November 13, 2025 • 40 mins
Solar activity gave all fifty states aurora borealis this week and there's a chance for more tonight. Blue Origin wants to launch today by the solar activity could complicate things. Astronomers have observed a CME on a star not called the Sun for the first time. And comet 3I/ATLAS is looking more like an interstellar comet that an alien spacecraft.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar, asterism and uranus. Listen,
that's your own risk. Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
When made of stars, made them stars, made sizes. When
made of stars, you could be from high they would
New Mexicomus, where all stars?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
When we are made of stars.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I'm West Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
Crusen from Lama State Universities, Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Speaker 5 (01:03):
Hay Sean, good morning, Wes. How are you doing today?
Speaker 4 (01:07):
A little disappointed after being really surprised and excited two
nights ago, and then last night some disappointment, but there's
some hope for tonight as we record the show on Thursday,
which is typically what we do. I mean, it's so
strange that in a span of what like nineteen months,
(01:29):
we've had now Aurora borealis visible from my front yard
three times. The only thing I can equate this to
when I was trying to kind of say this, it
started with a conversation with Luke, my thirteen year old,
who's gotten really into this. He's a weather nut to
begin with, doesn't surprise me, and both of my kids
(01:51):
are math nuts. Doesn't surprise me at all that they
would that he specifically would get very excited about space
weather and he has really been.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
There was a point with all of this.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
You taught me the things to look for for the
possibility of seeing Aurora in our area the first time
that this happened, and I kind of explained some of
that to him, and then last night he was breaking
down some of that. He's like, well, the density's off,
we need the density to be and I was like, Okay,
he now knows more about this than I do. He's
got a better understanding of what's going on. But I
(02:28):
was just kind of saying to him, this is a
pretty neat thing in that in the summer we were
snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef and then now we've seen
Aurora from our home this year. So it's twice in
one year that we've been able to observe, you know,
two of the natural wonders of the world. That's pretty neat.
I mean, we got to see it last calendar year.
(02:50):
But now we've seen both of these things in the
same calendar year, which is kind of cool. But anyway,
it's kind of the equivalent of you just walk outside
and the Grand Canyon just shows up in your front yard.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
I mean, when you're not.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Used to seeing this, it's like, wait a minute, what
is it doing there. It's not supposed to be the
harbor in Rio is not supposed to be in my
front yard.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
How did this happen? So here we go again.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
We had this cool moment where you know, the sun
starts doing weird things. The conditions were just right, and
I walked outside. You had sent me a text saying
that it was possible, and it's been possible several times.
But anyway, I went outside the other night and I said,
wait a minute, the sky's pink.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
What's going on?
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Here we go and I sent you some photos that
I had taken and what I didn't and it was
kind of late. When I didn't hear back from you.
I assumed maybe you were asleep, and I thought, well,
we're not heading to Shawn's house tonight. As I was
thinking it, Luke said, are we going to Shawn's house again?
So that's where we were. But anyway, it was kind
of cool, and it was great to see the photos
and nice to see that it was another cool moment
(03:59):
for a really almost nationwide.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
Let me tell you the most exciting thing about the story,
and then the most disappointing thing about the story. Here's
the most exciting thing about the story that you, my
friend and your awesome family, and so many other of
my friends and some of my relatives in Colorado and
people all across the United States got to see this phenomenon.
(04:26):
And when you text me, you text me something to
the effect of it's like having one of the natural
wonders of the world just wander into your front yard.
It's just made me laugh, right because it's it's but
it's actually true. There's a very good friend of ours
who I can tell y'all, you know off air that
I've been talking too lately about actually trying to plan
and schedule a trip to go somewhere to see the
(04:48):
northern lights. And then you know, within something less than
a week, they show up in our own town in
a pretty good display, like I mean, a non marginal
display northern lights here in the southwest west central part
of Georgia. I mean, it's just unbelievable, all right. So
(05:09):
that's the most exciting thing for me. Now, the most
disappointing thing is that I was hard out.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
I was disappointed for you, and when you sent me
a text the next morning, I, oh, no, you missed
it completely. However, why saw that KP index around seven,
which should have told me there was gonna be northern lights?
I saw that indicator, the KP index.
Speaker 5 (05:32):
Go to spaceweatherlive dot com, folks if you want to
know more about that KP index was at seven, and
I still fell asleep on the couch and then just
woke up enough to get myself into bed. It had
just been one of those days, one of those weeks,
and so yeah, I woke up to everyone else's pictures
of the aurora phenomenon the next day. So slacker me,
(05:53):
I missed it. Good on y'all, y'all saw it. That
was great.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Well, I was disappointed for you. I suspected that was
what was going I thought one of two things. When
you didn't respond, you were either actively out observing or
you were asleep. And I figured at some point, if
you were actively out observing, you would be taking photos,
probably with your phone. That's the best way to see
(06:17):
them and really appreciate them. And then I had friends
who were trying to see them and they're like, I
don't know, this guy's a little bit.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Pink, and I'm like, that's it.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Take a photo of it and see exactly how pink
or purple it is, because there's a lot going on
up there that you're not seeing with your eyes. So
what's happened is we've had these CMEs, We've had this
activity on the sun that has showered us with radiation.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
We were soaking up out there.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
Which we were just ecstatic about it. I know, it's
real bathed some solar radiation. You know, that's all good.
It's good for the skin. I think it's like.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Going to the dentist and they say, here, let's put
this vest on you so we can take some pictures
of your tea, some X rays of your teeth, and
you go just hang on to the vest.
Speaker 5 (07:03):
I'm good.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Just let me soak it all in. I want to
really breathe it in. I mean, it's a little different
than that, but I mean we're.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
Gonna cover your vital organs and shoot radiation at your head.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
If you don't mind, that's fine, blast it directly into
your mouth. So this happened, and it was there were
conditions that looked favorable yesterday had people excited again. And
I mean this tends to be the way I think
with most space events. It's like it happens, people go
oh my gosh, that happened. I missed it, and then
they go, well, it might happen today, and then it doesn't,
(07:36):
and then you go, oh, man, well this stinks.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
I'm gonna go kick a rock.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
And I think that happens often with you know, with
rocket launches or an eclipse when it's really cloudy, and
it's just like warrant, warrant, warrant, which, by the way,
when you sent me that text, that's exactly the way
I read it. So there's a chance tonight if you're
listening on Thursday as we record, as the show drops,
(08:00):
it still happen again tonight.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
So be ready charge.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
Let's talk about this like a news story first of all,
and just say this. There's something very important to share
about the event of November eleventh. It's the geomagnetic event.
Auroras were visible in all fifty of the US states,
that means Hawaii saw northern lights, so you could see
(08:25):
the southern cross from Hawaii. Just to put things in perspective,
I guess you can from Key West, Florida too, but
just barely so. All right. Auroras were reported on that
same evening to spaceweather dot com in Newport Richie, Florida,
latitude twenty eight, Tucson, Arizona, latitude thirty two. We would
(08:48):
consider both of those south Our latitude is almost the
same as Tucson here in Columbus, Georgia. And then but
also USU Latin El Salvador with the latitude of thirteen
degrees a mire thirteen degrees off the equator of the Earth,
and they were photographing the aurora that occurred on the
(09:11):
night of November eleventh. Now, why did such a thing happen, Well,
it's because there was something called a cannibal CMEME. We've
talked about these before, something akin to that two CMEs.
