August 25, 2023 • 20 mins
Dragon Con 2023's charity partner is Cure Childhood Cancer and CEO Kristen Connor joins us to talk about her organization and what partnering with Dragon Con has meant for them this year. Plus, Dr. Shawn Cruzen from Columbus State University's Coca-Cola Space Science Center talks about what conventions like Dragon Con mean for current and future scientists and talks about some of the recent developments in science that science fiction writers will be writing about in the years to come.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
This is the dragon con pregame showpowered by Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space
Science Center, where you can learnthe science behind the fiction. My next
guest is the CEO for this year'scharity partner for dragon con Cure Childhood Cancer,
Kristin Connor. Welcome, thank youhere, thanks for having me.
(00:23):
I always like when a charity organizationhas a name that's straight to the point,
it lays out exactly what it isthat you guys have as a mission
state. Yes, well, Iwish I could take credit for being so
smart as suppose, but you knowwhat we do in our name. But
I agree, it does make itvery clear what we do, and we
(00:44):
really and truly are focused urgently onfinding better treatments and cures for children with
cancer, and so we support sciencethat will get us there, and then
we also provide all kinds of supportand real help for the children and their
families who are who are going throughthis today. So it's multifaceted. It's
(01:10):
about helping the families that are dealingwith this, it's about research, it's
about treatment for the kids that areimpacted by this. So you guys are
hitting it from multiple angles at thesame time, Yes, and I think
that that makes us unique and whatwe do. And we're also very strategic
with both the research side and thesupport side with what we do. I
(01:34):
think for families going through we reallywant to, you know, stand in
the gap and be there for themwhen things are hardest. And so our
goals with our patient support is toreally focus on the critical and urgent needs
of families, which you know areat the time of diagnosis and really in
(01:55):
those tough days of treatment, andthen were those families who lose their children.
You know, we're still very bigpart of their lives and providing support
for them too. So we havea very strategic approach to to you know,
how we advance our mission. There'sa moment where a family learns about
(02:20):
cancer and their child, and it'sa very specific moment. Someone who has
been through it can understand it andyou understand it. Tell us a little
bit about Brandon, Yeah, Ido understand it. I wish I didn't,
but I do. My son wasa month old when he was diagnosed
with an aggressive form of childhood cancercalled neuroblastoma. He had a tumor on
(02:46):
his spine and we actually knew aboutthe mass. They saw it on an
ultrasound when I was thirty three weekspregnant, and but it was not until
he was about a month old thatwe were able to determ and what it
was. And it's it's really it'sreally a surreal, unbelievable, devastating moment.
(03:06):
And you know, you just don'tthink something like that is ever going
to happen to your your child,you know, and so it is.
It's a tough time and it's avery difficult experience. It's on so many
levels. I say, there aremany, many layers to the onion for
(03:28):
families who are going through this.But my son was it was about two
years before he was declared cancer free. So he's been cancer free since November
of two thousand and three, andhe is now almost twenty two and in
college and doing great. So Ilove to share that with families who are
(03:50):
in those dark moments. It,you know, being able to see a
child who's on the other side andnow a young man in thriving. I
think it's just that hands will hopethat families need, you know, when
they're in that time of crisis,talk to us a little bit about the
partnership that you guys have with dragonCon this year and what they have meant
(04:11):
as far as awareness and visibility foryou guys, Oh my gosh, I
mean, we could not be moreexcited and just so humbled to be their
their charity partner this year. DragonCon is just such a phenomenal you know
event in Atlanta and loved by andattended by thousands and thousands of people,
(04:39):
as you know, and so tobe selected to be their partner, I
mean, it just it means everything. I mean, the ability to get
our message in front of people whomay not you know, really understand much
about cancer and children and and isjust tremendous. You know, you just
(05:00):
can't get that exposure, you know, any other way, and so we
are so thankful for that. Andthen you know, just they really have
embraced Cure. All the people involvedand putting dragon Con on have embraced Kiera
and our mission like really and truly, and they want to raise money to
(05:21):
help us advance treatments for these kids. And so it's just an incredible opportunity
for us. I mean, Ican't tell you how thankful we are to
be a part of it. Thefolks who tend to attend Dragon Con annually
tend to be very passionate about theevent. And when you can focus those
(05:42):
passions the way that they do towardsa nonprofit organization that does go a long
way, doesn't it? Oh?It does, It definitely does. So
for folks that want to support,you want to donate, want to find
