July 10, 2025 • 38 mins
Venus Aerospace successfully flew the world’s first atmospheric test of a rotating
detonation rocket engine that could eventually lead to a 55 minute trip from NY to Paris. Why does the Moon have magnetic rocks? Scientists have a new strongest solar storm ever recorded. Scientists now know how the lights turned on at the bebinning of time.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/made-of-stars--4746260/support.
detonation rocket engine that could eventually lead to a 55 minute trip from NY to Paris. Why does the Moon have magnetic rocks? Scientists have a new strongest solar storm ever recorded. Scientists now know how the lights turned on at the bebinning of time.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/made-of-stars--4746260/support.
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Transcript
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.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (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 a.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Stars? When we are made of stars.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I'm Wes Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
Cruiser from Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Hey Sean, Hey, we's good to be here today.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
I normally we talk when we record, We'll say morning
or afternoon or whatever, based on when we're recording. I'm
I'm on the other side of the planet from you
right now, So I don't know if it's daytime, nighttime,
I don't know. I just know we're getting the we're
getting the show recorded about when we normally do on
a Thursday, and then we'll release it at about the
(01:28):
same time that we normally release it. But I mentioned
being here on the other side of the planet. In Australia.
We've been here for a few weeks now and our
trip kind of starting to wind down. But one of
the things that I feel like is really relevant to
(01:49):
my trip is this story. And the story a couple
of months old now from back in May, but it's
pretty significant considering not only a few weeks ago did
like a you know, thirty something hour trip to get here,
but I've got to do another one of those next
week to get back home.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Oh boy.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
But this is one of those cool stories where we
start looking at some of the when people talk about
things like, oh my gosh, it's rich people just launching
up to space so that they can say that they're
an astronaut, and all those sorts of things. We've talked
about how at one time just international travel or even
a domestic travel in an airplane wasn't something that the
average person could afford, and yes, the rich people did it,
(02:33):
and eventually that helped make it affordable for everyone else,
and then that certainly was true for you know, transatlantic
flight or so. One of the things that we hope
maybe that comes from some of the testing and things
that have been done with some of these missions, is
how do we shorten some of these flights and some
of the technology involved in doing that. Well, now we've
(02:55):
got a company that has had an achievement and accomplishment
that's as maybe we could get from one point on
the earth far far away in a really short amount
of time.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
So you hit the nail on the head as far
as I'm concerned saying that we we don't necessarily have
wide distribution of technologies when they are first being developed
or they're first coming out. Like, not everybody had electricity.
It was only a very limited number of people who
(03:29):
can afford electricity at one time in the history of
our civilization, right, But then as we developed electricity and
saw how useful it was, it became more affordable as
we developed the technology. Right. That has occurred with well,
I mean even water was that way, right, And so
(03:51):
there are places in the world today that still we're
still working to try to get their water at standpoint.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Right, Yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
So water distributions, distribution, uh, or the ability to have
a sewer system, electricity.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Indoor plumbing, right, I mean, there's you would be amazed
at how many places around the world don't have indoor plumbing.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
If you spend time in Haiti, you know how important
some of these ideas are. There are other countries. That's
just one that I've happened to visit a few times,
and they're working very diligently, diligently in Haiti to try
to get people clean and safe water.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
For the record, for the record, here in Australia, indoor plumbing,
toilets and always a possibility of a snake being in
the toilet. I'm just I'm just saying, that's nothing to do.
That's nothing to do. That's just the reality of this country.
And it's just the way or you know, you open
the lid and there's a tree frog underneath the lid.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
That's always a possibility.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
I can speak firsthand of that and have to catch
it and then you know, take it outside and then
come back into the bathroom.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
The wiles of Australia, friends, what you're facing right now,
that's right well anyway, So yeah, then if you consider
these technologies being advanced to things like telecommunications and radio and.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
TV and then actual telephones two way communication and then
the Internet and all these kinds of things, right we're
developing technologies, so we are now going to talk about
a technology that we are at the cusp of investigating
a brand new technology in transportation. We've already gone through
you know, horse and buggies, self propelled vehicles, ships and
(05:32):
trains and balloons and zeppelins and all kinds of things.
And we don't typically do travel stories on this podcast,
but we're you know, you're traveling right now. So this
is a story that I found on a website called
luxury launches dot com. Not a site that we quote
a lot from, but okay, we're going to do it today.
(05:53):
Luxury launches dot com. You can find the story otherwhere
other places, by the way, But there's a company in Houston,
Texas called Venus Aerospace that recently, earlier the summer, had
something that sounds a bit like science fiction, but they
actually achieved it, which is, they achieved testing an engine
(06:16):
that's for a jet aircraft that could not only possibly
help the jet aircraft achieve supersonic speeds faster than the
speed of sound, but all the way up to pass
the line of something that we call hypersonics, which is
mock five or five times the speed of sound. They
(06:37):
didn't test the aircraft, but they did test the engine
and this was a successful test. Now, if this particular
engine reaches its full potential, you might be able to
take a hypersonic aircraft trip from New York to Paris
(06:59):
in fifty five five minutes. Real, it's amazing, not even
enough time to finish an entire episode of an hour
long national geographic show. Because that's I know, that's the
favorite of many of our listeners out there, and that's
what I watch when I'm traveling. Of course, that's nothing
(07:22):
quite sets the tone for that international flight, like watching
you know, binging a whole in National Geographic series. So
I was gonna say something about The Walking Dead, but
you know, I just thought, Wow, maybe I'll shift gears
and go to National Geo.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
You know, that's that's fine.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
That's fine too, you know, the the last of us.
I don't know, whatever you watch in an hour, you're
not gonna have enough time, even if you're flying from
New York to Paris, because your flight can only take
fifty five minutes. Friends, it's gonna take longer to get
on the plane than to cross the Atlantic. Okay, so
(08:00):
what kind of crazy futuristic technology could possibly allow for
that to happen? Well, it's a certain kind of engine
system that allows for an aircraft that can take off
from a runway the same way that some you know,
(08:24):
some number like seven thirty seven, you know, or seven
eighty seven or one of those kind of you know,
they take it off from a horizontal you know, paved
asphalt tarmac. Well, what if you could do that though,
But then a hybrid of a regular jet engine combined
with a rocket engine began to fire, and you reached
(08:48):
hypersonic speeds and then you shut it back off and
you came back down to land. That is the vision
of Venus Aerospace from Houston, Texas. That is the vision
of their vd R two engine, And they just fired
the first one successfully just a few weeks ago out
(09:10):
in the deserts of New Mexico at Spaceport America. It's
a special kind of engine called a rotating detonation rocket engine,
which again is a hybrid of a jet engine, but
then also it generates a massive amount of thrust. It
generates a massive amount of thrust. A little bit further back, Okay,
(09:34):
it's a combination of a rocket engine and jet engine,
but it actually has a rot rotating detonation system where
it generates a massive amount of thrust and can do
it in a continual fashion. And this hybrid engine is
(09:54):
capable of reaching speeds and mock six. But it didn't
do that in the short flight Spaceport America because it
only fired for seven seconds. Okay, yeah, I mean, you
know that flight at Kitty Hawk was fairly short too,
but you know that led to some good places, asked
Chuck Yeger. All right, so the notion is that we
have this engine system. Now, that's the kind of engine
(10:16):
that can make all these things happen. And it had
its first ever successful test flight. It went from the
imagination of rocket engine engineers and designers and people that
do really complex fluid dynamics imagining how it could work,
to know a company actually built it and fluid. The company,
(10:41):
Venus Aerospace, was founded by a married couple, Sarah and
Andrew Duggleby, and they both quit their jobs at other
places and went off to begin their dream company of
a rocket engine that can help jet aircraft achieve hypersonic flight.
