Lost Wanderer Podcast for 11/02/2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 2 (00:11):
M m all Fair program.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
On BIA.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Today is a day from morning and remember Nancy and
I are gained the core, but the tragedy of the
Shuttle challenge.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
The full name program may contain flos, language, adult teens,
and bad attempts.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
A human listener discretion is advised. What is President Trump's goal?
What is his vision?

Speaker 3 (01:08):
He wants to put an American flag on.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Mars Briffin Anguality days here landed.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
I am jele F, a cosmic bard over on x
And this is the Lost Wanderer podcast for November two,
twenty twenty five. Coming to you from the ACS Serenade Observatory,
orbiting high above the night's side of Earth. Morning comes
slow to the golf, a pink haze over the dunes,

(01:53):
air heavy with salt, and a low home from the
direction of the launch complex.

Speaker 4 (01:59):
Look at you.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
It doesn't wake up so much as it rumbles to life.
The welders are already working, steel is creaking, pressure valves
are hissing, and far down the coast, the outline of
starship catches the first light of a day, the shape
of a dream, built in stainless steel and heat resistant tiles.
SpaceX calls it the next step toward humanity's return to

(02:22):
the Moon, but the truth is it's a race between time, patience,
and sadly politics. The company has spent months rewriting its
approach to Artemis three, the mission meant to land astronauts
astronauts American astronauts on the lunar surface for the first
time since nineteen seventy two. Their new blueprint is trimming

(02:45):
a lot of fat, fewer orbital refueling events, simplified vehicle handoffs,
and a more direct path between Earth and lunar orbit.
Instead of juggling half a dozen launches and fuel transfers.
The updated plan reduces the sequence so something that is
a little closer to practical and a field where simple
is a compliment rarely earned. SpaceX is chasing efficiency like

(03:09):
its oxygen. They called it simplified architecture, but in planar words,
it's a response to a hard reality.

Speaker 4 (03:16):
The schedule is slipping.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Artemis III was originally targeted for twenty twenty five than
twenty six, now twenty twenty seven. If all goes perfectly well,
and let's face it, perfection is rare in the field
of rocketry.

Speaker 4 (03:36):
That said, SpaceX hasn't.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
Been idle out Of the seventy eight milestones in the
Human Landing System contract for NASA, forty nine have already
been checked off. Light hardware is under test, Cryogenic propellant
transfers have begun in microgravity simulations, and the software controlling
descent and landing is running live simulations at Hawthorne. Progress
is quite tangible. The trouble, it seems, isn't fast enough

(04:02):
for Washington or more import importantly, Sean Duffy, NASA's acting administrator,
told reporters that SpaceX quote remains behind unquote reminds behind who.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
He was.

Speaker 4 (04:25):
Trying to be.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Diplomatic, but let's face at the phrasing land like a
spark in dry grass. Within hours, Elon Musk responded online
with a well with his tendency, you know that lace
little subtle touch that Elon often has, you know, like
a flame thrower and the exchange man the headlines before
engineers could finish their morning coffee. To some, it may

(04:50):
have seemed like arrogance, the billionaire biting the hand that
feeds into others. It was simply Musk being must a
man who has made a career out of proving the
establishment wrong. There's something almost predictable about it now, like
the phases of the moon. Now that said, Duffy's concern, however,
isn't completely just rhetoric. He is a little bit under

(05:11):
pressure of his own. Congress is watching, the White Houses watching,
and every delay adds fuel to critics who think private
industry shouldn't carry NASA's flap flagship program. The Artemis missions
are supposed to be more than photo ops. Are meant
to demonstrate a sustainable lunar economy, mining science, infrastructure, and more.

(05:31):
Every slip in the schedule pushes that vision further from
the decade's reach. Now that said, NASA operates more on
procedure and politics than anything else, while Space Ax operates
on iteration and fire. The collision between these two worlds
was inevitable. One side values documentation, oversight, and verification. The

(05:54):
other value speed, learning through failure and doing what seems
impossible until it becomes routine. Somewhere between them is where
actual progress happens. I tend to think it leans a
little bit more to the one side now must says
the Simpliflipan will get humans back to the Moon as
quickly as possible, And he's right about one thing. The

(06:15):
original choreography was nearly impossible to coordinate. The early plan
required up to ten refueling flights to fill Starship's tank
in orbit, each one perfectly timed and executed. The new
version may end up cutting that in half. Now it
is still daring, still fragile. It got transferring cryogenic methane
and oxygen between the vessels at orbital speeds, well, it's

(06:37):
something no one has ever done successfully, but it's no
longer something to be considered absurd. But the goal is clear.
Starship will serve as the human landing system for Artemis three,
ferrying four astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface and back.
Nasays oryan capsule launch the top. The SLS will remain

(06:57):
the command ship. SpaceX provides bridge between orbit and soil.
The two vehicles will dock somewhere beyond the far side
of the Moon, a dance between old school caution and
new age audacity. But before any of that happens, Starship
itself has to prove it can fly land and fly
again without becoming fantastic, glorious confetti over the golf. The

(07:22):
last test flight went higher and lasted longer than any
before the one before that. You know, we had some
issues with a couple of the ones before that. Each one,
as the engineers like to say, was nominal in its
own way. The company is learning from each fiery failure
and files it under data. But let's face it, NASA

(07:43):
doesn't work that way. It was born in an era
when failure met congressional hearings in public humiliation. Musk is
treating failure just as fuel Stuffy is treating it as
a liability, and that is probably where the friction point
is the worst. Still, NASA cannot ignore results. Without SpaceX,

(08:05):
America wouldn't have had crude orbital launches since the Shuttle era.
Without NASA, SpaceX wouldn't have had the credibility or contracts
to build this fast. As much as they may not
want to admit it, it's a co dependent orbit. For now,
neither can totally afford to drift too far from the other.