ways that they can help outside ofdonations, because sometimes there's ways to help
that way as well. Or ifthey just want to learn more about Cure
Childhood Cancer, where should they go? They should go to our website which
(06:06):
is Cure Childhood Cancer dot org.And it's really an exciting time I think
for people to check us out.It's we're heading into September, which is
Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and therereally are so many opportunities to support Cure
and and really help besides just donating, besides just writing a check and so
(06:30):
you can't there are businesses that aresupporting us throughout September, and restaurants and
they just that you have to eatanyway, So go to someplace that's supporting
Cure. You know. There arejust so many ways, and and of
course volunteers are the heart and soulof our organizations, So you know,
we we also you know, welcomethose people who might be interested and getting
(06:56):
involved. Next, we'll talk aboutscience at dragon Con. It's easy to
take a convention like dragon Con andthink of it as a science fiction convention,
and that doesn't really do it justiceat all. Dragon Con is a
popular arts convention and it covers amuch broader spectrum of things, and one
of those things that's included is actualscience. Yeah, there's an influence between
(07:16):
science and science fiction, and itreally goes both ways. But they're actual
attending professionals who are scientists who willbe at dragon Con. Some work as
consultants on movies and TV shows aswell as help authors write books about science
fiction, and some are just thereto talk about things like UAPs, which
is the new name for UFOs.My partner on the Made of Stars podcast,
(07:42):
doctor Sean Kruzen, is the executivedirector of Columba State University's Coca Cola
Space Science Center, and I'd liketo bring him in now and talk just
a little bit about that influence ofscience and science fiction on each other.
So one of the things that's funwhen I talk to scientists in my age
is that we all talk about howwhen we were kids, we were all
(08:03):
propped up in front of some TVwith rabbit ears probably on it, watching
Star Trek. And I'm not talkingabout the Next Generation or Deep Space nine
or any of those. No,I mean the original Star Trek. Yes,
I'm of that generation. And sowe were watching Captain Kirk and mister
Spock and the crew of the Enterprisego where no one has gone before,
(08:24):
investigating alien races and strange planets andweird space phenomenon with the Enterprise, and
that experience for so many people myage, drove our curiosity in science in
general. It helped us to bemotivated to do better in science classes,
and ultimately it drove a lot ofus to go pursue careers in science.
(08:46):
So I know for a fact,anecdotal as it may seem from my own
experience, I know for a factthat science fiction inspires people to study science.
And when we look at all ofour student population we hear their experiences,
we realize that those folks in ourscience degree programs had similar kinds of
(09:07):
inspiration points where they heard something fantastic, either maybe on television, maybe in
a movie, maybe in a book, but it was just like, Wow,
can that really happen? And howdo we know that can really happen?
And what kind of measurements do scientistsmake that tell us that those kinds
of things can really happen. Andbefore you know it, they've gone from
the very interesting and absorbing world ofscience fiction to now actually looking at how
(09:33):
the process of science takes place andthey want to be a part of it.
So when we support science fiction kindof events like our own comic book
and toy show, or west yourcoverage of the dragon Con event up in
Atlanta, we know for a factthat that bridge exists, and it exists
in very strong terms where science fictionis inspiring our next generation of scientists,
(09:56):
engineers, and science educators, likeour mission statement here at Columbus State University's
Coca Cola Space Science Center. Seawanon the Medea Stars podcast, you and
I cover space news, and wedo often talk about the influence of science
on science fiction and vice versa.But it does seem that in the last
(10:16):
few months, in a couple ofyears, but really a lot in the
last months, where there have beensome significant stories that we have covered that
are going to be interesting for writersmoving forward when they start writing more projects
for science fiction based on the newdevelopments and science. And I wanted to
(10:39):
get you to talk about a coupleof those. Yeah, jwst an amazingly
successful scientific instrument. We'll get tothat in just a second, but I'm
just gonna throw out this thought reallyquickly. It's interesting to go back and
read science fiction from a previous century, like Jules Verne for instance, Right,
(11:00):
So Jules Verne was writing from aperspective about the future based on things
that they knew at the time.H. G. Wells another person writing
about the future or about advanced science, but basing that on what they knew
at the time. So when weread some of those older science fiction stories,
(11:26):
we think, well, there's certainelements of all of this that's kind
of point because it's like, oh, well, they thought things were going
to be like that in the future, and that's based on you know,
their projections of a scientific vector basedon the eighteen hundreds, and it turns
