August 24, 2025 • 62 mins
The rockets roar in the first half, the mysteries whisper in the second. In this episode of The Lost Wanderer:
- Starship Flight 10 — The road, the failures, and the stakes (with a live launch cadence that may ignite during the show!)
- X-37B’s return — A spaceplane cloaked in secrets
- Asshoes in Space — China’s mega-constellation, Russia’s mouse motel, and climate crusaders hijacking NASA
- NASA’s next steps — Hard-to-reach orbits and an AI doctor for Moon/Mars crews
- Pluto the Planet — Yes, still a planet, NDT be damned
- Cosmic mysteries — A nameless new object, the Eye of Sauron spitting ghost particles, and black holes minting dark energy
- Exoplanet drama — A possible new neighbor just four light-years away, and the disappointment of TRAPPIST-1d
- Moons & mischief — Uranus gets another moon (giggity)
- Alien speculation — If they explore like us, where would we find them?
- Stargazing Forecast — From the Sturgeon Moon to the Blood Moon eclipse of September 7th
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I'm taking off my best leaping up behind than to.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Start to out the central.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Reason of the central on the spaceship n to man
with the stars and the.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Time for this nation to take a clearly leading role
in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the
key to our future on Earth.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
M H.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
As one Paul fam for Man.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
On Simple, Today is.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
A day for morning and remember man C and I
are gained at the core of the tragedy of the
Shadow Challenge.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
The following program may contain close language, adult themes, and
bad attempts of human.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Listener discretion as advised.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
What is President Trump's goal?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
What is his vision?
Speaker 4 (02:29):
He wants to put an American flag on Mars.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Within anglority based here are landed.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
I am your host J E. Double f also known
as a cosmic bard over on Twitter slash x and
this is the Lost Wonder of podcast for August twenty fourth,
twenty twenty five. Happy Sunday evening, and welcome aboard the
acs Serenade. We're gonna start out with our story well Starship,
(03:14):
because I was hoping, because I thought stars were going
to align and I was going to be able to
live stream Starship ten launch attempt, but it got scrubbed,
so I'm not gonna lie. I wrote it tonight's episode
on the assumption that they were at least going to launch,
So if I use anything that is improper in that regard,
(03:37):
I apologize. But hey, ground issues happen. But tonight on
the golf coast of Texas, a rocket taller from the
Statue of Liberty and wrapped in stainless steel still stands
waiting for its turn with history. Now, of course, the
countdown didn't hold, so Flight ten of Starship and launched
(04:00):
during the middle of this broadcast, even though I was
fully prepared with live video. Maybe I'll do a special
tomorrow night so we can watch it together. But before
we count down, I think we need a little bit
of a rewind because when that flight happened, it isn't
(04:22):
coming out of nowhere. It actually comes with a handful
of scars. There has been an unfortunate string of failures.
Light eight a promising ascent until a flash inside the
engine cluster rippled into catastrophe. A flicker, a spark, and
(04:43):
then structure breakup. Flight nine a hydraulic filter clog, steering
control vanished, and a rocket that should have been dancing
on plasma fell apart instead. Now, these weren't necessarily grand
architectural collapses. They weren't starship doesn't work. They were well,
(05:03):
let's face it, a batch of gremlins, a filter, a flash,
the sort of things you'd expect on you know, your
uncle's beat up buick. Maybe not, you know, a machine
carrying the ambitions of an entire species. And yet when
you build rockets, these little things end up writing the headlines.
(05:26):
Now SpaceX tore apart the data. Hydraulic filters were redesigned,
raptor ignition sequences were hardened, control lines were rerouted, heat
shielded tiles. The fragile black armor that must survive the
infernoveranch you were replaced with a new pattern, thicker, denser,
and less prone to popping off like poker chips. Every
part of the system was touched by human hands, tight
(05:48):
and tweaked, and even sometimes reinvented. Now the FAA reviewed
every correction, closed the investigation in the flight nine, and
signed off on all of the fixes. That's you know,
bureaucratic language where yeah, you can try again. It's the
kind of green light that matters more than any launch
tower floodlight. So when it does happen, you'll have that
(06:13):
choreography that we all love. At ignition, you'll have thirty
three raptors, engines that are roaring, shoving the booster skyward
with twice the thrust of Saturn five. And if everything
goes well, about two minutes and twenty four seconds a
stage separation, Booster sixteen peels away and attempts a descent
into the Gulf of Mexico. It doesn't sound like they
(06:35):
are planning attempt to recatch it, and if the software behaves,
it'll be an attempt of a soft splash down instead
of just a simple disintegration. But it's Ship thirty seven,
the upper stage that will continue eastward, test its new shielding,
relight its engines in space, and eventually arc toward the
Indian Ocean or a controlled re entry. If it survives
(06:59):
the heat tiles will finally earn their keep. But it
should be noted tucked inside a batch of simulated startling payloads,
probably more. You could call it ballast, but ballast that
forces the ship to prove it can actually carry cargo,
not just its own ambition. Now you may ask, why
(07:21):
does this even matter? Because flight ten is the line
between adolescents and adulthood. For Starship, a successful flight would
restore confidence that this beast of steel and methane isn't
just some weird engineering experiment, but a working platform. It
may give NASA confidence in its choice of Starship as
(07:42):
the Artemis Lunar Lander. It could also prove that orbital refueling,
the critical step for any Mars mission, isn't just a
concept sketch as well, But perhaps more importantly, it would
remind the world that failing forward is still progress. Every
explosion has been tuition, and when it launches, we will
(08:07):
have another exam. Now down at Boca Chica, people are
gathered along the coast, some hold phone, some old binoculars,
some holding their breath, and some with amazing tracking camera software.
Inside the launch control center, engineers who haven't probably slept
(08:27):
in weeks are waiting for that calm, synthetic voice to
say the words they crave.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
We are go for launch.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
The air itself will vibrate with tension when a rocket
this large takes flight. The sound isn't just heard, it's felt,
and not even just in your ribs, but in your
teeth and the sand at your feet and probably your
future future Ken's bodies. And when thirty three engines at night,
the ground doesn't just tremble its surges. But we have
(09:00):
to be honest. It could go wrong again, one misfire,
one valve that doesn't close best enough, one thermal tile
that pops off too early, and flight ten cut into
Waveflight nine did, and fragments scattered across sea and sky.
But that's the nature of this moment. Space Flight is
(09:22):
never guaranteed. Despite what Falcon nine has proven, every lift
off is a coin flip, weighed only slightly in favor
of success. At risk is why we're glued to it,
why we stream it, why we listen, and why we
care because of the nights like this or when it
does eventually launch, humanity rolls the dice with gravity itself.
(09:48):
If Starship ten succeeds, it means Artemis has a lander
that can carry astronauts back to the Moon and balk.
It means the first step towards amr's transport, and more
than just a simple PowerPoint presentation, it means reusability at
a scale no one has ever achieved, let alone fault possible,
(10:12):
and it means that when the launch goes, watching it live,
you and I get to say, you know what, we
were there when the next step of the future took off,
and whether it's sixteds or fails, I hope to air
tomorrow and we will witness it together. No that said, well,
(10:37):
starship is of course rightfully hogging the spotlight. Another vehicle
is quietly slipping back into orbit. A craft that has
never looked flashy, never really been live streamed, and yet
has logged more days in space than most astronauts will
in their entire life. And that is the X thirty
seven B space plane. Now, of course it's not new.
(11:00):
Design traces back to the late nineties, with roots in
a NASA program that the Air Force adopted, reshaped, and
finally tucked under the cloak of military secrecy. Think of
it as a bit of a scale down space shuttle.
It's about the quarter of the size. It's unmanned and
operate it entirely by automation. It launches a top vertically
(11:22):
on a rocket, it spends hundreds of days sometimes years,
in orbit, and then glides back down to Earth on
a runway like a silent ghost. And now it's getting
ready for another mission for the first time. SpaceX and
Boeing are teaming up to send the X thirty seven
B aloft once more. Boeing of course builds the airframe
(11:43):
space Sex. You know they're a little better at getting
things to space, and say, I'm Boeing, and it will
provide the ride a Falcon heavy booster capable of delivering
this splaceplane into its classified orbit. And somewhere in that
handshake between old aerospace and new the Pentagon finds exactly
(12:03):
what it wants. Access to orbit with a craft that
can vanish for a thousand days and return carrying data
samples and god knows what. So what does it actually
do up there, Well, that's a bit of a riddle. Officially,
the X thirty seven B tests new satellite hardware, solar
power systems, and material science. We call that mostly bullshit
(12:28):
around here. Unofficially, the Air Force and now the Space
Force aren't exactly eager to publish any details. Some believe
it's an orbital spy peaking at satellites. Others say it's
testing reusable components for classified missions. Still other whispers it
could be a prototype for a future space based weapons system.
(12:50):
Right now, the truth was locked tighter than the heat
shield tires files under its nose cone. The numbers, though,
don't lie. The X thirty seven b's last mission lasted
over nine hundred days in orbit. That's longer than some
space stations lasted in the seventies. It's the kind of
endurance that lets you slowly, quietly prove out technologies by
(13:11):
the world forgets you're even up there. So while Starship
gathers headlines with explosive drama, the X thirty seven B
gathers dust on runways between marathon missions, kind of an
unglamorous workhorse and a tailored cloak of secrecy splace. Planes
used to be the stuff of science fiction. Then the
(13:32):
Shuttle turned them into spectacle. Now the X thirty seven
B has turned them into something quieter, a chess piece
in orbit, And as it heads back to space aboarding
Falcon Heavy, one thing will be certain when it returns.
You and I may not know anything of what it did,
but the people who need to know will And that's
(13:54):
the strange poetry of X thirty seven B, a spacecraft
that lives in science and carries the loudest secrets of all.
And speaking speaking of secrecy and spies. If there's one
(14:39):
thing you can count on in the twenty twenties, it's
billionaires and nations trying to outstart link each other. This
week's entry comes courtesy of China, which just loved the
eighth batch of satellites in the orbit. For its Gao
Wang consolation, he plans network of tens of thousands of
(15:02):
spacecraft mean to blanket the skies and broadband and geopolitical
bragging rights. Gal Wang is supposed to be China's answer
to SpaceX's starlink. The pitch is the same connect to
the world, even the most remote corner. The reality we
will have thousands of more bright, shiny objects streaking across
the night sky, fluttering off orbital real estate and giving
(15:24):
astronomers migraines and bitching sessions. Now, if you're ever curse
that glowing train of dots that photo bombed your attempt
at shooting the Milky Way, imagine it now multiplied by
national pride. Now, China does it a little different than
say SpaceX. They don't exactly livestream. It's launches with techno
(15:46):
music and countdown memes. It's state television, A clean white
rocket on a pad, announcers reading off a pre approved
script and then boom. More often than not, more hardware
added to the orbital soup launches in Gauwang is starting
to look less like a plan and more like a
kind of a full court press to say, eh, we
can do this too, And it raises the old question
(16:10):
how many mega constellations can orbit handled before? It looks
less like space and more like a cosmic junkyard that
will be in desperate need of Alan Ray's Space junk
Collection division. I mean, Starlink has already up past six
thousand birds. Amazon's Kuiper system is trying to catch up.
