July 15, 2020 • 47 mins
How can a star disappear? Recently, an enterprising group of astronomers and astrophysicists found themselves transformed into full-on space detectives when a cursory observation of a luminous blue variable star located in the Kinman Dwarf galaxy revealed the star had simply... vanished. This is, according to what our species understands, impossible. Something this big should leave some sort of trace. So what happened? Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they explore the ongoing cosmic conundrum, exploring the story of this galactic noir mystery -- and, ultimately, attempting to learn what led to its untimely disappearance.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noelan. They call
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission Controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you, You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. Today we are investigating a mystery, and
spoiler alert, it is not one that we are going
(00:47):
to solve in today's episode. What are we talking about, Well,
let's let's take a somewhat secuitous route here. Let's start
comparatively local and consider the sudden. You know it, you
might love it, You've definitely heard of it. It's the
closest star to uh, almost said the US. But it's
(01:08):
the closest star to Earth and the US. Uh. It's
wildly popular. It's one of the few fads that humanity
can largely agree is a good thing and should be
kept around. But the Sun is far from the only
star in the universe. Really quickly, Ben, you know who
doesn't like the Sun? Me Beavis and butt headon. Oh
(01:30):
remember that part in the movie where they're like, the
sun sucks. That's all I got. Sorry, please carry on.
I think I'm there in the desert exactly. The hydration
and my skin also is not a big fan, but
it is also the life giver of you know, it
is the light bringer. If you will, there we go.
(01:53):
So so, if you're you know, standing on Earth and
you look out, you see our sun. That's definitely the
most prominent star out there. But if you continue to look,
even with the naked eye, if you're far enough away
from a city, you can see that these things are everywhere.
And then you imagine just that there are billions of
galaxies out there in the vast nothingness. It's not really nothingness,
(02:14):
it's the everythingness. It's somethingness at the very least. But
within each of those billions of galaxies there are stars, right,
or spaces of hopes right? Maybe maybe I don't know. Well,
here are the facts. Let's talk about stars. Okay, so cool.
If you look in one very specific direction out there
(02:36):
into the cosmos, and then you travel let's say, seventy
five million light years away from the Earth, you will
find yourself in the Kinman dwarf galaxy. It's also known
as PHL two three B or phil b U. There
is a massive star inside this little dwarf galaxy, and
(02:59):
it's fairly dwarf galaxy um that is inside the constellation
of Aquarius. If you're looking out there and looking at constellations, Yes,
this object in question is known as a luminous blue
variable star or lbv UM. And part of me wants
to just pronounce that little lit move, but doesn't roll
(03:22):
off the tongue the way Phil does. Matt, you win
with that one, sir. But it's about two and a
half million times brighter than the Sun. At least at
one point in time, it was so Ben, what's the scanny?
What happened with this? Uh? This like big brother to
the Sun that is now no longer that thing. Yes,
astute listeners, you may notice that we have started speaking
(03:44):
in past tense about this star. Here here's what happened.
This star is already relatively well studied in the modern day. Astrophysicists,
astronomers and so on had investigated it for the better
part of a decade from about two thousand and one
to two thousand and eleven. There's nothing unusual about that.
(04:06):
That is the routine research that scientists will do. This star, however,
was different in that it was nearing the end of
its stellar life. That's right, Stars, just like people or
living things, uh, do have a finite span of time
(04:28):
in their existence. And this star was in its older days.
It was elderly. It was an elderly star for lack
of a better word. And it was also subject to
these weird, unpredictable variations and brightness. So nol you had said, Uh,
this LBV was about two point five million times brighter
(04:50):
than the Sun. It was, but it wasn't consistently at
that brightness, and this was pretty baffling. Uh. Stars like
this are candidly pretty rare, but they are not unknown.
So again, still, this star was not unique yet. A
handful of these have been discovered already. However, when people
(05:11):
saw these fluctuations in brightness, some enterprising astro physicists also
recognized it as an enormous opportunity for possibly groundbreaking research,
and so they said, out of the multitude of stars
in the sky, we want to turn the telescopes back
to this one and see if there's anything else we
can learn. Yes, a doctoral astrophysicist student at Trinity Dublin
(05:37):
College did just that. A gentleman by the name of
Andrew Allen was very interested in the star. So back
in nineteen he and his fellow star enthusiasts, um professional
star enthusiasts, decided to use something delightfully named the European
Southern Observatories very Large Telescope love it just to tell it,
tell it like it is. And they wanted to use
(05:58):
this device to get a us or look um at
this star as it started kind of approaching its twilight
years um, the end of its stellar life, and that
would potentially really offer some incredible research material, right And
and it's not as though they were going in, you know,
(06:19):
completely blind about what may may happen. They had a
pretty rough idea of what's going to happen to this star,
because stars do a couple of general different things. But
usually when a star, you know that's this much larger
and brighter than the sun, begins to really end, truly end,
it's going to explode in some kind, in some form
(06:41):
or fashion. And there are several different types of these
explosions that we're going to talk about here, but there
it would it would explode, and we would notice because
we would see it. Even though it's seventy five million
light years away and it takes that light that long
to reach us, we would still be able to observe it. Yeah. Yeah,
And so we know that stars of this size tend
(07:06):
to have violent deaths. Uh. And and also you know, I,
I know I'm leaning into the comparisons here, uh and
I maybe anthropomorphizing a bit, but you'll see why these
comparisons are apt. So stars have Stars of this nature
tend to have violent deaths. Here's what happens. They run
(07:28):
out of hydrogen to fuse, right, and then the weight
of the star starts squeezing on its core. It gets
hotter and hotter and denser and denser. And then the
star uh, almost as if it is struggling to prevent
itself from dying. It begins to fuse heavier elements than usual,
(07:50):
and sort of a hail Mary, a last ditch effort
to keep from collapsing. So from carbon to silicon to iron,
each of these steps generates heat and pressure, but it's
never quite enough, and the fusion of these heavier elements
they don't give the star more energy, so boom, the
(08:10):
core collapses, and the resulting shock wave of protons and
neutrons colliding will rip the star apart. The outer layers
are thrown out into the ink, out into space, and
it becomes a supernova. Uh and for for very brief
(08:31):
time comparatively, the star is enormously bright. This massive amount
of chaos and and pandemonium makes for a beautiful display.
Actually it's it's weird that for us it's an amazing firework,
but you know, it's tremendously get damaging to the galaxies
in which it occurs. And it's one of those things
(08:53):
where if you are observing even the region around a
star that is going into supernova or beginning to supernova,
or has recently gone into that process, you'd be able
to see it because it's not just you know, um,
if you think about our son, it's not just kind
(09:13):
of that ball of gases that's burning, right, it's now
um if you imagine, you've seen it before depicted in
movies and and science fiction television probably, but it is
now kind of coloring the the uh space around it,
the darkness around it. Right, it looks like a splotch
(09:34):
now more than kind of spherical thing UM, because it's
the it's all those gases that Ben was talking about,
the radiation, it all just kind of looks to have
spilled out into the space around it for quite a while.
It doesn't just explode and then it's done right. It
doesn't last for a few seconds the way it does
and maybe a star wars or you know, something like that.
(09:57):
It's there and you're observing it again over the worse
of several years. Man. Yeah, so after the blast um,
this dense core that's left behind UM from stellar material
might collapse into a black hole or a neutron star.
And those are two of spaces most head scratching kind
(10:18):
of mysteries that we really don't know what happens when
you get sucked into one of these, or at least
not as much as we would like. UM. But that's
not what happened to LBV. When Andrew Alan searched for
this um LBV, he stumbled across a bit of a
galactic mystery. UM sort of like a victim and some
kind of cosmic noir detective story. I love this, Ben Um.
(10:42):
The star just just you know, like they like Kaiser,
so's like that it was gone. Um. And in order
to investigate this mystery and kind of follow the clues, uh,
the researchers had to look back at previous observations and
snapshots of the star taken in two thousand two and
two thousand line, and they discovered something very interesting, which
(11:03):
was at the star had been undergoing a very strong
one of those outburst periods that matt was talking about
during that time, Um getting rid of throwing off enormous
amounts of of that stellar material at a much much
faster rate than normal. I would just like to point
out that is not a supernova that you're talking about there, Um, Like,
(11:23):
it's not an explosion. It's it's ejecting material the way
maybe you've seen the Sun with a coronal mass ejection
or some of the filaments that just will escape from
the surface of the Sun and head out into space.