It's an interesting in comparison to say, you know, if
(11:02):
now that they've had a successful test, they're gonna be
working to build the actual functioning design for real aircraft.
Compare that to Concord right, that was we know Conquerwell,
I was a super fast you could you know, rock
stars and famous people rode this vehicle because you could
fly across the Atlantic in a very short time. Well,
(11:22):
that vehicle flew from nineteen seventy six to two thousand
and three. Its top speed was mock two, so it
still took three and a half hours. Granted a relatively
short time to cross the Atlantic, but that's not even
close to fifty five minutes mock two versus mock six.
(11:42):
Good luck and godspeed to Venus Aerospace. Congratulations on the
first ever test of the rotating detonation rocket engine, and
we hope there are bright things in the future of
this technology for all of us.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
All Right.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
So, something that we've always heard about magnetic rocks on
the Moon, and I've always wondered, and I don't never
asked you this question before, and I thought it was
great that we actually have a story from space dot
com this week that talks about this. There's no magnetic
field on the Moon, yet the Moon has magnetic rocks,
(12:20):
So how does that?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
How does that happen? Exactly?
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah, that's clearly a conspiracy Wes, you know, it's.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
I mean, I just assumed that there was a guy
up there with a with a magnet and and some
metal and he was just rubbing it together because that,
you know, it gives it just a little brief magnetic period, right,
you just rub it on there and then throw it
around and then I mean, that could be a way
that it happened. And you know, we did send a
bunch of monkeys up there at some point in the
in the past.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I like to point out during these moments that I
have no data to say that that didn't happen.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Well, I used to know a guy that it's firmly
believed that there are actively monkeys we send up there
on the Moon and on Mars looking for all of
the oil fields. So I mean, based on his logic,
that could have happened if those monkeys just started rubbing
the rocks on magnets. But that's unlikely at the very mean,
(13:13):
typically to.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Have fossil fuels, you first have to have fossils, you know, Okay,
you know, I mean I can't tell people what not
to believe. I don't really get into that. I can
tell them what what we have evidence for and we
have no evidence of fossil fuels either on the Moon
or Mars at this time.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
It was one of those middle management guys that you
just kind of go, I probably should correct them, but
I'm not really comfortable doing that.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
We don't Whereas the idea of monkeys on the Moon
might be very interesting. They probably would need to breathe,
unless they're special non breathing moon monkeys. I mean, it
could be a thing.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Well, we now have some more evidence to suggest that
maybe it wasn't someone or monkeys, you know, rubbing magnets
on rocks up there, that it was actually something else.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
It's a statistically unlikely scenario, I would say, monkeys rubbing
magnets on rocks. No, here's what really happened. We really
have something came in and slammed into the Moon so
hard that it turned the surface into plasma because of
the generated heat, and that plasma can then align magnetically
(14:23):
because it's a plasma, right, and so that's what that's
what's likely to have happened. So for decades, scientists have
been trying to understand why some rocks on the Moon
seem to have stronger magnetization than others, even though the
Moon has no magnetic field today at least right so,
these moon rocks have been brought back to Earth from
(14:43):
the NASA Apollo missions. There's also been some sample and
return from the Chinese Space Agency, so particularly from the
far side, there seem to have some rocks that are
surprisingly strong magnetic signatures as measured from space. So all
these things are interesting, right well, so, some new computer
(15:03):
simulations have been run. By the way, this is a
story from space dot com. You can check out more
on the space dot com website about this story. New
computer simulations have been run suggesting that a massive asteroid
impact billions of years ago. They have briefly amplified the
Moon's old weak magnetic field in certain geographic locations where
(15:25):
the surface was turned to plasma. So this impact could
have left behind a magnetic imprint that's still detectable in
lunar rocks today. There's a graduate student at MIT's Department
of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences that led the study.
His name is Isaac Nerrett, and here's a quote from
Isaac Nerrett quote. The majority of the strong magnetic fields
(15:47):
that are measurable by orbiting spacecraft can be explained by
this process, especially on the far side of the Moon.
All right, here's the weird thing. The far side of
the moon. We don't see any evidence of major impacts
on the far side of the moon, but we see
some really big impact sites on the near side, or
(16:12):
the Earth facing side of the Moon. Let's stay away
from the terms dark side and light side because that's
even though I love that album, that really isn't a
physical thing. Right, both sides are light and dark at
different times during the month. Okay, so it's the near
side far side. Well, on the near side or Earth
facing side of the Moon, there's a gigantic impact basin
(16:33):
called the mare Imbrium. Mara is a word that means sea,
and so there's a sea called the mare Imbrium. Is
it really a seed? No, it's what we thought were
bodies of water when our telescopes weren't very good several
hundred years ago. But we now realize they are lava
filled impact basins on the Moon. That means that something
(16:53):
big had to hit on this near side of the
Moon and make this gigantic basin called the mare Imbrium.
It turns out that such a large object hitting the
Moon would have sent vibrational shock waves and plat and
liquefied in turning into a plasma all the way through
to the other side of the Moon. So how do
(17:16):
you get magnetized rocks on the far side of the
Moon from an impact on the near side or Earth
facing side of the Moon. You do it because the
energy is transferred entirely through the middle of the Moon
all the way to the other side. Such an impact
would have vaporized surface material, created a cloud of superheated
(17:37):
electrically charged particles known as a plasma, and this would
have temporarily amplified the Moon's magnetic field in that region.
So rocks in that area would have captured short lived
magnetic surge before the field faded away and magnetized those rocks,
according to this new study out of MIT from HAD
(18:00):
student Isaac Narrett. So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen,
how do you get magnetized rocks on the Moon? You
have to punch the Moon really really hard with a
giant asteroid. That's how you do it.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Coming up after a quick break, we got two stories
that take a look back in time. One of them
goes way back in time. We'll do that next. We've
(18:38):
talked quite a bit since we've been doing this show
for a long time now about whenever there is some
sort of a solar storm or a chronal mass ejection,
or some sort of a solar event worth noting, there
have been some notable ones that we have talked about
from the past that were certainly things that get our attention.