Now gal Wang is elbowing into the buffet line. Every
(16:32):
one of them says, well, well, of course, you know,
oh managorbidal debris responsibly, which is like hearing someone at
the frat party say, don't worry, I'll clean up in
the morning. You know it ain't gonna happen. Of course,
A little bit of a kicker for China. Gala Wang
isn't just about the Internet. It's about control. A constellation
(16:53):
that size doubles as a surveillance net, a military communications backbone,
and a very shy piece of soft power launch enough satellites,
and you don't just own the orbit, you can own
the narrative. So tonight chalk up another round of assholes
in space, because while you and I are watching rockets rise,
(17:15):
some countries are watching the sky fill with their logos,
their networks, and their egos. And sadly we're not done
with China, or at least one of the other assholes,
because Russia never won to be outdone. And look at me,
(17:36):
I'm still a space power contest has launched the latest
bion M mission, a spacecraft loaded with mice, microbes, and more. Yep,
you heard it right. While SpaceX's testing reusable MAGA rockets
and NASA is mapping deep space, Ross Cosmos is running
(17:57):
an orbital pet store byon program has been around since.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
The Soviet days.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Biological satellites des unstudied how living organizes handle the brutality
of space. We've had dogs, turtles, fish, plants, bugs. If
it crawls, swims or squeaks, at some point, the Russians
have probably launched it.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Now.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
This latest installment is on m number two, following up
with a mission that flew more than a decade ago.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Pack the board.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
You have hundreds of mice, colonies of microbes, and maybe
even a few other test critic critics who resumes were
not made public. They'll spend weeks to months circling Earth
in a specially outfitted capsule and during weightlessness, radiation and
the kind of cosmic boredom that makes you wonder if
(18:48):
even a mouse can get existential dread. Now, it's easy
to laugh here, but there is some real science being done.
Long duration by all studies are critical for understanding how
human bodies will survive on missions to Mars or beyond. Mice, well,
they're kind of proxies for us, and microbes are the stowaways.
(19:10):
We can never foolish Spanish from our ships. What happens
to them out there happens to us in miniature. But
it's not hard really to see the irony. In a
week when the world's eyes are on starship Russia is
making headlines with basically a mouse hotel, and it's not
exactly a confidence booster for their battered space program. This
(19:30):
is the same Ross Cosmos that struggled with budget cuts,
abandoned Moon missions, and hardware failures that would make a
car mechanic blush. So of course we are adding this
into the assholes in space ledger, because we have China
cluttering the skies with satellites, in Russia cluttering Low Earth
(19:51):
orbit with rodents, and you and I are probably left
wondering if somewhere out there alien astronomers are looking at
Earth's launch records and concluding, yeah, this species is very confused.
But ironically we're not done with assholes in space. No,
(20:12):
we kind of have a new entry into this one.
And some of you are going to be a little
upset when I started out, but wait for it.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Be patient.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
The story will reveal itself as we go alone here.
Because there's a headline that got the climate crowd clutching
their reusable coffee mugs. This week, President Donald Trump signed
an executive order telling NASA to back away from climate
research and get back to what the agency was actually
built for, exploring space, And of course the howling began immediately.
(20:48):
According to the climate lobby, this is heresy.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
How dare you?
Speaker 4 (20:55):
How dare NASA stop obsessing over models, charts and endless
and desny press conferences. How dare they prioritize the Moon
and Mars over telling us for the one hundred and
nineteenth time that the sky is falling and your gas
stove is probably to blame. Well, let's be clear, NASA
(21:19):
wasn't founded to the environmental protection agency with rocket engines.
It was funded to build Saturn, fives land people on
the Moon, and send probes to the edge of the
solar system and honestly push human presence outward. That's their DNA.
But in the last couple of decades, the climate industry
got its claws and that every federal agency it could,
(21:42):
including NASA. Suddenly the same engineers who should be plotting
trajectories to Europa were being told to run speedstreets around
cow farts and carbon offsets. Now Trump's order flips this back. Program.
Doesn't need a lecture on recycling, it needs rockets. Mars
(22:05):
colonization doesn't need a pamphlet about climate justice. It needs landers,
needs habitats, and it needs oxygenators. Every dollar NASA sinks
into duplicating climate studies that NOAH and EPA and then
probably a dozen other agencies do, is a dollar not
spent building the future. Now, of course, if you listen
(22:27):
to the climate.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Warriors, this is the end of civilization.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
They're convinced the oceans are going to boil unless NASA
interns keep crunching ice core samples. But here's the irony.
The more they kind of scream, the more obvious it
is that they see NASA not as a space agency
but as a stage for their ideology. So, yes, we
(22:53):
are having a new segment into assholes in space. They
go there not for worrying about Earth, of course Earth matters,
but for a hijacking humanity's only real off world agency
and trying to turn it into another pulpit. Now, the
climate may change, it always has, always will, but rockets
don't build themselves, and tonight at least NASA is being
(23:15):
told to stop sermonizing and starts launching. Well, that leads
us to another issue. Most of the satellites you hear
about living well known neighborhoods low Earth orbit basically where
(23:36):
startlink Love you SpaceX, love you starlink, but it does
clutter the sky a little. Or you know, we've heard
of geosynchronous orbit where communication birds hover. But there are
corners of space that are harder to reach, harder to
stay in, and harder to exploit. And NASA wants new
(23:56):
spacecraft designed.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
To exploit it.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
The target, or what engineers call cislunar and deep space orbits.
Think halo orbits around the Moon, high inclination paths that
sweep above and blow earth falls, or long looping trajectories
where gravity from Earth, Moon, and even the Sun tuget
to spacecraft all at once. Now, these orbits are really
scientifically valuable places where observatories can watch the cosmos undisturbed,
(24:25):
or where communication release can beam signals around blind spots.
They're also strategically valuable since whoever controls the high ground,
as Anakin learned, you know above cislunar space controls a
gateway to everywhere else. That said, there is a bit
of a problem. Getting there is very very expensive, and
(24:50):
staying there is even harder, and servicing spacecraft in those
orbits is practically impossible right now. So NASA is asking
industry for these vehicles that can fly longer, maneuver more efficiently,
and survive radiation belts That true through electronics like termites
in a log cabin. And some propulsions and proposals are
(25:12):
talking nuclear engines that sip fuel and give a steady
push for months. Others are looking at solar electric drives
with a rais of unfurl like wings and ion thrusters
that go glow blue in the dark. All of it
basically points to the same idea. If you can build
a craft that thrive in the hard to reach places,
you unlock a whole new layer space. And for now
(25:34):
it's still early. NASA is listening, contractors are pitching, and
funding is a bit of a question mark, but the
intent is clear. The future isn't just low Earth orbit anymore.
It's the weird, lonely highways in between, where missions to Mars,
asteroid miners and deep space telescopes.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Will one day ride.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
And who knows, if starship really does fly reliably, those
out of the way orbits might not be out of
reach for very much longer.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Now.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
If you were listening to the Vincent Charle Project earlier
that I was, I don't know if guests is a
right word on, but talk of star Trek often permeates
that show for one reason or another, usually Janelle, it's okay,
we like that, so this next story will tie into that,
(26:30):
I think quite nicely. When you head to Mars, you know,
you just can't swing by the er. If someone you
know breaks a right ankle or you know, runs a
fever of one hundred and five pointy nine. No, no,
you can't just not or just not possible, because the
round trip time for radio signals can stretch up to
(26:53):
forty minutes. That means if an astronaut keels over, mission
control won't be talking them through CPR in real time,
you'll be talking about funeral plans. So enter NASA's new
partnership with Google, an AI medical assistant designed to travel
(27:15):
with astronauts into deep space. Think of it as a
digital doctor that never sleeps, trained on more medical textbooks
and any human could cram, and armed with the ability
to cross reference a patient vitals against a vast library
of symptoms and seconds. In practice, this means if an
(27:36):
astronaut feels chess pain, the AI could pull up their
heart rates, scan them on onboard tools, and suggest immediate
steps while flagging whether it's a minor cram or the
start of something deadly. For longer missions, it could monitor
sleep cycles, bound density scans, or even around diagnostic conversations.
Describe your pain on a scale of one to ten
(27:57):
of a bedside manner, of course, will be a little
cold to hey, we've all and marry once or twice,
but the speed could be life saving. And I know,
I know somewhere out there, a star trek ban is
already grinning because that NASA and Google basically building sounds
as suspiciously like the emergency medical hologram from Voyager, just
you know, without the bit of smug sarcasm, or you know,
(28:20):
Robert Pricardo's face flickering in the being if a real
version probably won't crack jokes about bedside manner, but it
will in its own way. Let astronauts call out computer,
activate the doctor. Now, of course there are challenges. Medical
data is messy, and space will add a handful of
(28:41):
complications that probably aren't even thought of yet. Bones weaken,
fluid shift, wounds healed differently in microgravity. And let's not
mention they haven't done a study in sex and space
yet that I'm willing to volunteer for a certain former
Prime Minister of Finland would love to join me. Anyway,
Training and AI to recognize what's normal in orbit is
very different than training for it here on Earth. Then
(29:04):
there's the trust factor. Astronauts are already elite professionals, but
when you're hurting in a deep space Would you really
believe the diagnostics of a talking algorithm over your own guts? Still,
let's face it, the alternative is worse. On Mars, the
er is a planet away. An AI doctor, even with
(29:25):
rough edges, is a better most likely than no doctor
at all, And like every toe NASA builds, it will
probably find its way back to Earth someday. And someday
a version of the same system could sit on your
phone diagnoostics you up and down your coll before you
even make an appointment. But for now it's well, it
(29:47):
is one more piece of science fiction edging toward fact.
A digital physician preparing to make house calls on the
Moon and maybe one day as well on Mars. And
that closes out this first half of tonight's flight plan.