It's yes, yes, star tantrum, It's yeah, that's essentially what
(11:45):
we're talking about here, but at a much higher rate.
That's a very good point, Matt Um. And so what
happened next, Well, the researchers know that this kind of
star variable LBV like this can experience these space tantrums
as they age, uh, and that can cause them to
(12:05):
glow more brightly. But what they found was that the
outbursts they could prove and trace ended some time after
right when routine observation the star halted, and that meant
that they needed some They needed to do some space
detective work because sometime between eleven and this star simply vanished.
(12:33):
So what happened? That's our question today and will attempt
to find some answers afterward. From our sponsor. Here's where
it gets crazy. Okay, jury is out. What happened? Well,
(12:55):
that's kind of the point of this episode, guys. Um,
we don't know exactly what happened, and scientists, even brilliant
younger people who are you know, getting pH d s
and astrophysics who are observing the thing directly, are trying
to figure out exactly what happened. But the cool thing
(13:17):
that occurs when you know, strange things go down is
that there are a bunch of explanations, proposed hypotheses, theories
about what perhaps occurred here. And what we're gonna do
from here on out is just explore some of the
things that may have happened with this star, and some,
of course, are a little more out there than others.
(13:40):
Some are a little more mundane, a little boring. But
it's okay because it could be any of these. Because
guess what's coming up in a second bend. Oh yeah,
strap In, I have a clear bias on this one, guys,
I have the one that I very much want to
be true. Uh. We're gonna get to aliens in a second.
But but right now, it's already spooky and disquieting enough
(14:03):
to note that stars do a lot of things. They
don't just disappear that that doesn't happen. They leave a trace.
Like you said, No, there will be a black hole, right,
there will be there will be some sort of detritus.
But this one seems to have just vanished. So if
we look at the possibilities, I suggest we start with
(14:25):
the mundane, or, as you said, Matt, maybe the more
boring a k plausible stuff. First, Uh, we have to
remember to a point I think one of us made earlier,
that we're looking at something from a long, long, long
way away. There's a lot of space in between us
and this star, so much space that there's a lot
(14:47):
of time in between us in this star and in
that space, that geographic space between us and this star. Uh,
there are plenty of things that get in the way.
To preface this, I want point out something that Matt
mentioned off air that you know, in that that gap
between the observation period nineteen, there's anything could have All
(15:08):
bets are off, anything could have happened in that time,
to just keep that in mind. But one uh, pretty
simple and a little bit mundane explanation could be that
the star dimmed considerably after its outburst and was then
further obscured by um a thick kind of cluster of
cosmic dust. UM. If that's the case, then the star
(15:29):
could reappear in future observations because again these clouds, uh,
this kind of veil could drift through space, and that's
a lot of time for something like that. You know,
things move very slowly in space, at least far away
when you're observing it. That absolutely would be a scenario
where the star didn't actually go anywhere, It just wasn't
observable at the time. Just what I would say here
(15:50):
that this one feels a little odd to me is
just how bright the star was in question here the LBV,
because you know, we mentioned at the top. It was
two and a half million times is brighter than the sun. Right,
that's some robust cosmic dust right there. You know, well,
well it is for sure. Um, it's just we don't
(16:10):
know how far away you know, where that veil would
be located in between the two points right on that
on that line, Um, I mean, would that be sort
of like an asteroid belt or something like like a
cluster of like closely knit together material that would potentially
obscure something from view. This is what I find hilarious
(16:32):
about this. This is classic human this this series basically
that UH is saying that seventy five million light years
is is a lot of space and that there could
be something in front of the telescope. We're dressing it
up to sound fancy and we're going to talk about
some weirder stuff, but this is like uh possibility and
(16:56):
feels like the exact kind of delightful hijinks are Specie
gets itself into. It's like the cosmic equivalent of accidentally
having your thumb slightly over the corner of the camera
on your phone when you're taking a selfie or something
like that. You know, if your thumb was let's say
forty million light years away gay exactly exactly. So we
(17:18):
let's get into what we you know, what we like
to talk about. Here the weirder and more exciting explanation, Ben,
I think I leave this d you, my friend. Oh
this is um this is on the way to weird.
I won't say this is We're not full weird yet
on this one. But what if the star never really
recovered from its space tantrums when it was bleeding out
(17:42):
all that material. What if it just somehow collapsed into
a black hole, not with a bang, but with a whimper.
What if no supernova occurred? In short, like, what if
what if there wasn't an explosion like that for us
to see, It just sort of became a black hole.
(18:04):
This is pretty crazy. This would be a rare event.
And if it did happen, then the star would have
made a enormous black hole. It would have a mass
that was five to a hundred and twenty times the
mass of Earth's Sun And we have no idea how
that would have happened. That's like, that's at the stage
(18:26):
of you know, spitballing and speculation where someone says, maybe
this could have happened, and then someone says, well, how
do you think it would have occurred? And everybody has
to kind of throw up their hands and shrug because
that doesn't make sense. It violates what we understand about
the rules of physics. Well, you know what they what
they really would have to do, Ben, and it's something
(18:47):
that would be completely beyond my understanding is throw up
a bunch of physics equations that there's no way I
could ever understand. But I've read some some papers on this.
We've all read some scientific papers on this now at
this point and trying to wrap my head at least
around the math that goes into calculating how it could
(19:10):
become a black hole like that. People are doing it
and they're checking it out and they're checking you know,
their maths. But uh, I certainly couldn't explain it to
you on this podcast. But but like you said, Rare,
what could have happened? Could have there there's another possibility
that comes to us through some research, some pretty recent
(19:30):
research at Cornell University. Right, is this a step up
in the weird spectrum? This one, this is a weird
one where it feels more plausible and a little less
I don't know if this one rise the line between
mundane and strange. So let's let's just get into it.
I'm good with that. Yeah. They it was a project
(19:51):
UM through an article submission to our x of dot
org that is a mouthful a r x I a
v dot org, which is like a database UM, and
that's through Cornell University in February. They weighed in on
different potential outcomes UM that we just mentioned so far,
(20:13):
and they added this one as another possibility UM positing
what if the light that these astronomers were observing all
that time UM and observing that it had dimmed so
significantly wasn't actually from an LBV star but from the
explosion of of of an LBV star from you know,
a supernovo LBV star. The scientists show that a type
(20:34):
two end supernova could account for some of these previous
misinterpretations of that light. That would you know, in theory,
have been coming from an active star rather than an explosion.
Your user error, then, is a good way to sum
up that argument. It's that it's not that the results
were wrong, we're necessarily mysterious at that point. It's that
(20:55):
our interpretation of those of that data was incorrect. And
these scientists, you know, they make a pretty good case
for this theory. Yeah. And if you you know, you
may think to yourself, what, no, man, there's no way
brilliant people could mistake a star just being there physically
somewhere and an explosion. Well, maybe think again. Here, I'm
(21:20):
gonna read a couple of quotes here from this article
that was published. It says it is possible the s
N supernova two end like event occurred some sometime between
September and September when no photometry is available, so no
actual pictures of this star and of the light being
(21:40):
emanated from that area. Going back to the quote, in
some cases supernova light curves exhibit bumps several years after
the explosion. Now that would account for you know, early
on Ben was talking about how this star or wherever
this light was coming from, it was very bright at
time times and then seemed to dim of it and
(22:01):
then be very bright, even brighter, and then a little
more dim um And that's what they're describing here as
these bumps in output of light. And here's another quote here,
the most plausible explanations for the recent dissipation of the
broad emission after an unusually persistent phase are an LBV
outburst followed by a slow, weakly variable phase, or a
(22:24):
very long lived s N two end event. That's a
supernova event. Um, so again exactly what we described before.
The most plausible things are that it just had that
weird outburst, that space tantrum we talked about then just
dimmed very significantly after that, or it was a long
(22:44):
lived supernova that we've just been observing as though it
were a star. Uh. And they say the latter is
more likely given the lack of short time scale variability
and the slowly fading light curve. The language just scientists, everyone, Yeah,
you did a really good job of unpacking that, Matt,
I applaud you. And now I think we're we're to
(23:06):
Ben's favorite part of today's episode, when we get legitimately
uh into the weirdest sphere here. Oh. I yeah, I'm
excited about this one. Guys. I think it's I think
it's gonna be our I think we'll be unanimous in
deciding this is our favorite part, this is our favorite
possible explanation. But let's hold the tension just a bit longer.