(08:26):
But yet, in recent weeks that dumbass Duffy has hinted
that NASA could quote unquote reconsider its commercial partnerships. It
progress doesn't meet expectations, that's bureaucratic language for pulling the plug,
but that threat is easier said than done. No other
company has a lander even remotely close to operational status.

(08:50):
Blue Origins version remains a pipe paper tiger.

Speaker 4 (08:54):
SpaceX may be a little late.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
But it's the only game in town now. But behind
that noise there is another pressure point, and that is China.
It's changes seven and eight missions are preparing for the
mid twenty thirties, with plans for a permanent base near
the lunar South Pole. The United States cannot afford to

(09:18):
look like it's falling behind. Every single headline about delays
becomes ammunition in a new kind of Cold war, not
over ideology, but influence and resources. That's why Artemis II
is more than a mission. It is a statement. Whoever
establishes a sustained presence on the Moon first will define

(09:38):
the framework for how space is governed. It's the quiet
subtext to all the frickin' noise about deadlines and budgets.

Speaker 4 (09:50):
And a bokachika.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
That subtext doesn't mean as much. The welders mechanics have
one focus. Get the next vehicle ready. They're working twenty
four hour ships in air so thick you could drink it.
Out there, the debate feels far far away, just words
bouncing around Washington, while the real work homes beneath the
Texas sun. The pat itself feels a bit alive. You

(10:17):
can taste the tang of metal in the air. Every
clang in his is a heartbeat. The people here know
they're part of something absurdly ambitious, building a machine meant
to leave Earth entirely, but they've seen absurd things work before. Meanwhile,
in the control room, telementary screens scroll like rivers of

(10:37):
code engineers talking acronyms and murmured numbers. Every test, every
data point, feeds into a greater shape of Artemis three.
For all the tension between the companies, the work is
still moving. The quiet truth is that no one, not NASA,
not SpaceX, not the politicians, maybe except for Sean Duppy,

(11:00):
who has his head up his ass right now, really
wants it to fail. Because failure now would be bigger
than either of them. It would be a pause in
the story of humanity that has been being written since
they first looked up out on the flats, starship gleams
under halogen floodlights, towering higher than the water towers around it.

(11:23):
It looks less like a spacecraft and more like a mirror,
reflecting every ambition, every argument, and every bit of hope
we've poured into the sky.

Speaker 4 (11:33):
And somewhere inside.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
A welder wipes his forehead, leans back and stares up
at it. He doesn't care about budget hearings or public statements.
He just wants to see it fly and land, and
when he does, maybe one day he'll look up at
the same moon, and though he helps someone get there.
Until then, the torches spark, the welds glow, and the

(11:57):
air homes with anticipation. High above the golf, the moon
hangs in it's pink light of morning, silent, perfect and patient.
It has seen empires rise and fall, rockets launch and crumble,
promises made and broken.

Speaker 4 (12:18):
It will see this as well.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
No, of course, that leads us to the inevitable, because
let's face it, you cannot, unfortunately, have a.

Speaker 4 (12:40):
Have a space show without this.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
Chin. Yeah, got some fun once tonight. Hopefully you heard

(13:13):
the music that time. Fingers crossed.

Speaker 4 (13:19):
There's a smoldering patch.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
Of desert in west Australia that looks like a meteor strike.
A few weeks ago, farmers near the Nollabor Plane found it,
blackened earth, twisted metal, fragments of composite sheeting. It was
not a meteor. It was dune dun done the upper
stage of a Chinese rocket. Fragments were still warm when

(13:45):
investigators arrived. The scorch marks traced a long skipping path
the breeze that had hit the atmosphere at twenty seven
thousand kilometers per hour and survived long enough to bounce
The local police caught it quote a foreign object of
interest unquote. Space agency has just caught it a Tuesday

(14:06):
in China. That's the new normal and low earth orbit.
We send up pieces of metal, loose tracks of half
of them, and then act.

Speaker 4 (14:13):
Surprise when one of them comes back down. Now I know,
I know.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
The next question is where any cows harmed? We do
not know at this time if any were, But that said, officially,
Beijing apologized for the quote uncontrolled reentry. Unofficially. The explanation
was that air friction and orbital decay was unpredictable, which, okay,
is a little true, but only if you don't plan ahead.

(14:40):
The odds of that stage hitting anyone were small, almost microscopic.
But that's not the point. It's the symbolism of it.
Nations leaving their crap to fall where it may, as
if gravity is somehow everyone else's little problem, and that
problem is getting worse. There are more more than seven
thousand active satellites in orbit now, twice that then there

(15:03):
were five years ago, and thousands of darrelic husk tumbling
around in private companies, government payloads, spice satellites, weather tracker,
science mission. It's not much of a space age as
a scrapyard with some levels of.