You've had some rockets, roaring, space plants, space planes flying,
(30:09):
and well more than a few assholes in space cluttering
up the stories tonight. But don't go far away. After
the break, we'll leave the launch pads behind and dive
into the strange, maybe a mysterious new object that doesn't
fit into any known category of star planet and well,
you know, maybe talk the so called Eye of souron
in space, a cosmic furnace, spitting out ghost particles like
(30:32):
something straight from Middle Earth. That's coming up in the
second half, right after this musical intermission.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
We will be right back, Birdie Eye across the nest.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Watcher sat in the cosmic.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
Flame, through the veil of cold resistance. Whispers carry only
on the silence storm overless bi Sumas Beach, and in
(32:40):
the dime ancient cays that never sat. He shuts the
boid with Josetly'.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Spot Chow's by Charles Stream.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
I see.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Through the shadows, say stock.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
From the Fat Scristo.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
We are haunted up show lost me a nor measure.
Speaker 6 (33:41):
It's just crowned with spectrum, every ver, high frasure, every
spot consumes.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
The night.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
We're in wonder Barn together.
Speaker 6 (34:02):
About by way Jack Johnson, We says forever.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Wims John and go say.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
Welcome back.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Sorry.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
There was no easy way to get out of that
without that ending abruptly. I just said I was really
planning on talking more about a launch tonight than doing
most of this show. But I wrote enough show to
get me through the hour. To thank you for tuning
in and welcome backboard the Lost Wonderer program. Now the
(35:18):
rockets have cold, the launch towers are quiet, and now
we turn our eyes to the silent wonders of the outside,
the outer Solar System, and the strange riddles they carry.
The second half tonight is all about the rocks and
the mysteries where science fiction lean's close enough to brush
(35:40):
shoulders with fact, which, of course brings us to Pluto,
that little world that refuses to stay forgotten. Pluto the planet.
That's how we call it here, because that's what it is.
(36:01):
It's not a dwarf, it's not a demotion, not whatever
label the IAU and the NDT slapped on it back
in two thousand and six, like the morons that they are.
Because let's face it, if a world can carve canyons,
hold moons, and maybe hide in ocean deep under its
icy skin, it has earned its title of planet. End
(36:24):
of story. And now Pluto the planet, maybe getting the
mission it deserves, one designed to probe its underworld. I'll
let you go ahead and do the gigas and chat.
(36:45):
Ever since New Horizons flew past in twenty fifteen, Pluto
has been dropping hims. It has more going on beneath
the surface than anyone expected smooth planes that look relatively young,
rips in fractures as if the crust has been stretched
and tugged, all signs that something warm and dynamic might
(37:09):
be lurking below. And the most compelling theory a hidden
ocean sealed away under miles of nitrogen and water ice
kept liquid by just an up internal heat to defy
the cold, and planetary scientists want to go back, not
just to snap pretty photos on Instagram, but to peer inside.
So it's more of an OnlyFans trip Radar two, you know,
(37:34):
sound through the ice, gravity mapping to feel the slash
of liquid beneath, and maybe even a lander to test
the surface chemistry for traces of what lies below. And
it's kind of sometimes space nerds really do amazing things
because the proposal has come with a fitting name, the
(37:54):
Queen of the Underworld, because if Pluto the planet hides
an ocean, it would be the ultimate underworld. They see
a darkness billions of years old, untouched and waiting. Once
again we have to ask why does it matter, because
subsurface oceans are prime candidates for light. Europa probably has
(38:15):
one and it's the latest. Well, it sprays it into
space like it's a freaking party, So Pluto joins that list.
The in habitable environments aren't rare jewels, They're actually common,
even out at the edge, where sunlightest faint and NDT
smug grin fades from view. Now, for now, it's just
(38:37):
a proposal on paper, and of course politics may stall it.
But Pluto, the planet has a way of tugging at imagination.
Demoted or not, it refuses to be forgotten. And if
the Queen of the underworld does fly, it won't just
settle a planetary debate, it will ask something much Bigger's
(39:00):
acrets lie in the oceans no sunlight has ever touched.
And let's face it, astronomy. Astronomy has a way of
humbling us. Just think, you know, when we think we've
got the cosmos, you know, neatly labeled, we've got stars,
(39:22):
we've got planets over here, black holes, galaxies, something shows
up that refuses to play by the rules. This week,
astronomers announced they spotted a new object that doesn't fit
into any known category. It's not quite a star, it
doesn't have the mass to ignite and shine, but it's
not a planet either. It's far too large, far too energetic,
(39:46):
it isn't a brown dwarf, at least not the kind
we know. It's emissions, it's light curve, it's very behavior
don't line up.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
With anything in the textbooks.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
For now, it's just a mystery placeholder in our catalog
in the universe with three question marks basically scribbled.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Next to it.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
And the discovery came the old fashioned way, by watching
this guy for flickers and signals that don't match the background.
This thing lit up in ways that made astronomers sit
back and ask, what are we even looking at? A
cosmic in between her, a misfit, a reminder that the
(40:25):
categories we invented our hours not what the universe has planned.
It could be a transitional object. They still a core
that never fully bloomed, or maybe one that's dying in
slow motion. It could be the first of a new
class of astrophysical objects entirely discovery that may force us
to add another line into the cosmic dictionary. And if
(40:49):
history is any guide, the real explanation is probably going
to be weirder than any of the early guesses. And
that's kind of the beauty of anomalies puzzles for astronomers.
The proof that the universe isn't exhausted that it still
has maybe a few new cards to play. Every time
something like this pops up, you can feel the quiet
(41:11):
thrill ripple through the field, a chance to rethink, to
expand to admit. We still don't have a clue of
how the universe operates. So for now this object will
remain nameless, category less, and really storyless. But it shines
it anyway, reminding us that the cosmos doesn't care about
(41:31):
any of our neat tightly wound definitions. It will always
keep something just beyond the edge of our understanding, daring
us to get out of our middle school understanding physics,
and the universe wasn't done. Every so often the universe
(41:53):
lines up a site so perfect, oh, it feels like
a special effects shot. A strong Armers recently trained their
instruments on a distant galaxy and found what looks uncannily
like the eye of Surn glaring back at us, a
cosmic furnace staring across the void, rimmed in fire and
now proven to be throwing out ghost particles as if
(42:14):
it were forged in Mordor itself.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
And here's here's a kicker.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
The eye is not a metaphor. Images show a central
pupil of darkness surrounded by glowing rings of gas, a
shape born from purious interactions around a super massive black hole.
But what makes it more than just, you know, a
pretty nickname is what's pouring out of it neutrinos, billions
(42:42):
of them, ghostly particles, so faint and so slippery, they
passed straight through you, through Earth, through almost everything without
leaving a trace. Catching even one is like fishing a
single rain drop out of a hurricane. And yet detectors
on Earth did just that. They trace the neutrons back
(43:02):
to this galaxy, to the fiery eye itself. This makes
us one of the rare cosmic sources we've actually called
in the act of producing these ghost particles, and neutrinos
carry information photons can't. They shoot straight through cosmic clutter,
telling us about the violent processes at the heart of
(43:24):
black holes and jets. So why call it the Eye
of Siron Because when you look at the images, it's
impossible not to see Tolkien's villain starring back the glowing
rings of plasma the central void. It's as if some
dark power was literally watching us, unblinking across intergalactic distances.
(43:45):
Of course, it isn't evil necessarily. It's physics. Some could
say physics can be evil how you use it. That's
a story for another shell. But the metaphor sticks because
sometimes the Cosmos hands is poetry along with amazing data.
And for astronomers this is more than a spectacle. It
(44:06):
steps toward multi messenger astronomy, where we study the universe
not just with light, but with neutrinos, gravitational waves and
maybe one day signals we haven't even imagined yet. And
for the rest of us, it's proof that the night
sky still has surprises that looks straight out of myth.
So the if surron isn't necessarily looking for two little
(44:27):
gay hobbits with a ring, it's looking for us, daring
us to keep watching and to keep learning before its
ghostly particles passed through unnoticed. And this wasn't the last
story of the universe. Decided to go, yeah, I'm smarter
than you, because every now and then the universe might
(44:50):
reminds us that out there isn't always necessarily that far away.
Sometimes the headlines aren't about dis in galaxies or quasars
that look like the I of Sauran. What about stars
that are practically next door? And this week the James
Webbs Face telescope picked up whispers faint dips of light
(45:12):
suggest there may be a new exoplanet only four light
years away. Four light years. I know some of you
are already don the math. Four light years that's right
in our backyard. On the cosmic scale, that's like finding
out your neighbor has been keeping a swimming pool that
you've never noticed. If confirmed, this would be one of
the closest exoplanets ever detected orbiting in huh the Alpha
(45:38):
Centauri neighborhood, which, of course, if you're paying attention, is.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
My home turf.
Speaker 4 (45:45):
Yeah, yeah, the rumors are true. Your host is an
alien stow away from the from Alpha Centauri that's just
here for snacks, science and someday the former Prime Minister
of Finland. So when I say neighbor, I mean it literally.
If there's a new rocky world orbiting there, that's like
someone building a new condo development rate basically on your block.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Hmm.
Speaker 4 (46:10):
Do you think maybe I can have a postcard and
reserve room when I go home? Anyway, So what did
a web to actually see it? Wasn't a clear, crystal
clear image of blue marble with oceans and clouds, because
they don't know where to find that one. Instead, astronomer
spotted a light curve tiny regular dips in starlight as
something crossed in front of it, and those dips routinely
(46:31):
suggest a planet. It seems to be about Earth sized
orbiting at a distance where conditions could be temperate, though
temperate around the red dwarf star can mean anything from
bomby greenhouse to surface.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Of a toaster.
Speaker 4 (46:48):
But this excitement isn't just proximity four light years is
actually within range of future missions with current tech. It's
still science fiction, but it's not impossible. Science fiction projects
like Breakthrough Starshot have drawn up blueprints for probe sales
(47:09):
driven by lasers that could in theory reach Alpha Centauri
within you know, human lifetime. If a real rocky planet
is waiting there, the motivation to build those missions goes
up tenfold. Of course, astronomers are unsurprisingly cautious right now.
This is just what they call a candidate. Web's data
(47:31):
needs to be confirmed, double checked, and of course challenged.