(19:00):
Talk about the Carrington event back in the eighteen fifties,
and we talk about how if something of that strength
were to happen today, how much chaos it could create
for us here, especially with all of our technology, and
you know, people using things like Starlink for their Internet
(19:20):
and other companies, but that being one of the more
notable ones, and I know people that use starlink for
their Internet. So there's a another solar event that took
place much much farther back back in the old BC
(19:40):
or BCE whatever they call it now, Way back then,
fourteen three hundred years ago, approximately the most powerful solar
storm ever recorded took place. And I guess if we
could talk about that and how they came to that conclusion,
and then what that kind of storm could mean for
(20:01):
us if that were to happen today.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Yeah, you did a great job teeing it up. Let
me let me just mention a couple of other storms.
So Wes mentioned the Carrington Event, which is a giant
solar flare in eighteen fifty nine that actually set telegraph
wires on fire all around the world. Now, again, our
electronic technology at the time was fairly rudimentary in eighteen
(20:26):
fifty nine compared to today's standards. But even that technology
was severely disrupted. Okay. Then there was another big storm
that was only about one tenth the strength of the
Carrington event that happened back in two thousand and three.
It happened on Halloween. Interestingly enough, we captured images of
that event from the Coca Cola Space Science Center and
(20:48):
our Solar Observatory, which is pretty cool. So the Halloween
Store of two thousand and three was strong enough that
it caused chaos in Earth's orbit as satellite trajectories changed predictably,
and we even lost a couple of satellites during that event.
Then there was a storm known as the Gannon Storm.
(21:09):
It happened back in twenty twenty four. It was similar
strength to the Halloween storm. And something really weird happened.
Now in twenty twenty four, we have so many more
satellites in orbit. The satellites are more sophisticated than they
were in two thousand and three, so they have on
board systems that detect when they're losing altitude, and then
(21:30):
the satellites have a system inside that is automatically triggered
to boost them back up to their proper orbit. Well,
when the Gannon Storm of twenty twenty four occurred, the
Sun shot a plasma or charge wave of charged particles
at the Earth that caused the atmosphere of the Earth
to swell, and then all of these satellites by the
(21:51):
thousand started experiencing drag of the atmosphere and all of
their little thrusters began to fire simultaneously, and so we
had a mass firing of thousands of satellites thruster systems
for them to readjust their altitude, which caused well what
(22:12):
it causes a lot of satellites to lose a lot
of their fuel necessary to sustain them in orbit. So
when we're in an era of things like starlink that
Wes mentioned earlier, which is a lower overting satellite and
we need to have them for a ground based services
like internet and telephone potentially are telecommunication systems. And suddenly
(22:33):
a storm like this happens back in twenty twenty four,
the Gannon event, and all of these satellites have to
try to swim upstream to even stay in orbit. You
begin to wonder about the sustainability of space based platforms.
Right okay, Now, let me just make it clear that
if the Carrington event, that eighteen to fifty nine storm
(22:55):
occurred today, you wouldn't just be worrying about satellite orbits.
You could be worrying about electrical outages and other communications
systems that are earth based being down for as long
as up to six months. That according to the National
Academy of Sciences. So yeah, Carrington event bad, all right,
(23:19):
But then we have to talk about what happened in
twelve three point fifty BC twelve thousand, three hundred and
fifty years BC, in about fourteen thousand years ago. Right
in that year, apparently there was such a strong solar
(23:41):
storm that it has now been considered to be the
strongest solar storm ever to occur. It's fifty times more
powerful than the Carrington event of eighteen fifty nine and
five hundred times more powerful than the Halloween Storm of
two thousand and three. So how do we know that, Well,
(24:04):
it was a long time ago, none of us were there.
But it turns out that events of that magnitude cause
a chain of chemical reactions that can actually cause a
spike in the carbon fourteen isotope to exist and that
gets embedded in trees. And so a group of scientists
(24:28):
out of Oulu University in Finland have done some chemistry
climate modeling based on the carbon fourteen isotope spikes that
they're finding in fossilized tree rings, and they are finding
based on that that sometime in the last Ice Age,
a massive, massive solar flare impacted the Earth. This event
(24:56):
was so powerful that it is now considered the strongest
flare in recorded history, and now it's recorded in actual
tree rings with carbon fourteen data. Right, So, this, according
to the team, establishes a new worst case scenario for
the most powerful flares to ever occur, something even far
(25:19):
more damaging than the Carrington event, which we call the
Great Solar Flare of eighteen fifty nine. It's just a possibility, right.
A storm is ferocious as the twelve three point fifty
BC event would likely cause complete mayhem if it were
to occur and strike Earth today, not just with space
based systems, but actually all ground based electronics. Something on
(25:44):
par with what we have talked about in society as
an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse, so something on that scale, right,
but globally, not locally, a global EMP. So this study
was published in the Journal of Earth and Planetary Sciences
back in May Bay fifteenth of this year, and so
(26:07):
interesting story out of Finland. The strongest ever solar storm,
at least in the records that we can find, both
electronically and in the Earth itself.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
Another reason that it's important that we talk about solar
activity on the show because we try to give you
those heads up.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
When things are happening.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
And obviously that is a worst case scenario that could
play out for all of us. With all of that,
all right, let's talk about it was going further back
in time, even much further back, and talk about the
beginning of time. And this is some new data that's
come in complements of the James Web Space Telescope as
(26:49):
well as Hubble.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Yeah, you know, it's this is literally a story about
the starting of the universe, the genesis of the cosmos,
the Great Beginning, often referred to as the Big Bang.
It's funny to know that that was a derogatory term
by somebody who didn't believe in the Big Bang. And
when I say somebody was an astrophysicist who did not
believe in the beginning of the universe, that they believed
(27:14):
in the steady state model at that time, guy by
the name of Fred Hoyle said, WHOA, what do you
mean it all started some kind of big bang? Anyway,
that term is stuck. So anyway, all right, so we're
really talking about the genesis of the space time continuum
itself from nothing to something. And in the early minutes
(27:39):
past the beginning of that event, it was very hard
for light to travel through the material that was on
hand at that time, and so there was a period
of time in the very early part of the universe
where light could not travel with out being encumbered by
(28:01):
running into little charged particles of protons and electrons that
would later become hydrogen. This is ionized hydrogen plasma. So
at the beginning of the universe, within just a few
minutes of the Big Bang, what little light there was
couldn't have penetrated this kind of hot, dense fog of
(28:21):
ionized plasma. Okay, well, then something caused the universe to
become transparent, right, the universe went from opaque to transparent.