Speaker 4 (15:14):
Wi Fi in it.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
So when you hear talk of space warfare, it's not
just paranoia. Countries are already flexing ground based lasers that
can blind sensors, jamming systems that can choke a satellite's signal,
maneuverable inspection satellites I can, you know, drift a little
too close to someone else's hardware and gently nudge them
out of orbit. It is the Cold War all over again,

(15:38):
just without as much gravity to hide behind. And let's
face it, China's military has already tested anti satellite weapons.
Russia did too, Scattering the cloud of deprix that NASA
had to steer the ISS station around. Each test leaves
behind a new field of shrapnel bullets that never stopped flying,

(16:04):
And every time it happens, spokespeople from all sides make
the same tired promise quote a controlled demonstration. It was
unquote controlled, apparently in the same way that Australian Desert
Crater was controlled.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
Not so much, but not.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
Every headline from orbit is a train wreck. In the
middle of all this, China sheds out twenty one mission
lifted off from Chikwan. It was a clean launch, it
was six month crew rotation, textbook precision, and you can
almost hear the collective side of Chinese engineers everywhere a
reminder that we're so capable of doing this right, even
from China. Now, the crew will spend their time aboard

(16:43):
Cheeing Young, the Chinese space station, running biology experiments, testing
long duration hybitation systems, setting the foundation for potential lunar operations.
Now a little bit on the technical side, it is
an accomplishment to admire. As new as they are to
this game, they're really really hitting a lot of their

(17:03):
marks lately. But on the political level, it's just one
more reminder that space expiration has turned into a score board,
and the contradiction is a little hard to ignore, the
same country that can land a capsule with pinpoint accuracy
also drops booster stages on villages and in deserts. The
same superpowers that talk about cooperation and science meetings are

(17:27):
quietly moving their chest pieces in orbits. Space once was
called the final frontier. These days it looks more like
the same old territory, just a little bit colder and
harder to clean up. And somewhere above that burn patch
of deserts that sends out twenty one drifts in silence,

(17:47):
a bright dot crossing the sky, and for a.

Speaker 4 (17:51):
Moment it is a beautiful human made star.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
And then you remember that half the glowing points up
there aren't stars at all anymore. Far too many are
trash and temper of a species still learning a little
bit on how to share the dark. And right now
there are more than thirty thousand trackable objects circling Earth. Boosters,

(18:18):
dead satellites, broken solar panels, fairings, bolts, as weird as
the sounds, even paint chips. Millions more are too small
to follow, but fast enough to destroy anything. They hit,
the ISS performs collision avoidance maneuvers several times a year.
New satellites dodge them constantly in low orbit. The problem

(18:40):
is now self sustaining. Every impact makes more fragments, and
those fragments now become new threats. And of course the
risk isn't theoretical. We're not talking make believe here. In
twenty twenty one, as we talked about earlier, Russia tested
and anti satellite mission and turned one of its own
spacecraft into a cloud of shrapnel, and many years before,

(19:05):
in two thousand and seven, China did the exact same crap.
The debris from those two events alone will linger for decades.
Each piece races around the planet every ninety minutes, too
small to see and too fast to stop. And that's
one of the next big challenge in spaceflight may not

(19:25):
be building more and bigger and better rockets. It's learning
to pick up after the ones they've already launched. The
ESA plans to send its first dedicated clean up mission,
clear space one as early.

Speaker 4 (19:40):
As next year.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
The vehicle, rendezvais with a discarded adapter from the Vega
launch and used robotic arms to grab it once attached.
Both will deorbit together and burn up safely in the atmosphere.
It's a one time mission, but if it works, it
proves we can take responsibility for the litter that is
growing and Japan Space Agency as we're working on another approach,

(20:05):
this one I think is absolutely brilliant magnetic capture. The
ELSA DED demonstration in twenty twenty one use a small
satellite equipped with a docking plate that could find and
attach itself to a piece of test debris using controlled
magnetic fields. The technology worked right now. The problem lies
in scaling it up because real debris doesn't come with

(20:28):
homing plates or cooperation. So there's a lot more to
be done and worked on. But it's a start. But
this is where the ion beam concept enters. The picture
developed by researchers in Spain and support it by ESA.
The ion beam shepherd doesn't need to touch its target
at all. It fires a narrow stream of charge particles

(20:50):
from a safe distance. The ions strike the surface of
the debris, transferring a tiny bit of momentum and fire
it long enough and you can slowly change it objects orbit,
pushing it into a lower path where atmospheric drag will
take over and pull it down, it said. It is
a precise, delicate work. The beam has to stay aligned

(21:11):
with a spinning, unpredictable target. The forces involved are so
small that calculations run for weeks before each maneuver. But
it may be a very clean possibly the cleanest option
we have for there are no explosions, no nets, no
debris created in the process, just physics, patience and a

(21:33):
neat little paint blue glow. And the industry is treating
orbital cleanup as business rather than the public relations project.
And it's funny I start talking about space Debrion Allen
shows up.

Speaker 4 (21:47):
In chat coincidence, I think not.