(23:30):
Will pause for a word from our sponsor. We'll be
right back, Noel Matt fellow conspiracy realists. Let's dream big.
What if this mysterious star was never destroyed at all.
(23:52):
What if reports of its death are exaggerated. What if
instead of being annihilated, this star was simply tamed. Which
sounds crazy, right, I'm anthropomorphizing left right here. But to
put a very fine point on it, what if somewhere
out there in the ink and extraterrestrial civilization has somehow
(24:13):
mastered the art of taming stars and using them for energy. Oh,
now we're talking, Ben, this is what I'm talking about.
Taming a star. How do you How does one do that? Well,
it's not like you can lasso it or capture it
(24:34):
in a trap of some sort, right you know, uh,
we know that we haven't done it yet officially. But
this is this is something I think we've talked about
on on stuff that I want you to know before,
the concept of the Kardashiev scale and this this is
this is very interesting. But we we have to explore
(24:56):
just a little bit about this so it doesn't sound
so the idea of someone taming a star doesn't sound
absolutely bonkers, which maybe it is that sounds like something
Dr Manhattan would do, or like maybe four you know,
fighting a star or taming a star. But no, this
is yeah, we can we can put this in UM
relatively grounded terms UM. So. In nineteen sixty four, Soviet
(25:18):
astronomer named Nicolai Cardischef proposed that a civilization's level of
technological advancement UM is like a direct correlation to the
amount of energy that the civilization is able to utilize.
And he's got three. He categorized the civilizations into three categories,
type one, Type two, type three. In a burst of creativity,
as Ben would say, a type one civilization can manage
(25:40):
the entire energy UM output and material resources of a planet.
A Type to civilization is capable of harnessing the energy
and material resources of a star and its entire planetary system.
And a type three UH civilization is able to wrangle
all of the energy and material resources of an entire galaxy.
(26:02):
Let's just try to simplify this ever so slightly, so
within this scale, it's theoretically possible that some intelligent civilization
somewhere out there in space has reached the level of
a type to civilization UM. Type three is just beast
mode um, and this would mean the construction of something
called a Dyson sphere. No, that is not a ball
(26:26):
vacuum cleaner, but I do believe that's where the name
came from. If I'm not mistaken, or is the guy's
name actually Dyson. I think it's I think it's a
connection because there's that Dison vacuum that has the sphere.
I don't know, I'm just conjecturing here. Yeah, it's the
Dyson spear is named after Freeman Dyson, but I don't
think he's affiliated with the vacuums. No, that's Sir James Dyson.
(26:46):
Who does happen? Is this parallel thinking? He's James decided
to keep his scientific smarts in the realm of of
of keeping your home nice and tidy. But they're both
working with vacuums. When you think about it, that's very true,
terrible point. So I think it's perfectly spot on, and
it's certainly helped help me look a little less foolish,
and I appreciate that. Oh no, no, no chumps in
(27:08):
the squad. I just want to put out there that
I think we're talking about type to civilization, building a
dicen sphere here, we'll get into it. I think we're
actually talking about a type three civilization, gentlemen, here best mode.
I think we're talking about beast mode because of the
time frame where the demmi occurred. But let's continue forward. Yeah, yea.
(27:30):
So it's interesting that scale is a tremendously humbling one.
If you are familiar with Cardassiev, or if you have
read his work, or if you you know, if you're
thinking about this and putting humanity in this context, we
are yet to become a type one civilization. We are
below the bottom barrel of energy. We're Cardashev made a
(27:55):
scale that is a little bit difficult for the average
human to relate to, perhaps where the average to soxiety.
But a Dyson sphere is even cooler than a dyson
um vacuum. Clear the technology, if it exists, would um
would would be like that Arthur C. Clark quote, you know,
it would be indistinguishable from magic to the average human
(28:18):
being here on our ball of mud. The Dyson sphere
is a theoretical structure that's just like the kind of
trap you described, Matt. It's something that would be built
or constructed somehow around the entirety of a star. Imagine
putting the Sun in a box and then this sphere. This, uh,
(28:42):
this contraption would capture all of the energy emitted by
the star, and most importantly, it would be able to
transfer that energy converted into some sort of usable form.
For the enigmatic constructors of the Dyson sphere, this thing
would be huge. It would be without exceptions, without hyperbole,
(29:07):
it would be the biggest thing ever built as far
as humanity could understand. It was like, do you think
the Death Star is a big deal in Star Wars?
I mean, it's a huge plot point, doesn't have the
best design, get it, sure, but but it's massive. This
would absolutely dwarf this we have We have no idea
(29:28):
how it would be built. Absolutely at least the Dyson's
fear that was put forward, as you said, by Freeman
Dyson in nineteen sixty because you're talking about bigger than
a star, right, it's some constructed thing that's larger than
a star. Um certainly boggles of the mind there. But
there have been several theoretical, obviously very theoretical types of
(29:55):
solar grids almost that would consist of smaller essentially machines
and solar captured devices that would be placed close to
a star um but not in the same way as
a Dyson sphere wouldn't encapsulate the entire thing. But there
are some really fascinating concepts out there right now about
how you could begin down the road to a Dyson sphere. Yeah. Yeah,
(30:20):
and I do want to give credit where it's d
Dyson formalized this idea back in nineteen sixty, but we
believe he was he was inspired by earlier works of
science fiction by authors like Olaf Stapledon and H. Fellow
named J. D. Bernal. It's weird. The cool thing about
science fiction is that, uh, sometimes it ends up being prescient, right,
(30:45):
Like the US government True story has hired science fiction
writers in the past and just said, okay, yeah, pitch
this to us. Uh, this is a real thing we're
working on. How should we handle it? And they get
some wild answers. But yeah, Dyson, Uh, Dyson had a
pretty solid logic. He said, Look, if humanity can continue
(31:08):
our merry and mad experiments uh of existence, eventually we
are going to expand our energy demands so much so
that we're going to need to figure out a way
to get the total energy output of the Sun. How
do we do that? How do we make that happen?
He came up with the Dyson sphere. As you said, Matt,
(31:30):
there are it sounds with bonkers, but there there are
pretty I don't want to say conclusive, there are compelling
and tantalizing arguments for the legitimacy or the feasibility of
a dice and sphere. The craziest thing about this whole
notion is that theoretically it's possible. Theoretically it is possible
to build something around a start. I really quickly just
(31:53):
want to make a pop culture reference in the one
hundred and thirty episode of Star Trek the Next Generation
and called relics uh the Enterprise, you know, as they
typically do response to a distress call and they discover
a dice and sphere. So a fun way to kind
of see it sort of fictionalized because it is there's
some science behind it, but it also it's one of
(32:14):
those things that's a little nebulous, right, Like it's conceptually possible,
but it's also like a thing in Star Trek that
they're presenting as though it's real, but we're not really
there yet technologically To actually make that happen. And just
to reiterate, that was Star Trek The Next Generation Season six,
episode four, a k a. The onety episode of the
show called Relics Relics. I like, hey, man, I love
(32:39):
Star Trek. YouTube. Parts of it corny, but oh man,
I find it very relaxing and comforting. I'll put it
on before bed. Sometimes it sort of lulls me into
a nice space trance. I'm super into the Borg, the queue,
all the villains. Oh yeah, totally. I want to put
this out there because I maybe I just have not
fully understanding. I oppose it to you guys as a
(32:59):
full off a cool question. I don't understand why an
intelligence at that level would want to fully encapsulate a star,
knowing that effects that that would have on all of
the solar system that you know is surrounding that star.
(33:20):
Like it feels like you'd want to capture the energy
or enough of the energy of that star while still
allowing it to keep you know, the functionality of the
solar system um. And maybe it's just my misunderstanding of
how that would actually affect it, because you certainly wouldn't
be sending heat anywhere throughout the Solar system anymore. If
you put a dicensephere on the thing, you're saying it
(33:42):
would affect like gravitational balance or something like that. Or well,
I mean, if if there's any I guess you'd want
to identify a star that doesn't have any life on
any of the planets, or observable life on any of
the planets, if you're anything like the you know this
crew of the starship Enterprise and you know the Federation
(34:03):
and all that, or maybe if you don't give a
crap and you're just you need that star energy, you
just put a Dicen sphere on that thing, and I
everybody else, Well, here's the here. This is a great question,
and it's also, unfortunately uh a good argument against a
Dicen sphere being responsible for the disappearance of this star.