out that they had no idea howto predict certain developments that we've come up
(11:46):
with in the future. Well,that's every day, right, So if
somebody's setting out to write a sciencefiction book, let's say in the nineteen
forties or the nineteen fifties or thenineteen sixties, They're perspectives were all different,
even just decade by decade, becausescience at that time was taking major
(12:07):
advances, and I might include engineeringin that too, both science and engineering
taking major advances decade by decade,and so then there was just more material
to incorporate in your science fiction thatsimply wasn't known before. And so off
air West and I had this discussionabout this, saying, well, you
know what, some of these discoveriesfrom the James web Space Telescope, they're
(12:31):
really significant enough that they're going tobe changing the way that science fiction authors
think about the Solar System, thinkabout planets around other stars, think about
the large scale structure of the universe, the galaxies and how they form,
and even think about these weird interactionswith exotic sounding terms like dark matter,
(12:54):
dark energy, that kind of thing. So we've put together a brief list
of some James Webspace Telescope discoveries thatwe really think is going to change science
fiction because they're going to have toadapt to some of these new things that
are discovered. And first, onmy list. Coming from the James Webspace
Telescope is a confirmation of water icepreserved in the asteroid Belt. Now you
(13:20):
might think, well, okay,big deal. Why is that important?
Well, because, ladies and gentlemen, it was never known that comets in
the asteroid belt had lots of different, large, large amounts of water content
on their surfaces. So the firstthing to think through is are there comets
in the asteroid belt? Aren't thosetwo different things? Don't comets normally come
(13:43):
from much farther off, Yes,they do, and they come from a
place that's much colder, and sothe ideas when they get in the inner
part of the Solar System, alot of the volatile materials like water would
vaporize away. But with the JamesWebspace Telescope, they pointed it at a
comet in the asteroid belt and foundthat that comet is actually preserving fair amounts
of water in relatively nearby space.So why does this matter to science fiction
(14:09):
authors? Well, where you havewater, ladies and gentlemen, you have
both rocket fuel and breathable air.And now if you think about you know
science fiction stories where we're migrating outand colonizing the near Solar System. We
now know about large amounts of waterstored in these commentary bodies within the asteroid
(14:30):
belt, So suddenly there's a sourcefor rocket fuel and breathable air and all
those kinds of things right there inthe very near part of the Solar System.
So that's interesting on that front.Another great discovery by the James Webb
Space Telescope is the existence of carbondioxide in the atmospheres of exoplanets. An
(14:50):
exoplanet is a planet around another star. And yes, we probably thought that
carbon dioxide was there, but wenow have confirmation of it. So there's
a planet called OP thirty nine B, and the James Webs Space Telescope was
actually able to detect for the veryfirst time the presence of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere of that planet. Ladiesand gentlemen, think for a moment,
(15:13):
what do plants digest from the atmosphere. We breathe oxygen out of the atmosphere,
but plants breathe carbon dioxide out ofthe atmosphere for their survival. So
this is part of what we knowis the life chain here on Earth.
It could be that it's part ofthe life chain now in these exoplanets,
and it's a real game changer forthe scientists who are studying exoplanets out there
(15:37):
in the soul, out there inthe galaxy. Another really amazing and interesting
discovery, and maybe the most shockingdiscovery from James web Space Telescope in terms
of upending paradigms about things, waswhen James web Space Telescope peered through a
four ground cluster of galaxies and actuallyuse that the gravity from those galaxies as
(16:00):
an extra lens from gravitational lensing,they were able to observe the most distant
set of galaxies in the entire universe, the furthest galaxies, both back in
space and time that we've ever observedbefore. They found out that galaxies were
pretty well developed and had pretty advancedstar formation, had a mirror three hundred
(16:22):
and fifty million years after the BigBang. All right, yes, we
can all agree three hundred and fiftymillion is a big number, and three
hundred and fifty million years is along time if you're a snail or a
human or a tree. But ifyou're a galaxy, that's hardly any time
at all. And if you're astar like our Sun. The Sun has
(16:45):
approximately a ten billion year life cycle, so three hundred and fifty million years
would be like its infancy. Andthe fact that after the Big Bang,
a mirror three hundred and fifty millionyears after the Big Bang James Webbs based
telescope has detected fully developed stars andmostly developed galaxies after that very short time
(17:10):
is absolutely astounding, and it's kindof it's not upending the Big Bang theory,
but it is making astronomers reconsider howthey how they think that these objects
got to such an advanced stage offormation in such a very short time.