Like profer science is sometimes noise pretends to be a
planet sometimes it's star spots or maybe some sort of
weird cosmic background event. But even asking the question, this
close to home is thrilling, really close to my home
if you catch my meeting mister Frodo. Now here's where
(47:56):
the story takes a bit of a twist, because while
Alpha Centauri is whispering sweet, nothing's of Maybe I'm here,
maybe I'm not. Let me show a little leg tease
you another system that has been shouting, pick me, pick me,
is all of a sudden, gone quiet. Trappist one D,
one of the seven Earth sized planets around the famous
(48:17):
red dwarf forty.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
Light years away.
Speaker 4 (48:20):
Well, that was supposed to be one of the crown
jewels of exo planet hunting because trap is one d
orbits right, and that beautiful, absolutely amazing habitable zone the
sweet spot where liquid water could exist on the surface.
When it was first announced in twenty seventeen, headlines went wild.
Speaker 3 (48:40):
Seven earths found.
Speaker 4 (48:44):
Teachers used it in class slides, nasupposters reimagine the planets
like vintage travel ads. Trappist one D was practically marketed
as the front runner for Earth two point zero, but
pipe only gets you so far. Web turned its instruments
on the planet and looked for the tail telltale fingerprints
(49:05):
of an atmosphere guesses absorbing starlight during transits.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
The results.
Speaker 4 (49:12):
Disappointing. Treface one D doesn't seem to have the thick
protective atmosphere needed to keep water stable. Without this blanket,
the surface is likely dry, barren, and exposed to constant
stolar flares from its parent star.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
What looked like a.
Speaker 4 (49:26):
Potential paradise on paper is probably just another fun little rock,
scorched and bare. It's kind of a sobering reminder. Size
and orbit aren't enough. Just because a planet is Earth
sized and in the right zone doesn't mean it's habitable.
Atmospheres are fragile. They can be stripped away by stellar
winds or never formed thickly in the first place. Treface
(49:51):
one teaches us the habitability is rare, and not every
candidate makes the cut. And yes, I am hating the
ET for sending me this story, but I am the words,
so I'm happy. But here's the thing, even this failure
is a bit of a progress. By ruling trap is
one D out, we have sharpened our methods. We learn
that well, there are certain things to look for and
(50:14):
what red flags the spot faster next time. The list
of maybes are is getting smaller, but the science is
getting better, and in that sense, Trappis one D is
still valuable. It's a reminder that discovery isn't just about
finding what we want. It's what science should be about,
which is finding what's true. So the cosmic balance sheet
(50:37):
this week looks like Alpha Centauri whispers that we may
have a new neighbor just for late years away, or
you know, a couple hundred thousand miles if you already
lived there. And trapp Is one D, the former darling
of the ball quietly stepping off stage. And that's the
sad truth of the nature of exploration, joy and disappointment,
wonder and humility all in the same breath. Now, while
(51:03):
we dream about distant neighbors or light years away, sometimes
the best surprises all right here in our own solar system.
Case in point, a tiny new moon has just been
spotted circling Uranus. I'll let that one's sink in for
(51:26):
a minute. Okay, after all the talk of distant worlds,
let's speak back to our own solar system for something smaller, stranger,
and oh a little funnier astronomers using the James Webspace
telescope had discovered a tiny new moon orbiting Uranus. Yes, Urinus,
go ahead, get your jokes out now, I'll wait for him.
(51:49):
I'd play the Jeffardy theme music, but I'd probably get
copyright struck or something. But the astronomer astronomy community has
been dealing with this since the eighteenth century. You know,
new moons around Uranus, rings of uranus. You know, don't
make me smell uranus. Every discovery sounds like it was
(52:12):
written by a twelve year old, and honestly, I laughed
the entire time. I see headlines and read the stories myself,
so I get it. This little moon is only a
few miles across, more of a cosmic pebble than a world.
But it's important because Eurytus, despite being a giant, hasn't
been closely studied since Voyager two flew by back in
(52:35):
eighty six. That's almost forty years in the gleck. Much
like my second marriage. Finding a new moon now is
like dusting off an old attic box and discovering, hey,
look there's something living inside. It tells us the system
is more active, more populated, than we ever realize. And
let's face it, Urinus already has a reputation. Twenty seven
(52:57):
moons have been confirmed, and of course to them are
named after Shakespearean characters, which I'm sure Vincent loves. You know,
we have Titanian, Oberon, Ariel Miranda, and now I had
this tiny newcomer waiting for its proper name. Will it
get another Shakespeare not or will someone please, for the
love of God and everything that's holy, finally slip a
(53:19):
future rama reference past the naming committee, please please. But
beyond the giggles, these little moons actually do matter. They
hint and how this planet rings are actually formed, how
it's gravity kraals debris, and maybe even how Urinus itself
tilted over on its side long ago. So yeah, we
(53:39):
just added another moon to Uranus. It's tiny, hits, quirky,
and it gives everyone from late night host to giggling
podcast listeners an excuse to last. But it is also science,
and sometimes science is best served with a side of humor,
and that's why I love doing this show, face it,
(54:01):
especially when it comes to things all uranous and every
so often in the world of NASA, scientists like you know,
the good ones let themselves play a thought experiment. Instead
(54:23):
of asking what do we see out there? They ask
more questions like, hey, if aliens are like us, where
would we see them first? And that's a new premise
of a new study. The idea is simple. When humans
explore space, we don't scatter randomly. We go where it
makes sense, stable orbits, gravitational weight points, regions that are
(54:46):
used for fuel, communication, observation. If another intelligent species followed
this same logic their signals or even their ships, mice
cluster and the same places. In other words, don't just
into the dark, look into the cosmic equivalent of airports,
crossroads and gas stations, the grange points where gravity balances out,
(55:08):
halo orbits around moons and planets, those stable nisses where
technology tends to gather, just like it does here on Earth.
And it's honestly, finally a clever idea and probably a
humbling one, because if aliens are out there and they
think anything like us, then we might already be staring
straight past them. We just haven't been looking in the
(55:31):
right spots.
Speaker 3 (55:33):
Of course, I'll say it. You could save them in trouble.
Speaker 4 (55:38):
Look, you can stop searching alien Hello right here, you
know me broadcasting bi weekly from Alpha Centauri under the
very subtle disguise of a human podcaster and not telling
many people, apparently, but choking aside. This study does matter.
It's one more step in what's called techno signature research.
(55:59):
The hunts not for aliens themselves, but the fingerprints of
technology that they would leave behind, radio burst, waste, heat,
orbital clutter, the kind of things we're already creating without
meaning to. So if humanity's footprint is visible across thesar is,
why wouldn't there be as well? So tonight the search
(56:23):
widens again. We may not have answers, but we have
better questions. If aliens are like you, they'll be where
the physics is, you know kind, Their orbits are steady,
and the traffic makes logical sense. And maybe someday when
you know Earth finally, you know, tune in on the
right frequency, you know, glance at the right point of
(56:43):
the sky, they'll realize the universe has been waving back
the whole freaking time. And black holes, and then we
talked a little bit about it earlier. Black holes have
always been cast as the villains of the cosmos collapse
in the and you're gone. No light, no signal, no
holpe the great devours of stars, the sinkholes of the universe.
(57:07):
But there is a new theory that is starting to
flip the script. What if black holes aren't just the
ultimate full stops of matter and energy. What if deep
inside their factories for dark energy, let's rewind.
Speaker 3 (57:20):
Shall we.
Speaker 4 (57:21):
In ninety eight, astronomers studying supernova noticed something alarming. The
universe isn't just expanding, it's accelerating. That discovery actually earned
a Nobel Prize and a permanent headache. To explain it,
scientists coined to phrase dark energy. It's that wonderful invisible
pressure driving galaxies apart faster and faster, and it makes
(57:42):
up amazingly nearly seventy percent of the cosmos. And yet
after more than two decades, we still don't know what
the hell it is. We can only measure its fingerprints
in the sky. Now comes a provocative idea. Maybe black
holes are the missing source. Traditionally, we picture black holes
as dead ends. Matter collapse past the event horizon, compressed
(58:05):
into a singularity of infinite density.
Speaker 3 (58:07):
And that's it.
Speaker 4 (58:09):
But if physics allows some of that matter to undergo
a transformation, a phase change under conditions we can barely model.
Then the result might not be more mass or heat.
It might be something stranger, a contribution to the universe's
dark energy budget. And that's kind of, you know, a
big question. What does this mean for the fate of
(58:31):
the universe. If black holes are factories for dark energy,
then every new one adds fuel to the fire of expansion.
That could tip the scales toward a future where the
cosmos keep stretching until galaxies vanished from each other's site.
The stars will wink out and only the lonely Pole
expansion remains. The so called Big Rip, which I covered
(58:53):
in the Crease, becomes even more plausible, something that was
laughed at when I talked about it from my listener,
of course. But a universe torn apart not by gravity
but by the runaway pressure of energy boom born in darkness.
For now, it is just a model, a bold idea,
scratching at the edge about ignorance. But that's how science works.
(59:19):
Now we come to that closing act of tonight, The
question is the cosmos ready to dazzle us? So let's
grab a drink and sit down by the campfire and
take a a gander up. Monday, August twenty fifth begins
our two week run under the lingering glow of the
Sturgeon Moon, the last full moon of summer, hanging bright
(59:42):
as August prepares to give way to September. It's a
reminder that the long nights of autumn are on the horizon.
All of this builds towards the showstopper Sunday, September seventh,
when Earth's shadow swallows the corn moon and transforms it
into a blood moon. Across New England, for example, you'll
see it climbing above the horizon, already wrapped in red
(01:00:02):
totality lasts for more than an hour, bathing the sky
in that eerie copper light only a lunar eclipse can deliver.
Of course, this moon carries names across traditions because my
useektive producer loves laughing at me trying to pronounce this.
And and it's called wati gis the leaves turning moon.
The Dakota Sue call it kanwah pe con sun Wi
(01:00:28):
the moon when the leaves are falling, And in Cree
it's name Tahnaseki men the berry harvest moon. However you
say hits, the meaning is the same. A season is
shifting and the moon rises to market between these dates
next two weeks. There aren't really major alignance or meteor
(01:00:49):
showers to really distract you. This window is kind of
more about a slow crescendo. The sky is holding its breath,
saving its drama. So mark your calendars August twenty fifth
to September seventh, from the Sturgeon Moon to the blood moon.
The Cosmos is tuning its instruments, dimming the lights, and
then in one long red performance, giving you a front
row seat to a theater of the heavens. That's it
(01:01:14):
for tonight's show. Thank you for tuning in whenever, and
however you do, stay tuned for Sunday Night with Alan
Ray Special. Thanks to NASA Spacexpace dot Com or Technica,
NASA spate Flight, Popular Mechanics and more for the stories
and inspiration Tonight with Me at the helm and the
EP setting course and the ship's computer in the back
(01:01:34):
whispering star maps through static. This is a Lost Wonder
podcast until next door of It. I hope you enjoyed
the show, learned a little something, and maybe had a
laugh or two along the way. The universe is a
pretty big place.
Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
It's bigger than anything anyone who's ever dreamed of before.
Speaker 4 (01:02:01):
So if it's just us, it seems like an awful
waste of space, right
Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
When
I'm taking off my best leaping up behind than to.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Start to out the central.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Reason of the central on the spaceship n to man
with the stars and the.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Time for this nation to take a clearly leading role
in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the
key to our future on Earth.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
M H.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
As one Paul fam for Man.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
On Simple, Today is.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
A day for morning and remember man C and I
are gained at the core of the tragedy of the
Shadow Challenge.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
The following program may contain close language, adult themes, and
bad attempts of human.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Listener discretion as advised.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
What is President Trump's goal?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
What is his vision?
Speaker 4 (02:29):
He wants to put an American flag on Mars.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Within anglority based here are landed.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
I am your host J E. Double f also known
as a cosmic bard over on Twitter slash x and
this is the Lost Wonder of podcast for August twenty fourth,
twenty twenty five. Happy Sunday evening, and welcome aboard the
acs Serenade. We're gonna start out with our story well Starship,
(03:14):
because I was hoping, because I thought stars were going
to align and I was going to be able to
live stream Starship ten launch attempt, but it got scrubbed,
so I'm not gonna lie. I wrote it tonight's episode
on the assumption that they were at least going to launch,
So if I use anything that is improper in that regard,
(03:37):
I apologize. But hey, ground issues happen. But tonight on
the golf coast of Texas, a rocket taller from the
Statue of Liberty and wrapped in stainless steel still stands
waiting for its turn with history. Now, of course, the
countdown didn't hold, so Flight ten of Starship and launched
(04:00):
during the middle of this broadcast, even though I was
fully prepared with live video. Maybe I'll do a special
tomorrow night so we can watch it together. But before
we count down, I think we need a little bit
of a rewind because when that flight happened, it isn't
(04:22):
coming out of nowhere. It actually comes with a handful
of scars. There has been an unfortunate string of failures.
Light eight a promising ascent until a flash inside the
engine cluster rippled into catastrophe. A flicker, a spark, and
(04:43):
then structure breakup. Flight nine a hydraulic filter clog, steering
control vanished, and a rocket that should have been dancing
on plasma fell apart instead. Now, these weren't necessarily grand
architectural collapses. They weren't starship doesn't work. They were well,
(05:03):
let's face it, a batch of gremlins, a filter, a flash,
the sort of things you'd expect on you know, your
uncle's beat up buick. Maybe not, you know, a machine
carrying the ambitions of an entire species. And yet when
you build rockets, these little things end up writing the headlines.
(05:26):
Now SpaceX tore apart the data. Hydraulic filters were redesigned,
raptor ignition sequences were hardened, control lines were rerouted, heat
shielded tiles. The fragile black armor that must survive the
infernoveranch you were replaced with a new pattern, thicker, denser,
and less prone to popping off like poker chips. Every
part of the system was touched by human hands, tight
(05:48):
and tweaked, and even sometimes reinvented. Now the FAA reviewed
every correction, closed the investigation in the flight nine, and
signed off on all of the fixes. That's you know,
bureaucratic language where yeah, you can try again. It's the
kind of green light that matters more than any launch
tower floodlight. So when it does happen, you'll have that
(06:13):
choreography that we all love. At ignition, you'll have thirty
three raptors, engines that are roaring, shoving the booster skyward
with twice the thrust of Saturn five. And if everything
goes well, about two minutes and twenty four seconds a
stage separation, Booster sixteen peels away and attempts a descent
into the Gulf of Mexico. It doesn't sound like they
(06:35):
are planning attempt to recatch it, and if the software behaves,
it'll be an attempt of a soft splash down instead
of just a simple disintegration. But it's Ship thirty seven,
the upper stage that will continue eastward, test its new shielding,
relight its engines in space, and eventually arc toward the
Indian Ocean or a controlled re entry. If it survives
(06:59):
the heat tiles will finally earn their keep. But it
should be noted tucked inside a batch of simulated startling payloads,
probably more. You could call it ballast, but ballast that
forces the ship to prove it can actually carry cargo,
not just its own ambition. Now you may ask, why
(07:21):
does this even matter? Because flight ten is the line
between adolescents and adulthood. For Starship, a successful flight would
restore confidence that this beast of steel and methane isn't
just some weird engineering experiment, but a working platform. It
may give NASA confidence in its choice of Starship as
(07:42):
the Artemis Lunar Lander. It could also prove that orbital refueling,
the critical step for any Mars mission, isn't just a
concept sketch as well, But perhaps more importantly, it would
remind the world that failing forward is still progress. Every
explosion has been tuition, and when it launches, we will
(08:07):
have another exam. Now down at Boca Chica, people are
gathered along the coast, some hold phone, some old binoculars,
some holding their breath, and some with amazing tracking camera software.
Inside the launch control center, engineers who haven't probably slept
(08:27):
in weeks are waiting for that calm, synthetic voice to
say the words they crave.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
We are go for launch.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
The air itself will vibrate with tension when a rocket
this large takes flight. The sound isn't just heard, it's felt,
and not even just in your ribs, but in your
teeth and the sand at your feet and probably your
future future Ken's bodies. And when thirty three engines at night,
the ground doesn't just tremble its surges. But we have
(09:00):
to be honest. It could go wrong again, one misfire,
one valve that doesn't close best enough, one thermal tile
that pops off too early, and flight ten cut into
Waveflight nine did, and fragments scattered across sea and sky.
But that's the nature of this moment. Space Flight is
(09:22):
never guaranteed. Despite what Falcon nine has proven, every lift
off is a coin flip, weighed only slightly in favor
of success. At risk is why we're glued to it,
why we stream it, why we listen, and why we
care because of the nights like this or when it
does eventually launch, humanity rolls the dice with gravity itself.
(09:48):
If Starship ten succeeds, it means Artemis has a lander
that can carry astronauts back to the Moon and balk.
It means the first step towards amr's transport, and more
than just a simple PowerPoint presentation, it means reusability at
a scale no one has ever achieved, let alone fault possible,
(10:12):
and it means that when the launch goes, watching it live,
you and I get to say, you know what, we
were there when the next step of the future took off,
and whether it's sixteds or fails, I hope to air
tomorrow and we will witness it together. No that said, well,
(10:37):
starship is of course rightfully hogging the spotlight. Another vehicle
is quietly slipping back into orbit. A craft that has
never looked flashy, never really been live streamed, and yet
has logged more days in space than most astronauts will
in their entire life. And that is the X thirty
seven B space plane. Now, of course it's not new.
(11:00):
Design traces back to the late nineties, with roots in
a NASA program that the Air Force adopted, reshaped, and
finally tucked under the cloak of military secrecy. Think of
it as a bit of a scale down space shuttle.
It's about the quarter of the size. It's unmanned and
operate it entirely by automation. It launches a top vertically
(11:22):
on a rocket, it spends hundreds of days sometimes years,
in orbit, and then glides back down to Earth on
a runway like a silent ghost. And now it's getting
ready for another mission for the first time. SpaceX and
Boeing are teaming up to send the X thirty seven
B aloft once more. Boeing of course builds the airframe
(11:43):
space Sex. You know they're a little better at getting
things to space, and say, I'm Boeing, and it will
provide the ride a Falcon heavy booster capable of delivering
this splaceplane into its classified orbit. And somewhere in that
handshake between old aerospace and new the Pentagon finds exactly
(12:03):
what it wants. Access to orbit with a craft that
can vanish for a thousand days and return carrying data
samples and god knows what. So what does it actually
do up there, Well, that's a bit of a riddle. Officially,
the X thirty seven B tests new satellite hardware, solar
power systems, and material science. We call that mostly bullshit
(12:28):
around here. Unofficially, the Air Force and now the Space
Force aren't exactly eager to publish any details. Some believe
it's an orbital spy peaking at satellites. Others say it's
testing reusable components for classified missions. Still other whispers it
could be a prototype for a future space based weapons system.
(12:50):
Right now, the truth was locked tighter than the heat
shield tires files under its nose cone. The numbers, though,
don't lie. The X thirty seven b's last mission lasted
over nine hundred days in orbit. That's longer than some
space stations lasted in the seventies. It's the kind of
endurance that lets you slowly, quietly prove out technologies by
(13:11):
the world forgets you're even up there. So while Starship
gathers headlines with explosive drama, the X thirty seven B
gathers dust on runways between marathon missions, kind of an
unglamorous workhorse and a tailored cloak of secrecy splace. Planes
used to be the stuff of science fiction. Then the
(13:32):
Shuttle turned them into spectacle. Now the X thirty seven
B has turned them into something quieter, a chess piece
in orbit, And as it heads back to space aboarding
Falcon Heavy, one thing will be certain when it returns.
You and I may not know anything of what it did,
but the people who need to know will And that's
(13:54):
the strange poetry of X thirty seven B, a spacecraft
that lives in science and carries the loudest secrets of all.
And speaking speaking of secrecy and spies. If there's one
(14:39):
thing you can count on in the twenty twenties, it's
billionaires and nations trying to outstart link each other. This
week's entry comes courtesy of China, which just loved the
eighth batch of satellites in the orbit. For its Gao
Wang consolation, he plans network of tens of thousands of
(15:02):
spacecraft mean to blanket the skies and broadband and geopolitical
bragging rights. Gal Wang is supposed to be China's answer
to SpaceX's starlink. The pitch is the same connect to
the world, even the most remote corner. The reality we
will have thousands of more bright, shiny objects streaking across
the night sky, fluttering off orbital real estate and giving
(15:24):
astronomers migraines and bitching sessions. Now, if you're ever curse
that glowing train of dots that photo bombed your attempt
at shooting the Milky Way, imagine it now multiplied by
national pride. Now, China does it a little different than
say SpaceX. They don't exactly livestream. It's launches with techno
(15:46):
music and countdown memes. It's state television, A clean white
rocket on a pad, announcers reading off a pre approved
script and then boom. More often than not, more hardware
added to the orbital soup launches in Gauwang is starting
to look less like a plan and more like a
kind of a full court press to say, eh, we
can do this too, And it raises the old question
(16:10):
how many mega constellations can orbit handled before? It looks
less like space and more like a cosmic junkyard that
will be in desperate need of Alan Ray's Space junk
Collection division. I mean, Starlink has already up past six
thousand birds. Amazon's Kuiper system is trying to catch up.