(34:24):
And it's this, it's a question of efficiency. Why build
an entire box or an entire sphere around a star
when you can get all the energy you need from
an alternative design like a Dyson ring. Think about how
much we save in terms of great now we're space engineers,
think about all the cost cutting we could institute if
(34:48):
we just got a a Dyson um what's sometimes described
as a diceon swarm, and that would be instead of
one contiguous sphere, we have, uh, we have like satellites
in these positions, right, these immovable or static positions arranged,
(35:08):
and maybe a ring that would be the simplest form,
or in a series of rings, like the lines of
longitude on a globe. Right, we would still be harvesting
a tremendous amount of energy, but we would also you know,
energy would be leaving the mechanism as well. And to
(35:28):
your point, Matt, I think it's more dangerous for us
to anthropomorphize alien life than it is to anthropomorphies stars,
because uh, it leads us down these dark these dark roads,
these dark paths. To your question about why why someone
or some entity would build us fhear knowing that it
could wreak havoc on a solar system. Um, all we
(35:52):
can say is that if an aliens or anything like us,
if an extraterrestrial mind is anything like our own, uh
that and we can look at our human past and
every time we have had a chance to do the
right thing for the environment during you know, energy rushes,
we have decided to go with the short term profit. Yeah,
(36:14):
Prime Minister Groulp needed that star energy, man, right right,
we need that star energy. You know, the other other
life forms will just have to deal with it. It's
true though, Um, there's no proof of this. It's just
a fascinating idea. And you know, as we've discussed in
(36:35):
previous episodes, whenever the concept of aliens somewhere out there
in space comes up, they are more or less a
mathematical certainty. And that makes this theory so fascinating for
a few different reasons. If if a dicens fear, we
know it can be built, but if there is a
civilization capable of building one, that makes the possibility of
(36:57):
finding intelligent extraterrestrial lie so much easier. There's a big
thing that we can find, you know what I mean. Uh.
And then second, if we find something like this, it
would prove a powerful commonality because it would mean that
these entities, these minds, whatever they are, would mean that
(37:19):
they use energy in a way similar to us, That they,
like us, uh, derive nourishment and existence from a star.
And that that that sounds small, but philosophically that's astounding.
That's that's kind of beautiful. I mean, we have to
remember every single thing, uh that about discovering a Dycen
(37:42):
sphere would be historic, It would be mind blowing, It
would be no small way terrifying. Uh. But we also
have to remember, you know, when we think about life
and planets that carry life, we are stuck with a
sample size of one. So we have no idea this
this would be I would rarely say this, guys, but
(38:02):
this would be a revolution of a spiritual level as
well as a scientific and circular one. I really want,
I really quickly want to point out that Popular Mechanics
has a fantastic article called could we Build a Dicen Sphere?
By Adam Hatizie from February twenty if of this year,
And so it is, you know, theoretically possible, but you know,
(38:25):
from everything that I've read, it would take like eighty
years to build one, just with the metrics of what
we know of how much material it would take, and
just like the you know, the time frame of constructing
such a thing and just the logistics of it. But
there's also a few pretty cool videos on YouTube about
conceptually what it would take to build a Dicen sphere.
But it's it's I love the stuff that like this,
that's conceptually possible, but we're just not there yet because
(38:48):
it really scratches that sci fi it's for me, and
I think this is exactly that it's such an interesting story. Well,
we're in this scenario. We're talking about roughly nine years
or a little than that, some short period of time
where this star went from extremely bright to disappearing. Right, So,
(39:08):
if a Dicen sphere was installed, I'm thinking, You've got
two halves of a Dicen sphere and you ram them
together and now it's gone i Keia style, all right,
I love I love it. Some assembly required, right, Yeah?
That that that would be like a one million page
i Kea manual. You Uh, maybe it's also super simple.
(39:31):
Maybe it's just the equivalent of one very vague assembly
sheet and it says take Dycen sphere half A, noted
as A and attached to be not to just be.
I don't I don't know. I've been assembling a lot
of a lot of furniture from sketchy places recently and
and I'm loving I'm loving the genre of writing that
(39:54):
the instructions are in. But but you guys are right, uh,
we we can find this inspiring. The dicensephere is still
kind of a I mean, it's a thought experiment. There's
a great YouTube video about this called in a Nutshell.
If you guys are familiar with this series, they do animated,
(40:15):
excellent explanations of various things of this nature. But the
jury is still out. If you want a dicense fear
to be real, and you want this LBV to be
evidence of one, then we have somewhat good news for you. Currently,
this star has yet to reappear. No one has confirmed
(40:35):
whether it transformed into a black hole, whether there's some
kind of uh cosmic flotsam and jetsam in between the
telescope and the star, and we don't know if it
got bound into a dicense fhere. We don't know what happened.
There was no supernova, there was no sudden burst of light,
no dying scream of admitted energy. Instead, like a drowning sailor,
(40:58):
this enormous star are just sort of slipped beneath the waves. Also,
on a somewhat depressing philosophical note, because of the passage
of time, we have to realize that if this civilization existed,
they existed seventy five million years ago. So even if
(41:22):
they were, there are odds of finding them now are
very very very very very low as we understand them.
We should end it on a higher note. Sorry, it's
all good. I do like that we're in. That we're
ending here with a mystery because it gives us, you know,
something to look forward to, because we will find out
(41:42):
what happened to this start or the supernova. It's just
gonna take time. Thankfully, it won't take seventy five million
years light years, but it will, you know, we'll get there.
What if? What if? What if there's some deep space
equivalent of a Leviathan or kracking and it's like a
(42:04):
life form and it like eat stars. What if there's
a star eater out there? Not that's just swimming past
the star for an elongated period of time. Stuff of
nightmares right there, gentlemen. But we want to hear from you, folks,
think you as always so much for tuning in. What
do you think happened to this LBV? Can you solve
(42:29):
the mystery of a star that again just disappeared? We've posed, uh,
we posed various theories again, as Matt said, ranging across
the spectrum of plausibility, But what do we miss? What
do you think what would be the wildest thing that
could happen, What do you think is the most likely
(42:50):
thing that could happen? And what should what should we
be looking for when we searched the sky at night?
Mm hmm. This besides giant space whales? Are space whales? Yeah? Yeah,
(43:11):
I do. Now, I just want to see that has
that ever been depicted? We're gonna I'm gonna start just
a Google search where giant space whales. We're gonna build
it somewhere. Didn't we talk about space whales in a
recent episode, and I and I incorrectly said that Mobius
was a big purveyor of space whales and he maybe
(43:31):
did one space whale. But we looked up pictures. It's
definitely a popular sci fi trope, but it wasn't Mobius.
But I don't know. Oh the art, yes, I believe so, Yeah,
they're amazing. Well, let us know what your take on
a space whale is also. I'm interested. Um. I was
thinking about this earlier. If we think about the universe
(43:52):
just in terms of size, there could easily be life
forms that are larger than our entire planet. Uh and
we might never know. It's just what do they breathe? Man?
Does that work? Just just just energy, bro, just straight
space dust. I have no idea man, space radiation. Maybe
(44:17):
maybe they're like, uh, you know how whales have bailey
that allows them to filter krill. Maybe they're doing something
like okay, like this has nothing to do with this
disappearing star. We haven't solved the mystery. We want to.
We want to hear from you, folks. Let us know.
You can find us on Facebook, you can find us
on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter, not just
(44:38):
as a show but as individuals. Yes, if you wish,
you may find me on Instagram, which is where I
hang out. I'm not really a tweeter, um, but I
do look occasionally and I'm trying to get more into
it because of because of all the smart folks out
there on Twitter making crazy weird Twitter communities out there
that I feel excluded from. But for now, I am
(44:59):
an Instagram only user at how Now Noel Brown And
should you wish to take some weird detours and your
daily interneting, you can find me at ben Bullying HSW
on Twitter or at ben Bullying on Instagram. And if
you're not in the social media, you can give us
a call. Our number is one eight three three st
(45:20):
d w y t K. Please give us a call.
Let us know what you think. I apologize that we
do not say that in unison anymore. It became much
harder than we expected when attempting to do it over
a zoom call. All the things we've lost from covid.
You guys, people are saying it at home along with us.