Back at what's a cmeme, a coronal mass ejection. So
it goes like this, a giant eruption happens on the Sun.
(09:34):
We call that a solar flare. And with the large
majority of those events, they can kick out bursts of
radiation off the Sun's surface out into the Solar system.
We call that a coronal mass ejection. The masses radioactive particles,
they can be generally the size of Mount Everest in
(09:55):
terms of the amount of mass that's blasted out from
the Sun. Then that radiation goes raying out through the
Solar system. Well, these very two close together CMEs were
shot directly at the Earth by an angry sun spot
on the Sun a few days ago. And and so
then one was traveling a little faster than the other,
(10:15):
and that was the second one. So the second one
kind of caught up to the first one, and they
arrived almost in tandem here at the Earth on the
night of November eleventh, which is what triggered this intense,
nearly global observation of northern lights, which is really really cool.
(10:36):
So you know, strong internal magnetic fields and shock waves
capable of sparking intense geomagnet magnetic activity. That's that's what
these cms were, or the cannibal cmmes, the stacked up CMEs.
All right, So as Wes just alluded to, we all
went out the next night because the the shall we
call in the reporting authorities spaceweather dot com, Space Weather,
(11:00):
and other popular space whether monitoring websites. We're telling us, hey,
it could really happen again tonight because there's a third
CMME on its way in. So we all went out
again last night, which was the twelfth, and we didn't
see anything. And that included me, by the way, Wes,
I was not asleep on the couch last night. I
did go out and look a couple of different times
you and I were texting KP indices back and forth
(11:23):
to each other. It just wasn't quite the same, right, Okay.
But the headline from spaceweather dot com again today again
this morning, more geomagnetic storms are likely today today being
the day we're recording the show, November thirteenth, twenty twenty five.
Earth magnetic field is still reverberating from those three potent
(11:45):
coronal mass ejection strikes in the past forty eight hours.
According to spaceweather dot com, this is causing geomagnetic storms
and widespread aurars right now as we speak. But it's
daytime here in the US as we're recording. Currently, the
storm levels are bouncing betwe between category G one, which
is a minor storm all the way up to G three,
which is a strong storm. As the solar wind blows Earth,
(12:08):
blows around Earth faster than nine hundred kilometers per second.
You don't have a reference for that, but that's about
three times faster than normal. Okay. So NOAA forecasters are
saying that there is a lingering chance of a severe
G four class geomagnetic storm on November thirteenth, that's today.
(12:31):
This according to spaceweather dot com. That's the magnitude of
storm that occurred two days ago on the eleventh that
caused that nearly global set of Aurora phenomenon. So you're
saying there's a chance, lies, damn lies, and statistics, there's
some statistical possibility of a G four class geomagnetic storm
(12:53):
lingering into the evening hours here in the continental United States,
where we could potentially see northern lights. Where a third night.
By the way, even though we didn't see them here
last night, my niece back out in Colorado, she did
send me more pictures, so they did see them at
a little bit more northern latitudes than us last night
as well. This could be a third night in a
(13:14):
row of Aurora phenomenon taking place.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
I have a friend in Montana and he absolutely saw
them up there as well, So that just shows it's
all about you got to be at the right place
at the right time. And you know, one of the
differences this time and the you know, the last two instances,
one was in October, one was in May, and like
(13:38):
five months apart or.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Whatever, it was exactly to the day.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
And this time, because it's in you know, November, we've
had the time change.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
It's darker sooner.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
So the opportunity to get out and check them out
a little bit earlier in the night is also an
advantage to it. So keep that in mind if you're
thinking about checking out the sky tonight.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
That's a really good point west. And I think that
kind of gets forgotten by those of us living in
southerly latitudes trying to see northern lights, because it's not
just the latitude, it's also the longitude that you live
on right your part of Earth has to be faced
toward the dark part of the sky when the particle
(14:19):
wave arrives. So even though you might be quote unquote
far enough south, I'm sorry, far enough north to see it.
Even if you're in southerly latitudes. You could still be
far enough north to see it, like we all were
on the eleventh, but we just weren't on the right
line of longitude when the wave arrived. The wave arrived
a little bit later than what was convenient for us
(14:42):
to observe here in Georgia, and a lot of longitude
was a little bit more westerly. People in the western
United States had a little bit better shot at it.
So that's kind of what we're in the midst of
right now. We know that there is a potential for
enhanced geomagnetic activity today on the thirteenth, we just don't
know if we're at the right place longitude line where
we'll actually be dark when that wave arrives and causes
(15:05):
the geomagnetic disruption. So keep an eye on the sky, friends,
but also keep an eye on spaceweather dot com. Another
great site is spaceweather live dot com. Space weatherlive dot
com is a data site. You have to take a
little bit of time getting used to the data. The
first thing to look at is that kind of speedometer
like plot right at the top of space weather Live.
(15:25):
That is the KP index. If it's green, you're not seen.
If it's orange, maybe there's a shot. If it's red,
go outside right then and just swim in that solar
radiation coming into the earth.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
And I just quickly, just one last thing. And this
may seem obvious to people who took part in this
the last three times. Now you know, if you are
near a bunch of light, you may not get an
opportunity to see it. You want to kind of be
away from any of that light pollution so you got
a better chance of seeing things. You and I have
a mutual friend who I sent him a text the
(16:00):
other night and I said, now go outside, look to
the north, and you.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Know, take a picture.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
And he basically took a picture of a street light
and he's like, I don't see anything.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
And I was like, never mind, never mind.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
I was trying to tell him, no, you don't want
to be near the street light, and you want to
be where it's as dark as the sky that you
can see even if you're just not facing the street light.
But I give him credit, he knew the street light
was to the north.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
I guess.
Speaker 5 (16:23):
I mean, that's a little bit different kind of electromagnetic
fluorescence was observing there. But yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, probably listen. Friends.
If you're a city dweller, you automatically have a disadvantage
to seeing cool things in the sky. It's one of
the reasons I personally live rural. I live out of town.
I bought this house intentionally with not many lights around
(16:46):
it so that I can see sky phenomenon. So there
you go, get out of town once in a while.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
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after this, Well, on the subject of disadvantages, Blue Origin
(18:46):
wants to launch, but I don't know. There's a CME
that's spraying radiation on the planet right about when they
want to do this potentially, So what's the status on
this Blue Origin escapade? They're launching an escapade into space?
What does this this?
Speaker 5 (19:02):
It's an escapade in space, that's exactly what it is.