Now gal Wang is elbowing into the buffet line. Every
(16:32):
one of them says, well, well, of course, you know,
oh managorbidal debris responsibly, which is like hearing someone at
the frat party say, don't worry, I'll clean up in
the morning. You know it ain't gonna happen. Of course,
A little bit of a kicker for China. Gala Wang
isn't just about the Internet. It's about control. A constellation
(16:53):
that size doubles as a surveillance net, a military communications backbone,
and a very shy piece of soft power launch enough satellites,
and you don't just own the orbit, you can own
the narrative. So tonight chalk up another round of assholes
in space, because while you and I are watching rockets rise,
(17:15):
some countries are watching the sky fill with their logos,
their networks, and their egos. And sadly we're not done
with China, or at least one of the other assholes,
because Russia never won to be outdone. And look at me,
(17:36):
I'm still a space power contest has launched the latest
bion M mission, a spacecraft loaded with mice, microbes, and more. Yep,
you heard it right. While SpaceX's testing reusable MAGA rockets
and NASA is mapping deep space, Ross Cosmos is running
(17:57):
an orbital pet store byon program has been around since.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
The Soviet days.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Biological satellites des unstudied how living organizes handle the brutality
of space. We've had dogs, turtles, fish, plants, bugs. If
it crawls, swims or squeaks, at some point, the Russians
have probably launched it.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Now.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
This latest installment is on m number two, following up
with a mission that flew more than a decade ago.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Pack the board.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
You have hundreds of mice, colonies of microbes, and maybe
even a few other test critic critics who resumes were
not made public. They'll spend weeks to months circling Earth
in a specially outfitted capsule and during weightlessness, radiation and
the kind of cosmic boredom that makes you wonder if
(18:48):
even a mouse can get existential dread. Now, it's easy
to laugh here, but there is some real science being done.
Long duration by all studies are critical for understanding how
human bodies will survive on missions to Mars or beyond. Mice, well,
they're kind of proxies for us, and microbes are the stowaways.
(19:10):
We can never foolish Spanish from our ships. What happens
to them out there happens to us in miniature. But
it's not hard really to see the irony. In a
week when the world's eyes are on starship Russia is
making headlines with basically a mouse hotel, and it's not
exactly a confidence booster for their battered space program. This
(19:30):
is the same Ross Cosmos that struggled with budget cuts,
abandoned Moon missions, and hardware failures that would make a
car mechanic blush. So of course we are adding this
into the assholes in space ledger, because we have China
cluttering the skies with satellites, in Russia cluttering Low Earth
(19:51):
orbit with rodents, and you and I are probably left
wondering if somewhere out there alien astronomers are looking at
Earth's launch records and concluding, yeah, this species is very confused.
But ironically we're not done with assholes in space. No,
(20:12):
we kind of have a new entry into this one.
And some of you are going to be a little
upset when I started out, but wait for it.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Be patient.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
The story will reveal itself as we go alone here.
Because there's a headline that got the climate crowd clutching
their reusable coffee mugs. This week, President Donald Trump signed
an executive order telling NASA to back away from climate
research and get back to what the agency was actually
built for, exploring space, And of course the howling began immediately.
(20:48):
According to the climate lobby, this is heresy.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
How dare you?
Speaker 4 (20:55):
How dare NASA stop obsessing over models, charts and endless
and desny press conferences. How dare they prioritize the Moon
and Mars over telling us for the one hundred and
nineteenth time that the sky is falling and your gas
stove is probably to blame. Well, let's be clear, NASA
(21:19):
wasn't founded to the environmental protection agency with rocket engines.
It was funded to build Saturn, fives land people on
the Moon, and send probes to the edge of the
solar system and honestly push human presence outward. That's their DNA.
But in the last couple of decades, the climate industry
got its claws and that every federal agency it could,
(21:42):
including NASA. Suddenly the same engineers who should be plotting
trajectories to Europa were being told to run speedstreets around
cow farts and carbon offsets. Now Trump's order flips this back. Program.
Doesn't need a lecture on recycling, it needs rockets. Mars
(22:05):
colonization doesn't need a pamphlet about climate justice. It needs landers,
needs habitats, and it needs oxygenators. Every dollar NASA sinks
into duplicating climate studies that NOAH and EPA and then
probably a dozen other agencies do, is a dollar not
spent building the future. Now, of course, if you listen
(22:27):
to the climate.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Warriors, this is the end of civilization.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
They're convinced the oceans are going to boil unless NASA
interns keep crunching ice core samples. But here's the irony.
The more they kind of scream, the more obvious it
is that they see NASA not as a space agency
but as a stage for their ideology. So, yes, we
(22:53):
are having a new segment into assholes in space. They
go there not for worrying about Earth, of course Earth matters,
but for a hijacking humanity's only real off world agency
and trying to turn it into another pulpit. Now, the
climate may change, it always has, always will, but rockets
don't build themselves, and tonight at least NASA is being
(23:15):
told to stop sermonizing and starts launching. Well, that leads
us to another issue. Most of the satellites you hear
about living well known neighborhoods low Earth orbit basically where
(23:36):
startlink Love you SpaceX, love you starlink, but it does
clutter the sky a little. Or you know, we've heard
of geosynchronous orbit where communication birds hover. But there are
corners of space that are harder to reach, harder to
stay in, and harder to exploit. And NASA wants new
(23:56):
spacecraft designed.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
To exploit it.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
The target, or what engineers call cislunar and deep space orbits.
Think halo orbits around the Moon, high inclination paths that
sweep above and blow earth falls, or long looping trajectories
where gravity from Earth, Moon, and even the Sun tuget
to spacecraft all at once. Now, these orbits are really
scientifically valuable places where observatories can watch the cosmos undisturbed,
(24:25):
or where communication release can beam signals around blind spots.
They're also strategically valuable since whoever controls the high ground,
as Anakin learned, you know above cislunar space controls a
gateway to everywhere else. That said, there is a bit
of a problem. Getting there is very very expensive, and
(24:50):
staying there is even harder, and servicing spacecraft in those
orbits is practically impossible right now. So NASA is asking
industry for these vehicles that can fly longer, maneuver more efficiently,
and survive radiation belts That true through electronics like termites
in a log cabin. And some propulsions and proposals are
(25:12):
talking nuclear engines that sip fuel and give a steady
push for months. Others are looking at solar electric drives
with a rais of unfurl like wings and ion thrusters
that go glow blue in the dark. All of it
basically points to the same idea. If you can build
a craft that thrive in the hard to reach places,
you unlock a whole new layer space. And for now
(25:34):
it's still early. NASA is listening, contractors are pitching, and
funding is a bit of a question mark, but the
intent is clear. The future isn't just low Earth orbit anymore.
It's the weird, lonely highways in between, where missions to Mars,
asteroid miners and deep space telescopes.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Will one day ride.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
And who knows, if starship really does fly reliably, those
out of the way orbits might not be out of
reach for very much longer.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Now.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
If you were listening to the Vincent Charle Project earlier
that I was, I don't know if guests is a
right word on, but talk of star Trek often permeates
that show for one reason or another, usually Janelle, it's okay,
we like that, so this next story will tie into that,
(26:30):
I think quite nicely. When you head to Mars, you know,
you just can't swing by the er. If someone you
know breaks a right ankle or you know, runs a
fever of one hundred and five pointy nine. No, no,
you can't just not or just not possible, because the
round trip time for radio signals can stretch up to
(26:53):
forty minutes. That means if an astronaut keels over, mission
control won't be talking them through CPR in real time,
you'll be talking about funeral plans. So enter NASA's new
partnership with Google, an AI medical assistant designed to travel
(27:15):
with astronauts into deep space. Think of it as a
digital doctor that never sleeps, trained on more medical textbooks
and any human could cram, and armed with the ability
to cross reference a patient vitals against a vast library
of symptoms and seconds. In practice, this means if an
(27:36):
astronaut feels chess pain, the AI could pull up their
heart rates, scan them on onboard tools, and suggest immediate
steps while flagging whether it's a minor cram or the
start of something deadly. For longer missions, it could monitor
sleep cycles, bound density scans, or even around diagnostic conversations.
Describe your pain on a scale of one to ten
(27:57):
of a bedside manner, of course, will be a little
cold to hey, we've all and marry once or twice,
but the speed could be life saving. And I know,
I know somewhere out there, a star trek ban is
already grinning because that NASA and Google basically building sounds
as suspiciously like the emergency medical hologram from Voyager, just
you know, without the bit of smug sarcasm, or you know,
(28:20):
Robert Pricardo's face flickering in the being if a real
version probably won't crack jokes about bedside manner, but it
will in its own way. Let astronauts call out computer,
activate the doctor. Now, of course there are challenges. Medical
data is messy, and space will add a handful of
(28:41):
complications that probably aren't even thought of yet. Bones weaken,
fluid shift, wounds healed differently in microgravity. And let's not
mention they haven't done a study in sex and space
yet that I'm willing to volunteer for a certain former
Prime Minister of Finland would love to join me. Anyway,
Training and AI to recognize what's normal in orbit is
very different than training for it here on Earth. Then
(29:04):
there's the trust factor. Astronauts are already elite professionals, but
when you're hurting in a deep space Would you really
believe the diagnostics of a talking algorithm over your own guts? Still,
let's face it, the alternative is worse. On Mars, the
er is a planet away. An AI doctor, even with
(29:25):
rough edges, is a better most likely than no doctor
at all, And like every toe NASA builds, it will
probably find its way back to Earth someday. And someday
a version of the same system could sit on your
phone diagnoostics you up and down your coll before you
even make an appointment. But for now it's well, it
(29:47):
is one more piece of science fiction edging toward fact.
A digital physician preparing to make house calls on the
Moon and maybe one day as well on Mars. And
that closes out this first half of tonight's flight plan.
You've had some rockets, roaring, space plants, space planes flying,
(30:09):
and well more than a few assholes in space cluttering
up the stories tonight. But don't go far away. After
the break, we'll leave the launch pads behind and dive
into the strange, maybe a mysterious new object that doesn't
fit into any known category of star planet and well,
you know, maybe talk the so called Eye of souron
in space, a cosmic furnace, spitting out ghost particles like
(30:32):
something straight from Middle Earth. That's coming up in the
second half, right after this musical intermission.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
We will be right back, Birdie Eye across the nest.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Watcher sat in the cosmic.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
Flame, through the veil of cold resistance. Whispers carry only
on the silence storm overless bi Sumas Beach, and in
(32:40):
the dime ancient cays that never sat. He shuts the
boid with Josetly'.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Spot Chow's by Charles Stream.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
I see.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Through the shadows, say stock.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
From the Fat Scristo.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
We are haunted up show lost me a nor measure.