(45:42):
We can. We can hear you through the void and
I will say I don't know. Um, go ahead and
leave us some messages. We've got a big old backlog
that we need to start curating, and we're already in
the process of doing so. And there may be some
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(46:03):
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(46:24):
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(46:55):
don't want you to know is a production of I
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noelan. They call
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission Controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you, You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. Today we are investigating a mystery, and
spoiler alert, it is not one that we are going
(00:47):
to solve in today's episode. What are we talking about, Well,
let's let's take a somewhat secuitous route here. Let's start
comparatively local and consider the sudden. You know it, you
might love it, You've definitely heard of it. It's the
closest star to uh, almost said the US. But it's
(01:08):
the closest star to Earth and the US. Uh. It's
wildly popular. It's one of the few fads that humanity
can largely agree is a good thing and should be
kept around. But the Sun is far from the only
star in the universe. Really quickly, Ben, you know who
doesn't like the Sun? Me Beavis and butt headon. Oh
(01:30):
remember that part in the movie where they're like, the
sun sucks. That's all I got. Sorry, please carry on.
I think I'm there in the desert exactly. The hydration
and my skin also is not a big fan, but
it is also the life giver of you know, it
is the light bringer. If you will, there we go.
(01:53):
So so, if you're you know, standing on Earth and
you look out, you see our sun. That's definitely the
most prominent star out there. But if you continue to look,
even with the naked eye, if you're far enough away
from a city, you can see that these things are everywhere.
And then you imagine just that there are billions of
galaxies out there in the vast nothingness. It's not really nothingness,
(02:14):
it's the everythingness. It's somethingness at the very least. But
within each of those billions of galaxies there are stars, right,
or spaces of hopes right? Maybe maybe I don't know. Well,
here are the facts. Let's talk about stars. Okay, so cool.
If you look in one very specific direction out there
(02:36):
into the cosmos, and then you travel let's say, seventy
five million light years away from the Earth, you will
find yourself in the Kinman dwarf galaxy. It's also known
as PHL two three B or phil b U. There
is a massive star inside this little dwarf galaxy, and
(02:59):
it's fairly dwarf galaxy um that is inside the constellation
of Aquarius. If you're looking out there and looking at constellations, Yes,
this object in question is known as a luminous blue
variable star or lbv UM. And part of me wants
to just pronounce that little lit move, but doesn't roll
(03:22):
off the tongue the way Phil does. Matt, you win
with that one, sir. But it's about two and a
half million times brighter than the Sun. At least at
one point in time, it was so Ben, what's the scanny?
What happened with this? Uh? This like big brother to
the Sun that is now no longer that thing. Yes,
astute listeners, you may notice that we have started speaking
(03:44):
in past tense about this star. Here here's what happened.
This star is already relatively well studied in the modern day. Astrophysicists,
astronomers and so on had investigated it for the better
part of a decade from about two thousand and one
to two thousand and eleven. There's nothing unusual about that.
(04:06):
That is the routine research that scientists will do. This star, however,
was different in that it was nearing the end of
its stellar life. That's right, Stars, just like people or
living things, uh, do have a finite span of time
(04:28):
in their existence. And this star was in its older days.
It was elderly. It was an elderly star for lack
of a better word. And it was also subject to
these weird, unpredictable variations and brightness. So nol you had said, Uh,
this LBV was about two point five million times brighter
(04:50):
than the Sun. It was, but it wasn't consistently at
that brightness, and this was pretty baffling. Uh. Stars like
this are candidly pretty rare, but they are not unknown.
So again, still, this star was not unique yet. A
handful of these have been discovered already. However, when people
(05:11):
saw these fluctuations in brightness, some enterprising astro physicists also
recognized it as an enormous opportunity for possibly groundbreaking research,
and so they said, out of the multitude of stars
in the sky, we want to turn the telescopes back
to this one and see if there's anything else we
can learn. Yes, a doctoral astrophysicist student at Trinity Dublin
(05:37):
College did just that. A gentleman by the name of
Andrew Allen was very interested in the star. So back
in nineteen he and his fellow star enthusiasts, um professional
star enthusiasts, decided to use something delightfully named the European
Southern Observatories very Large Telescope love it just to tell it,
tell it like it is. And they wanted to use
(05:58):
this device to get a us or look um at
this star as it started kind of approaching its twilight
years um, the end of its stellar life, and that
would potentially really offer some incredible research material, right And
and it's not as though they were going in, you know,
(06:19):
completely blind about what may may happen. They had a
pretty rough idea of what's going to happen to this star,
because stars do a couple of general different things. But
usually when a star, you know that's this much larger
and brighter than the sun, begins to really end, truly end,
it's going to explode in some kind, in some form
(06:41):
or fashion. And there are several different types of these
explosions that we're going to talk about here, but there
it would it would explode, and we would notice because
we would see it. Even though it's seventy five million
light years away and it takes that light that long
to reach us, we would still be able to observe it. Yeah. Yeah,
And so we know that stars of this size tend
(07:06):
to have violent deaths. Uh. And and also you know, I,
I know I'm leaning into the comparisons here, uh and
I maybe anthropomorphizing a bit, but you'll see why these
comparisons are apt. So stars have Stars of this nature
tend to have violent deaths. Here's what happens. They run
(07:28):
out of hydrogen to fuse, right, and then the weight
of the star starts squeezing on its core. It gets
hotter and hotter and denser and denser. And then the
star uh, almost as if it is struggling to prevent
itself from dying. It begins to fuse heavier elements than usual,
(07:50):
and sort of a hail Mary, a last ditch effort
to keep from collapsing. So from carbon to silicon to iron,
each of these steps generates heat and pressure, but it's
never quite enough, and the fusion of these heavier elements
they don't give the star more energy, so boom, the
(08:10):
core collapses, and the resulting shock wave of protons and
neutrons colliding will rip the star apart. The outer layers
are thrown out into the ink, out into space, and
it becomes a supernova. Uh and for for very brief
(08:31):
time comparatively, the star is enormously bright. This massive amount
of chaos and and pandemonium makes for a beautiful display.
Actually it's it's weird that for us it's an amazing firework,
but you know, it's tremendously get damaging to the galaxies
in which it occurs. And it's one of those things
(08:53):
where if you are observing even the region around a
star that is going into supernova or beginning to supernova,
or has recently gone into that process, you'd be able
to see it because it's not just you know, um,
if you think about our son, it's not just kind
(09:13):
of that ball of gases that's burning, right, it's now
um if you imagine, you've seen it before depicted in
movies and and science fiction television probably, but it is
now kind of coloring the the uh space around it,
the darkness around it. Right, it looks like a splotch
(09:34):
now more than kind of spherical thing UM, because it's
the it's all those gases that Ben was talking about,
the radiation, it all just kind of looks to have
spilled out into the space around it for quite a while.
It doesn't just explode and then it's done right. It
doesn't last for a few seconds the way it does
and maybe a star wars or you know, something like that.
(09:57):
It's there and you're observing it again over the worse
of several years. Man. Yeah, so after the blast um,
this dense core that's left behind UM from stellar material
might collapse into a black hole or a neutron star.
And those are two of spaces most head scratching kind
(10:18):
of mysteries that we really don't know what happens when
you get sucked into one of these, or at least
not as much as we would like. UM. But that's
not what happened to LBV. When Andrew Alan searched for
this um LBV, he stumbled across a bit of a
galactic mystery. UM sort of like a victim and some
kind of cosmic noir detective story. I love this, Ben Um.
(10:42):
The star just just you know, like they like Kaiser,
so's like that it was gone. Um. And in order
to investigate this mystery and kind of follow the clues, uh,
the researchers had to look back at previous observations and
snapshots of the star taken in two thousand two and
two thousand line, and they discovered something very interesting, which
(11:03):
was at the star had been undergoing a very strong
one of those outburst periods that matt was talking about
during that time, Um getting rid of throwing off enormous
amounts of of that stellar material at a much much
faster rate than normal. I would just like to point
out that is not a supernova that you're talking about there, Um, Like,
(11:23):
it's not an explosion. It's it's ejecting material the way
maybe you've seen the Sun with a coronal mass ejection
or some of the filaments that just will escape from
the surface of the Sun and head out into space.
It's yes, yes, star tantrum, It's yeah, that's essentially what
(11:45):
we're talking about here, but at a much higher rate.
That's a very good point, Matt Um. And so what
happened next, Well, the researchers know that this kind of
star variable LBV like this can experience these space tantrums
as they age, uh, and that can cause them to
(12:05):
glow more brightly. But what they found was that the
outbursts they could prove and trace ended some time after
right when routine observation the star halted, and that meant
that they needed some They needed to do some space
detective work because sometime between eleven and this star simply vanished.
