June 12, 2025 • 39 mins
The Strawberry Moon's name doesn't come from it's color but from what time of year strawberries are at peak ripeness. Japan's Resilience spacecraft has slammed into the Moon. Astronomers have dicovered an object "unlike anything we've seen before". Axiom's Ax-4 has been delayed again. Axiom has partnered with NASA to study DNA of fruit flies.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
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 1 (00:16):
Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
When made of stars, made them stars, madies. When made
of stars, you could be from high they would New
Mexicomus where a stars?
Speaker 4 (00:43):
When we are made of stars.
Speaker 5 (00:57):
I'm Wes Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
Reisen from Columbus State Universities, Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Hey Shaan, good.
Speaker 6 (01:04):
Morning, Wes. Good to be here today.
Speaker 5 (01:06):
So we're recording a little bit early. We're doing this
on the eleventh for our show on the twelfth, and
just as just general, I don't know how important it
is that we say it, but we mentioned it because
we've got a story that relates to this for possibly
for tomorrow. As far as today goes, and then the
next several shows will be pre recorded, as many of
(01:31):
them will be because I'm going to be overseas. I'll
be in Australia doing lots of planning, for a possible
podcast and trip and visit down Under so that we
can check out totality for the eclipse happening there. And
I think it's twenty twenty nine. I forget the month,
but so I'll make sure that'll be the first question
(01:51):
I asked down there to make my trip at tax
right off?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
When when is this thing going to happen?
Speaker 5 (01:58):
It's the beginning of my investigator report anyway, So the
next few shows will be pre recorded and we've got
some good stuff coming up. One of the things that
we're going to be doing in a couple of weeks
is you and I what.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Was it fourteen years ago? Eleven years? How long ago
was it?
Speaker 5 (02:19):
I forgot the We interviewed al Warden for radio because
he was coming to the Cocola Space Science Center for
an event, So coming up in a few weeks, we
decided to officially make that part of the Mate of
Stars podcast by transferring that over into a podcast so
relevant because of his connections with Dave Scott. And then
(02:41):
we'll also have a show coming up around Independence Day,
a tribute for Dave Scott. So we got some cool
stuff kind of planned while I'm gone. Anytime you can
interview an astronaut and revisit an interview with an astronaut.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
That's fun.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
And then obviously Dave Scott and you guys are doing
a special thing. We'll talk about that towards the end
of the show. But what you guys are doing compliments
of the Scott family and things going on at the
Space Science Center and the Bow Bartlett Center. But we'll
get to that coming up. Before we do that, we
want to talk about a few space things because we
(03:17):
talked not long ago about the fact that we had
China and Russia trying to teaming up so that they can,
you know, they want to move forward on building a
base on the Moon, and one of the things they
wanted to do was get some kind of nuclear power
there as a something that they've teamed up to do
(03:37):
and I had questions about and it's going to be
all like, you know, robots are going to be building
this thing, AI and robots and nanobots and I don't know,
just they're going to be sending some sort of nuclear
agent to the Moon in order to do this. And
and I'd had questions then about you know, how how
(03:59):
many successful landings if we had by both of them.
I know one of them is a little better than
the other. Right now, I guess China's doing a little
better than Russia. But it's just a concern to me
when we start talking about plutonium or uranium or whatever
it is they will send to the Moon because of
the possibility of one of these crafts slamming into the Moon.
(04:20):
The Moon's kind of important for a number of reasons,
at least for our survival here on Earth, and I
just get a little nervous about it. And then that
leads us into our next story, which isn't about China
or Russia. It's about Japan. But hey, Japan just slams
something into the Moon.
Speaker 6 (04:39):
I mean, in the days of modern technology, artificial intelligence,
advanced robotics, landing on the Moon in twenty twenty five
is a piece of cake. I mean, not like back
in the sixties where it was actually hard. Now today
there is just zero problem landing anything on the Moon. Friends,
(05:00):
if you don't know what this is, this is a
scientist being sarcastic. That's what I'm saying right now, because yeah,
yet another mission has failed to successfully soft land on
the Moon. Now, let's make no mistake. They landed on
the Moon. They took a payload, launched it from Earth.