So some Blue Origins had been having a bit of
an escapade. They've been trying to launch this rocket for
several days, and due to that weird cold snap that
came through the southeastern United States there in the last
few days, cast some strange weather down in Florida, and
it cost them the ability to launch their launch vehicle,
(19:23):
which is called the New Glen Rocket. Why is Blue
Origin launching a New Glen Rocket. Well, you see, there's
a bit of an escapade on and that's the NASA
Escapade mission. Escapade being yet again a fantastic acronym stands
for escape and plasma acceleration dynamics. Explorers plural, not explorer
(19:44):
one singular, Explorers two plural. There are two of these
Mars bound space probes ready to go to space aboard
that New Glen rocket in that giant firing that's twenty
three feet across the New Glenn fairing holding both of
these spacecraft, plus a demonstration flight from a company called Viasat,
(20:08):
which is headquartered in Atlanta, actually provides telecommunication services from
space as well. So that giant New Glen rocket, which
is nearly the size of a Saturn five rocket that
took human beings to the Moon back of the nineteen sixties.
It's a really big heavy lift rocket is waiting to
go potentially today as we're recording the show November thirteenth,
(20:31):
it'll be in the afternoon. We're recording here in the morning,
but they have a watch on because of solar activity. Yes,
the very same solar activity we were just discussing in
the previous two stories. It could be causing a problem
for the launch of the new Glen rocket because the
potential exists for severe geomagnetic storms and in geomagnetic storm levels.
(20:54):
Once again, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issuing an
extended warning for ready proton ten mega electron volt integral
flux above the ten particle flux units, or as they
say it, proton ten MeV integral flux above TENPFU. I
(21:18):
try to not say PFU whenever I can. It can
be misinterpreted. So this type of so called solar proton
event or SPE for short, can be harmful to spacecraft electronics,
so says spaceflightnow dot Com, quoting the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, which is watching the situation closely as they
(21:42):
go through their launch protocols about deciding whether or not
to launch a couple of Mars explorers. If the Escapade
mission actually gets off the ground today, it will be
heading to Mars to do its mission around there, which
is studying the magnet and magnetosphere of Mars to learn
more about how it's been influenced by space weather as
it turns out, over time, about these very kinds of
(22:03):
events that the rocket might get held up for. These
two vehicles are called the Escapade probes are going to
go study the geomagnetic field of Mars. I guess it's
not geomagnet it's Marso magnetic field, the Marso magnetic field
of the planet Mars, to see how it may have
been affected over time by the very kinds of violent
solar storms that we've been discussing on the show today.
(22:25):
Pretty cool stuff, all tied up neatly together in a
big bow.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
All right, So CMEs, obviously for us big part of
what we've been talking about so far. Today, Let's talk
about a different CME, a first of its kind, a
CME from another star that's not ours. First time that
this has been observed.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Ever, every time we've discussed a CME on this show,
probably probably to my recollection at least, we've been talking
about chronal mass injection events off our own star, the Sun.
It's it's it's actually named the Sun. It's like we
looked up and said Moon. Now we call it the moon.
(23:12):
We call other moons. We have names for other moons,
like Callisto is just called moon.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Why didn't we just call it the star? And then
the others are stars, Like I don't I didn't understand
that one. But anyway, I like Sun.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
It's not have we had this subtle, you know, like
distinction between those things. It's all about It's all about
nuance anyway. So all right, so let me get off
that topic. So the for the first time, a coronal
mass ejection, a verified coronal mass ejection, has been observed
taking place on another star that not named the Sun,
(23:49):
name something else anyway. So there's a a red dwarf star.
It was being studied by the European Space Agency a
space craft called the x MM Newton, and this is
a spacecraft designed to study strong X ray events as
they occur in other parts of the visible universe from Earth.
(24:10):
So astronomers using the x MM Newton's spacecraft have seen
a powerful explosion of plasma erupting from a distant star
for the first time, so says space dot com, where
we took this article from. Now, the interesting thing is
this that this the flux we were talking about. You
know how your son is getting more and more into
(24:33):
space weather and how he knows things like, hey, we
need to look at the particle density because that's you know,
that's going to be a thing we have to monitor
to make sure we know. I think this is an
off air conversation that Wes and I were having, but
that's exactly what these astronomers were looking at. As they
looked at this CME around another star, it had a
incredibly high particle density, so it was also moving quite fast.
(24:59):
The ejectivem material was traveling at five point four million
miles per hour, which is considerably faster THANMES, the CMEs
that we were talking about earlier in this show coming
off the Sun. It's also around thirty five hundred times
faster than a an F sixteen fighter jet according to
(25:20):
the story from space dot com as well, and that's
only observed about once in every two thousand coronal mass
ejections from our Sun, so it is not your average
coronal mass ejection, at least compared to those happening around
our parent star. Now see here's the bad thing. The
bad thing is for any planets that might be in
(25:41):
the Goldilock zone around that star, that exostar we would
call those exoplanets or extrasolar planets. If there had been
a planet in the Goldilock zone that had the potential
to have an atmosphere that could be supporting life, that
kind of a CME would strip that atmosphere right off
(26:01):
that orbiting planet, or a significant portion thereof, and therefore
it would make it very difficult for any Earth like
planets around that exo star or extrasolar star. It would
be very difficult for any of those planets to support
life because they couldn't support an atmosphere because they're nearby
(26:22):
to a star that's doing some really violent and aggressive
things and making it very unhospitable in that particular part
of that alien solar system.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
So the age of the star is having an effect
on the speed I mean, is that a possibility of
why it was moving so fast. We don't have to
worry about it here, or should we be worried that,
oh my gosh, this thing we could have one of
these tear off of our sun right at us.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
Certainly, the red dwarf star could has the potential being
significantly older than our Sun. That's just because red dwarf
stars live a lot longer than stars like our set
un tends to live a pretty long time anyway. But
the other thing is that these red dwarf stars can
often have larger interactions between their own magnetic field and
(27:10):
their own surface, which they call the photosphere. They can
have bigger sunspot groups, meaning bigger flares our Sun. One
of the many things that makes it nice for life
here on Earth is that we have a star that
tends to act a little bit more stably. It does
not tend to have these mega sunspot groups that are
(27:34):
capable of super powerful solar flares. Now, we have had
a few mass extinction events in the history of our planet.
We don't know what the cause of all of those
events were. It's not entirely out of the question that
our Sun could have produced a few megaflares in its
(27:54):
past that had a significant impact on life. It's one
of the things we like to try to study in
the kind of fornsic record of the Earth, the Earth's
atmosphere and the Earth's fossils, right, So those are things
that people do look at trying to decide if the
Sun was the culprit behind any of the mass extinction
events that have happened on Earth in the past, But
(28:16):
certainly our Sun is a much more stable star than
what we're seeing from this little red dwarf star in
the nearby part of our galaxy, which just made a
mess of things for its inner part of the Solar system.