(12:33):
So what happened? That's our question today and will attempt
to find some answers afterward. From our sponsor. Here's where
it gets crazy. Okay, jury is out. What happened? Well,
(12:55):
that's kind of the point of this episode, guys. Um,
we don't know exactly what happened, and scientists, even brilliant
younger people who are you know, getting pH d s
and astrophysics who are observing the thing directly, are trying
to figure out exactly what happened. But the cool thing
(13:17):
that occurs when you know, strange things go down is
that there are a bunch of explanations, proposed hypotheses, theories
about what perhaps occurred here. And what we're gonna do
from here on out is just explore some of the
things that may have happened with this star, and some,
of course, are a little more out there than others.
(13:40):
Some are a little more mundane, a little boring. But
it's okay because it could be any of these. Because
guess what's coming up in a second bend. Oh yeah,
strap In, I have a clear bias on this one, guys,
I have the one that I very much want to
be true. Uh. We're gonna get to aliens in a second.
But but right now, it's already spooky and disquieting enough
(14:03):
to note that stars do a lot of things. They
don't just disappear that that doesn't happen. They leave a trace.
Like you said, No, there will be a black hole, right,
there will be there will be some sort of detritus.
But this one seems to have just vanished. So if
we look at the possibilities, I suggest we start with
(14:25):
the mundane, or, as you said, Matt, maybe the more
boring a k plausible stuff. First, Uh, we have to
remember to a point I think one of us made earlier,
that we're looking at something from a long, long, long
way away. There's a lot of space in between us
and this star, so much space that there's a lot
(14:47):
of time in between us in this star and in
that space, that geographic space between us and this star. Uh,
there are plenty of things that get in the way.
To preface this, I want point out something that Matt
mentioned off air that you know, in that that gap
between the observation period nineteen, there's anything could have All
(15:08):
bets are off, anything could have happened in that time,
to just keep that in mind. But one uh, pretty
simple and a little bit mundane explanation could be that
the star dimmed considerably after its outburst and was then
further obscured by um a thick kind of cluster of
cosmic dust. UM. If that's the case, then the star
(15:29):
could reappear in future observations because again these clouds, uh,
this kind of veil could drift through space, and that's
a lot of time for something like that. You know,
things move very slowly in space, at least far away
when you're observing it. That absolutely would be a scenario
where the star didn't actually go anywhere, It just wasn't
observable at the time. Just what I would say here
(15:50):
that this one feels a little odd to me is
just how bright the star was in question here the LBV,
because you know, we mentioned at the top. It was
two and a half million times is brighter than the sun. Right,
that's some robust cosmic dust right there. You know, well,
well it is for sure. Um, it's just we don't
(16:10):
know how far away you know, where that veil would
be located in between the two points right on that
on that line, Um, I mean, would that be sort
of like an asteroid belt or something like like a
cluster of like closely knit together material that would potentially
obscure something from view. This is what I find hilarious
(16:32):
about this. This is classic human this this series basically
that UH is saying that seventy five million light years
is is a lot of space and that there could
be something in front of the telescope. We're dressing it
up to sound fancy and we're going to talk about
some weirder stuff, but this is like uh possibility and
(16:56):
feels like the exact kind of delightful hijinks are Specie
gets itself into. It's like the cosmic equivalent of accidentally
having your thumb slightly over the corner of the camera
on your phone when you're taking a selfie or something
like that. You know, if your thumb was let's say
forty million light years away gay exactly exactly. So we
(17:18):
let's get into what we you know, what we like
to talk about. Here the weirder and more exciting explanation, Ben,
I think I leave this d you, my friend. Oh
this is um this is on the way to weird.
I won't say this is We're not full weird yet
on this one. But what if the star never really
recovered from its space tantrums when it was bleeding out
(17:42):
all that material. What if it just somehow collapsed into
a black hole, not with a bang, but with a whimper.
What if no supernova occurred? In short, like, what if
what if there wasn't an explosion like that for us
to see, It just sort of became a black hole.
(18:04):
This is pretty crazy. This would be a rare event.
And if it did happen, then the star would have
made a enormous black hole. It would have a mass
that was five to a hundred and twenty times the
mass of Earth's Sun And we have no idea how
that would have happened. That's like, that's at the stage
(18:26):
of you know, spitballing and speculation where someone says, maybe
this could have happened, and then someone says, well, how
do you think it would have occurred? And everybody has
to kind of throw up their hands and shrug because
that doesn't make sense. It violates what we understand about
the rules of physics. Well, you know what they what
they really would have to do, Ben, and it's something
(18:47):
that would be completely beyond my understanding is throw up
a bunch of physics equations that there's no way I
could ever understand. But I've read some some papers on this.
We've all read some scientific papers on this now at
this point and trying to wrap my head at least
around the math that goes into calculating how it could
(19:10):
become a black hole like that. People are doing it
and they're checking it out and they're checking you know,
their maths. But uh, I certainly couldn't explain it to
you on this podcast. But but like you said, Rare,
what could have happened? Could have there there's another possibility
that comes to us through some research, some pretty recent
(19:30):
research at Cornell University. Right, is this a step up
in the weird spectrum? This one, this is a weird
one where it feels more plausible and a little less
I don't know if this one rise the line between
mundane and strange. So let's let's just get into it.
I'm good with that. Yeah. They it was a project
(19:51):
UM through an article submission to our x of dot
org that is a mouthful a r x I a
v dot org, which is like a database UM, and
that's through Cornell University in February. They weighed in on
different potential outcomes UM that we just mentioned so far,
(20:13):
and they added this one as another possibility UM positing
what if the light that these astronomers were observing all
that time UM and observing that it had dimmed so
significantly wasn't actually from an LBV star but from the
explosion of of of an LBV star from you know,
a supernovo LBV star. The scientists show that a type
(20:34):
two end supernova could account for some of these previous
misinterpretations of that light. That would you know, in theory,
have been coming from an active star rather than an explosion.
Your user error, then, is a good way to sum
up that argument. It's that it's not that the results
were wrong, we're necessarily mysterious at that point. It's that
(20:55):
our interpretation of those of that data was incorrect. And
these scientists, you know, they make a pretty good case
for this theory. Yeah. And if you you know, you
may think to yourself, what, no, man, there's no way
brilliant people could mistake a star just being there physically
somewhere and an explosion. Well, maybe think again. Here, I'm
(21:20):
gonna read a couple of quotes here from this article
that was published. It says it is possible the s
N supernova two end like event occurred some sometime between
September and September when no photometry is available, so no
actual pictures of this star and of the light being
(21:40):
emanated from that area. Going back to the quote, in
some cases supernova light curves exhibit bumps several years after
the explosion. Now that would account for you know, early
on Ben was talking about how this star or wherever
this light was coming from, it was very bright at
time times and then seemed to dim of it and
(22:01):
then be very bright, even brighter, and then a little
more dim um And that's what they're describing here as
these bumps in output of light. And here's another quote here,
the most plausible explanations for the recent dissipation of the
broad emission after an unusually persistent phase are an LBV
outburst followed by a slow, weakly variable phase, or a
(22:24):
very long lived s N two end event. That's a
supernova event. Um, so again exactly what we described before.
The most plausible things are that it just had that
weird outburst, that space tantrum we talked about then just
dimmed very significantly after that, or it was a long
(22:44):
lived supernova that we've just been observing as though it
were a star. Uh. And they say the latter is
more likely given the lack of short time scale variability
and the slowly fading light curve. The language just scientists, everyone, Yeah,
you did a really good job of unpacking that, Matt,
I applaud you. And now I think we're we're to
(23:06):
Ben's favorite part of today's episode, when we get legitimately
uh into the weirdest sphere here. Oh. I yeah, I'm
excited about this one. Guys. I think it's I think
it's gonna be our I think we'll be unanimous in
deciding this is our favorite part, this is our favorite
possible explanation. But let's hold the tension just a bit longer.
(23:30):
Will pause for a word from our sponsor. We'll be
right back, Noel Matt fellow conspiracy realists. Let's dream big.
What if this mysterious star was never destroyed at all.
(23:52):
What if reports of its death are exaggerated. What if
instead of being annihilated, this star was simply tamed. Which
sounds crazy, right, I'm anthropomorphizing left right here. But to
put a very fine point on it, what if somewhere
out there in the ink and extraterrestrial civilization has somehow
(24:13):
mastered the art of taming stars and using them for energy. Oh,
now we're talking, Ben, this is what I'm talking about.