One of the things that cosmologists try to figure out
is what could have possibly caused that era to occur
in the early universe. And as it turns out that
(28:43):
if you just bombard these plasmas with massive amounts of photons,
you can actually cause that plasma to become transparent by
the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with these charge particles. So
the question has long been Okay, well, what then generated
enough light to photoionize the early universe? This has been
(29:07):
one of the big questions in cosmology. Some ideas have
been thrown out, things like super massive black holes that
may have formed very quickly after the beginning of the
universe and had interactions with the plasma. Maybe they could
have put off enough electromagnetic radiation to kind of ionize everything,
but that model has difficulties. Other mechanisms have been suggested,
(29:30):
but now we are finding a new mechanism with some
evidence that's backing it up from data from the James
Web Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope working together,
So using data from James Webb and Hubble. By the way,
what's different about James Web than Hubble. James Webb can
see in the dark now, James Web can see in
(29:50):
the infrared part of the spectrum. Right. The Hubble Space
Telescope does not have infrared capability, but the James Web's
infrared capability allows it to be able to see through clouds,
seeing back further into the ancient universe as well. All right,
So this interesting capability combining Hubble images with James Webspace
(30:11):
Telescope images has caused us to look at some of
the very earliest parts of our universe, very far back
in time, and be able to penetrate those early locales
with infrared observing technologies. And it turns out what scientists
are finding in greater numbers than ever before are something
(30:33):
called dwarf galaxies, little baby sized galaxies that aren't really
going to grow up to be bigger galaxies. They're just
a whole different species of galaxy. We see dwarf galaxies today.
In fact, around our own Milky Way, we have the
large Magulanic Cloud and the small Magellanic Cloud, which by
the way west, they're visible from Australia. You can check
(30:54):
them out while you're down there. They are two little
dwarf companions to the Milky Way Galaxy, and the Milky
Way Galaxy is a large spiral. So what the scientists
are finding is that there were just a huge number
of these little dwarf galaxies. But that's only part of
the story, because here's something else. It turns out that
(31:15):
dwarf galaxies in the early part of the universe, has
measured from these James Webspace telescope data sets, it looks
like they were way brighter than dwarf galaxies today. In
other words, they were inhabited by massive stars that were
putting off far more light than the typical stars in
(31:36):
dwarf galaxies today, as much as four times the amount
of ionizing radiation that would be necessary to cause this
photoionization of the early universe by big galaxies. This is
a really cool story. It's being led by a team
from the Institute the Astrophysique de Paris. That's my best
(31:59):
French friends.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
That's pretty boy. Yeah, that was pretty pretty darn good.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
I never study foreign language. But anyway, so anyway, so uh,
Irena Kimrinska, Irena Kimriinska, I didn't study that name well enough.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Irena Kimriinska is one of the scientists on this Here's
a quote from Irena Kimriinska. This discovery unveils the crucial
role played by ultra faint galaxies. Because they're small ultra
faint galaxies in the early universe, right, they produce ionizing
photons that transform neutral hydrogen into ionized plasma during cosmic reionization.
(32:38):
This discovery highlights the importance of understanding low mass galaxies
in shaping the universe's history. Irena Kimerinska institute the Astrophysique.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
De Peli Right.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Another scientist from the same place, don't make me say
it again, from the same place, the team lead, Hakeem
Atech has this quote. Despite their tiny size, these low
mass galaxies are prolific producers of energetic radiation, and their
abundance during this period is so substantial that their collective
influence can transform the entire state of the universe. Unbelievable
(33:16):
new discovery. If you don't follow cosmology, you may go
while that was a lot of mumbo jumble mouthfuls. But
if you're a person like me who spent the vast
majority of my career thinking about the early cosmological environments
of the universe, this is a huge story because it's
offering a brand new mechanism for an unexplained behavior of
(33:38):
the early universe. Friends, there you.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Have it all right.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
I can't say that I've driven a car on the Moon.
I can say that I have driven a car many
times in Australia on the other side of the road,
and at the moment it kind of almost makes more
sense than driving it on the correct side of the road,
as we like to call it. But at the Coca
(34:03):
Cola Space Science Center and at the Bow Bartlett Center,
you guys have plenty of opportunities for folks to see
some artifacts donated by the family of a guy who
did drive a car on the Moon.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
The first guy to drive a car.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
On the Moon, the first guy to drive a car.
I love Jerry Seinfeld's a bit about that. He's like,
as if it weren't far enough, we went all the
way to the Moon, then what we had to do
when we got there, we had to drive around in
a little car. That's the most male activity you can do.
You go all the way to the moon and then
you drive around in a car.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
As comedian Brian Reagan says, I was really worried about
the speed of it, but then I realized we're the
only ones here, all right. Yeah. So Commander David Scott
from Apollo fifteen was the first person to ever drive
a car on the surface.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Of the Moon.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
And I don't know if he was on the right
or left hand side. Wes, I'm confused about this, but
I guess he got to decide. That's like, sure's the
person that said, up here, we're driving on the you know,
fill in the blank.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
It was a virtual Autobahn.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
He could just do whatever, any speed, any side of
the road, just avoid the potholes.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
As a lot of potholes.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Well, even though I don't know what side of the
road Dave drove on on the Moon, I do know
his brother Tom, and his brother Tom was a very
good friend to Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science
Center and has facilitated the donation of many artifacts and
pieces of memorabilia from Dave Scops three trips to the
Moon his brother Dave three trips to the moon Gemini eight,
(35:35):
Apollo nine, and Apollo fifteen, and we have artifacts from
all three of those trips. In fact, we have so
many now that we can't even we don't even have
enough room in our own gallery to put him up.
So we made a special arrangement with our friends down
at the Bow Bartlett Center, the art gallery at Columbustate
University that's just down the street from us, about three
blocks and my good friend Mike McFall down there is
(35:57):
the director of the bo Bartlett Center, has agreed to
put up these beautiful pieces from the David Scott collection
on display this summer. We began that back on June third,
and it's going to be on display through August the second.
If you would like to come down and see original
collection pieces from the collection of astronaut David Scott on display,
(36:20):
you can visit the Bow Bartlet Center and then while
you're there, get a great tour of these artifacts. But
then you can take a selfie next to an astronaut
and you can use that selfie with the astronaut to
get a discounted admission here to the Space Science Center,
and we'll give you a five dollars ticket to come
in and see us that day, so you can have
a two facility space adventure with your family for a
(36:44):
very reasonable price free at the Bow Bartlet Center five
dollars per person here at Space Science Center. Got to
take that selfie down at Bow Bartlett first, but then
you show that at the front desk here Space Science Center.