So yes, first chural mass ejection from an alien star. No,
not good for life around that particular star. Let's move
(28:36):
on and look somewhere else for signals from aliens.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
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(30:08):
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Make sure to use your exclusive code Wes w ees
for fifteen percent off. More made of Stars right after this. Okay,
(30:48):
so we've been tracking the three Iye Atlas comet and
we know the story the legend now of three i
Atlas as it was it was an interstellar comment that
had come into our solar system, and then suddenly it
was is it a comet? And that's just sort of
(31:09):
the way that the legend of this thing started to grow,
and it became, well, let's keep an eye on it
and see if it starts doing any strange things. And
it did sort of do some strange things. We address
this on Made of Stars Live when we did our
show at Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center
back on November first, we talked a little bit about it.
(31:30):
We don't talk about aliens lightly. Whenever we have alien discussions.
We try to keep it in the realm of science,
at least you do. You're the scientist. You know that's
I get to make jokes if I want to. I mean,
you get to make jokes too, but you know, you're
trying to keep it serious as much as you can.
Speaker 5 (31:49):
And I do too.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
And then we had you know, Avi Lobe, who is
someone who has really sort of become the face of
the maybe it's an alien story and he is still
kind of trying to keep the possibility of it there
even though the comic is is it starting to.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
Act more like a comet. Now, yeah, so well, maybe
a thing to say is it never really quit acting
like a comet, but.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
It was doing some things that were not typical of comments.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
It really was and so so again Wes said the
right thing. Go back and listen to last week's show,
and now listen. You know, I don't like to go
too deeply into the realm of shameless self promotion, but
I will just say last show's Last week's show was great.
It was really good. We had a fun time. We
had a studio audience. They a live group actually listening
(32:46):
to Wes and I do what we do here, and
they had a good time. So if you missed it,
I'm really sorry you missed it, because it was pretty fun.
We had a great night together, and the content of
the show. I went back and listened to it. It's
pretty good. It's okay. You know again, I'm not trying
to I'm trying to break my arm patting myself on
the back. But we had a fun time West And
(33:07):
one of the things we did is we talked a
lot about this commet.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
And some of the things that it was doing then
or potentially doing the things that science wanted to keep
an eye out for. What I didn't understand is I
saw some of the images of it and it looks
like a comet.
Speaker 5 (33:24):
I didn't understand.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
I mean, it would be one thing if it you know,
if there was you know, like a windscreen on it
or you know something where you go, oh, wall, there's
there might be people or things in there. And it
just looked like a rock the images that we got
back from it to begin with. So that was my
first suspicion that that would be an odd shape and
design for any sort of an alien craft, unless it
(33:49):
was you know, camouflage and they were trying to hide
inside that thing. Anyways, in the dark paths you can
go down, I know, you can go this.
Speaker 5 (33:57):
Well, they designed it to look like so if of
course it's going to actress like a commet, it's going
to quack like a dock, and it's going to walk
like a duck. But it might not be a duck.
It could be an alien spacecraft. I mean, yes, you
could make this point.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
So is it quacking like a duck or what's it
doing now?
Speaker 5 (34:13):
It's quacking like it is quacking like a duck from
someone else's farm. That's what it's doing so again, we
chronicled the differences between this comment and what we think
of as typical comments. But remember this is an actual
known comment from another solar system, so we don't have
a full database of comets from other solar systems to
(34:36):
know what they would act like. And so, yes, there's
a lot more CO two content. Yes, it started forming
a tail far out there, way before our you know,
children of the Sun comets form tails. It has an
odd nickel to iron ratio. And yes, it's been non
(34:58):
gravitationally accelerating, but all comets do that as they outgas.
This comment's been out gassing more than normal, but that's
because it has more CO two than normal comets. So
so it acts like a comet of different characteristics, not
a non comet, right, So that's that's probably the best
way to say it. The story we're going to talk
(35:19):
about now today and offer you comes from space dot com.
It is yet another story about how this commet is
behaving a bit like a comet. It has now been
photographed by Earth based telescopes in a very very kind
of twilight look through the sky at only a mere
fourteen degrees off the eastern horizon at sunrise. So this
(35:44):
is this is a difficult thing to do, but it
was done by what's called the Virtual Telescope Project that's
headquartered out of Italy, and it's a bunch of telescopes
that are robotically driven that can all photograph different object
in the sky simultaneously, and then you can take the
multiple photographs from multiple observatories combine them into a single image.
(36:06):
That's what they've done. The Virtual Telescope Project has now
released the latest image of Comet three I Atlas from
now ground based telescopes on Earth. Because it's just far
enough away from the sun now it's coming around it's
perihelium just now far away enough from the Sun that
we can begin to see it and guess what. It
(36:29):
looks a lot like a comet. Now. What it does
have is it has a sharply defined eye on tail
that is consistent with it having a higher gas content
than most comets that we would typically see from our
own solar system, which we already know about. So it's
behaving still. Similarly, it did experience some non gravitational accelerations
(36:52):
in fact, consistent with the comet losing about thirteen percent
of its mass. That's been reported by AVI Lobe and others. However,
as many common experts will point out, that's not unusual
for a comet that is going by perihelion, particularly if
it has a high content of frozen volatile gases like
CO two, they're gonna melt off and come off. So yeah,
(37:15):
it got boosted a little bit by its own escaping gases,
but not anything that's out of the realm of what
comets do. Now here's the last thing that's interesting. This
is now coming out of South Africa. It is coming
from a report in Wired dot com, but it's been
that's just the kind of the popularized story about this.
It's been released by a group of scientists from the
(37:38):
South African Radio Astronomy Observatory. They have an instrument called Meerkat,
which is a radio telescope kind of conglomeration sixty four
different antennas and Meerkat was able to take data from
three I atlas as well. And guess what it's emitting
radio signatures, So therefore it has to be alien spacecraft. No, yes,
(38:04):
and no. Yes, it's we're detecting the first radio signals
from three IE atlas. No it's not artificially generated radio
signals phoning home by et. It is simply the absorption
features from the oh they call the hydroxyl ion, the
ohion that was detected at sixteen sixty five megaherts and
(38:27):
sixteen sixty seven megahertz. It's a pair of lines from
that hydroxyl ion that is characteristic of comets. There you go.
One more thing where three I Atlas is cleverly disguised
as a naturally made comet when we all know it's
an alien spacecraft. There you go. You heard it here first.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
Friends, you mentioned last week's show. Not only did we
do Music under the Dome there at the Coca Cola
Space sign Center, we did it while Astronomy Night was
getting ready to kick off. If you want to learn
more about Astronomy Night and what goes on at Astronomy Night,
listened to last week's show. The next one is this
weekend for Astronomy Night that is on November fifteenth, and
(39:10):
then coming up in March the next Music under the Dome.
It's done for this calendar year, but in March you'll
get another chance to check out the students and staff
at the Schwob School of music performing there inside the
Omnosphere Theater, with a dazzling show taking place on the
dome up above you. Check out the schedule of all
(39:32):
the events CCSSC dot org. Shawan and I thank you
for listening, and we will do this again next week.
Overhead Door Company of Columbus has all of your garage
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Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar, asterism and uranus. Listen,
that's your own risk. Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
When made of stars, made them stars, made sizes. When
made of stars, you could be from high they would
New Mexicomus, where all stars?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
When we are made of stars.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I'm West Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
Crusen from Lama State Universities, Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Speaker 5 (01:03):
Hay Sean, good morning, Wes. How are you doing today?