Taming a star. How do you How does one do that? Well,
it's not like you can lasso it or capture it
(24:34):
in a trap of some sort, right you know, uh,
we know that we haven't done it yet officially. But
this is this is something I think we've talked about
on on stuff that I want you to know before,
the concept of the Kardashiev scale and this this is
this is very interesting. But we we have to explore
(24:56):
just a little bit about this so it doesn't sound
so the idea of someone taming a star doesn't sound
absolutely bonkers, which maybe it is that sounds like something
Dr Manhattan would do, or like maybe four you know,
fighting a star or taming a star. But no, this
is yeah, we can we can put this in UM
relatively grounded terms UM. So. In nineteen sixty four, Soviet
(25:18):
astronomer named Nicolai Cardischef proposed that a civilization's level of
technological advancement UM is like a direct correlation to the
amount of energy that the civilization is able to utilize.
And he's got three. He categorized the civilizations into three categories,
type one, Type two, type three. In a burst of creativity,
as Ben would say, a type one civilization can manage
(25:40):
the entire energy UM output and material resources of a planet.
A Type to civilization is capable of harnessing the energy
and material resources of a star and its entire planetary system.
And a type three UH civilization is able to wrangle
all of the energy and material resources of an entire galaxy.
(26:02):
Let's just try to simplify this ever so slightly, so
within this scale, it's theoretically possible that some intelligent civilization
somewhere out there in space has reached the level of
a type to civilization UM. Type three is just beast
mode um, and this would mean the construction of something
called a Dyson sphere. No, that is not a ball
(26:26):
vacuum cleaner, but I do believe that's where the name
came from. If I'm not mistaken, or is the guy's
name actually Dyson. I think it's I think it's a
connection because there's that Dison vacuum that has the sphere.
I don't know, I'm just conjecturing here. Yeah, it's the
Dyson spear is named after Freeman Dyson, but I don't
think he's affiliated with the vacuums. No, that's Sir James Dyson.
(26:46):
Who does happen? Is this parallel thinking? He's James decided
to keep his scientific smarts in the realm of of
of keeping your home nice and tidy. But they're both
working with vacuums. When you think about it, that's very true,
terrible point. So I think it's perfectly spot on, and
it's certainly helped help me look a little less foolish,
and I appreciate that. Oh no, no, no chumps in
(27:08):
the squad. I just want to put out there that
I think we're talking about type to civilization, building a
dicen sphere here, we'll get into it. I think we're
actually talking about a type three civilization, gentlemen, here best mode.
I think we're talking about beast mode because of the
time frame where the demmi occurred. But let's continue forward. Yeah, yea.
(27:30):
So it's interesting that scale is a tremendously humbling one.
If you are familiar with Cardassiev, or if you have
read his work, or if you you know, if you're
thinking about this and putting humanity in this context, we
are yet to become a type one civilization. We are
below the bottom barrel of energy. We're Cardashev made a
(27:55):
scale that is a little bit difficult for the average
human to relate to, perhaps where the average to soxiety.
But a Dyson sphere is even cooler than a dyson
um vacuum. Clear the technology, if it exists, would um
would would be like that Arthur C. Clark quote, you know,
it would be indistinguishable from magic to the average human
(28:18):
being here on our ball of mud. The Dyson sphere
is a theoretical structure that's just like the kind of
trap you described, Matt. It's something that would be built
or constructed somehow around the entirety of a star. Imagine
putting the Sun in a box and then this sphere. This, uh,
(28:42):
this contraption would capture all of the energy emitted by
the star, and most importantly, it would be able to
transfer that energy converted into some sort of usable form.
For the enigmatic constructors of the Dyson sphere, this thing
would be huge. It would be without exceptions, without hyperbole,
(29:07):
it would be the biggest thing ever built as far
as humanity could understand. It was like, do you think
the Death Star is a big deal in Star Wars?
I mean, it's a huge plot point, doesn't have the
best design, get it, sure, but but it's massive. This
would absolutely dwarf this we have We have no idea
(29:28):
how it would be built. Absolutely at least the Dyson's
fear that was put forward, as you said, by Freeman
Dyson in nineteen sixty because you're talking about bigger than
a star, right, it's some constructed thing that's larger than
a star. Um certainly boggles of the mind there. But
there have been several theoretical, obviously very theoretical types of
(29:55):
solar grids almost that would consist of smaller essentially machines
and solar captured devices that would be placed close to
a star um but not in the same way as
a Dyson sphere wouldn't encapsulate the entire thing. But there
are some really fascinating concepts out there right now about
how you could begin down the road to a Dyson sphere. Yeah. Yeah,
(30:20):
and I do want to give credit where it's d
Dyson formalized this idea back in nineteen sixty, but we
believe he was he was inspired by earlier works of
science fiction by authors like Olaf Stapledon and H. Fellow
named J. D. Bernal. It's weird. The cool thing about
science fiction is that, uh, sometimes it ends up being prescient, right,
(30:45):
Like the US government True story has hired science fiction
writers in the past and just said, okay, yeah, pitch
this to us. Uh, this is a real thing we're
working on. How should we handle it? And they get
some wild answers. But yeah, Dyson, Uh, Dyson had a
pretty solid logic. He said, Look, if humanity can continue
(31:08):
our merry and mad experiments uh of existence, eventually we
are going to expand our energy demands so much so
that we're going to need to figure out a way
to get the total energy output of the Sun. How
do we do that? How do we make that happen?
He came up with the Dyson sphere. As you said, Matt,
(31:30):
there are it sounds with bonkers, but there there are
pretty I don't want to say conclusive, there are compelling
and tantalizing arguments for the legitimacy or the feasibility of
a dice and sphere. The craziest thing about this whole
notion is that theoretically it's possible. Theoretically it is possible
to build something around a start. I really quickly just
(31:53):
want to make a pop culture reference in the one
hundred and thirty episode of Star Trek the Next Generation
and called relics uh the Enterprise, you know, as they
typically do response to a distress call and they discover
a dice and sphere. So a fun way to kind
of see it sort of fictionalized because it is there's
some science behind it, but it also it's one of
(32:14):
those things that's a little nebulous, right, Like it's conceptually possible,
but it's also like a thing in Star Trek that
they're presenting as though it's real, but we're not really
there yet technologically To actually make that happen. And just
to reiterate, that was Star Trek The Next Generation Season six,
episode four, a k a. The onety episode of the
show called Relics Relics. I like, hey, man, I love
(32:39):
Star Trek. YouTube. Parts of it corny, but oh man,
I find it very relaxing and comforting. I'll put it
on before bed. Sometimes it sort of lulls me into
a nice space trance. I'm super into the Borg, the queue,
all the villains. Oh yeah, totally. I want to put
this out there because I maybe I just have not
fully understanding. I oppose it to you guys as a
(32:59):
full off a cool question. I don't understand why an
intelligence at that level would want to fully encapsulate a star,
knowing that effects that that would have on all of
the solar system that you know is surrounding that star.
(33:20):
Like it feels like you'd want to capture the energy
or enough of the energy of that star while still
allowing it to keep you know, the functionality of the
solar system um. And maybe it's just my misunderstanding of
how that would actually affect it, because you certainly wouldn't
be sending heat anywhere throughout the Solar system anymore. If
you put a dicensephere on the thing, you're saying it
(33:42):
would affect like gravitational balance or something like that. Or well,
I mean, if if there's any I guess you'd want
to identify a star that doesn't have any life on
any of the planets, or observable life on any of
the planets, if you're anything like the you know this
crew of the starship Enterprise and you know the Federation
(34:03):
and all that, or maybe if you don't give a
crap and you're just you need that star energy, you
just put a Dicen sphere on that thing, and I
everybody else, Well, here's the here. This is a great question,
and it's also, unfortunately uh a good argument against a
Dicen sphere being responsible for the disappearance of this star.