Get a discounted amission here and have a day of
space friends. Find out all about Dave Scott and as
many trips to outer space, including driving a car on
(37:05):
the Moon. And come see this here and enjoy the atmosphere, theater,
the space Shuttle, otysy, and the many exhibits we have
in our exhibit gallery here at the Coca Cola Space
Signed Center, all at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
Seawann and I thank you for listening, and we'll do
this again. I'll be very jet lagged, but we'll 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 you need a new garage door,
(37:42):
or you're just looking to upgrade or repair your current door,
Overhead Door Company of Columbus has you covered. Plus they've
got your emergency repairs or service covered as well. Seven
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dot com
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.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (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 a.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Stars? When we are made of stars.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I'm Wes Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
Cruiser from Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Hey Sean, Hey, we's good to be here today.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
I normally we talk when we record, We'll say morning
or afternoon or whatever, based on when we're recording. I'm
I'm on the other side of the planet from you
right now, So I don't know if it's daytime, nighttime,
I don't know. I just know we're getting the we're
getting the show recorded about when we normally do on
a Thursday, and then we'll release it at about the
(01:28):
same time that we normally release it. But I mentioned
being here on the other side of the planet. In Australia.
We've been here for a few weeks now and our
trip kind of starting to wind down. But one of
the things that I feel like is really relevant to
(01:49):
my trip is this story. And the story a couple
of months old now from back in May, but it's
pretty significant considering not only a few weeks ago did
like a you know, thirty something hour trip to get here,
but I've got to do another one of those next
week to get back home.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Oh boy.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
But this is one of those cool stories where we
start looking at some of the when people talk about
things like, oh my gosh, it's rich people just launching
up to space so that they can say that they're
an astronaut, and all those sorts of things. We've talked
about how at one time just international travel or even
a domestic travel in an airplane wasn't something that the
average person could afford, and yes, the rich people did it,
(02:33):
and eventually that helped make it affordable for everyone else,
and then that certainly was true for you know, transatlantic
flight or so. One of the things that we hope
maybe that comes from some of the testing and things
that have been done with some of these missions, is
how do we shorten some of these flights and some
of the technology involved in doing that. Well, now we've
(02:55):
got a company that has had an achievement and accomplishment
that's as maybe we could get from one point on
the earth far far away in a really short amount
of time.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
So you hit the nail on the head as far
as I'm concerned saying that we we don't necessarily have
wide distribution of technologies when they are first being developed
or they're first coming out. Like, not everybody had electricity.
It was only a very limited number of people who
(03:29):
can afford electricity at one time in the history of
our civilization, right, But then as we developed electricity and
saw how useful it was, it became more affordable as
we developed the technology. Right. That has occurred with well,
I mean even water was that way, right, And so
(03:51):
there are places in the world today that still we're
still working to try to get their water at standpoint.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Right, Yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
So water distributions, distribution, uh, or the ability to have
a sewer system, electricity.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Indoor plumbing, right, I mean, there's you would be amazed
at how many places around the world don't have indoor plumbing.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
If you spend time in Haiti, you know how important
some of these ideas are. There are other countries. That's
just one that I've happened to visit a few times,
and they're working very diligently, diligently in Haiti to try
to get people clean and safe water.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
For the record, for the record, here in Australia, indoor plumbing,
toilets and always a possibility of a snake being in
the toilet. I'm just I'm just saying, that's nothing to do.
That's nothing to do. That's just the reality of this country.
And it's just the way or you know, you open
the lid and there's a tree frog underneath the lid.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
That's always a possibility.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
I can speak firsthand of that and have to catch
it and then you know, take it outside and then
come back into the bathroom.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
The wiles of Australia, friends, what you're facing right now,
that's right well anyway, So yeah, then if you consider
these technologies being advanced to things like telecommunications and radio and.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
TV and then actual telephones two way communication and then
the Internet and all these kinds of things, right we're
developing technologies, so we are now going to talk about
a technology that we are at the cusp of investigating
a brand new technology in transportation. We've already gone through
you know, horse and buggies, self propelled vehicles, ships and
(05:32):
trains and balloons and zeppelins and all kinds of things.
And we don't typically do travel stories on this podcast,
but we're you know, you're traveling right now. So this
is a story that I found on a website called
luxury launches dot com. Not a site that we quote
a lot from, but okay, we're going to do it today.
(05:53):
Luxury launches dot com. You can find the story otherwhere
other places, by the way, But there's a company in Houston,
Texas called Venus Aerospace that recently, earlier the summer, had
something that sounds a bit like science fiction, but they
actually achieved it, which is, they achieved testing an engine
(06:16):
that's for a jet aircraft that could not only possibly
help the jet aircraft achieve supersonic speeds faster than the
speed of sound, but all the way up to pass
the line of something that we call hypersonics, which is
mock five or five times the speed of sound. They
(06:37):
didn't test the aircraft, but they did test the engine
and this was a successful test. Now, if this particular
engine reaches its full potential, you might be able to
take a hypersonic aircraft trip from New York to Paris
(06:59):
in fifty five five minutes. Real, it's amazing, not even
enough time to finish an entire episode of an hour
long national geographic show. Because that's I know, that's the
favorite of many of our listeners out there, and that's
what I watch when I'm traveling. Of course, that's nothing
(07:22):
quite sets the tone for that international flight, like watching
you know, binging a whole in National Geographic series. So
I was gonna say something about The Walking Dead, but
you know, I just thought, Wow, maybe I'll shift gears
and go to National Geo.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
You know, that's that's fine.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
That's fine too, you know, the the last of us.
I don't know, whatever you watch in an hour, you're
not gonna have enough time, even if you're flying from
New York to Paris, because your flight can only take
fifty five minutes. Friends, it's gonna take longer to get
on the plane than to cross the Atlantic. Okay, so
(08:00):
what kind of crazy futuristic technology could possibly allow for
that to happen? Well, it's a certain kind of engine
system that allows for an aircraft that can take off
from a runway the same way that some you know,
(08:24):
some number like seven thirty seven, you know, or seven
eighty seven or one of those kind of you know,
they take it off from a horizontal you know, paved
asphalt tarmac. Well, what if you could do that though,
But then a hybrid of a regular jet engine combined
with a rocket engine began to fire, and you reached
(08:48):
hypersonic speeds and then you shut it back off and
you came back down to land. That is the vision
of Venus Aerospace from Houston, Texas. That is the vision
of their vd R two engine, And they just fired
the first one successfully just a few weeks ago out
(09:10):
in the deserts of New Mexico at Spaceport America. It's
a special kind of engine called a rotating detonation rocket engine,
which again is a hybrid of a jet engine, but
then also it generates a massive amount of thrust. It
generates a massive amount of thrust. A little bit further back, Okay,
(09:34):
it's a combination of a rocket engine and jet engine,
but it actually has a rot rotating detonation system where
it generates a massive amount of thrust and can do
it in a continual fashion. And this hybrid engine is
(09:54):
capable of reaching speeds and mock six. But it didn't
do that in the short flight Spaceport America because it
only fired for seven seconds. Okay, yeah, I mean, you
know that flight at Kitty Hawk was fairly short too,
but you know that led to some good places, asked
Chuck Yeger. All right, so the notion is that we
have this engine system. Now, that's the kind of engine
(10:16):
that can make all these things happen. And it had
its first ever successful test flight. It went from the
imagination of rocket engine engineers and designers and people that
do really complex fluid dynamics imagining how it could work,
to know a company actually built it and fluid. The company,
(10:41):
Venus Aerospace, was founded by a married couple, Sarah and
Andrew Duggleby, and they both quit their jobs at other
places and went off to begin their dream company of
a rocket engine that can help jet aircraft achieve hypersonic flight.