Speaker 4 (01:07):
A little disappointed after being really surprised and excited two
nights ago, and then last night some disappointment, but there's
some hope for tonight as we record the show on Thursday,
which is typically what we do. I mean, it's so
strange that in a span of what like nineteen months,
(01:29):
we've had now Aurora borealis visible from my front yard
three times. The only thing I can equate this to
when I was trying to kind of say this, it
started with a conversation with Luke, my thirteen year old,
who's gotten really into this. He's a weather nut to
begin with, doesn't surprise me, and both of my kids
(01:51):
are math nuts. Doesn't surprise me at all that they
would that he specifically would get very excited about space
weather and he has really been.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
There was a point with all of this.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
You taught me the things to look for for the
possibility of seeing Aurora in our area the first time
that this happened, and I kind of explained some of
that to him, and then last night he was breaking
down some of that. He's like, well, the density's off,
we need the density to be and I was like, Okay,
he now knows more about this than I do. He's
got a better understanding of what's going on. But I
(02:28):
was just kind of saying to him, this is a
pretty neat thing in that in the summer we were
snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef and then now we've seen
Aurora from our home this year. So it's twice in
one year that we've been able to observe, you know,
two of the natural wonders of the world. That's pretty neat.
I mean, we got to see it last calendar year.
(02:50):
But now we've seen both of these things in the
same calendar year, which is kind of cool. But anyway,
it's kind of the equivalent of you just walk outside
and the Grand Canyon just shows up in your front yard.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
I mean, when you're not.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Used to seeing this, it's like, wait a minute, what
is it doing there. It's not supposed to be the
harbor in Rio is not supposed to be in my
front yard.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
How did this happen? So here we go again.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
We had this cool moment where you know, the sun
starts doing weird things. The conditions were just right, and
I walked outside. You had sent me a text saying
that it was possible, and it's been possible several times.
But anyway, I went outside the other night and I said,
wait a minute, the sky's pink.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
What's going on?
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Here we go and I sent you some photos that
I had taken and what I didn't and it was
kind of late. When I didn't hear back from you.
I assumed maybe you were asleep, and I thought, well,
we're not heading to Shawn's house tonight. As I was
thinking it, Luke said, are we going to Shawn's house again?
So that's where we were. But anyway, it was kind
of cool, and it was great to see the photos
and nice to see that it was another cool moment
(03:59):
for a really almost nationwide.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
Let me tell you the most exciting thing about the story,
and then the most disappointing thing about the story. Here's
the most exciting thing about the story that you, my
friend and your awesome family, and so many other of
my friends and some of my relatives in Colorado and
people all across the United States got to see this phenomenon.
(04:26):
And when you text me, you text me something to
the effect of it's like having one of the natural
wonders of the world just wander into your front yard.
It's just made me laugh, right because it's it's but
it's actually true. There's a very good friend of ours
who I can tell y'all, you know off air that
I've been talking too lately about actually trying to plan
and schedule a trip to go somewhere to see the
(04:48):
northern lights. And then you know, within something less than
a week, they show up in our own town in
a pretty good display, like I mean, a non marginal
display northern lights here in the southwest west central part
of Georgia. I mean, it's just unbelievable, all right. So
(05:09):
that's the most exciting thing for me. Now, the most
disappointing thing is that I was hard out.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
I was disappointed for you, and when you sent me
a text the next morning, I, oh, no, you missed
it completely. However, why saw that KP index around seven,
which should have told me there was gonna be northern lights?
I saw that indicator, the KP index.
Speaker 5 (05:32):
Go to spaceweatherlive dot com, folks if you want to
know more about that KP index was at seven, and
I still fell asleep on the couch and then just
woke up enough to get myself into bed. It had
just been one of those days, one of those weeks,
and so yeah, I woke up to everyone else's pictures
of the aurora phenomenon the next day. So slacker me,
(05:53):
I missed it. Good on y'all, y'all saw it. That
was great.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Well, I was disappointed for you. I suspected that was
what was going I thought one of two things. When
you didn't respond, you were either actively out observing or
you were asleep. And I figured at some point, if
you were actively out observing, you would be taking photos,
probably with your phone. That's the best way to see
(06:17):
them and really appreciate them. And then I had friends
who were trying to see them and they're like, I
don't know, this guy's a little bit.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Pink, and I'm like, that's it.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Take a photo of it and see exactly how pink
or purple it is, because there's a lot going on
up there that you're not seeing with your eyes. So
what's happened is we've had these CMEs, We've had this
activity on the sun that has showered us with radiation.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
We were soaking up out there.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
Which we were just ecstatic about it. I know, it's
real bathed some solar radiation. You know, that's all good.
It's good for the skin. I think it's like.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Going to the dentist and they say, here, let's put
this vest on you so we can take some pictures
of your tea, some X rays of your teeth, and
you go just hang on to the vest.
Speaker 5 (07:03):
I'm good.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Just let me soak it all in. I want to
really breathe it in. I mean, it's a little different
than that, but I mean we're.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
Gonna cover your vital organs and shoot radiation at your head.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
If you don't mind, that's fine, blast it directly into
your mouth. So this happened, and it was there were
conditions that looked favorable yesterday had people excited again. And
I mean this tends to be the way I think
with most space events. It's like it happens, people go
oh my gosh, that happened. I missed it, and then
they go, well, it might happen today, and then it doesn't,
(07:36):
and then you go, oh, man, well this stinks.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
I'm gonna go kick a rock.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
And I think that happens often with you know, with
rocket launches or an eclipse when it's really cloudy, and
it's just like warrant, warrant, warrant, which, by the way,
when you sent me that text, that's exactly the way
I read it. So there's a chance tonight if you're
listening on Thursday as we record, as the show drops,
(08:00):
it still happen again tonight.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
So be ready charge.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
Let's talk about this like a news story first of all,
and just say this. There's something very important to share
about the event of November eleventh. It's the geomagnetic event.
Auroras were visible in all fifty of the US states,
that means Hawaii saw northern lights, so you could see
(08:25):
the southern cross from Hawaii. Just to put things in perspective,
I guess you can from Key West, Florida too, but
just barely so. All right. Auroras were reported on that
same evening to spaceweather dot com in Newport Richie, Florida,
latitude twenty eight, Tucson, Arizona, latitude thirty two. We would
(08:48):
consider both of those south Our latitude is almost the
same as Tucson here in Columbus, Georgia. And then but
also USU Latin El Salvador with the latitude of thirteen
degrees a mire thirteen degrees off the equator of the Earth,
and they were photographing the aurora that occurred on the
(09:11):
night of November eleventh. Now, why did such a thing happen, Well,
it's because there was something called a cannibal CMEME. We've
talked about these before, something akin to that two CMEs.
Back at what's a cmeme, a coronal mass ejection. So
it goes like this, a giant eruption happens on the Sun.
(09:34):
We call that a solar flare. And with the large
majority of those events, they can kick out bursts of
radiation off the Sun's surface out into the Solar system.
