Mark Cruz from a Stern and from Duke, And
this is Hannah the genius from Bristol.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
He was so helpful. I've asked him every dumb question
and human kind and he always answers it.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
No dumb questions. There's no dumb christ, no dumb questions.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Thank you, Mark, we have Chris. Thanks for joining you know,
Hannah and Mark Cruz genius from Cern and Duke in
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. I don't even though
(04:49):
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 had 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 series is, you know,
(05:10):
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 no big deal. I mean, it's
a huge deal what you do. But I just wanted
to know more about like awesome things you're doing with
Citizen Science, about your book Bang that you wrote with
(05:32):
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 (05:41):
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. Yeah, because I think that's deep Pele'll make
(06:01):
a pitch for you.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So, and what you could tell us what you want
to do with the telescope, and 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 whatever you want. Sleep deprived, just ramble on.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
I'll let Chris take it first. I can collect my
brain to go for from pieces.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
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 (06:38):
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.
(06:58):
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
(07:19):
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 hopefully 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
(07:42):
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. It's also
been a wonderful way to work. So we call this
citizen science, and it's a big part of what I do.
Speaker 5 (08:05):
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,
(08:29):
to try and understand the timelines from particles leaving the
Sun and then hitting our upper atmosphere and causing them
to emit those beautiful lights. That really kind of took
me on to just really loving atmospheres and everything to
do with them. And I studied exoplanets and their atmospheres.
(08:50):
They had only 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
(09:13):
and what's in their 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. And I absolutely love atmospheres of
(09:35):
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 of those gorgeous
(09:57):
pictures you see, 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. So we're really interested
(10:20):
in looking at the spectrum of all of these different molecules,
and that actually takes us from these planetry atmospheres to
the gas that formed them. So how did their staff
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 can take us all the
(10:40):
way back through time. So it's all about taking those
gorgeous images that we see and turning them into squiggles
with aer bars. And that's the bit that I really
enjoy doing, is just really playing with it.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
And Hannah's very very good at this and the world
why we're both here, 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
(11:15):
nineteen fifty seven. It pre dates the space Age, so
it started before Sputnik, the first satellite was launched, and.
Speaker 5 (11:23):
I want to make it clear it started before Chris.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Thanks any Yeah, this is an old man role. I
think I'm playing here. But the Sky there used to
be 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 presenter
(11:52):
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
(12:15):
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 Garden and all the
rest of it, Brian had some downtime and so he
(12:36):
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 astronomer in the
country and asked for advice on what telescope he should buy.
So those two became friends. Despite the fact that they
shared no musical taste whatsoever. They're both very musical people
and there's no overlap in the middle. Patrick had had
(12:56):
the idea of getting Brian to write a book about
me 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 a book,
but I don't have time. I said, I don't know
(13:17):
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
(13:38):
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 it's
(14:00):
actually 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,
and we felt that we needed to reflect all the
amazing science that's happened in the last fifteen years. And
when we started thinking about that, what's interesting is that
the science of the big the science of the grand
(14:21):
scale of the universe, 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
(14:42):
that an earthlike planet will form? All of those things
have changed dramatically because of the work by Hannah and
her colleagues to find and understand these exoplanets, these planets
around other stars. So I realized we needed somebody who
was an expert in that middle section. You know, the stuff,
the stuff involving rocks and atmospheres and that sort of stuff.
(15:05):
Some things, yeah, yeah, 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.
(15:27):
If you had that, she was the perfect person to
come in and help us rethink this middle sectary?
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Are 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
(15:56):
scientists or 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 market scern with what these two guys do.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
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? Right? And so you know, astrophysicists tend
(16:33):
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, and particle physics we
kind of do the opposite. We look in. We've got
you know, we build these huge and some almost like
huge microscopes where we collide particles together with very high energies,
(16:57):
like at the Large Hadron Collider, we're colliding protons together
with enormous energies, and in some sense we're trying to
recreate what the very early universe looked like. So when
we do these collisions at the Large Adron Collider, we're
colliding particles with energies that naturally existed when the universe
was about a trillionth of a second old. So in
some sense, we're recreating the condition of the universe it
(17:19):
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, we
(17:40):
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
(18:03):
heads around how small that is. But the universe expanded
extremely rapidly at about tenth of 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
(18:27):
completely speculative. So all our theories about what happened. The
trillionth of a second and younger for the universe are
purely speculative theories. I mean, there's some interesting ones out there,
but I think we're probably a long long way from
really understanding that.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
So I like that we can take this in secret.