Speaker 3 (21:51):
Now you have astro Scale, the Japanese company behind ELSA
D is offering commercial and of life the orbiting services.
NASA and private satellite operators are now required to include
disposal plans for new launches. The sky at last is
at least getting some rules. But the debris in Australia
made headlines because we could see it. But the real

(22:14):
victory will come from the things we don't, the fragments
that never fall because someone somewhere found a way to
move them safely out of the way. And that first
clean up mission is already on the manifest and the
hum of the ion engines will soon be part of
the sound of helping clean up orbits. And you think

(22:37):
about these technological breakthroughs. God to think back. There was
a time when breaking the sound barrier was an act
of violence. The first supersonic flights rattled windows for miles,
cracked plaster, and startled cattle on the planes. The air
didn't give way quietly, It tore. And that tear, that thunderclap,

(23:00):
was the signature of an age that priced power over subtlety.
Now decades later, NASA is trying to prove the speed
doesn't have to shout. The X fifty nine sits on
the tarmac of Edwards Air Force Base, long then almost
delicate ninety nine feet from those to tail. Its fuselage

(23:22):
looks like a spear bounced on a pair of slendered wings,
no wider than a city bus. The cockpit sets halfway
down the nose, not at the front. The pilot doesn't
look out a window. Cameras are feeding a panoramic view
to digital screens.

Speaker 4 (23:37):
At the rear.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
And F four one four jet engine, the same core
that powers modern Navy fighters hums with restrained potential. This
is NASA's QUEST Mission, the Quiet Supersonic Test Demonstrator. It's
the first aircraft designed not to avoid a soamic sonic boon,
but to reshape it, and the X fifty nine passes makwe.

(24:01):
The shockwaves that normally merge in the single thunderous cracks
are spread out and softened by the jet's long nose
and sculpted body. What use to rattle dishes now registers
around seventy five decibels, more like a car door closing
than the explosion. That small change in sound could reopen
a door that has been closed for half a century.

(24:24):
Since the early seventies, the FAA has banned routine supersonic
flight over land. The concord could cross oceans, but never
the continent. Every design since has been muzzled by regulation
and physics alike. The QUEST mission aims to change that,
not through lobbying, but just through the data. Over the
next year, the X fifty nine will begin a series

(24:46):
of test flights across the Mojavei, collecting acoustic measurements from
ground sensors and from volunteer communities under its path. If
the boom really does just become a hope NASA will
share the results with the FAA and international regular The
goal isn't just another airplane. It's to prove that supersonic
travel can actually be neighborly.

Speaker 4 (25:08):
Now.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Engineers have chased noise for decades. You have engines, rotors,
even the wine of electric cars, but nothing compares to
reshaping this guy itself, to teaching air how to fold
without complaint. Hell, I couldn't get my ex wife to
do that. It's art by algorithm and airflow sculpting sound
as much as metal. But standing near that run where

(25:29):
you wouldn't notice much, the engine roarer fades fast that
the desert is absorbing it. A small silver dart lifts
into the blue, gathering speed and disappears in the silence.
Then a short moment later you hear it, not a crack,
but that muted pause, like a distant heartbeat.

Speaker 4 (25:51):
So somewhere over the mahave you on the lookout. But
all of this.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
Already, this has been happening. That last launch was a
week and a half or two weeks ago, so probably
what you heard.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
Now.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
All of this, in the end still comes down to
one thing, the human factor. All the rockets, boosters, and
test flights come down to the few people in flight
suits and those building it what. It's those in flight
seats that you know. You see them sometimes in photos
standing ankle deep in water at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab,

(26:40):
heads just above the surface, helmets glinting under the lights
around them, the outline of a moch lunar landing weights
on the pool floor. Every moment is slowed by resistance,
Every gesture deliberate, and this is where the next generation
of astronauts is learning how to walk on the Moon
again for the first time. Eleven and one am or

(27:03):
eleven in one pm local time already.

Speaker 4 (27:05):
I will investigate that for you and get back to you.

Speaker 3 (27:10):
The Artemis program has shifted from design reviews to rehearsal.
Crews are training for six week missions, longer than any
Apollo stay, longer than even some early ISS rotations. They
practice navigation of blackout advisors, working by instrument and instinct.
They train for one point six gravity, where every motion
wants to become a jump. They drill for tool failures,

(27:33):
suit leaks, silence, and the calm leap loop. And they
do it not in the name of spectacle, but in
the name of logistics, science, payloads, power systems, habitats that
have to function for whoever come next. It's easy to
forget how human the work still is. I mean, we
talk about the rockets and the contracts and the timelines
and the automated landings and take offs, but in the end,

(27:55):
it's the person pults inside the suit that will most
likely mix it difference. The Artemis cruise American, Canadian, European
Japanese are training side by side, and the underwater mock
up a gateway. They float through modules that don't yet
exist in orbit. The teamwork they are build here will
matter later on when communication with Earth lags by seconds

(28:19):
and the only voice they can count on is each other's.

Speaker 4 (28:23):
Now.

Speaker 3 (28:24):
Remember, psychological psychologists call it operational isolation. You prepare people
for confinement, for that long quiet between messages, for the
awareness when you look out the window the world isn't there.
It's beneath you, tiny, blue and magnificent. And some of
the exercises are simple, the laid cam dre's decisions made

(28:48):
under fatigue conflict resolution without a chain of command. The
goal here isn't perfection, It's stability. The unspoken roll of expirations.
Machines can't improvise as easily as people can. The astronauts
themselves will tell you the hardest part isn't the danger.
It is the waiting, waiting to launch, waiting to land,

(29:11):
waiting to come home. You train for years knowing the
odds that you'll actually step on another world are still
relatively slim, but you keep training anyway because someone will,
and you want to be ready. If the first half
of this new space age is about speed, the second
will be about endurance. The machines will get us there faster,

(29:32):
but the people have to live with it longer, and
it will take more than a rocket to survive that.
It will take the quiet confidence to put one boot
in front of the other on a surface no one
is touched in fifty years, and eventually on a surface
knowing from Earth has touched. So Somewhere inside the neutral

(29:52):
buoyancy lab, the bubbles rise slowly to the surface. A
gloved hand rehearses the motion of planting an instrument in
lunar dust. The radio crackles. Someone says, copy that, and
the work will continue.