It is now on the Moon, so we can't say
(05:22):
they didn't land there. We can say that it's even
impact with the lunar surface. We can say there's embedded question.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
Embedded is a word we could say, you know, like
it's there is it is part of the Moon.
Speaker 6 (05:35):
Earlier this morning, friends, I sent my friend Wes a
text message that had a gift of Wiley coyote falling
off the cliff in a little mushroom cloud at the bottom.
That's what the latest Japanese spacecraft did. Now, let's not
make fun of the Japanese because we just had an
American company do that a few months ago. Intuitive machines,
(05:58):
this is I space. I don't know why they all
start with ie. They just seem to anyway, So I
got a good idea. Yeah, I mean, could could be
the we might be referencing some other technological advances anyway.
So then I mean, but also, you know, India and
Israel and lots of other there have been a lot
of spacecraft that have just simply ardered into the surface
(06:20):
of the Moon and made a you know, a giant
smudge yeah, and now we have one more. And as
West pointed out, it's a good thing that there's not
plutonium on it, because that site might not be acceptable
for some long period of time to even try to
go near or explore or you know, let alone build
a space station or a power plant on the Moon.
(06:43):
So yeah, there's all that. Yeah, the Moon's hard, even
with AI, even with advanced robotics technology, even though we
are just the smartest creatures that have ever lived on
planet Earth. Again scientific sarcasm landing on the hard period.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
Yeah, it is, and it's it's going to be hard
for the next long foreseeable future. Maybe we get to
a point where it's just easy. It's back and forth.
Some companies make it look a little easier than others,
some countries make it look a little easier than others.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Doesn't mean that it is easy.
Speaker 5 (07:19):
There's always that possibility of complications and problems.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
I just see this.
Speaker 5 (07:24):
You sent me that gift, and I sent you a
gift of you know, some sort of world ending explosion,
which wasn't I don't think the moon, but it looked
close enough, and I just thought, wow, we we we
need that. And I know it's not it's Japan. This
isn't the Russia China project. I just have concerns that
they're going to have this perfected in the next what
(07:46):
seven years or whatever it is that they're going to start.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Where's the kaboom?
Speaker 6 (07:50):
There should have been an earth shattering kaboom.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
Yes, indeed, Uh so there was that. And then now
we have another follow up story. We were telling everyone
that the uh uh ax four is was getting ready
to launch. We talked about the significance of that as
far as the passengers that we're going to be on board.
That that has been delayed, and it had been delayed
(08:19):
a few times.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
It's been delayed again.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
Uh, there's a chance that by the time we get
around to uh we'll have this up tomorrow on the
twelfth of June. And like I said, we're recording this
on the eleventh, but if we get this up on
the twelfth, well we'll have a better idea of whether
or not tomorrow's potential launch happens or is going to happen.
(08:43):
But yeah, we have a booster leak.
Speaker 6 (08:47):
Yeah, so it is Axiom space go ahead.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
Yeah, no, and it ties into this hole. This is
hard because we often hear these stories about leaks, right,
I mean, this is one of the things that is hard.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
So anyway, sorry, you have to take some.
Speaker 6 (09:02):
Of the lightest elements on the entire periodic table and
put them under extreme pressure, which if you know a
little bit about chemistry, those little molecules, those little atoms,
those little molecules of elements, they sneak out of little holes,
(09:23):
they get out really easy.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Right.
Speaker 6 (09:25):
And so if you're trying to pressurize helium, which is
necessary for these fuel tanks, or you're trying to pressurize
some fuels that are again among some of the lighter
elements on the periodic table and quite combustible, and you
put them under extreme pressure, and then you have to
stop all the leaks. I mean, we can't even stop
links under sinks sometimes, right, there's I've had links in
my lenks in my own bathroom that were difficult to
(09:46):
plug up. It's a hard job, right, And so yeah,
what happened was, well, what happened was the Falcon nine booster,
which was scheduled to take the axiom Ax four IT
astronaut mission to the International Space Station since late May.