So Mark, you do the first trillianth of a second exactly. Yes,
we don't understand. Then I take over because I'm an observer.
So I look out 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. We can
(19:03):
infer 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 new telescope like JWST.
(19:25):
Gravity acts to sort of pull material together to form galaxies,
to form clusters of galaxies. This is grand dance that
happens across the universe to form the structure. But it's
not too long maybe, and we could argue about when
the first planets are but you get the first stars.
The first stars are made out of almost completely hydrogen
(19:48):
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
that planets can form. And at that point things get
complicated and so to hena.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
Yeah, 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 our stars and our planetary systems are forming,
(20:25):
all the way down through that evolutionary period till we've
got these fully formed planets orbiting around their stars 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 the planet's atmosphere, how it formed, where it formed,
(20:48):
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 for where we
see them today. They move around over time, their orbits
lengthen and shorten as they move closer and further from
(21:09):
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
(21:31):
its mass. 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 five days around their sar. They're locked
into this kind of dance where one side is permanently
(21:51):
heated to thousands of degrees and the other is in
permanent darkness. And it's all then about the dynamics and
the chemistry of what's happening on those time scales. 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
(22:13):
at the atoms in these atmospheres.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Amazing. Why did they say that we're made of the stars?
How did that all work out?
Speaker 5 (22:20):
That's a Chris question.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Okay, yeah, so we have this. We actually had this.
It was Brian Innovator. So we have this as the
quote at the start of the first version of Bangs.
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 manages to
(22:43):
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 mu helium. And there's not even
a sprinkling of lithium. Doesn't do much when you want,
(23:03):
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 into helium.
(23:28):
Bigger stars or stars near their ends of their lives
sometimes can turn helium into heavier elements, and so they
produce the carbon, 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 came quickly and
(23:50):
burned through their fuel very quickly and exploded in dramatic supernova,
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 that could have planets made
out of this extra stuff that we've created. Our sun
(24:13):
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 son 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 you know, we are stardust
(24:33):
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've set out to tell
the story in order, because stories are telled in order.
You have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
You know.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
So this seems sensible. But what happened was that they
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 in on the back of an envelope
(25:14):
and do a good job 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 few years. And so
Hannah's science is a science of complexity. I live in
the middle of just looking at things and marking the
(25:34):
particle visits a simple thing.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
Yeah, it's quite remarkable that, you know. In 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 directions,
which then you know, are used to make more complex structures.
But the understanding will never be able to explain emergent
behavior like you know, atmospheres, and you know everything in
(25:58):
some things 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 complex systems that exist. And it doesn't matter,
(26:22):
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 come to you know, crossroads yet, but it
(26:45):
is a limitation of our models. Models are really restricted
in some sense and I think explaining emergent behavior emergent
you know, 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 whether. We've got to run
very sophisticated computer models. Does that mean that you know,
(27:07):
equations don't exist. I've be using even the right languages
in order to form these equations. There's lots of open questions.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
I think.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
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,
(27:36):
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
(27:58):
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
(28:19):
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
(28:41):
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 stuff,
and it's about understanding the relationship between all of those
(29:03):
really complex systems.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
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
(29:28):
to imagine such vastness.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
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,
(29:52):
you know, the Sun is just a start, 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
(30:12):
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. First thing, we don't actually know how many
grains of sand there are on the Earth. Turns out
(30:33):
that's a much harder problem, so that that's difficult and
geologists should work on that so that I can pin down.
Speaker 5 (30:41):
I mean that depends on what you call a grain.
Where does start becoming a grain?
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Right?
Speaker 5 (30:46):
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 (30:55):
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
(31:16):
galaxy that's one of a few, and 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
(31:39):
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 and the behaviors of particles that mark worries about,
(32:02):
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.
(32:23):
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 (32:39):
I'm yeah, 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 (32:56):
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 approcessed. 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 assume you've gone
(33:19):
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 (33:24):
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 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, sometimes
(33:46):
it's not something that we can put an exam for,
then we can't solve that. You'll need a computer. I'm afraid.
So getting the transition from understanding these principles or even
and just being able to think about them and going okay,
but that can mean any one of these things is
(34:08):
a whole different way of looking at things, and it's
a really hard thing to get around.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
That's why I love where music and art and science,
where it all connects, because that accessing that not knowing
or and 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
(34:33):
important to encourage people to well just to you know, explore.
That's so exciting.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
Yeah, I think encouraging failure is a good thing. I mean,
it's you know, failure is not a bad thing. And yeah,
you know, I teach both particle physics and astrophysics courses here.