Speaker 4 (30:08):
With bat.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
Let's take a brief break so I can say hi
to everyone in the chats, and.

Speaker 4 (30:16):
We'll be back in a few minutes.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
Step by step the journey runs Jason Shadows, catchy songs,
always the first step, se Wow, where we belong, and.

Speaker 4 (32:50):
Man and welcome back.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
Hope everyone was able to got a little bit of
a refill when they're drinking snacks or whatever they're doing
at the moment. Seismologists have uncovered new evidence that part
of an ancient world still exists inside our planet. Deep

(34:10):
beneath the mantle, near the boundary where solid rock meets
the liquid metal of the outer core, researchers have identified
dense structures that appear older than the Earth's surface itself.
This discovery comes from advances in seismic tomography, a technique
that uses earthquake waves to map the planet's interior. When

(34:30):
seismic waves travel through different materials, they bend and slow
at predictable rates. By collecting this data from one hundreds
of monitoring stations around the world, scientists can reconstruct those
pathways in three dimensions. What they found are two enormous
regions of unusual dense material, one under Africa and one
beneath the Pacific Ocean. Each spans thousands of kilometers together,

(34:53):
they contain enough mass to rival the Moon for decades.
Their origin has been debated. Some believe they were agent
labs of a crust pushed downward by plate teutonics. Others
suggest that they were chemical leftovers from Earth's early mantle,
But a new study points to another explanation. The dense
regions share an isotopic signature that matches samples of lunar

(35:15):
rock collected during the Apollo mission that suggests that could
be the renants of thea the protoplanet believed to have
struct Earth about four and a half billion years ago.
That impact that formed the Moon may have also left
fragments of the impact or embedded deep inside our planet.

(35:37):
The idea aligns with long standing models of planetary formation.
When two large bodies collide, the lighter debris is flung
outward and the heavier material sinks inward and eventually stabilizes.

Speaker 4 (35:49):
Near the core.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
Over time, that buried material could influence convection patterns in
the manner, possibly affecting volcanic activity plate in even Earth's
magnetic field. The finding reframes how scientists think about the
planet structure. Earth may not be a single, uniform sphere,
but rather a composite, a planet fused with another.

Speaker 4 (36:16):
The large, low.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
Shear velocity provinces, as the data describe them, are not
temporary features. They have persisted for billions and billions of years,
surviving mantle mixing and continental drift. In effect, they represent
the oldest physical record of our planet's formation. This research
was made possible by global network of seismic sensors and

(36:39):
the computational power of process decades of earthquake data simultaneously
supercomputer simulations TETs on thousand models until the pattern that
matched the observations emerged, thence chemically distinct material shaped like
submerged continents at the base of the mantle. It is
a reminder the exploration isn't and shouldn't be limited to space.

(37:06):
The deepest frontier may still be within the planet we inhabit.
Temperatures near those layers exceed five thousand degrees celsius, pressures
crush iron like it's clay. No probe can survive there.
Yet the signals from those desks reach us faintly through
vibrations recorded on the surface. The study authors describe it
as finding a second planet hidden within the first, and

(37:29):
technically that isn't a metaphor. It's physics evidence that Earth
we stand and still carries pieces of another world that
helped create it. But for centuries out in space, there

(37:52):
has been one easy star to find the night sky, Beetlegeist,
the bright red shoulder of Orion. Massive, unstable and close
enough that when it sneezes we kind of notice. And
in twenty nineteen Beetle geese or goose or juice dimmed
so dramatically that astronomers wonderful it was about to explode

(38:13):
into a souper nova. It didn't, but the mystery of
what caused that fading never quite went away. Now new
observations suggests Beetlegeist wasn't acting alone. Oh shit, I just
said it three times. Okay, nothing popped up. I think

(38:34):
I think I'm in the clear.

Speaker 4 (38:36):
Now.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Using the very large telescope in Chile, the data from
the Atacama Pathfinder Array, astronomers have found evidence of a
small stellar companion orbiting the giant, a beetle buddy, if
you will. The companion is faint, roughly one tenth of
mass of Beetlegeist, and hidden so close to its swollen
atmosphere that has been barely nearly impossible to detect until now.

(39:01):
That discovery changes how scientists interpret everything we've seen from
the star in the last decade. It is about six
hundred light years away and more than seven hundred times
the diameter of our Sun, but it's nearing the end
of its life, using heavier and heavier elements in the
shell around its core. At that stage, stars outer layers

(39:23):
become unstable, expanding and contracting like the surface of a
slow explosion. The new data shows patterns of motion and
dust that fit better with a binary system than a
single solitary super giant. The companion may have dipped into
the outer envelope in the recent centuries, this distributing its

(39:44):
disturbing its equilibrium, helping drive off the huge plumes of
gas that have been observed. When those plumes cooled and condensed,
they form dust that temporarily block the star's lights the
Great Dimming of twenty nineteen. That dimming wasn't the beginning
of the end.