Actually they've been having delays for one reason or another,
(10:09):
they got it out to the pad, and again this
is yesterday as we're recording the show. They got it
out to the pad, fueled it up, got ready to go,
and it had a leak. And it had a fuel leak.
And here's the interesting thing. The interesting thing is this
is a reused booster. And that's the beautiful thing about
what SpaceX is doing. They're not throwing away their main
(10:31):
stage boosters. Therefore they're making space travel a lot more
accessible and a lot more affordable. Okay, that's the upside.
The downside is the last time this same booster launched,
it was taking a Starlink constellation of satellites up to
orbit and it had a leak then two. So apparently
(10:52):
they didn't get the leak fixed in the liquid oxygen system,
in this case liquid oxygen on the Falcon nine booster.
According to Bill gersten Meyer, we haven't said Gersty's name
for a while. Ohsty, Girsty's back. He used to be
the director of Human Spaceflight for NASA. Now he is
vice president of Build and Fly Reliability at SpaceX. He's
(11:13):
got a new gig. In other words, went from the
government side to the pay dollars side. Anyway, so there
he is working at SpaceX. He came out and said this,
the liquid oxygen leak was first detected on the booster's
previous flight. We discovered we had not fully repaired the
booster during refurbishment. He said, we didn't find the leak
(11:35):
and didn't get it corrected. Well, okay, that's one of
the problems with reusability. I mean it's you know, everything's
a trade off, right, This is what we learn in physics.
Everything's a trade off. So so yeah, it's now they're
now they're actually going to address the leak. It's probably
going to take a few days. I don't think this
(11:58):
will be a quick turnaround. But they're not releasing or
not suggesting a new launch date as of the time
of the recording of this show. So we think it's
we think we're safe. We think it's gonna be a
bit probably not gonna be tomorrow, but you know who knows.
So uh. This is Dana Weigel, who's NASA's ISS program manager.
(12:19):
She said there is no immediate schedule pressure to launch
AX four. The station can support launch opportunities through the
end of June, and that's because you know, they're the
traffic is low right now, there's not a lot of
it's apparently not the tourist season on the ISS there's
not well except the tourist we're trying to get up there,
and they had a fuel leak other than them anyway,
(12:40):
so they're they're still waiting to fly. Now, who's on
the mission. It's Peggy Whitson. She's the actual Axiom employee. Now,
she's former NASA astronaut and a legend of American spaceflight.
So I'm just there's an avalanche of stuff in my
office right now. It's probably making a lot of noise.
Is just decided to fall against my wall. I have
(13:02):
no idea why. Peggy Whitson a legend of American space
flight and she is the commander of the AX four crew.
She's of course from the US. Shibhan Shu Schokla from
India as a mission specialist, slaswo Uzlananski is from Poland,
and Tibor Capou from Hungary. It's gonna make the first
(13:25):
Indian Poland person and Hungarian Polish person to go up
to the International Space Station. So this is gonna be
a good flight. It's packed full of interesting experiments. Actually,
the one of those experiments is our next story, but
we're gonna have to put it off for just a
little longer until they fix that fuel league, that oxygen
fuel league on that reused SpaceX Falcon nine boosters.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
Speaking of that next story, it relates to fruit flies,
and it's kind of interesting and it's funny. This story
came up because I was reading a completely different article
about something else relating to fruitflies, another study that was
being done.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Because of the.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
Similar DNA or the similarities, we're not too far off,
surprisingly from fruitflies who would have known. And my concern was,
this doesn't relate to the NASA one we're about to
talk about. But when you start saying they're doing all
this work on fruit flies and figuring out ways to
help their DNA and make them live longer, and I'm like,
(14:30):
that's not.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
A good thing.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
We don't want those out there.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
But but I suppose some of this could relate to
some of this, because they're trying to study DNA of
fruitflies in space as part of a mission. So yeah,
let's let's talk about that.
Speaker 6 (14:50):
As long as we don't share the data freely with
the fruitfly scientists. That's true, you know, begin to employ
this technology in the fruitfly society.