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 an astrophysics
we're talking about the stars and the galaxies. You know everything.
(35:00):
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 this 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
(35:20):
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 dark energy because basically we have no
idea what it is. It's presumably come some kind of field,
but it has it's having this anti gravitational, anti pressure
(35:43):
effects on the universe, causing it to expand at an
accelerating rate. So you know, 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, and
that's our starting point.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
So we should just have fun cool to look at
all this. I know nothing you carry.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Well, I was just going to say, in astronomy we
have this other uncertity as well, in that we don't
get to go and reach in manipulate what we're studying.
So I'm I would love to know more. We've got
a neighboring galaxy to the Milky Away called the Andromeda Galaxy,
which we will in about four and a half billion
years collide with. But it'll be fine, it'll be safe.
But I'd love to know more about Agomeda. But unfortunately
it's a pancake and it's almost edge on to us,
(36:30):
so we 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 (36:43):
Yeah, So we've just got these what we call transiting planets.
These are planets that pass in front of their staff
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 star in such a way that
it blocks out some of that star's light. Only about
(37:04):
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
(37:25):
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,
colorfully 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
(37:49):
image 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
(38:12):
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.
(38:32):
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 (38:52):
And hennah, you can actually tell if a planet as
an atmosphere in some of these methods.
Speaker 5 (38:56):
Yeah, So when we're looking at these transfing planets, for example,
as the planet passes in front of the star, some
of that starlight 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
(39:17):
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
its surface that absorbs infrared light, it absorbs heat. So
we can actually look for these fingerprints of water vapor
(39:40):
in these planetary atmospheres by seeing how the planet appears
to change size as a function of waver 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,
(40:01):
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 (40:10):
You guys are so fun. I feel like I want
to come to all of your classes and so what
are you? I don't want to delay you with getting
out those telescope proposals. What are do?
Speaker 3 (40:21):
You?
Speaker 1 (40:21):
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.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Yeah, you should do the road trip. We'll show you
some old observatories and some new data, which is always
the fun big 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
lead project, but it's also a European project in the
(40:54):
Canadian one 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 actually know this is
the first proper big call for proposals. But the Hubble
(41:15):
Space Telescope, 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
on the scope to do and so yeah, no, I
have a set of galaxies that have been found by
(41:35):
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 lots of
materials falling down onto it. The black hole is feeding
(41:55):
that creates energy, and you get these jets of material
that shoot out and 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 to
prove that, and we need to take a closer look
(42:16):
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.
Speaker 5 (42:25):
Right all right, all right.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
Before it takes over. And what we want a beautiful images,
so we will get galaxies.
Speaker 5 (42:38):
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
(42:58):
haven't been able to do with yet because of how
complex the 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
(43:20):
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,
(43:42):
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
(44:03):
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,
(44:28):
these dips in the light from the star into these real,
strange alien planets.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
He 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 (44:58):
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
(45:20):
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're looking at
these Jupiter sized planets, but we can also look at
things that are rocky, so rocky worlds, so densities similar
(45:41):
to the Earth 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 the question does
it even have one? So the first thing we're doing
with JWST is trying to detect these apples spheres, and
then the next question is what are those atmosphere made of?
(46:03):
What does that tell 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
(46:25):
which interacts with the atmosphere, we 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
(46:49):
life to exist? And that's a 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 (47:07):
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 it.
Speaker 5 (47:27):
Just be curious.
Speaker 4 (47:28):
That's the main.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Thing, curious and fun. And you made my day. Thank
you so much. I'm sure you inspired so many of
our listeners too. 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 and concern and and I hope we'll
(47:51):
all be meeting up in person soon, so thank you
for all your inspiration and really making it absolutely fun
and cool.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
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
(48:21):
enjoy both of those. I'm sure in their very different.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Ways, we would. 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 me. Bye,
(48:50):
Thank you. Wow, that was so inspiring. I mean my
mind is blown. We got universe's galaxy, stars, planets, exoplanets, rocks, pebbles,
grains of sand, particles, subatomic particles. Let me get so
much to dream about. Thank you for being part of
(49:10):
the OMGPS Club. It's a pleasure to have you here.
Make 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.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
We are the stars.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Goodbye for now. Adios a Rivederci, ab Petersen Aabiento. Join
us next week on the Oh 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.
(49:53):
It's gotta be a blast. Nope, this podcast may actually
be nine dimensional or more. But if this is the case,
to the best of our non 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
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