Speaker 4 (40:03):
It was a.

Speaker 3 (40:03):
Binary interaction two stars sharing one long, unstable orbit. Now,
binary pairs like this are actually common in the universe.
Roughly half of all stars form in multiples. The gravitational
dance can feed or striped material, shaping the way each
star lives and eventually dies. In this case, the relationship

(40:24):
may decide when, or even how it finally collapses into
a supernova. If the companion draws away enough mass, it
actually could delay the inevitable by thousands of years. If
it plunges deeper, the end could come sooner and brighter
than ever expected. But for now, the system is stable

(40:45):
and the star has returned to its normal brilliance. The
latest measurements put its diameter at roughly one point three
billion kilometers and its surface temperature near three thy five
hundred degrees celsius, and its mass is about twelve times
that of Earth's. On astronomers continue to monitor subtle changes
in brightness, track and collective bubbles that rise and burst

(41:05):
across the surface like solar storms scaled up to what
would be planetary size. Now, for those curious, there is
no threat to Earth. When it finally decides to go
play its game of pop goes the weasel at six
hundred light years. The event will be spectacular but not dangerous,
and for a few weeks Beetlegeist will outshine the full

(41:27):
Moon visible even in daylight. A reminders that the universe
doesn't just end things, It kind of recycles them. The
element's forge and that explosion will drift through interstellar space someday,
forming new stars, new planets, maybe even new watchers looking
back at us. For now, it holds steady, its faint

(41:48):
companion hidden in the glare to the orbiting in slow conversation.
What we see from here is the flicker of that
dialogue light that left long for anyone knew that's not
the only funness going out going on in the.

Speaker 4 (42:09):
Universe, not by a long shots.

Speaker 3 (42:13):
For about fifteen hundred light years away, a dead star
is still making headlines. It's small, it's dim and quiet.
It's a white dwarf, the compact ramnant left behind when
a suddenly star runs out of fuel. But what called
astronomer's attention wasn't the star itself, but what it's doing
to the planet that is strayed too close. Telescopes from

(42:37):
NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite or Tests and ESA's Guya
observatory picked up the rhythmic dips in light coming from
the system. Every ten hours, a signal dimmed and then
brightened again. At first, this did look like an ordinary
exoplanet transit, but the curve wasn't clean. It trailed off

(42:57):
uneven in a bit ragged as a planet, we're leaving
a trail behind. Follow Up observations confirmed this suspicion. The
planet is being torn apart. The white dwarf packs nearly
a sun's worth a mass into the body, no bigger
than Earth. Their gravity is crushing magnetic fields or extreme.

(43:21):
When a surviving planet drifts too close to it, the
tidal forces stretch it into fragments, pulling dust and rock
into a glowing ring. The debris will spiral inward until
it falls onto the star's surface, flaring in an ultra
violent and X bunch of X rays before fading into silence. Now,
this isn't the first such discovery, but it is one

(43:43):
of the clearest ever made. For years, scientists have found
traces of polluted white dwarf stars whose outer layers contain
heavy elements that shouldn't exist there unless they recently consumed
a planet. But this new system shows that process actually
in motion, the slow deliberate disassembly of a world called
into its parents gravity. Well, and for those curious, it's

(44:07):
a glimpse of our own future. And about five billion
years give or take, the Sun will exhaust its hydrogen
swell into a red giant, a golf mercury and venus.

Speaker 4 (44:19):
Now.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
Earth may survive the expansion, but not the aftermath. When
the outer layers blow away, the corp will collapse into
a white dwarf. In any remaining planet's will orbity pale
ember and some like this one will end up wondering
just a tad too clutch. Close in the images, the
white dwarf looks like a pinpoint surrounded by faint hayes,

(44:43):
the shredded memory of a solar system. It isn't something
you would see in a cinematic movie display. It's steady,
it's mathematical, and it's highly predictable. A reminder that gravity
doesn't take sentiment into account at all. It's only really
there to help balance out equations, apparently, and every system

(45:07):
will end this way given enough time. Planets will fall,
stars will fade, and what remains become something else. But
we have to remember, even in space, every destruction is
a form of creation, a transfer of mass, a redistribution
of energy. It's kind of how the universe keeps playing

(45:27):
in its own little game. But astronomers were not done.

Speaker 4 (45:39):
No, well, not by a long shot.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
Where astronomers have confirmed a new planetary system that seems
built straight from the imagination of a filmmaker. Three Earth
sized worlds orbiting two suns. It's the kind of place
where every day would end with not one sunset, but two.
The system lies about one hundred years away in the
constellation of Centaurus, not the one I'm from. Using data

(46:06):
from NASA's tests and follow up observations with ground based telescopes,
researchers identified subtle, repeating dips and brightness from the parent
star or stars. In this case, the pattern indicated planets
roughly the size of Earth, each competing, completing an orbit
in less than a month. Now it's not the first
binary system known to host planets, but it's among the

(46:28):
most stable and best measured. The stars a pair of
small orange dwarfs orbit each other every fifteen days. The
planets circled them both in wider shired paths, and their
gravity synchronized in what astronomers called a syicombinary orbit. The
balance is delicate, but not necessarily rare. It just requires

(46:50):
the right spacing and the right timing. If you stood
on the surface of one of these world's diskies, honestly,
it would never look the scene twice times. The sun
and so would rise together, casting twin shadows. Sometimes one
would set when the others lingered, turning the light copper
and violent knights would be short, the temperature swing small,
and the rhythm of time itself different from anything we