Speaker 5 (15:00):
Because we're gonna we're gonna be able to figure out
if there's a lab where they do experiments on fruit
flies somewhere, and then if we have a fruit fly
problem that comes out of that lab, maybe that would
be the first place we should look.
Speaker 6 (15:14):
We definitely don't want to share this with the dingy flies.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Oh, we do not.
Speaker 5 (15:18):
I'm gonna hear a lot of I'm gonna hear a
lot about dingy fever over the next few weeks, lots
about it.
Speaker 6 (15:26):
Well. This story is from the American Physical SOCIETYFIZZ dot
org phys dot org. It says this, NASA partners with Axiom. Yep,
that's right, it's the ax for mission. Friends, NASA partners
with Axiom for International Space Station DNA repair experiment. Okay,
so here's here's one of the important characteristics that we
share with fruit flies. We all like watermelon. Yes, that's
(15:50):
that must be at least one of them. That's not
in the story, by the way, I just threw that
in pro bono.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
And bananas.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
Bananas are good. Yeah, I like them. Actually, I had
a really squishy banana on my lunch yesterday, probably the
fruitflies would have liked it better than me. I'm just
thinking that's but that's too much information. Let's go back
to the story, all right. So on the AX four
flight is an experiment that NASA scientists are hoping will
help us better understand the effects of space travel on
(16:17):
the human body, particularly on something called the DNA repair process.
Here's what happens. There are elements in the space environment,
such as cosmic radiation that can damage our DNA, and
if it damages our DNA strings, that's what our body
(16:38):
uses to rep for the replication process to produce new
cells that help us rebuild our muscles and our brain
tissue and all the important parts of our organs. So
we want those DNA strands intact. We don't want them
to be disrupted by cosmic radiation because if our body
starts replicated on damage DNA, that can lead to things
(16:59):
like cams and so that's not good. So the one
thing that we share in common with fruitflies is that
they rebuild their DNA code in much the same way
that we do. It's not that we share the same
pant sizes, and we certainly can't use their glasses because
they have more eyes than us. So it's all those
(17:20):
things are not in common how and they have wings
we don't, at least most of us don't. So and
then so let's ignore those characteristics, but let's look at
the way that they replicate their DNA and how that
might be affected by the space environment. That is what
they're doing, all right. So, because humans and fruitflies share
a lot of this process of repairing their genetic codes,
(17:43):
we do a lot of experiments on the International Space
Station with fruitflies, and for one reason is they're just
cheaper to take to space than Michael Strahan. He's too big.
We love that Michael Strahan went to space. We can
talk about later whether he's an astronaut or not he is,
but for sure he's not as small as a fruit fly,
(18:05):
definitely not. He's going to take a little bit more
infrastructure to go to space than a fruitfly. So, if
we're going to perform DNA experiments on someone, and your
choice is Michael Strahan, who's a big fellow, and a
fruitfly who's a small fellow, you want to take the
fruit flies and lots of their friends because you can
(18:27):
do a lot more experimenting. See, there's what we're up
to right. So, through a New Space Act agreement between
NASA and Axiom Space, Axiom is agreed to transport NASA
experiments on board the AX four flight, including the quote
vented flybox vented v n ted sounds like they might escape.
I don't know. Well, I'm not responsible for looking at over,
(18:51):
but I have some students who might be responsible for
looking at over over at their former students working over
at Marshall Space Flight Center working with the astronauts on
board the International Space Station. And if they're listening today, guys,
just make sure you check out the vented flybox, because
you know, you would just want to double check make
sure that the flies don't get out.
Speaker 5 (19:09):
We don't need super ones or anything. The article I
found the article that i'd been reading, and it's, I guess,
talking about some of those same things, but this specifically,
and I think what got my attention is it was
talking about neurodegeneration and fruitflies sort of like Alzheimer's disease,
and they're trying to figure out how that generates their
death and what we could possibly connect with all that
(19:30):
pretty fascinating stuff. I would have never guessed, Hey, fruitflies
could be the key to fighting cancer and possibly Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
That's wild.