It's an interesting in comparison to say, you know, if
(11:02):
now that they've had a successful test, they're gonna be
working to build the actual functioning design for real aircraft.
Compare that to Concord right, that was we know Conquerwell,
I was a super fast you could you know, rock
stars and famous people rode this vehicle because you could
fly across the Atlantic in a very short time. Well,
(11:22):
that vehicle flew from nineteen seventy six to two thousand
and three. Its top speed was mock two, so it
still took three and a half hours. Granted a relatively
short time to cross the Atlantic, but that's not even
close to fifty five minutes mock two versus mock six.
(11:42):
Good luck and godspeed to Venus Aerospace. Congratulations on the
first ever test of the rotating detonation rocket engine, and
we hope there are bright things in the future of
this technology for all of us.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
All Right.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
So, something that we've always heard about magnetic rocks on
the Moon, and I've always wondered, and I don't never
asked you this question before, and I thought it was
great that we actually have a story from space dot
com this week that talks about this. There's no magnetic
field on the Moon, yet the Moon has magnetic rocks,
(12:20):
So how does that?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
How does that happen? Exactly?
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah, that's clearly a conspiracy Wes, you know, it's.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
I mean, I just assumed that there was a guy
up there with a with a magnet and and some
metal and he was just rubbing it together because that,
you know, it gives it just a little brief magnetic period, right,
you just rub it on there and then throw it
around and then I mean, that could be a way
that it happened. And you know, we did send a
bunch of monkeys up there at some point in the
in the past.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I like to point out during these moments that I
have no data to say that that didn't happen.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Well, I used to know a guy that it's firmly
believed that there are actively monkeys we send up there
on the Moon and on Mars looking for all of
the oil fields. So I mean, based on his logic,
that could have happened if those monkeys just started rubbing
the rocks on magnets. But that's unlikely at the very mean,
(13:13):
typically to.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Have fossil fuels, you first have to have fossils, you know, Okay,
you know, I mean I can't tell people what not
to believe. I don't really get into that. I can
tell them what what we have evidence for and we
have no evidence of fossil fuels either on the Moon
or Mars at this time.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
It was one of those middle management guys that you
just kind of go, I probably should correct them, but
I'm not really comfortable doing that.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
We don't Whereas the idea of monkeys on the Moon
might be very interesting. They probably would need to breathe,
unless they're special non breathing moon monkeys. I mean, it
could be a thing.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Well, we now have some more evidence to suggest that
maybe it wasn't someone or monkeys, you know, rubbing magnets
on rocks up there, that it was actually something else.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
It's a statistically unlikely scenario, I would say, monkeys rubbing
magnets on rocks. No, here's what really happened. We really
have something came in and slammed into the Moon so
hard that it turned the surface into plasma because of
the generated heat, and that plasma can then align magnetically
(14:23):
because it's a plasma, right, and so that's what that's
what's likely to have happened. So for decades, scientists have
been trying to understand why some rocks on the Moon
seem to have stronger magnetization than others, even though the
Moon has no magnetic field today at least right so,
these moon rocks have been brought back to Earth from
(14:43):
the NASA Apollo missions. There's also been some sample and
return from the Chinese Space Agency, so particularly from the
far side, there seem to have some rocks that are
surprisingly strong magnetic signatures as measured from space. So all
these things are interesting, right well, so, some new computer
(15:03):
simulations have been run. By the way, this is a
story from space dot com. You can check out more
on the space dot com website about this story. New
computer simulations have been run suggesting that a massive asteroid
impact billions of years ago. They have briefly amplified the
Moon's old weak magnetic field in certain geographic locations where
(15:25):
the surface was turned to plasma. So this impact could
have left behind a magnetic imprint that's still detectable in
lunar rocks today. There's a graduate student at MIT's Department
of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences that led the study.
His name is Isaac Nerrett, and here's a quote from
Isaac Nerrett quote. The majority of the strong magnetic fields
(15:47):
that are measurable by orbiting spacecraft can be explained by
this process, especially on the far side of the Moon.
All right, here's the weird thing. The far side of
the moon. We don't see any evidence of major impacts
on the far side of the moon, but we see
some really big impact sites on the near side, or
(16:12):
the Earth facing side of the Moon. Let's stay away
from the terms dark side and light side because that's
even though I love that album, that really isn't a
physical thing. Right, both sides are light and dark at
different times during the month. Okay, so it's the near
side far side. Well, on the near side or Earth
facing side of the Moon, there's a gigantic impact basin
(16:33):
called the mare Imbrium. Mara is a word that means sea,
and so there's a sea called the mare Imbrium. Is
it really a seed? No, it's what we thought were
bodies of water when our telescopes weren't very good several
hundred years ago. But we now realize they are lava
filled impact basins on the Moon. That means that something
(16:53):
big had to hit on this near side of the
Moon and make this gigantic basin called the mare Imbrium.
It turns out that such a large object hitting the
Moon would have sent vibrational shock waves and plat and
liquefied in turning into a plasma all the way through
to the other side of the Moon. So how do
(17:16):
you get magnetized rocks on the far side of the
Moon from an impact on the near side or Earth
facing side of the Moon. You do it because the
energy is transferred entirely through the middle of the Moon
all the way to the other side. Such an impact
would have vaporized surface material, created a cloud of superheated
(17:37):
electrically charged particles known as a plasma, and this would
have temporarily amplified the Moon's magnetic field in that region.
So rocks in that area would have captured short lived
magnetic surge before the field faded away and magnetized those rocks,
according to this new study out of MIT from HAD
(18:00):
student Isaac Narrett. So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen,
how do you get magnetized rocks on the Moon? You
have to punch the Moon really really hard with a
giant asteroid. That's how you do it.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Coming up after a quick break, we got two stories
that take a look back in time. One of them
goes way back in time. We'll do that next. We've
(18:38):
talked quite a bit since we've been doing this show
for a long time now about whenever there is some
sort of a solar storm or a chronal mass ejection,
or some sort of a solar event worth noting, there
have been some notable ones that we have talked about
from the past that were certainly things that get our attention.