(47:12):
know currently. If that sounds familiar, well you've probably seen
it before somewhere, you know, long ago, in a galaxy
not nearly as far away as we thought, you know,
before the world was destroyed by Disney. But for scientists,
these systems are more than curiosities. They help refine models

(47:36):
on how planets form and I think more importantly, how
they survive. And a binary system, gravitational chaos should make
stable orbits difficult. Yet these worlds prove it's possible that
planets can immerge ind or even in complex environments. Their

(47:57):
existence expands the boundaries of what we consider how habitable space.
The discovery also highlights the precision of modern surveys that
changes in starlight are measured in fractions of a percent,
subtle enough that a passing cloud on Earth could mask them,
but with years of data, patterns do begin to emerge,
small dips repeating at constant intervals, each one marking a

(48:21):
world will never see directly, and for now ashenomers can only.

Speaker 4 (48:27):
Infer what these worlds are like.

Speaker 3 (48:29):
The data is suggesting rocky compositions in mild temperatures depending
on the atmospheric density, while both provide light and energy balance,
could possibly support liquid water, at least in theory. Now,
future instruments like the James Web Space Telescope, when it

(48:52):
tunes its eye to there, may be able to analyze
their atmospheres and search for a chemical fingerprints of life.
But it can be easy to imagine what it might
look like from the surface, with two suns climbing over
a horizon of a rust colored hills, clouds painted in
double shadows, a landscape bright enough for two dawns and twice,

(49:13):
the promise of warmth in the universe that often feels
harsh and solitary, the discovery of twin suns orbiting together,
and small worlds that manage to stay between them. It's
a bit of a quiet reassurance balance, it seems, is possible,

(49:38):
even amid complexity. Complexity in Disney's fuckery, or it seems
the sky is wide enough for more than.

Speaker 4 (49:45):
One kind of day.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
Now, there is something in science that can be hard
for people to understand the times, Can I get it?
They're buggy little things in life, and I'm talking ghost particles,
the ones that pasture you by the trillions every second.

(50:19):
No one feels them, no one stops them. They move
straight through the planet as if it wasn't even here.
They are the most elusive messengers in the universe. Neutrinos.
Physinessists call them ghost particles for good reason. They have
almost no mass, no electrical charge, and they barely interact
with matter at all. If you built a wall of

(50:41):
solid lead a light year thick, most of them would
still slip right through it. And yet when one of
them finally does collide with an atom, it leaves us
a trace, a tiny flash of light that that scientist
glimpse but is otherwise invisible. And this is how we're
actually learning about the most extreme places in the cosmos.

(51:05):
Deep under the ice of Antarctica sits the ice cube
Neutrinia Observatory, a lattice of more than five thousand sensors
suspended in a cubic kilometer of frozen water.

Speaker 4 (51:14):
It watches for the.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
Faint blue sharon, a cough glow that erupts when a
neutrino interacts with a molecule of ice. Each flash is
telling a story, the direction the particle came from, its energy,
and yes, even sometimes its origin. No confirmation a bug
planet here, But recently ice Cube, the Neutrino observatory, not

(51:35):
the retired wrapper, detected a burst of high energy neutrinos
that seem to have traveled from a blazar, a galaxy
with a super massive black hole firing jets of radiation
towards Earth. That confirmation cross tracked with space based gamma
ray observations, marks one of the few times at first
times have directly traced the cosmic trino back to its source.

(51:58):
It means we can now use the particles as a
new kind of telescope, ones that can see through the
dust and magnetic fields and yes, even entire galaxies. Because,
unlike light, neutrinos carry unaltered information from the heart of
violent events exploding stars, colliding black holes, or the dense

(52:19):
cores where elements are forged. When you think about it,
each one is a survivor, evidence that something somewhere just
released more energy than a million suns.

Speaker 4 (52:34):
Now.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
To find them, researchers have gone to the extremes. There
are no trino detectors buried in Japanese mines, submerged off
the coast of Italy, and of course floating in.

Speaker 4 (52:46):
Deep Arctic ice.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
Together, they are forming a planet sized observatory watching the universe,
and a wavelength made of silence. Now, these detections are
not frequent, maybe a few a month with clear origin,
but each one does change the understanding of cosmic dynamics.
Neutrinos give us a way to study process that even

(53:09):
the most powerful telescopes just simply cannot see. They are
the missing notes in the universe's backgrounds music, And for
all their strangers, neutrinos are everywhere. They were born in
the first seconds after the Big Bang. They still pour
from every nuclear reaction happening in every star right now.