We call that a coronal mass ejection. The masses radioactive particles,
they can be generally the size of Mount Everest in
(09:55):
terms of the amount of mass that's blasted out from
the Sun. Then that radiation goes raying out through the
Solar system. Well, these very two close together CMEs were
shot directly at the Earth by an angry sun spot
on the Sun a few days ago. And and so
then one was traveling a little faster than the other,
(10:15):
and that was the second one. So the second one
kind of caught up to the first one, and they
arrived almost in tandem here at the Earth on the
night of November eleventh, which is what triggered this intense,
nearly global observation of northern lights, which is really really cool.
(10:36):
So you know, strong internal magnetic fields and shock waves
capable of sparking intense geomagnet magnetic activity. That's that's what
these cms were, or the cannibal cmmes, the stacked up CMEs.
All right, So as Wes just alluded to, we all
went out the next night because the the shall we
call in the reporting authorities spaceweather dot com, Space Weather,
(11:00):
and other popular space whether monitoring websites. We're telling us, hey,
it could really happen again tonight because there's a third
CMME on its way in. So we all went out
again last night, which was the twelfth, and we didn't
see anything. And that included me, by the way, Wes,
I was not asleep on the couch last night. I
did go out and look a couple of different times
you and I were texting KP indices back and forth
(11:23):
to each other. It just wasn't quite the same, right, Okay.
But the headline from spaceweather dot com again today again
this morning, more geomagnetic storms are likely today today being
the day we're recording the show, November thirteenth, twenty twenty five.
Earth magnetic field is still reverberating from those three potent
(11:45):
coronal mass ejection strikes in the past forty eight hours.
According to spaceweather dot com, this is causing geomagnetic storms
and widespread aurars right now as we speak. But it's
daytime here in the US as we're recording. Currently, the
storm levels are bouncing betwe between category G one, which
is a minor storm all the way up to G three,
which is a strong storm. As the solar wind blows Earth,
(12:08):
blows around Earth faster than nine hundred kilometers per second.
You don't have a reference for that, but that's about
three times faster than normal. Okay. So NOAA forecasters are
saying that there is a lingering chance of a severe
G four class geomagnetic storm on November thirteenth, that's today.
(12:31):
This according to spaceweather dot com. That's the magnitude of
storm that occurred two days ago on the eleventh that
caused that nearly global set of Aurora phenomenon. So you're
saying there's a chance, lies, damn lies, and statistics, there's
some statistical possibility of a G four class geomagnetic storm
(12:53):
lingering into the evening hours here in the continental United States,
where we could potentially see northern lights. Where a third night.
By the way, even though we didn't see them here
last night, my niece back out in Colorado, she did
send me more pictures, so they did see them at
a little bit more northern latitudes than us last night
as well. This could be a third night in a
(13:14):
row of Aurora phenomenon taking place.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
I have a friend in Montana and he absolutely saw
them up there as well, So that just shows it's
all about you got to be at the right place
at the right time. And you know, one of the
differences this time and the you know, the last two instances,
one was in October, one was in May, and like
(13:38):
five months apart or.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Whatever, it was exactly to the day.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
And this time, because it's in you know, November, we've
had the time change.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
It's darker sooner.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
So the opportunity to get out and check them out
a little bit earlier in the night is also an
advantage to it. So keep that in mind if you're
thinking about checking out the sky tonight.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
That's a really good point west. And I think that
kind of gets forgotten by those of us living in
southerly latitudes trying to see northern lights, because it's not
just the latitude, it's also the longitude that you live
on right your part of Earth has to be faced
toward the dark part of the sky when the particle
(14:19):
wave arrives. So even though you might be quote unquote
far enough south, I'm sorry, far enough north to see it.
Even if you're in southerly latitudes. You could still be
far enough north to see it, like we all were
on the eleventh, but we just weren't on the right
line of longitude when the wave arrived. The wave arrived
a little bit later than what was convenient for us
(14:42):
to observe here in Georgia, and a lot of longitude
was a little bit more westerly. People in the western
United States had a little bit better shot at it.
So that's kind of what we're in the midst of
right now. We know that there is a potential for
enhanced geomagnetic activity today on the thirteenth, we just don't
know if we're at the right place longitude line where
we'll actually be dark when that wave arrives and causes
(15:05):
the geomagnetic disruption. So keep an eye on the sky, friends,
but also keep an eye on spaceweather dot com. Another
great site is spaceweather live dot com. Space weatherlive dot
com is a data site. You have to take a
little bit of time getting used to the data. The
first thing to look at is that kind of speedometer
like plot right at the top of space weather Live.
(15:25):
That is the KP index. If it's green, you're not seen.
If it's orange, maybe there's a shot. If it's red,
go outside right then and just swim in that solar
radiation coming into the earth.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
And I just quickly, just one last thing. And this
may seem obvious to people who took part in this
the last three times. Now you know, if you are
near a bunch of light, you may not get an
opportunity to see it. You want to kind of be
away from any of that light pollution so you got
a better chance of seeing things. You and I have
a mutual friend who I sent him a text the
(16:00):
other night and I said, now go outside, look to
the north, and you.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Know, take a picture.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
And he basically took a picture of a street light
and he's like, I don't see anything.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
And I was like, never mind, never mind.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
I was trying to tell him, no, you don't want
to be near the street light, and you want to
be where it's as dark as the sky that you
can see even if you're just not facing the street light.
But I give him credit, he knew the street light
was to the north.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
I guess.
Speaker 5 (16:23):
I mean, that's a little bit different kind of electromagnetic
fluorescence was observing there. But yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, probably listen. Friends.
If you're a city dweller, you automatically have a disadvantage
to seeing cool things in the sky. It's one of
the reasons I personally live rural. I live out of town.
I bought this house intentionally with not many lights around
(16:46):
it so that I can see sky phenomenon. So there
you go, get out of town once in a while.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
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after this, Well, on the subject of disadvantages, Blue Origin
(18:46):
wants to launch, but I don't know. There's a CME
that's spraying radiation on the planet right about when they
want to do this potentially, So what's the status on
this Blue Origin escapade? They're launching an escapade into space?
What does this this?
Speaker 5 (19:02):
It's an escapade in space, that's exactly what it is.
So some Blue Origins had been having a bit of
an escapade. They've been trying to launch this rocket for
several days, and due to that weird cold snap that
came through the southeastern United States there in the last
few days, cast some strange weather down in Florida, and
it cost them the ability to launch their launch vehicle,
(19:23):
which is called the New Glen Rocket. Why is Blue
Origin launching a New Glen Rocket. Well, you see, there's
a bit of an escapade on and that's the NASA
Escapade mission. Escapade being yet again a fantastic acronym stands
for escape and plasma acceleration dynamics. Explorers plural, not explorer
(19:44):
one singular, Explorers two plural. There are two of these
Mars bound space probes ready to go to space aboard
that New Glen rocket in that giant firing that's twenty
three feet across the New Glenn fairing holding both of
these spacecraft, plus a demonstration flight from a company called Viasat,
(20:08):
which is headquartered in Atlanta, actually provides telecommunication services from
space as well. So that giant New Glen rocket, which
is nearly the size of a Saturn five rocket that
took human beings to the Moon back of the nineteen sixties.