(19:00):
Talk about the Carrington event back in the eighteen fifties,
and we talk about how if something of that strength
were to happen today, how much chaos it could create
for us here, especially with all of our technology, and
you know, people using things like Starlink for their Internet
(19:20):
and other companies, but that being one of the more
notable ones, and I know people that use starlink for
their Internet. So there's a another solar event that took
place much much farther back back in the old BC
(19:40):
or BCE whatever they call it now, Way back then,
fourteen three hundred years ago, approximately the most powerful solar
storm ever recorded took place. And I guess if we
could talk about that and how they came to that conclusion,
and then what that kind of storm could mean for
(20:01):
us if that were to happen today.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Yeah, you did a great job teeing it up. Let
me let me just mention a couple of other storms.
So Wes mentioned the Carrington Event, which is a giant
solar flare in eighteen fifty nine that actually set telegraph
wires on fire all around the world. Now, again, our
electronic technology at the time was fairly rudimentary in eighteen
(20:26):
fifty nine compared to today's standards. But even that technology
was severely disrupted. Okay. Then there was another big storm
that was only about one tenth the strength of the
Carrington event that happened back in two thousand and three.
It happened on Halloween. Interestingly enough, we captured images of
that event from the Coca Cola Space Science Center and
(20:48):
our Solar Observatory, which is pretty cool. So the Halloween
Store of two thousand and three was strong enough that
it caused chaos in Earth's orbit as satellite trajectories changed predictably,
and we even lost a couple of satellites during that event.
Then there was a storm known as the Gannon Storm.
(21:09):
It happened back in twenty twenty four. It was similar
strength to the Halloween storm. And something really weird happened.
Now in twenty twenty four, we have so many more
satellites in orbit. The satellites are more sophisticated than they
were in two thousand and three, so they have on
board systems that detect when they're losing altitude, and then
(21:30):
the satellites have a system inside that is automatically triggered
to boost them back up to their proper orbit. Well,
when the Gannon Storm of twenty twenty four occurred, the
Sun shot a plasma or charge wave of charged particles
at the Earth that caused the atmosphere of the Earth
to swell, and then all of these satellites by the
(21:51):
thousand started experiencing drag of the atmosphere and all of
their little thrusters began to fire simultaneously, and so we
had a mass firing of thousands of satellites thruster systems
for them to readjust their altitude, which caused well what
(22:12):
it causes a lot of satellites to lose a lot
of their fuel necessary to sustain them in orbit. So
when we're in an era of things like starlink that
Wes mentioned earlier, which is a lower overting satellite and
we need to have them for a ground based services
like internet and telephone potentially are telecommunication systems. And suddenly
(22:33):
a storm like this happens back in twenty twenty four,
the Gannon event, and all of these satellites have to
try to swim upstream to even stay in orbit. You
begin to wonder about the sustainability of space based platforms.
Right okay, Now, let me just make it clear that
if the Carrington event, that eighteen to fifty nine storm
(22:55):
occurred today, you wouldn't just be worrying about satellite orbits.
You could be worrying about electrical outages and other communications
systems that are earth based being down for as long
as up to six months. That according to the National
Academy of Sciences. So yeah, Carrington event bad, all right,
(23:19):
But then we have to talk about what happened in
twelve three point fifty BC twelve thousand, three hundred and
fifty years BC, in about fourteen thousand years ago. Right
in that year, apparently there was such a strong solar
(23:41):
storm that it has now been considered to be the
strongest solar storm ever to occur. It's fifty times more
powerful than the Carrington event of eighteen fifty nine and
five hundred times more powerful than the Halloween Storm of
two thousand and three. So how do we know that, Well,
(24:04):
it was a long time ago, none of us were there.
But it turns out that events of that magnitude cause
a chain of chemical reactions that can actually cause a
spike in the carbon fourteen isotope to exist and that
gets embedded in trees. And so a group of scientists
(24:28):
out of Oulu University in Finland have done some chemistry
climate modeling based on the carbon fourteen isotope spikes that
they're finding in fossilized tree rings, and they are finding
based on that that sometime in the last Ice Age,
a massive, massive solar flare impacted the Earth. This event
(24:56):
was so powerful that it is now considered the strongest
flare in recorded history, and now it's recorded in actual
tree rings with carbon fourteen data. Right, So, this, according
to the team, establishes a new worst case scenario for
the most powerful flares to ever occur, something even far
(25:19):
more damaging than the Carrington event, which we call the
Great Solar Flare of eighteen fifty nine. It's just a possibility, right.
A storm is ferocious as the twelve three point fifty
BC event would likely cause complete mayhem if it were
to occur and strike Earth today, not just with space
based systems, but actually all ground based electronics. Something on
(25:44):
par with what we have talked about in society as
an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse, so something on that scale, right,
but globally, not locally, a global EMP. So this study
was published in the Journal of Earth and Planetary Sciences
back in May Bay fifteenth of this year, and so
(26:07):
interesting story out of Finland. The strongest ever solar storm,
at least in the records that we can find, both
electronically and in the Earth itself.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
Another reason that it's important that we talk about solar
activity on the show because we try to give you
those heads up.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
When things are happening.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
And obviously that is a worst case scenario that could
play out for all of us. With all of that,
all right, let's talk about it was going further back
in time, even much further back, and talk about the
beginning of time. And this is some new data that's
come in complements of the James Web Space Telescope as
(26:49):
well as Hubble.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Yeah, you know, it's this is literally a story about
the starting of the universe, the genesis of the cosmos,
the Great Beginning, often referred to as the Big Bang.
It's funny to know that that was a derogatory term
by somebody who didn't believe in the Big Bang. And
when I say somebody was an astrophysicist who did not
believe in the beginning of the universe, that they believed
(27:14):
in the steady state model at that time, guy by
the name of Fred Hoyle said, WHOA, what do you
mean it all started some kind of big bang? Anyway,
that term is stuck. So anyway, all right, so we're
really talking about the genesis of the space time continuum
itself from nothing to something. And in the early minutes
(27:39):
past the beginning of that event, it was very hard
for light to travel through the material that was on
hand at that time, and so there was a period
of time in the very early part of the universe
where light could not travel with out being encumbered by
(28:01):
running into little charged particles of protons and electrons that
would later become hydrogen. This is ionized hydrogen plasma. So
at the beginning of the universe, within just a few
minutes of the Big Bang, what little light there was
couldn't have penetrated this kind of hot, dense fog of
(28:21):
ionized plasma. Okay, well, then something caused the universe to
become transparent, right, the universe went from opaque to transparent.