Speaker 6 (19:38):
It's amazing, isn't it. You know, it's you know, neurodegeneration
and DNA repair. We just share a lot more with
fruitflies than I ever realized.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Me too.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
It jumped out at me and I thought, well, and
then it started talking about doing some kind of experiments
to help them live longer, and I was like.
Speaker 6 (19:56):
I mean, I don't want to harm anybody's self esteem,
but you know, if there's if you look in the
mirror and you just go wow, I just I'm a
lot like a fruit fly. It's not you, it's the
DNA code.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
Sometimes it feel like I have a hard enough time
trying to grab them when they when they're in the
kitchen somewhere, and you're you know, I don't need a
super one fighting back.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
We don't.
Speaker 6 (20:14):
They're definitely faster than I am.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
They are, no doubt.
Speaker 5 (20:18):
Coming up after a quick break, we're going to talk
about the not so pink Strawberry Moon.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
We'll do that next.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
Really bum because on this trip to Australia coming up,
I'm probably not going to get to see Graham Hobson
because he's the singer of our theme song for the show,
and I'm not going to be going to his hometown.
And we were just discussing that a couple of days ago,
and I was like, I don't think we're taking it
to Brisbane this time. So anyway, but we appreciate Graham
(21:04):
for giving us that, did he not? Yeah, we've we
really appreciate it.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
You know, Graham, you and I have never met, but
I would just like to say thank you. It's a
great theme song. It demands attention. We love the part
about New Mexico or Mars. It's just the best. So
he understood the assignment.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
Yeah, when he volunteered to do it, he listened to
like two of our shows maybe and he goes, I
got it, and then he just that was the first
thing he wrote. There was a couple two little notes
in it that we tweaked. I think that was it,
and then otherwise it was dead on it and it.
Speaker 6 (21:38):
Just captures the spirit of what we do here.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
Ninety nine percent of that is all him. So other
than my tiny little notes that were there, that was it.
So anyway, all right, So we get excited whenever there's
a story that gets people talking about anything to do
with space and staring at the sky. That's always a
good thing. It is almost always, it's usually a good thing. Now,
occasionally we get these stories that we're glad that people
(22:04):
are talking about the moon and talking about cool events,
and really there's a more significant thing to this than hey,
the moon's going to be pink, because that were the
pictures that were posted, were all these photoshop pictures of
pink moon, saying what's going to be the strawberry moon?
And I already had a couple of people go.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
It's not pink.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
I don't understand. It's a little orangeish, but it's not pink,
And it's like, hey, don't believe everything on the internet.
I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who wrote that on Twitter.
So let's talk about the strawberry moon, what it is
and why, what's actually really cool about it? More so
than just it's the strawberry moon, but the significance of
this major lunar standstill.
Speaker 6 (22:42):
I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who named the strawberry moon,
probably because I read that on Facebook.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah that's true, think he did.
Speaker 6 (22:50):
He was I can't remember Twitter, I don't know. Yeah,
it's one of those one of those something. Okay, let's
get serious. Hey, space dot com has an article about
the strawberry moon, as does everyone else. Okay, so the
strawberry moon, as we're recording the show, happened within the
last twelve hours. So it was a full moon, the
full moon of June. It's always called the strawberry moon.
(23:12):
Not because it's pink, pa nk pink. Not because it's pink,
as they say down here where we are, Not because
it's pink. It's because it's because, friends, the strawberries come
out at the same time as the full moon. See,
this is when you might start finding wild strawberries at
their peak ripeness. So found the Native Americans who began
(23:35):
to call it a strawberry moon because they knew which one.
See they knew which one, you know, because they measured
its position in the sky very very carefully. And to me,
even though you might have gone out last night looking
for a pink moon, and if you did and didn't
see one, you were disappointed about that, please don't blame astronomy,
because it's not astronomy's fault. Here's where astronomy is cool.
(23:59):
Not only was it the Strawberry Moon that happens every June,
just the nickname for the full moon in June. It
was also something called a major lunar standstill, which only
happens every eighteen point six years. In fact, it's on
an eighteen point six year cycle. Well, what in the
world is that, doctor Cruisin, I'm here to tell you.