It's a really big heavy lift rocket is waiting to
go potentially today as we're recording the show November thirteenth,
(20:31):
it'll be in the afternoon. We're recording here in the morning,
but they have a watch on because of solar activity. Yes,
the very same solar activity we were just discussing in
the previous two stories. It could be causing a problem
for the launch of the new Glen rocket because the
potential exists for severe geomagnetic storms and in geomagnetic storm levels.
(20:54):
Once again, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issuing an
extended warning for ready proton ten mega electron volt integral
flux above the ten particle flux units, or as they
say it, proton ten MeV integral flux above TENPFU. I
(21:18):
try to not say PFU whenever I can. It can
be misinterpreted. So this type of so called solar proton
event or SPE for short, can be harmful to spacecraft electronics,
so says spaceflightnow dot Com, quoting the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, which is watching the situation closely as they
(21:42):
go through their launch protocols about deciding whether or not
to launch a couple of Mars explorers. If the Escapade
mission actually gets off the ground today, it will be
heading to Mars to do its mission around there, which
is studying the magnet and magnetosphere of Mars to learn
more about how it's been influenced by space weather as
it turns out, over time, about these very kinds of
(22:03):
events that the rocket might get held up for. These
two vehicles are called the Escapade probes are going to
go study the geomagnetic field of Mars. I guess it's
not geomagnet it's Marso magnetic field, the Marso magnetic field
of the planet Mars, to see how it may have
been affected over time by the very kinds of violent
solar storms that we've been discussing on the show today.
(22:25):
Pretty cool stuff, all tied up neatly together in a
big bow.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
All right, So CMEs, obviously for us big part of
what we've been talking about so far. Today, Let's talk
about a different CME, a first of its kind, a
CME from another star that's not ours. First time that
this has been observed.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Ever, every time we've discussed a CME on this show,
probably probably to my recollection at least, we've been talking
about chronal mass injection events off our own star, the Sun.
It's it's it's actually named the Sun. It's like we
looked up and said Moon. Now we call it the moon.
(23:12):
We call other moons. We have names for other moons,
like Callisto is just called moon.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Why didn't we just call it the star? And then
the others are stars, Like I don't I didn't understand
that one. But anyway, I like Sun.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
It's not have we had this subtle, you know, like
distinction between those things. It's all about It's all about
nuance anyway. So all right, so let me get off
that topic. So the for the first time, a coronal
mass ejection, a verified coronal mass ejection, has been observed
taking place on another star that not named the Sun,
(23:49):
name something else anyway. So there's a a red dwarf star.
It was being studied by the European Space Agency a
space craft called the x MM Newton, and this is
a spacecraft designed to study strong X ray events as
they occur in other parts of the visible universe from Earth.
(24:10):
So astronomers using the x MM Newton's spacecraft have seen
a powerful explosion of plasma erupting from a distant star
for the first time, so says space dot com, where
we took this article from. Now, the interesting thing is
this that this the flux we were talking about. You
know how your son is getting more and more into
(24:33):
space weather and how he knows things like, hey, we
need to look at the particle density because that's you know,
that's going to be a thing we have to monitor
to make sure we know. I think this is an
off air conversation that Wes and I were having, but
that's exactly what these astronomers were looking at. As they
looked at this CME around another star, it had a
incredibly high particle density, so it was also moving quite fast.
(24:59):
The ejectivem material was traveling at five point four million
miles per hour, which is considerably faster THANMES, the CMEs
that we were talking about earlier in this show coming
off the Sun. It's also around thirty five hundred times
faster than a an F sixteen fighter jet according to
(25:20):
the story from space dot com as well, and that's
only observed about once in every two thousand coronal mass
ejections from our Sun, so it is not your average
coronal mass ejection, at least compared to those happening around
our parent star. Now see here's the bad thing. The
bad thing is for any planets that might be in
(25:41):
the Goldilock zone around that star, that exostar we would
call those exoplanets or extrasolar planets. If there had been
a planet in the Goldilock zone that had the potential
to have an atmosphere that could be supporting life, that
kind of a CME would strip that atmosphere right off
(26:01):
that orbiting planet, or a significant portion thereof, and therefore
it would make it very difficult for any Earth like
planets around that exo star or extrasolar star. It would
be very difficult for any of those planets to support
life because they couldn't support an atmosphere because they're nearby
(26:22):
to a star that's doing some really violent and aggressive
things and making it very unhospitable in that particular part
of that alien solar system.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
So the age of the star is having an effect
on the speed I mean, is that a possibility of
why it was moving so fast. We don't have to
worry about it here, or should we be worried that,
oh my gosh, this thing we could have one of
these tear off of our sun right at us.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
Certainly, the red dwarf star could has the potential being
significantly older than our Sun. That's just because red dwarf
stars live a lot longer than stars like our set
un tends to live a pretty long time anyway. But
the other thing is that these red dwarf stars can
often have larger interactions between their own magnetic field and
(27:10):
their own surface, which they call the photosphere. They can
have bigger sunspot groups, meaning bigger flares our Sun. One
of the many things that makes it nice for life
here on Earth is that we have a star that
tends to act a little bit more stably. It does
not tend to have these mega sunspot groups that are
(27:34):
capable of super powerful solar flares. Now, we have had
a few mass extinction events in the history of our planet.
We don't know what the cause of all of those
events were. It's not entirely out of the question that
our Sun could have produced a few megaflares in its
(27:54):
past that had a significant impact on life. It's one
of the things we like to try to study in
the kind of fornsic record of the Earth, the Earth's
atmosphere and the Earth's fossils, right, So those are things
that people do look at trying to decide if the
Sun was the culprit behind any of the mass extinction
events that have happened on Earth in the past, But
(28:16):
certainly our Sun is a much more stable star than
what we're seeing from this little red dwarf star in
the nearby part of our galaxy, which just made a
mess of things for its inner part of the Solar system.
So yes, first chural mass ejection from an alien star. No,
not good for life around that particular star. Let's move
(28:36):
on and look somewhere else for signals from aliens.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Well, the holidays are fast approaching, and we all have
someone in our life, maybe more than one, someone in
our life that's really tough to shop for. Well, how
about the gift of peace of mind? We know that
emergencies can strike at any time, and being prepared is
that peace of mind that would be great to be
(29:00):
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Not just about the equipment, It's not just about the gear.
It's about being ready and knowing that you're not going
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figure out exactly what you need to do, and you
(29:22):
can actually focus on the people that matter to you
and imagine being able to give that gift to someone
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Speaker 5 (29:44):
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Speaker 4 (29:45):
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(30:08):
even worldwide. You want to be ready now and not later.