So this is a really fun setof discoveries and it's changing the way that
astronomers are understanding the universe, whichin turn changes the way that science fiction
(17:36):
writers have to explain their stories orincorporate these elements into their work. So
that's a real game changer about thelarge scale structure of the universe. All
right, well there's an associated storynow. We just talked about this last
week on our podcast, so ifyou want to hear it in detail,
check out our Mate of Stars podcast. Go back to the early August episodes
and you'll find where we talked aboutDark Star, which is a really interesting
(18:02):
object. In order for these veryinfant galaxies to be of such mature stages,
and in order for them to havefairly advanced stars, there may have
had to be a generation of starsthat burned first, which didn't burn regular
hydrogen and helium in what we callfrom a nuclear refusion, but instead consumed
(18:26):
dark matter through matter antimatter reactions,generating enough energy to be a whole primary
generation of stars that we never evenimagine could exist before. And James Webb
Space Telescope has been able to identifysome of the signatures in the early universe
that make us think that these darkstars stars that power through dark matter may
(18:52):
have actually existed. And if theyexisted, that could be the energy mechanism
which draw the early formation of starsand therefore galaxies that we just talked about
in the in the previous story.So so, once again, what better
title for a science fiction book thandark Star or something with the phrase dark
star in the title. Right,Well, dark stars may now appear to
(19:15):
be a thing, and it's agreat discovery by jwst And you know,
there's lots of places to go outand read about that online, but just
do a quick search for dark Stars, and you're gonna find out the latest
discoveries from James Webb Space Telescope.They're setting on their ear both the worlds
of science and science fiction. Sogood luck you aspiring sci fi writers out
(19:37):
there. I hope you have agreat time with you know, carbon dioxide
on exoplanets and water in the asteroidbelt, and galaxies and stars forming in
a really rapid time, and thenthe crazy phenomenon of dark matter eating guzzling
stars called dark stars. Phil Lamarjoins us next right here on the dragon
Con Pregame Show. This is thedragon Con Pregame Show, powered by Columbus
(20:03):
State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center, where you can learn the science behind the fiction
This is the dragon con pregame showpowered by Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space
Science Center, where you can learnthe science behind the fiction. My next
guest is the CEO for this year'scharity partner for dragon con Cure Childhood Cancer,
Kristin Connor. Welcome, thank youhere, thanks for having me.
(00:23):
I always like when a charity organizationhas a name that's straight to the point,
it lays out exactly what it isthat you guys have as a mission
state. Yes, well, Iwish I could take credit for being so
smart as suppose, but you knowwhat we do in our name. But
I agree, it does make itvery clear what we do, and we
(00:44):
really and truly are focused urgently onfinding better treatments and cures for children with
cancer, and so we support sciencethat will get us there, and then
we also provide all kinds of supportand real help for the children and their
families who are who are going throughthis today. So it's multifaceted. It's
(01:10):
about helping the families that are dealingwith this, it's about research, it's
about treatment for the kids that areimpacted by this. So you guys are
hitting it from multiple angles at thesame time, Yes, and I think
that that makes us unique and whatwe do. And we're also very strategic
with both the research side and thesupport side with what we do. I
(01:34):
think for families going through we reallywant to, you know, stand in
the gap and be there for themwhen things are hardest. And so our
goals with our patient support is toreally focus on the critical and urgent needs
of families, which you know areat the time of diagnosis and really in
(01:55):
those tough days of treatment, andthen were those families who lose their children.
You know, we're still very bigpart of their lives and providing support
for them too. So we havea very strategic approach to to you know,
how we advance our mission. There'sa moment where a family learns about
(02:20):
cancer and their child, and it'sa very specific moment. Someone who has
been through it can understand it andyou understand it. Tell us a little
bit about Brandon, Yeah, Ido understand it. I wish I didn't,
but I do. My son wasa month old when he was diagnosed
with an aggressive form of childhood cancercalled neuroblastoma. He had a tumor on
(02:46):
his spine and we actually knew aboutthe mass. They saw it on an
ultrasound when I was thirty three weekspregnant, and but it was not until
he was about a month old thatwe were able to determ and what it
was. And it's it's really it'sreally a surreal, unbelievable, devastating moment.