One of the things that cosmologists try to figure out
is what could have possibly caused that era to occur
in the early universe. And as it turns out that
(28:43):
if you just bombard these plasmas with massive amounts of photons,
you can actually cause that plasma to become transparent by
the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with these charge particles. So
the question has long been Okay, well, what then generated
enough light to photoionize the early universe? This has been
(29:07):
one of the big questions in cosmology. Some ideas have
been thrown out, things like super massive black holes that
may have formed very quickly after the beginning of the
universe and had interactions with the plasma. Maybe they could
have put off enough electromagnetic radiation to kind of ionize everything,
but that model has difficulties. Other mechanisms have been suggested,
(29:30):
but now we are finding a new mechanism with some
evidence that's backing it up from data from the James
Web Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope working together,
So using data from James Webb and Hubble. By the way,
what's different about James Web than Hubble. James Webb can
see in the dark now, James Web can see in
(29:50):
the infrared part of the spectrum. Right. The Hubble Space
Telescope does not have infrared capability, but the James Web's
infrared capability allows it to be able to see through clouds,
seeing back further into the ancient universe as well. All right,
So this interesting capability combining Hubble images with James Webspace
(30:11):
Telescope images has caused us to look at some of
the very earliest parts of our universe, very far back
in time, and be able to penetrate those early locales
with infrared observing technologies. And it turns out what scientists
are finding in greater numbers than ever before are something
(30:33):
called dwarf galaxies, little baby sized galaxies that aren't really
going to grow up to be bigger galaxies. They're just
a whole different species of galaxy. We see dwarf galaxies today.
In fact, around our own Milky Way, we have the
large Magulanic Cloud and the small Magellanic Cloud, which by
the way west, they're visible from Australia. You can check
(30:54):
them out while you're down there. They are two little
dwarf companions to the Milky Way Galaxy, and the Milky
Way Galaxy is a large spiral. So what the scientists
are finding is that there were just a huge number
of these little dwarf galaxies. But that's only part of
the story, because here's something else. It turns out that
(31:15):
dwarf galaxies in the early part of the universe, has
measured from these James Webspace telescope data sets, it looks
like they were way brighter than dwarf galaxies today. In
other words, they were inhabited by massive stars that were
putting off far more light than the typical stars in
(31:36):
dwarf galaxies today, as much as four times the amount
of ionizing radiation that would be necessary to cause this
photoionization of the early universe by big galaxies. This is
a really cool story. It's being led by a team
from the Institute the Astrophysique de Paris. That's my best
(31:59):
French friends.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
That's pretty boy. Yeah, that was pretty pretty darn good.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
I never study foreign language. But anyway, so anyway, so uh,
Irena Kimrinska, Irena Kimriinska, I didn't study that name well enough.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Irena Kimriinska is one of the scientists on this Here's
a quote from Irena Kimriinska. This discovery unveils the crucial
role played by ultra faint galaxies. Because they're small ultra
faint galaxies in the early universe, right, they produce ionizing
photons that transform neutral hydrogen into ionized plasma during cosmic reionization.
(32:38):
This discovery highlights the importance of understanding low mass galaxies
in shaping the universe's history. Irena Kimerinska institute the Astrophysique.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
De Peli Right.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Another scientist from the same place, don't make me say
it again, from the same place, the team lead, Hakeem
Atech has this quote. Despite their tiny size, these low
mass galaxies are prolific producers of energetic radiation, and their
abundance during this period is so substantial that their collective
influence can transform the entire state of the universe. Unbelievable
(33:16):
new discovery. If you don't follow cosmology, you may go
while that was a lot of mumbo jumble mouthfuls. But
if you're a person like me who spent the vast
majority of my career thinking about the early cosmological environments
of the universe, this is a huge story because it's
offering a brand new mechanism for an unexplained behavior of
(33:38):
the early universe. Friends, there you.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Have it all right.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
I can't say that I've driven a car on the Moon.
I can say that I have driven a car many
times in Australia on the other side of the road,
and at the moment it kind of almost makes more
sense than driving it on the correct side of the road,
as we like to call it. But at the Coca
(34:03):
Cola Space Science Center and at the Bow Bartlett Center,
you guys have plenty of opportunities for folks to see
some artifacts donated by the family of a guy who
did drive a car on the Moon.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
The first guy to drive a car.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
On the Moon, the first guy to drive a car.
I love Jerry Seinfeld's a bit about that. He's like,
as if it weren't far enough, we went all the
way to the Moon, then what we had to do
when we got there, we had to drive around in
a little car. That's the most male activity you can do.
You go all the way to the moon and then
you drive around in a car.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
As comedian Brian Reagan says, I was really worried about
the speed of it, but then I realized we're the
only ones here, all right. Yeah. So Commander David Scott
from Apollo fifteen was the first person to ever drive
a car on the surface.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Of the Moon.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
And I don't know if he was on the right
or left hand side. Wes, I'm confused about this, but
I guess he got to decide. That's like, sure's the
person that said, up here, we're driving on the you know,
fill in the blank.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
It was a virtual Autobahn.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
He could just do whatever, any speed, any side of
the road, just avoid the potholes.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
As a lot of potholes.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Well, even though I don't know what side of the
road Dave drove on on the Moon, I do know
his brother Tom, and his brother Tom was a very
good friend to Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science
Center and has facilitated the donation of many artifacts and
pieces of memorabilia from Dave Scops three trips to the
Moon his brother Dave three trips to the moon Gemini eight,
(35:35):
Apollo nine, and Apollo fifteen, and we have artifacts from
all three of those trips. In fact, we have so
many now that we can't even we don't even have
enough room in our own gallery to put him up.
So we made a special arrangement with our friends down
at the Bow Bartlett Center, the art gallery at Columbustate
University that's just down the street from us, about three
blocks and my good friend Mike McFall down there is
(35:57):
the director of the bo Bartlett Center, has agreed to
put up these beautiful pieces from the David Scott collection
on display this summer. We began that back on June third,
and it's going to be on display through August the second.
If you would like to come down and see original
collection pieces from the collection of astronaut David Scott on display,
(36:20):
you can visit the Bow Bartlet Center and then while
you're there, get a great tour of these artifacts. But
then you can take a selfie next to an astronaut
and you can use that selfie with the astronaut to
get a discounted admission here to the Space Science Center,
and we'll give you a five dollars ticket to come
in and see us that day, so you can have
a two facility space adventure with your family for a
(36:44):
very reasonable price free at the Bow Bartlet Center five
dollars per person here at Space Science Center. Got to
take that selfie down at Bow Bartlett first, but then
you show that at the front desk here Space Science Center.
Get a discounted amission here and have a day of
space friends. Find out all about Dave Scott and as
many trips to outer space, including driving a car on
(37:05):
the Moon. And come see this here and enjoy the atmosphere, theater,
the space Shuttle, otysy, and the many exhibits we have
in our exhibit gallery here at the Coca Cola Space
Signed Center, all at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
Seawann and I thank you for listening, and we'll do
this again. I'll be very jet lagged, but we'll 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 you need a new garage door,
(37:42):
or you're just looking to upgrade or repair your current door,
Overhead Door Company of Columbus has you covered. Plus they've
got your emergency repairs or service covered as well. Seven
oh six three five eight forty five hundred seven oh
six three five eight forty five hundred o DC Columbus
dot com
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