(53:29):
The majority of the trino's passing through you come from
the Earth's sun, harmless echoes of fusion that began eight
minutes ago, still racing outward at nearly the speed of light.
When astrophysicists talk about a Neutrino's guy. They mean exactly that,
a map not made of light but of energy that

(53:50):
barely acknowledges that matter even exists. It's a reminder that
most of the reality passes straight through us without notice, vast,
unmeassu and largely invisible, and that leads us to, I

(54:11):
think a fun story to start wrapping up the show.
For the newest names in the asteroid catalog don't belong
to some seasoned astronomer or some deep space observatory or
billion dollar telescope. They belonged to a twelve year old,

(54:32):
through an international citizens science project, a student analyzing telescope
images spot at two faint points of light that weren't
supposed to be there. They were small, moving slowly, and
consistent across multiple exposures, the tailtale sign of near Earth
asteroids that no one had previously cataloged. After confirmation by

(54:54):
professional observatories, the discoveries were accepted into the Minor Planet
Center's official database. Now, programs like this have become one
of astronomy's quiet success stories, and no one really talks
about the International Astronomical Search Collaboration or IASC partners with
observatories such as pant stars in Hawaii to share fresh

(55:15):
Guy Survey data with schools and students around the world.
Each image covers a patch of sky thousands of times
fainter than what the human eye can see, while volunteers
compare sequences of those images looking for anything that shifts
position against the fixed backgrounds of the stars. Most nights

(55:35):
it's just pixels and patients, but every so often someone
finds motion, a rock left over from the birth of
the Solar system still circling the Sun. The two objects
a student identified are each only a few hundred meters across,
too small to threaten Earth, but large enough.

Speaker 4 (55:53):
To actually track.

Speaker 3 (55:55):
Their orbits have already been plotted elongated ellipses that carry
them from the outer edge of the asteroid to just
beyond Mars, and as with all new finds, they'll receive
numerical designations before being eligible for initial names, names to
the discoverer will get to help choose. Now, if this
discovery sounds like a novelty, it isn't. It is actually

(56:19):
part of a growing shift in how science is done.
With global access to digital data, students and amateur observers
now contribute meaningfully to professional research viable stars, supernova comments,
exoplanet transits, and near Earth object tracking. Because the data,
the flow of data, it never stops. What matters is

(56:43):
who has the patience to look at it, And for
asteroid detections, it's that patience that matters more than ever.
NASA's Planetary Defense Network currently tracks more than thirty thousand
Near Earth objects. Each one represents a piece of the
Solar System's history, and I would be amiss if I
did not say a potential hazard. Discoveries like this expand

(57:06):
the catalog and refine our ability to protect orbital paths
decades ahead. But for the student behind these two rocks,
the moment wasn't about planetary defense. It was about, honestly recognition,
proof that curiosity can matter, a faint movement of light
measured against infinity, and the realization that you you saw

(57:28):
it first. It may be a small contribution in scientific terms,
but a huge one in spirit. Astronomers have always depended
on people willing to share stare at data that seems
empty until you know what. Suddenly that data isn't empty anymore.
The next generation isn't waiting for their turn at this telescope.

(57:49):
They're already in the archives learning how to see, and
somewhere tonight those two asteroids are crossing a line of
sunlight between Mars and Jupiter, invisible to the eye but
for remarked by the person who noticed them. And somewhere else,
another student is scrolling through another mh set looking for
glimmer that moves when nothing else does. The universe rewards attention,

(58:16):
and it always always has. And with that, let's go
grab a drink, start to campfire, or get the shovels
out if you're in higher elevations of Vermont. But the
nights are here, the long nights, especially the cold nights,
and the sky is ready for it. Juventer now rolls

(58:41):
the midnight sky, rising in the east around ten PM
Eastern and standing bright and steady through the early morning.
Its golden light is unmistakable. Saturn follows lower in the
south east after dusk, a pale emverse sliding west. Each evening.
Mercury makes a brief but brilliant showings low in the
twilight just after sunset this week, hugging the horizon for

(59:02):
only a few days before fading back towards the sun.
The full moon arise Wednesday, November fifth, the beaver moon
called Basakian con The Gennis guesses, I don't know what's
hard of that name or the aa Chaneva want Waman

(59:26):
Indian tribe that calls it that holy crap, thank you ep,
but it means the freezing moon. It will ride unusually
close to Earth, a cycle, appearing slightly larger and brighter
than normal, a quiet supermoon to mark the season's change.
The lineag meteor shower peaks before dawn on November seventeenth,
but early streaks often begin around fifteenth and sixteenth. Look

(59:48):
east after midnight at the constellation Leo. As it climbs,
the moon will only be a thin crescent, leaving the
sky darken enough probably see twenty or more meteors an
hour if conditions are kind, and around the thirteenth, as
the moon is waning, the milky Way becomes sharper, a
pale ribbon stretching from Cassiopeia down through oriyon best scene
from rural skies. If you happen to catch a faint,

(01:00:12):
bluish trace moving through Virgo or Leo, that's Comet thirty
one atlas making a slow, graceful exit from the inner system.
An alien spacecraft, a comet thirty one Atlas dim, but
it will be there for the patient observer.

Speaker 4 (01:00:31):
So for the next two weeks, watch.

Speaker 3 (01:00:32):
Jupiter climb, catch Mercury splash before it vanishes, and let
the beaver moon light your nights. The sky is busy,
but once again, it's never ever hurried.

Speaker 4 (01:00:43):
Keep watching.

Speaker 3 (01:00:47):
So that's it for tonight's transmission. Thank you for tuning
in when ever and however you do. Special thanks to
NASA spacexpace dot COM's ours Technica, NASA Spaceflight, Popular Mechanics,
and everyone out there keeping you many's eyes on the star,
especially that twelve year old kid with me at the helm,
the executive producer plotting our next course, and the ship's

(01:01:08):
computer in the back was bring the star maps through
the static. This has been the Lost Wonder our 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.

(01:01:28):
It's bigger than anything.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
Anyone has ever dreamed of before.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
So if it's just us, it seems like an awful

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
Waste of space, right