(24:21):
Because of the position of the tilt of the axis
of the Earth in June, which tilts the northern hemisphere
toward the Sun, we have something called summer, and the
first day of summer is somewhere on or around the
twenty first of June, which is just days away, you
might notice. And so this full moon is particularly close
(24:44):
to that day that we call the summer solstice. Okay,
that's one thing, but to get a major lunar standstill,
you have to have a second thing. And the second
thing is this. The Moon is tilted in its orbit
around the Earth relative to the Earth's orbit around the Sun.
(25:07):
It's like wearing two hats and the brim of the
second hat doesn't line up with the brim of the
first hat. They're tilted relative to each other. See how
that goes. And so the Moon's orbit around Earth is
tilted relative to the Earth's orbit around the Sun, like
you're wearing two hats and their brims don't line up.
(25:27):
Now here's the fun part. When you have a particularly
high sun in the sky, like on the twenty first
of June, you have particularly low full moons. That happens
every June, so the highest that the June full moon
gets above the horizon is quite a bit lower than
it does the rest of the year. But then you
(25:49):
have that second effect of the two tilted hats, and
the moon is also at its lowest point in the
south relative to the Earth's orbit around the Sun because
of its own tilt. So it's a compounded effect, and
that only happens every roughly nineteen years. And the ancient
(26:12):
Native Americans of the American Southwest, also native cultures throughout
South America, knew this phenomenon very well and actually built
massive monuments that were aligned not just with the rising
and setting sun on certain days like the winter solstice
or the summer solstice or the equinoxes, which we've all heard,
(26:35):
but also they lined up entire structures with the moon's
major and minor lunar standstills, both north and south of
the celestial equator, which is all amazingly impressive because this
thing that I tried to explain to you the listeners
out there in the theater of the mind, I tried
(26:56):
to use the two hat example. They knew this too
within well, let's just say this a high degree of precision.
They knew the positions of these moons as they rose
and as they set on the northern and southern parts
of the western and eastern horizons. That's not a small
feat because it takes twenty years to see it once.
(27:20):
In order to get this high precision, they had to
see it maybe ten times, So that culture had to
be observing with this high rate of precision for a
couple of one hundred years before they built those monuments
that lined up with these standstills. If you want to
know more about this, go search online. A place called
(27:42):
Choco Canyon Cchaco Canyon that is in northwestern New Mexico.
I have taken college students there many times, and we've
actually measured with our modern compasses, because we have such things,
and we have math and numbers and such, we actually
measured the alignments of these structures out there in the
(28:02):
desert southwest of the United States and found indeed that
they were aligned with certain astronomical alignments like the major
lunar standstill. So if you knew all of that going
into last night's Strawberry Moon, and you weren't just looking
for the color pink, good on your friend. And I
have high confidence that that might be you, because you're
listening to this podcast.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
It's true.
Speaker 6 (28:24):
Good on you a second time.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Yeah, or you're listening and you're going but.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
I wanted a pink moon.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
I thought I was getting a pink.
Speaker 6 (28:32):
And at that point I might suggest other podcasts that
you could listen to. No, no, no, no, well this
one we'll always Lady Barry has a podcast. Maybe I
don't know.
Speaker 5 (28:43):
I'm wondering if maybe, now we've said pink so much,
maybe Pink needs to go to space and come back
and the two of them could do a show together
about me.
Speaker 6 (28:51):
She spilled her name pa n K. I'm not sure.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
Uh, actually she spells it p upside down exclamation point NK.
I know because I've got a platinum record in my
office in here on the wall. Coming up after another
quick break, we're going to talk about this mysterious planet
(29:15):
sending all kinds of fun stuff our way, including radio we.
Speaker 6 (29:18):
Love you, paint by the way, we love you.
Speaker 5 (29:35):
All Right, So I've got friends that got really excited
when they heard the story about, oh my gosh, there's
something that's blasting radio waves towards us at a very
specific frequency, like happening seemingly on a cycle, and they're going,
what's going on there. We've blasted radio waves out into
space ourselves, haven't we. So I guess that's reason enough
(29:58):
to go, huh.