(03:06):
And you know, you just don'tthink something like that is ever going
to happen to your your child,you know, and so it is.
It's a tough time and it's avery difficult experience. It's on so many
levels. I say, there aremany, many layers to the onion for
(03:28):
families who are going through this.But my son was it was about two
years before he was declared cancer free. So he's been cancer free since November
of two thousand and three, andhe is now almost twenty two and in
college and doing great. So Ilove to share that with families who are
(03:50):
in those dark moments. It,you know, being able to see a
child who's on the other side andnow a young man in thriving. I
think it's just that hands will hopethat families need, you know, when
they're in that time of crisis,talk to us a little bit about the
partnership that you guys have with dragonCon this year and what they have meant
(04:11):
as far as awareness and visibility foryou guys, Oh my gosh, I
mean, we could not be moreexcited and just so humbled to be their
their charity partner this year. DragonCon is just such a phenomenal you know
event in Atlanta and loved by andattended by thousands and thousands of people,
(04:39):
as you know, and so tobe selected to be their partner, I
mean, it just it means everything. I mean, the ability to get
our message in front of people whomay not you know, really understand much
about cancer and children and and isjust tremendous. You know, you just
(05:00):
can't get that exposure, you know, any other way, and so we
are so thankful for that. Andthen you know, just they really have
embraced Cure. All the people involvedand putting dragon Con on have embraced Kiera
and our mission like really and truly, and they want to raise money to
(05:21):
help us advance treatments for these kids. And so it's just an incredible opportunity
for us. I mean, Ican't tell you how thankful we are to
be a part of it. Thefolks who tend to attend Dragon Con annually
tend to be very passionate about theevent. And when you can focus those
(05:42):
passions the way that they do towardsa nonprofit organization that does go a long
way, doesn't it? Oh?It does, It definitely does. So
for folks that want to support,you want to donate, want to find
ways that they can help outside ofdonations, because sometimes there's ways to help
that way as well. Or ifthey just want to learn more about Cure
Childhood Cancer, where should they go? They should go to our website which
(06:06):
is Cure Childhood Cancer dot org.And it's really an exciting time I think
for people to check us out.It's we're heading into September, which is
Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and therereally are so many opportunities to support Cure
and and really help besides just donating, besides just writing a check and so
(06:30):
you can't there are businesses that aresupporting us throughout September, and restaurants and
they just that you have to eatanyway, So go to someplace that's supporting
Cure. You know. There arejust so many ways, and and of
course volunteers are the heart and soulof our organizations, So you know,
we we also you know, welcomethose people who might be interested and getting
(06:56):
involved. Next, we'll talk aboutscience at dragon Con. It's easy to
take a convention like dragon Con andthink of it as a science fiction convention,
and that doesn't really do it justiceat all. Dragon Con is a
popular arts convention and it covers amuch broader spectrum of things, and one
of those things that's included is actualscience. Yeah, there's an influence between
(07:16):
science and science fiction, and itreally goes both ways. But they're actual
attending professionals who are scientists who willbe at dragon Con. Some work as
consultants on movies and TV shows aswell as help authors write books about science
fiction, and some are just thereto talk about things like UAPs, which
is the new name for UFOs.My partner on the Made of Stars podcast,
(07:42):
doctor Sean Kruzen, is the executivedirector of Columba State University's Coca Cola
Space Science Center, and I'd liketo bring him in now and talk just
a little bit about that influence ofscience and science fiction on each other.
So one of the things that's funwhen I talk to scientists in my age
is that we all talk about howwhen we were kids, we were all
(08:03):
propped up in front of some TVwith rabbit ears probably on it, watching
Star Trek. And I'm not talkingabout the Next Generation or Deep Space nine
or any of those. No,I mean the original Star Trek. Yes,
I'm of that generation. And sowe were watching Captain Kirk and mister
Spock and the crew of the Enterprisego where no one has gone before,
(08:24):
investigating alien races and strange planets andweird space phenomenon with the Enterprise, and
that experience for so many people myage, drove our curiosity in science in
general. It helped us to bemotivated to do better in science classes,
and ultimately it drove a lot ofus to go pursue careers in science.