(34:24):
And it's this, it's a question of efficiency. Why build
an entire box or an entire sphere around a star
when you can get all the energy you need from
an alternative design like a Dyson ring. Think about how
much we save in terms of great now we're space engineers,
think about all the cost cutting we could institute if
(34:48):
we just got a a Dyson um what's sometimes described
as a diceon swarm, and that would be instead of
one contiguous sphere, we have, uh, we have like satellites
in these positions, right, these immovable or static positions arranged,
(35:08):
and maybe a ring that would be the simplest form,
or in a series of rings, like the lines of
longitude on a globe. Right, we would still be harvesting
a tremendous amount of energy, but we would also you know,
energy would be leaving the mechanism as well. And to
(35:28):
your point, Matt, I think it's more dangerous for us
to anthropomorphize alien life than it is to anthropomorphies stars,
because uh, it leads us down these dark these dark roads,
these dark paths. To your question about why why someone
or some entity would build us fhear knowing that it
could wreak havoc on a solar system. Um, all we
(35:52):
can say is that if an aliens or anything like us,
if an extraterrestrial mind is anything like our own, uh
that and we can look at our human past and
every time we have had a chance to do the
right thing for the environment during you know, energy rushes,
we have decided to go with the short term profit. Yeah,
(36:14):
Prime Minister Groulp needed that star energy, man, right right,
we need that star energy. You know, the other other
life forms will just have to deal with it. It's
true though, Um, there's no proof of this. It's just
a fascinating idea. And you know, as we've discussed in
(36:35):
previous episodes, whenever the concept of aliens somewhere out there
in space comes up, they are more or less a
mathematical certainty. And that makes this theory so fascinating for
a few different reasons. If if a dicens fear, we
know it can be built, but if there is a
civilization capable of building one, that makes the possibility of
(36:57):
finding intelligent extraterrestrial lie so much easier. There's a big
thing that we can find, you know what I mean. Uh.
And then second, if we find something like this, it
would prove a powerful commonality because it would mean that
these entities, these minds, whatever they are, would mean that
(37:19):
they use energy in a way similar to us, That they,
like us, uh, derive nourishment and existence from a star.
And that that that sounds small, but philosophically that's astounding.
That's that's kind of beautiful. I mean, we have to
remember every single thing, uh that about discovering a Dycen
(37:42):
sphere would be historic, It would be mind blowing, It
would be no small way terrifying. Uh. But we also
have to remember, you know, when we think about life
and planets that carry life, we are stuck with a
sample size of one. So we have no idea this
this would be I would rarely say this, guys, but
(38:02):
this would be a revolution of a spiritual level as
well as a scientific and circular one. I really want,
I really quickly want to point out that Popular Mechanics
has a fantastic article called could we Build a Dicen Sphere?
By Adam Hatizie from February twenty if of this year,
And so it is, you know, theoretically possible, but you know,
(38:25):
from everything that I've read, it would take like eighty
years to build one, just with the metrics of what
we know of how much material it would take, and
just like the you know, the time frame of constructing
such a thing and just the logistics of it. But
there's also a few pretty cool videos on YouTube about
conceptually what it would take to build a Dicen sphere.
But it's it's I love the stuff that like this,
that's conceptually possible, but we're just not there yet because
(38:48):
it really scratches that sci fi it's for me, and
I think this is exactly that it's such an interesting story. Well,
we're in this scenario. We're talking about roughly nine years
or a little than that, some short period of time
where this star went from extremely bright to disappearing. Right, So,
(39:08):
if a Dicen sphere was installed, I'm thinking, You've got
two halves of a Dicen sphere and you ram them
together and now it's gone i Keia style, all right,
I love I love it. Some assembly required, right, Yeah?
That that that would be like a one million page
i Kea manual. You Uh, maybe it's also super simple.
(39:31):
Maybe it's just the equivalent of one very vague assembly
sheet and it says take Dycen sphere half A, noted
as A and attached to be not to just be.
I don't I don't know. I've been assembling a lot
of a lot of furniture from sketchy places recently and
and I'm loving I'm loving the genre of writing that
(39:54):
the instructions are in. But but you guys are right, uh,
we we can find this inspiring. The dicensephere is still
kind of a I mean, it's a thought experiment. There's
a great YouTube video about this called in a Nutshell.
If you guys are familiar with this series, they do animated,
(40:15):
excellent explanations of various things of this nature. But the
jury is still out. If you want a dicense fear
to be real, and you want this LBV to be
evidence of one, then we have somewhat good news for you. Currently,
this star has yet to reappear. No one has confirmed
(40:35):
whether it transformed into a black hole, whether there's some
kind of uh cosmic flotsam and jetsam in between the
telescope and the star, and we don't know if it
got bound into a dicense fhere. We don't know what happened.
There was no supernova, there was no sudden burst of light,
no dying scream of admitted energy. Instead, like a drowning sailor,
(40:58):
this enormous star are just sort of slipped beneath the waves. Also,
on a somewhat depressing philosophical note, because of the passage
of time, we have to realize that if this civilization existed,
they existed seventy five million years ago. So even if
(41:22):
they were, there are odds of finding them now are
very very very very very low as we understand them.
We should end it on a higher note. Sorry, it's
all good. I do like that we're in. That we're
ending here with a mystery because it gives us, you know,
something to look forward to, because we will find out
(41:42):
what happened to this start or the supernova. It's just
gonna take time. Thankfully, it won't take seventy five million
years light years, but it will, you know, we'll get there.
What if? What if? What if there's some deep space
equivalent of a Leviathan or kracking and it's like a
(42:04):
life form and it like eat stars. What if there's
a star eater out there? Not that's just swimming past
the star for an elongated period of time. Stuff of
nightmares right there, gentlemen. But we want to hear from you, folks,
think you as always so much for tuning in. What
do you think happened to this LBV? Can you solve
(42:29):
the mystery of a star that again just disappeared? We've posed, uh,
we posed various theories again, as Matt said, ranging across
the spectrum of plausibility, But what do we miss? What
do you think what would be the wildest thing that
could happen, What do you think is the most likely
(42:50):
thing that could happen? And what should what should we
be looking for when we searched the sky at night?
Mm hmm. This besides giant space whales? Are space whales? Yeah? Yeah,
(43:11):
I do. Now, I just want to see that has
that ever been depicted? We're gonna I'm gonna start just
a Google search where giant space whales. We're gonna build
it somewhere. Didn't we talk about space whales in a
recent episode, and I and I incorrectly said that Mobius
was a big purveyor of space whales and he maybe
(43:31):
did one space whale. But we looked up pictures. It's
definitely a popular sci fi trope, but it wasn't Mobius.
But I don't know. Oh the art, yes, I believe so, Yeah,
they're amazing. Well, let us know what your take on
a space whale is also. I'm interested. Um. I was
thinking about this earlier. If we think about the universe
(43:52):
just in terms of size, there could easily be life
forms that are larger than our entire planet. Uh and
we might never know. It's just what do they breathe? Man?
Does that work? Just just just energy, bro, just straight
space dust. I have no idea man, space radiation. Maybe
(44:17):
maybe they're like, uh, you know how whales have bailey
that allows them to filter krill. Maybe they're doing something
like okay, like this has nothing to do with this
disappearing star. We haven't solved the mystery. We want to.
We want to hear from you, folks. Let us know.
You can find us on Facebook, you can find us
on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter, not just
(44:38):
as a show but as individuals. Yes, if you wish,
you may find me on Instagram, which is where I
hang out. I'm not really a tweeter, um, but I
do look occasionally and I'm trying to get more into
it because of because of all the smart folks out
there on Twitter making crazy weird Twitter communities out there
that I feel excluded from. But for now, I am
(44:59):
an Instagram only user at how Now Noel Brown And
should you wish to take some weird detours and your
daily interneting, you can find me at ben Bullying HSW
on Twitter or at ben Bullying on Instagram. And if
you're not in the social media, you can give us
a call. Our number is one eight three three st
(45:20):
d w y t K. Please give us a call.
Let us know what you think. I apologize that we
do not say that in unison anymore. It became much
harder than we expected when attempting to do it over
a zoom call. All the things we've lost from covid.
You guys, people are saying it at home along with us.
(45:42):
We can. We can hear you through the void and
I will say I don't know. Um, go ahead and
leave us some messages. We've got a big old backlog
that we need to start curating, and we're already in
the process of doing so. And there may be some
opportunities to hear yourself on the show coming up in
the near future. And then you know, if if you
if your phone isn't your thing and you wanna maybe
(46:03):
you don't want to go on social media, but you
still want to like participate in the stuff they don't
want you to know. Extended Universe. Go to Apple Podcasts,
leave a cool review, help fight the trolls. You guys,
We very much appreciate some kind words on Apple podcasts
that help people discover the show and pushes some of
those mean ones further down in the list. Yes, and
(46:24):
in general. If you don't want to do any of
those things, but you still want to let us know
what you think, or you found something interesting that you
want to share with us, please write to us. We
are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff they
(46:55):
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