Speaker 6 (33:41):
It's just crowned with spectrum, every ver, high frasure, every
spot consumes.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
The night.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
We're in wonder Barn together.
Speaker 6 (34:02):
About by way Jack Johnson, We says forever.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Wims John and go say.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
Welcome back.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Sorry.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
There was no easy way to get out of that
without that ending abruptly. I just said I was really
planning on talking more about a launch tonight than doing
most of this show. But I wrote enough show to
get me through the hour. To thank you for tuning
in and welcome backboard the Lost Wonderer program. Now the
(35:18):
rockets have cold, the launch towers are quiet, and now
we turn our eyes to the silent wonders of the outside,
the outer Solar System, and the strange riddles they carry.
The second half tonight is all about the rocks and
the mysteries where science fiction lean's close enough to brush
(35:40):
shoulders with fact, which, of course brings us to Pluto,
that little world that refuses to stay forgotten. Pluto the planet.
That's how we call it here, because that's what it is.
(36:01):
It's not a dwarf, it's not a demotion, not whatever
label the IAU and the NDT slapped on it back
in two thousand and six, like the morons that they are.
Because let's face it, if a world can carve canyons,
hold moons, and maybe hide in ocean deep under its
icy skin, it has earned its title of planet. End
(36:24):
of story. And now Pluto the planet, maybe getting the
mission it deserves, one designed to probe its underworld. I'll
let you go ahead and do the gigas and chat.
(36:45):
Ever since New Horizons flew past in twenty fifteen, Pluto
has been dropping hims. It has more going on beneath
the surface than anyone expected smooth planes that look relatively young,
rips in fractures as if the crust has been stretched
and tugged, all signs that something warm and dynamic might
(37:09):
be lurking below. And the most compelling theory a hidden
ocean sealed away under miles of nitrogen and water ice
kept liquid by just an up internal heat to defy
the cold, and planetary scientists want to go back, not
just to snap pretty photos on Instagram, but to peer inside.
So it's more of an OnlyFans trip Radar two, you know,
(37:34):
sound through the ice, gravity mapping to feel the slash
of liquid beneath, and maybe even a lander to test
the surface chemistry for traces of what lies below. And
it's kind of sometimes space nerds really do amazing things
because the proposal has come with a fitting name, the
(37:54):
Queen of the Underworld, because if Pluto the planet hides
an ocean, it would be the ultimate underworld. They see
a darkness billions of years old, untouched and waiting. Once
again we have to ask why does it matter, because
subsurface oceans are prime candidates for light. Europa probably has
(38:15):
one and it's the latest. Well, it sprays it into
space like it's a freaking party, So Pluto joins that list.
The in habitable environments aren't rare jewels, They're actually common,
even out at the edge, where sunlightest faint and NDT
smug grin fades from view. Now, for now, it's just
(38:37):
a proposal on paper, and of course politics may stall it.
But Pluto, the planet has a way of tugging at imagination.
Demoted or not, it refuses to be forgotten. And if
the Queen of the underworld does fly, it won't just
settle a planetary debate, it will ask something much Bigger's
(39:00):
acrets lie in the oceans no sunlight has ever touched.
And let's face it, astronomy. Astronomy has a way of
humbling us. Just think, you know, when we think we've
got the cosmos, you know, neatly labeled, we've got stars,
(39:22):
we've got planets over here, black holes, galaxies, something shows
up that refuses to play by the rules. This week,
astronomers announced they spotted a new object that doesn't fit
into any known category. It's not quite a star, it
doesn't have the mass to ignite and shine, but it's
not a planet either. It's far too large, far too energetic,
(39:46):
it isn't a brown dwarf, at least not the kind
we know. It's emissions, it's light curve, it's very behavior
don't line up.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
With anything in the textbooks.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
For now, it's just a mystery placeholder in our catalog
in the universe with three question marks basically scribbled.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Next to it.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
And the discovery came the old fashioned way, by watching
this guy for flickers and signals that don't match the background.
This thing lit up in ways that made astronomers sit
back and ask, what are we even looking at? A
cosmic in between her, a misfit, a reminder that the
(40:25):
categories we invented our hours not what the universe has planned.
It could be a transitional object. They still a core
that never fully bloomed, or maybe one that's dying in
slow motion. It could be the first of a new
class of astrophysical objects entirely discovery that may force us
to add another line into the cosmic dictionary. And if
(40:49):
history is any guide, the real explanation is probably going
to be weirder than any of the early guesses. And
that's kind of the beauty of anomalies puzzles for astronomers.
The proof that the universe isn't exhausted that it still
has maybe a few new cards to play. Every time
something like this pops up, you can feel the quiet
(41:11):
thrill ripple through the field, a chance to rethink, to
expand to admit. We still don't have a clue of
how the universe operates. So for now this object will
remain nameless, category less, and really storyless. But it shines
it anyway, reminding us that the cosmos doesn't care about
(41:31):
any of our neat tightly wound definitions. It will always
keep something just beyond the edge of our understanding, daring
us to get out of our middle school understanding physics,
and the universe wasn't done. Every so often the universe
(41:53):
lines up a site so perfect, oh, it feels like
a special effects shot. A strong Armers recently trained their
instruments on a distant galaxy and found what looks uncannily
like the eye of Surn glaring back at us, a
cosmic furnace staring across the void, rimmed in fire and
now proven to be throwing out ghost particles as if
(42:14):
it were forged in Mordor itself.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
And here's here's a kicker.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
The eye is not a metaphor. Images show a central
pupil of darkness surrounded by glowing rings of gas, a
shape born from purious interactions around a super massive black hole.
But what makes it more than just, you know, a
pretty nickname is what's pouring out of it neutrinos, billions
(42:42):
of them, ghostly particles, so faint and so slippery, they
passed straight through you, through Earth, through almost everything without
leaving a trace. Catching even one is like fishing a
single rain drop out of a hurricane. And yet detectors
on Earth did just that. They trace the neutrons back
(43:02):
to this galaxy, to the fiery eye itself. This makes
us one of the rare cosmic sources we've actually called
in the act of producing these ghost particles, and neutrinos
carry information photons can't. They shoot straight through cosmic clutter,
telling us about the violent processes at the heart of
(43:24):
black holes and jets. So why call it the Eye
of Siron Because when you look at the images, it's
impossible not to see Tolkien's villain starring back the glowing
rings of plasma the central void. It's as if some
dark power was literally watching us, unblinking across intergalactic distances.
(43:45):
Of course, it isn't evil necessarily. It's physics. Some could
say physics can be evil how you use it. That's
a story for another shell. But the metaphor sticks because
sometimes the Cosmos hands is poetry along with amazing data.
And for astronomers this is more than a spectacle. It
(44:06):
steps toward multi messenger astronomy, where we study the universe
not just with light, but with neutrinos, gravitational waves and
maybe one day signals we haven't even imagined yet. And
for the rest of us, it's proof that the night
sky still has surprises that looks straight out of myth.
So the if surron isn't necessarily looking for two little
(44:27):
gay hobbits with a ring, it's looking for us, daring
us to keep watching and to keep learning before its
ghostly particles passed through unnoticed. And this wasn't the last
story of the universe. Decided to go, yeah, I'm smarter
than you, because every now and then the universe might
(44:50):
reminds us that out there isn't always necessarily that far away.
Sometimes the headlines aren't about dis in galaxies or quasars
that look like the I of Sauran. What about stars
that are practically next door? And this week the James
Webbs Face telescope picked up whispers faint dips of light
(45:12):
suggest there may be a new exoplanet only four light
years away. Four light years. I know some of you
are already don the math. Four light years that's right
in our backyard. On the cosmic scale, that's like finding
out your neighbor has been keeping a swimming pool that
you've never noticed. If confirmed, this would be one of
the closest exoplanets ever detected orbiting in huh the Alpha
(45:38):
Centauri neighborhood, which, of course, if you're paying attention, is.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
My home turf.
Speaker 4 (45:45):
Yeah, yeah, the rumors are true. Your host is an
alien stow away from the from Alpha Centauri that's just
here for snacks, science and someday the former Prime Minister
of Finland. So when I say neighbor, I mean it literally.
If there's a new rocky world orbiting there, that's like
someone building a new condo development rate basically on your block.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Hmm.
Speaker 4 (46:10):
Do you think maybe I can have a postcard and
reserve room when I go home? Anyway, So what did
a web to actually see it? Wasn't a clear, crystal
clear image of blue marble with oceans and clouds, because
they don't know where to find that one. Instead, astronomer
spotted a light curve tiny regular dips in starlight as
something crossed in front of it, and those dips routinely
(46:31):
suggest a planet. It seems to be about Earth sized
orbiting at a distance where conditions could be temperate, though
temperate around the red dwarf star can mean anything from
bomby greenhouse to surface.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Of a toaster.
Speaker 4 (46:48):
But this excitement isn't just proximity four light years is
actually within range of future missions with current tech. It's
still science fiction, but it's not impossible. Science fiction projects
like Breakthrough Starshot have drawn up blueprints for probe sales
(47:09):
driven by lasers that could in theory reach Alpha Centauri
within you know, human lifetime. If a real rocky planet
is waiting there, the motivation to build those missions goes
up tenfold. Of course, astronomers are unsurprisingly cautious right now.
This is just what they call a candidate. Web's data
(47:31):
needs to be confirmed, double checked, and of course challenged.
Like profer science is sometimes noise pretends to be a
planet sometimes it's star spots or maybe some sort of
weird cosmic background event. But even asking the question, this
close to home is thrilling, really close to my home
if you catch my meeting mister Frodo. Now here's where
(47:56):
the story takes a bit of a twist, because while
Alpha Centauri is whispering sweet, nothing's of Maybe I'm here,
maybe I'm not. Let me show a little leg tease
you another system that has been shouting, pick me, pick me,
is all of a sudden, gone quiet. Trappist one D,
one of the seven Earth sized planets around the famous
(48:17):
red dwarf forty.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
Light years away.
Speaker 4 (48:20):
Well, that was supposed to be one of the crown
jewels of exo planet hunting because trap is one d
orbits right, and that beautiful, absolutely amazing habitable zone the
sweet spot where liquid water could exist on the surface.