(08:46):
So I know for a fact,anecdotal as it may seem from my own
experience, I know for a factthat science fiction inspires people to study science.
And when we look at all ofour student population we hear their experiences,
we realize that those folks in ourscience degree programs had similar kinds of
(09:07):
inspiration points where they heard something fantastic, either maybe on television, maybe in
a movie, maybe in a book, but it was just like, Wow,
can that really happen? And howdo we know that can really happen?
And what kind of measurements do scientistsmake that tell us that those kinds
of things can really happen. Andbefore you know it, they've gone from
the very interesting and absorbing world ofscience fiction to now actually looking at how
(09:33):
the process of science takes place andthey want to be a part of it.
So when we support science fiction kindof events like our own comic book
and toy show, or west yourcoverage of the dragon Con event up in
Atlanta, we know for a factthat that bridge exists, and it exists
in very strong terms where science fictionis inspiring our next generation of scientists,
(09:56):
engineers, and science educators, likeour mission statement here at Columbus State University's
Coca Cola Space Science Center. Seawanon the Medea Stars podcast, you and
I cover space news, and wedo often talk about the influence of science
on science fiction and vice versa.But it does seem that in the last
(10:16):
few months, in a couple ofyears, but really a lot in the
last months, where there have beensome significant stories that we have covered that
are going to be interesting for writersmoving forward when they start writing more projects
for science fiction based on the newdevelopments and science. And I wanted to
(10:39):
get you to talk about a coupleof those. Yeah, jwst an amazingly
successful scientific instrument. We'll get tothat in just a second, but I'm
just gonna throw out this thought reallyquickly. It's interesting to go back and
read science fiction from a previous century, like Jules Verne for instance, Right,
(11:00):
So Jules Verne was writing from aperspective about the future based on things
that they knew at the time.H. G. Wells another person writing
about the future or about advanced science, but basing that on what they knew
at the time. So when weread some of those older science fiction stories,
(11:26):
we think, well, there's certainelements of all of this that's kind
of point because it's like, oh, well, they thought things were going
to be like that in the future, and that's based on you know,
their projections of a scientific vector basedon the eighteen hundreds, and it turns
out that they had no idea howto predict certain developments that we've come up
(11:46):
with in the future. Well,that's every day, right, So if
somebody's setting out to write a sciencefiction book, let's say in the nineteen
forties or the nineteen fifties or thenineteen sixties, They're perspectives were all different,
even just decade by decade, becausescience at that time was taking major
(12:07):
advances, and I might include engineeringin that too, both science and engineering
taking major advances decade by decade,and so then there was just more material
to incorporate in your science fiction thatsimply wasn't known before. And so off
air West and I had this discussionabout this, saying, well, you
know what, some of these discoveriesfrom the James web Space Telescope, they're
(12:31):
really significant enough that they're going tobe changing the way that science fiction authors
think about the Solar System, thinkabout planets around other stars, think about
the large scale structure of the universe, the galaxies and how they form,
and even think about these weird interactionswith exotic sounding terms like dark matter,
(12:54):
dark energy, that kind of thing. So we've put together a brief list
of some James Webspace Telescope discoveries thatwe really think is going to change science
fiction because they're going to have toadapt to some of these new things that
are discovered. And first, onmy list. Coming from the James Webspace
Telescope is a confirmation of water icepreserved in the asteroid Belt. Now you
(13:20):
might think, well, okay,big deal. Why is that important?
Well, because, ladies and gentlemen, it was never known that comets in
the asteroid belt had lots of different, large, large amounts of water content
on their surfaces. So the firstthing to think through is are there comets
in the asteroid belt? Aren't thosetwo different things? Don't comets normally come
(13:43):
from much farther off, Yes,they do, and they come from a
place that's much colder, and sothe ideas when they get in the inner
part of the Solar System, alot of the volatile materials like water would
vaporize away. But with the JamesWebspace Telescope, they pointed it at a
comet in the asteroid belt and foundthat that comet is actually preserving fair amounts
of water in relatively nearby space.So why does this matter to science fiction
(14:09):
authors? Well, where you havewater, ladies and gentlemen, you have
both rocket fuel and breathable air.And now if you think about you know
science fiction stories where we're migrating outand colonizing the near Solar System. We
now know about large amounts of waterstored in these commentary bodies within the asteroid
(14:30):
belt, So suddenly there's a sourcefor rocket fuel and breathable air and all
those kinds of things right there inthe very near part of the Solar System.