Go to prep StartsNow dot com. Your purchase is not
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Make sure to use your exclusive code Wes w ees
for fifteen percent off. More made of Stars right after this. Okay,
(30:48):
so we've been tracking the three Iye Atlas comet and
we know the story the legend now of three i
Atlas as it was it was an interstellar comment that
had come into our solar system, and then suddenly it
was is it a comet? And that's just sort of
(31:09):
the way that the legend of this thing started to grow,
and it became, well, let's keep an eye on it
and see if it starts doing any strange things. And
it did sort of do some strange things. We address
this on Made of Stars Live when we did our
show at Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center
back on November first, we talked a little bit about it.
(31:30):
We don't talk about aliens lightly. Whenever we have alien discussions.
We try to keep it in the realm of science,
at least you do. You're the scientist. You know that's
I get to make jokes if I want to. I mean,
you get to make jokes too, but you know, you're
trying to keep it serious as much as you can.
Speaker 5 (31:49):
And I do too.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
And then we had you know, Avi Lobe, who is
someone who has really sort of become the face of
the maybe it's an alien story and he is still
kind of trying to keep the possibility of it there
even though the comic is is it starting to.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
Act more like a comet. Now, yeah, so well, maybe
a thing to say is it never really quit acting
like a comet, but.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
It was doing some things that were not typical of comments.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
It really was and so so again Wes said the
right thing. Go back and listen to last week's show,
and now listen. You know, I don't like to go
too deeply into the realm of shameless self promotion, but
I will just say last show's Last week's show was great.
It was really good. We had a fun time. We
had a studio audience. They a live group actually listening
(32:46):
to Wes and I do what we do here, and
they had a good time. So if you missed it,
I'm really sorry you missed it, because it was pretty fun.
We had a great night together, and the content of
the show. I went back and listened to it. It's
pretty good. It's okay. You know again, I'm not trying
to I'm trying to break my arm patting myself on
the back. But we had a fun time West And
(33:07):
one of the things we did is we talked a
lot about this commet.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
And some of the things that it was doing then
or potentially doing the things that science wanted to keep
an eye out for. What I didn't understand is I
saw some of the images of it and it looks
like a comet.
Speaker 5 (33:24):
I didn't understand.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
I mean, it would be one thing if it you know,
if there was you know, like a windscreen on it
or you know something where you go, oh, wall, there's
there might be people or things in there. And it
just looked like a rock the images that we got
back from it to begin with. So that was my
first suspicion that that would be an odd shape and
design for any sort of an alien craft, unless it
(33:49):
was you know, camouflage and they were trying to hide
inside that thing. Anyways, in the dark paths you can
go down, I know, you can go this.
Speaker 5 (33:57):
Well, they designed it to look like so if of
course it's going to actress like a commet, it's going
to quack like a dock, and it's going to walk
like a duck. But it might not be a duck.
It could be an alien spacecraft. I mean, yes, you
could make this point.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
So is it quacking like a duck or what's it
doing now?
Speaker 5 (34:13):
It's quacking like it is quacking like a duck from
someone else's farm. That's what it's doing so again, we
chronicled the differences between this comment and what we think
of as typical comments. But remember this is an actual
known comment from another solar system, so we don't have
a full database of comets from other solar systems to
(34:36):
know what they would act like. And so, yes, there's
a lot more CO two content. Yes, it started forming
a tail far out there, way before our you know,
children of the Sun comets form tails. It has an
odd nickel to iron ratio. And yes, it's been non
(34:58):
gravitationally accelerating, but all comets do that as they outgas.
This comment's been out gassing more than normal, but that's
because it has more CO two than normal comets. So
so it acts like a comet of different characteristics, not
a non comet, right, So that's that's probably the best
way to say it. The story we're going to talk
(35:19):
about now today and offer you comes from space dot com.
It is yet another story about how this commet is
behaving a bit like a comet. It has now been
photographed by Earth based telescopes in a very very kind
of twilight look through the sky at only a mere
fourteen degrees off the eastern horizon at sunrise. So this
(35:44):
is this is a difficult thing to do, but it
was done by what's called the Virtual Telescope Project that's
headquartered out of Italy, and it's a bunch of telescopes
that are robotically driven that can all photograph different object
in the sky simultaneously, and then you can take the
multiple photographs from multiple observatories combine them into a single image.
(36:06):
That's what they've done. The Virtual Telescope Project has now
released the latest image of Comet three I Atlas from
now ground based telescopes on Earth. Because it's just far
enough away from the sun now it's coming around it's
perihelium just now far away enough from the Sun that
we can begin to see it and guess what. It
(36:29):
looks a lot like a comet. Now. What it does
have is it has a sharply defined eye on tail
that is consistent with it having a higher gas content
than most comets that we would typically see from our
own solar system, which we already know about. So it's
behaving still. Similarly, it did experience some non gravitational accelerations
(36:52):
in fact, consistent with the comet losing about thirteen percent
of its mass. That's been reported by AVI Lobe and others. However,
as many common experts will point out, that's not unusual
for a comet that is going by perihelion, particularly if
it has a high content of frozen volatile gases like
CO two, they're gonna melt off and come off. So yeah,
(37:15):
it got boosted a little bit by its own escaping gases,
but not anything that's out of the realm of what
comets do. Now here's the last thing that's interesting. This
is now coming out of South Africa. It is coming
from a report in Wired dot com, but it's been
that's just the kind of the popularized story about this.
It's been released by a group of scientists from the
(37:38):
South African Radio Astronomy Observatory. They have an instrument called Meerkat,
which is a radio telescope kind of conglomeration sixty four
different antennas and Meerkat was able to take data from
three I atlas as well. And guess what it's emitting
radio signatures, So therefore it has to be alien spacecraft. No, yes,
(38:04):
and no. Yes, it's we're detecting the first radio signals
from three IE atlas. No it's not artificially generated radio
signals phoning home by et. It is simply the absorption
features from the oh they call the hydroxyl ion, the
ohion that was detected at sixteen sixty five megaherts and
(38:27):
sixteen sixty seven megahertz. It's a pair of lines from
that hydroxyl ion that is characteristic of comets. There you go.
One more thing where three I Atlas is cleverly disguised
as a naturally made comet when we all know it's
an alien spacecraft. There you go. You heard it here first.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
Friends, you mentioned last week's show. Not only did we
do Music under the Dome there at the Coca Cola
Space sign Center, we did it while Astronomy Night was
getting ready to kick off. If you want to learn
more about Astronomy Night and what goes on at Astronomy Night,
listened to last week's show. The next one is this
weekend for Astronomy Night that is on November fifteenth, and
(39:10):
then coming up in March the next Music under the Dome.
It's done for this calendar year, but in March you'll
get another chance to check out the students and staff
at the Schwob School of music performing there inside the
Omnosphere Theater, with a dazzling show taking place on the
dome up above you. Check out the schedule of all
(39:32):
the events CCSSC dot org. Shawan and I thank you
for listening, and we will do this again next week.
Overhead Door Company of Columbus has all of your garage
door needs covered. Residential and commercial service and repairs. If
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you need a new garage door you're just looking to
upgrade or repair your current door, Overhead Door Company of
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