When it was first announced in twenty seventeen, headlines went wild.
Speaker 3 (48:40):
Seven earths found.
Speaker 4 (48:44):
Teachers used it in class slides, nasupposters reimagine the planets
like vintage travel ads. Trappist one D was practically marketed
as the front runner for Earth two point zero, but
pipe only gets you so far. Web turned its instruments
on the planet and looked for the tail telltale fingerprints
(49:05):
of an atmosphere guesses absorbing starlight during transits.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
The results.
Speaker 4 (49:12):
Disappointing. Treface one D doesn't seem to have the thick
protective atmosphere needed to keep water stable. Without this blanket,
the surface is likely dry, barren, and exposed to constant
stolar flares from its parent star.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
What looked like a.
Speaker 4 (49:26):
Potential paradise on paper is probably just another fun little rock,
scorched and bare. It's kind of a sobering reminder. Size
and orbit aren't enough. Just because a planet is Earth
sized and in the right zone doesn't mean it's habitable.
Atmospheres are fragile. They can be stripped away by stellar
winds or never formed thickly in the first place. Treface
(49:51):
one teaches us the habitability is rare, and not every
candidate makes the cut. And yes, I am hating the
ET for sending me this story, but I am the words,
so I'm happy. But here's the thing, even this failure
is a bit of a progress. By ruling trap is
one D out, we have sharpened our methods. We learn
that well, there are certain things to look for and
(50:14):
what red flags the spot faster next time. The list
of maybes are is getting smaller, but the science is
getting better, and in that sense, Trappis one D is
still valuable. It's a reminder that discovery isn't just about
finding what we want. It's what science should be about,
which is finding what's true. So the cosmic balance sheet
(50:37):
this week looks like Alpha Centauri whispers that we may
have a new neighbor just for late years away, or
you know, a couple hundred thousand miles if you already
lived there. And trapp Is one D, the former darling
of the ball quietly stepping off stage. And that's the
sad truth of the nature of exploration, joy and disappointment,
wonder and humility all in the same breath. Now, while
(51:03):
we dream about distant neighbors or light years away, sometimes
the best surprises all right here in our own solar system.
Case in point, a tiny new moon has just been
spotted circling Uranus. I'll let that one's sink in for
(51:26):
a minute. Okay, after all the talk of distant worlds,
let's speak back to our own solar system for something smaller, stranger,
and oh a little funnier astronomers using the James Webspace
telescope had discovered a tiny new moon orbiting Uranus. Yes, Urinus,
go ahead, get your jokes out now, I'll wait for him.
(51:49):
I'd play the Jeffardy theme music, but I'd probably get
copyright struck or something. But the astronomer astronomy community has
been dealing with this since the eighteenth century. You know,
new moons around Uranus, rings of uranus. You know, don't
make me smell uranus. Every discovery sounds like it was
(52:12):
written by a twelve year old, and honestly, I laughed
the entire time. I see headlines and read the stories myself,
so I get it. This little moon is only a
few miles across, more of a cosmic pebble than a world.
But it's important because Eurytus, despite being a giant, hasn't
been closely studied since Voyager two flew by back in
(52:35):
eighty six. That's almost forty years in the gleck. Much
like my second marriage. Finding a new moon now is
like dusting off an old attic box and discovering, hey,
look there's something living inside. It tells us the system
is more active, more populated, than we ever realize. And
let's face it, Urinus already has a reputation. Twenty seven
(52:57):
moons have been confirmed, and of course to them are
named after Shakespearean characters, which I'm sure Vincent loves. You know,
we have Titanian, Oberon, Ariel Miranda, and now I had
this tiny newcomer waiting for its proper name. Will it
get another Shakespeare not or will someone please, for the
love of God and everything that's holy, finally slip a
(53:19):
future rama reference past the naming committee, please please. But
beyond the giggles, these little moons actually do matter. They
hint and how this planet rings are actually formed, how
it's gravity kraals debris, and maybe even how Urinus itself
tilted over on its side long ago. So yeah, we
(53:39):
just added another moon to Uranus. It's tiny, hits, quirky,
and it gives everyone from late night host to giggling
podcast listeners an excuse to last. But it is also science,
and sometimes science is best served with a side of humor,
and that's why I love doing this show, face it,
(54:01):
especially when it comes to things all uranous and every
so often in the world of NASA, scientists like you know,
the good ones let themselves play a thought experiment. Instead
(54:23):
of asking what do we see out there? They ask
more questions like, hey, if aliens are like us, where
would we see them first? And that's a new premise
of a new study. The idea is simple. When humans
explore space, we don't scatter randomly. We go where it
makes sense, stable orbits, gravitational weight points, regions that are
(54:46):
used for fuel, communication, observation. If another intelligent species followed
this same logic their signals or even their ships, mice
cluster and the same places. In other words, don't just
into the dark, look into the cosmic equivalent of airports,
crossroads and gas stations, the grange points where gravity balances out,
(55:08):
halo orbits around moons and planets, those stable nisses where
technology tends to gather, just like it does here on Earth.
And it's honestly, finally a clever idea and probably a
humbling one, because if aliens are out there and they
think anything like us, then we might already be staring
straight past them. We just haven't been looking in the
(55:31):
right spots.
Speaker 3 (55:33):
Of course, I'll say it. You could save them in trouble.
Speaker 4 (55:38):
Look, you can stop searching alien Hello right here, you
know me broadcasting bi weekly from Alpha Centauri under the
very subtle disguise of a human podcaster and not telling
many people, apparently, but choking aside. This study does matter.
It's one more step in what's called techno signature research.
(55:59):
The hunts not for aliens themselves, but the fingerprints of
technology that they would leave behind, radio burst, waste, heat,
orbital clutter, the kind of things we're already creating without
meaning to. So if humanity's footprint is visible across thesar is,
why wouldn't there be as well? So tonight the search
(56:23):
widens again. We may not have answers, but we have
better questions. If aliens are like you, they'll be where
the physics is, you know kind, Their orbits are steady,
and the traffic makes logical sense. And maybe someday when
you know Earth finally, you know, tune in on the
right frequency, you know, glance at the right point of
(56:43):
the sky, they'll realize the universe has been waving back
the whole freaking time. And black holes, and then we
talked a little bit about it earlier. Black holes have
always been cast as the villains of the cosmos collapse
in the and you're gone. No light, no signal, no
holpe the great devours of stars, the sinkholes of the universe.
(57:07):
But there is a new theory that is starting to
flip the script. What if black holes aren't just the
ultimate full stops of matter and energy. What if deep
inside their factories for dark energy, let's rewind.
Speaker 3 (57:20):
Shall we.
Speaker 4 (57:21):
In ninety eight, astronomers studying supernova noticed something alarming. The
universe isn't just expanding, it's accelerating. That discovery actually earned
a Nobel Prize and a permanent headache. To explain it,
scientists coined to phrase dark energy. It's that wonderful invisible
pressure driving galaxies apart faster and faster, and it makes
(57:42):
up amazingly nearly seventy percent of the cosmos. And yet
after more than two decades, we still don't know what
the hell it is. We can only measure its fingerprints
in the sky. Now comes a provocative idea. Maybe black
holes are the missing source. Traditionally, we picture black holes
as dead ends. Matter collapse past the event horizon, compressed
(58:05):
into a singularity of infinite density.
Speaker 3 (58:07):
And that's it.
Speaker 4 (58:09):
But if physics allows some of that matter to undergo
a transformation, a phase change under conditions we can barely model.
Then the result might not be more mass or heat.
It might be something stranger, a contribution to the universe's
dark energy budget. And that's kind of, you know, a
big question. What does this mean for the fate of
(58:31):
the universe. If black holes are factories for dark energy,
then every new one adds fuel to the fire of expansion.
That could tip the scales toward a future where the
cosmos keep stretching until galaxies vanished from each other's site.
The stars will wink out and only the lonely Pole
expansion remains. The so called Big Rip, which I covered
(58:53):
in the Crease, becomes even more plausible, something that was
laughed at when I talked about it from my listener,
of course. But a universe torn apart not by gravity
but by the runaway pressure of energy boom born in darkness.
For now, it is just a model, a bold idea,
scratching at the edge about ignorance. But that's how science works.
(59:19):
Now we come to that closing act of tonight, The
question is the cosmos ready to dazzle us? So let's
grab a drink and sit down by the campfire and
take a a gander up. Monday, August twenty fifth begins
our two week run under the lingering glow of the
Sturgeon Moon, the last full moon of summer, hanging bright
(59:42):
as August prepares to give way to September. It's a
reminder that the long nights of autumn are on the horizon.
All of this builds towards the showstopper Sunday, September seventh,
when Earth's shadow swallows the corn moon and transforms it
into a blood moon. Across New England, for example, you'll
see it climbing above the horizon, already wrapped in red
(01:00:02):
totality lasts for more than an hour, bathing the sky
in that eerie copper light only a lunar eclipse can deliver.
Of course, this moon carries names across traditions because my
useektive producer loves laughing at me trying to pronounce this.
And and it's called wati gis the leaves turning moon.
The Dakota Sue call it kanwah pe con sun Wi
(01:00:28):
the moon when the leaves are falling, And in Cree
it's name Tahnaseki men the berry harvest moon. However you
say hits, the meaning is the same. A season is
shifting and the moon rises to market between these dates
next two weeks. There aren't really major alignance or meteor
(01:00:49):
showers to really distract you. This window is kind of
more about a slow crescendo. The sky is holding its breath,
saving its drama. So mark your calendars August twenty fifth
to September seventh, from the Sturgeon Moon to the blood moon.
The Cosmos is tuning its instruments, dimming the lights, and
then in one long red performance, giving you a front
row seat to a theater of the heavens. That's it
(01:01:14):
for tonight's show. Thank you for tuning in whenever, and
however you do, stay tuned for Sunday Night with Alan
Ray Special. Thanks to NASA Spacexpace dot Com or Technica,
NASA spate Flight, Popular Mechanics and more for the stories
and inspiration Tonight with Me at the helm and the
EP setting course and the ship's computer in the back
(01:01:34):
whispering star maps through static. This is a Lost Wonder
podcast until next door of It. I hope you enjoyed
the show, learned a little something, and maybe had a
laugh or two along the way. The universe is a
pretty big place.
Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
It's bigger than anything anyone who's ever dreamed of before.
Speaker 4 (01:02:01):
So if it's just us, it seems like an awful
waste of space, right
Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
When
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