So that's interesting on that front.Another great discovery by the James Webb
Space Telescope is the existence of carbondioxide in the atmospheres of exoplanets. An
(14:50):
exoplanet is a planet around another star. And yes, we probably thought that
carbon dioxide was there, but wenow have confirmation of it. So there's
a planet called OP thirty nine B, and the James Webs Space Telescope was
actually able to detect for the veryfirst time the presence of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere of that planet. Ladiesand gentlemen, think for a moment,
(15:13):
what do plants digest from the atmosphere. We breathe oxygen out of the atmosphere,
but plants breathe carbon dioxide out ofthe atmosphere for their survival. So
this is part of what we knowis the life chain here on Earth.
It could be that it's part ofthe life chain now in these exoplanets,
and it's a real game changer forthe scientists who are studying exoplanets out there
(15:37):
in the soul, out there inthe galaxy. Another really amazing and interesting
discovery, and maybe the most shockingdiscovery from James web Space Telescope in terms
of upending paradigms about things, waswhen James web Space Telescope peered through a
four ground cluster of galaxies and actuallyuse that the gravity from those galaxies as
(16:00):
an extra lens from gravitational lensing,they were able to observe the most distant
set of galaxies in the entire universe, the furthest galaxies, both back in
space and time that we've ever observedbefore. They found out that galaxies were
pretty well developed and had pretty advancedstar formation, had a mirror three hundred
(16:22):
and fifty million years after the BigBang. All right, yes, we
can all agree three hundred and fiftymillion is a big number, and three
hundred and fifty million years is along time if you're a snail or a
human or a tree. But ifyou're a galaxy, that's hardly any time
at all. And if you're astar like our Sun. The Sun has
(16:45):
approximately a ten billion year life cycle, so three hundred and fifty million years
would be like its infancy. Andthe fact that after the Big Bang,
a mirror three hundred and fifty millionyears after the Big Bang James Webbs based
telescope has detected fully developed stars andmostly developed galaxies after that very short time
(17:10):
is absolutely astounding, and it's kindof it's not upending the Big Bang theory,
but it is making astronomers reconsider howthey how they think that these objects
got to such an advanced stage offormation in such a very short time.
So this is a really fun setof discoveries and it's changing the way that
astronomers are understanding the universe, whichin turn changes the way that science fiction
(17:36):
writers have to explain their stories orincorporate these elements into their work. So
that's a real game changer about thelarge scale structure of the universe. All
right, well there's an associated storynow. We just talked about this last
week on our podcast, so ifyou want to hear it in detail,
check out our Mate of Stars podcast. Go back to the early August episodes
and you'll find where we talked aboutDark Star, which is a really interesting
(18:02):
object. In order for these veryinfant galaxies to be of such mature stages,
and in order for them to havefairly advanced stars, there may have
had to be a generation of starsthat burned first, which didn't burn regular
hydrogen and helium in what we callfrom a nuclear refusion, but instead consumed
(18:26):
dark matter through matter antimatter reactions,generating enough energy to be a whole primary
generation of stars that we never evenimagine could exist before. And James Webb
Space Telescope has been able to identifysome of the signatures in the early universe
that make us think that these darkstars stars that power through dark matter may
(18:52):
have actually existed. And if theyexisted, that could be the energy mechanism
which draw the early formation of starsand therefore galaxies that we just talked about
in the in the previous story.So so, once again, what better
title for a science fiction book thandark Star or something with the phrase dark
star in the title. Right,Well, dark stars may now appear to
(19:15):
be a thing, and it's agreat discovery by jwst And you know,
there's lots of places to go outand read about that online, but just
do a quick search for dark Stars, and you're gonna find out the latest
discoveries from James Webb Space Telescope.They're setting on their ear both the worlds
of science and science fiction. Sogood luck you aspiring sci fi writers out
(19:37):
there. I hope you have agreat time with you know, carbon dioxide
on exoplanets and water in the asteroidbelt, and galaxies and stars forming in
a really rapid time, and thenthe crazy phenomenon of dark matter eating guzzling
stars called dark stars. Phil Lamarjoins us next right here on the dragon
Con Pregame Show. This is thedragon Con Pregame Show, powered by Columbus
(20:03):
State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center, where you can learn the science behind the fiction
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