Speaker 6 (30:00):
Yeah, this is a weird story because it's another one
of those that we just don't know what it is like.
So there are times when observational astronomers like myself, who
point telescopes of various kinds at the sky and actually
take data, we usually can match those right on up
(30:21):
with some physical circumstance out there in the universe that's
been predicted to exist or has been known to exist
because of the theoretical astrophysicists who do all that great
modeling and things on computers back in the day on chalkboards,
but now on computers, right. So there's just times though
(30:42):
that their math predicts something that we've never seen with
our telescopes, or as in this case, our telescopes are
seeing something that they haven't caught up with with the
math end of things yet, and that's what this story
is about. This story is about something that has been
observed by the NASA's Chandra X ray Observatory, and it's
(31:04):
caught a blasting of X ray radiation, which we've seen before,
so that alone isn't weird, but it's also blasting out
at the same time that radio waves are blasting out, which, okay,
that narrows things a little bit. Objects out there are
(31:25):
usually producing either radio waves in abundance or X rays
in abundance, but not both in abundance. They produce both,
but not both in abundance, so that already makes it
a little strange. But now here's the weird thing. It's
a flash of both radio waves and X rays for
(31:46):
a two minute period, which is a long time, and
it's happening every forty four minutes, which is also a
long time. Now you may think, well, the universe is
billions of years old, how can forty four minutes be
a long time. It's a long time for the kinds
(32:06):
of objects that usually blast out X rays and radio waves,
because usually those are the cores of collapse stars, and
they're things like neutron stars or white dwarfs or even
black holes, and those things usually spin very very rapidly,
and so if we're getting pulse radiation from space, it's
(32:27):
usually due to a collapsed object like a neutron star,
and those happen on the scales of milliseconds, so they
can be very very powerful sources of radiation like either
X rays or radio waves, usually radio waves, and they
only happen in either milliseconds or microseconds or you know,
(32:50):
some fractions. Some of them are like on the order
of one second, that's a pretty slow spinning neutron star.
But every forty four minutes, that's yirdle the turtle. Friends,
that's not something that's moving very fast. That's really slow.
And the fact that the blast of both X rays
and radio waves lasts for a period of two minutes,
(33:11):
well the period of like think of like a blinker
on a car on, off, on, off, Right, if your
blinker stays on for two minutes and it only flashes
every forty four minutes, no one's gonna know you're turning.
They're thinking that you just have a problem with your
brick light. They didn't understand that it's that actual turn indicator.
(33:32):
So that's that's kind of the situation with this weird
object called askap J eighteen thirty two dashes zero nine
eleven rolls off the tongue. Friends, that's a catalog number.
They haven't given it a name yet. It's just a
catalog number from the Chanter X ray Observatory, And so
it's one of the phenomenon that is now known as
(33:52):
long period transients, a long period transient which is both
a high energy X ray and a very low energy
radio wave burst of light simultaneously for a long period
of time, and then even longer period in between flashes.
(34:12):
We just don't have an explanation right now for what
is going on. There's a guy from the team of researchers,
which by the way, is down Under again. We're back
to Australia at Curtin University. His name is Andy Wong,
and Andy said in a statement, this object is unlike
anything we have seen before. Remember, friends, in the context
(34:33):
of Andy's quote, we have seen literally billions of objects.
Astronomers have observed billions of objects in the universe, and
we can almost always put them in some kind of
a bin and understand what's going on. But now let
me reread Andy's statement. This object is unlike anything we've
(34:54):
seen before. Andy goes on to say this discovery could
indicate a new type of physics or new models of
stellar evolution unquote. Those are bold claims, friends, and bold claims,
as we know, require significant evidence to back them up.
So we're just beginning this journey. We're just now heading
(35:15):
down this new road of some very entertaining physics because
we just don't know what's causing this thing to switch
on and switch off at these long intervals, but yet
regular and unusual intervals. It's a weird new branch of physics.
Read all about it on space dot com.
Speaker 5 (35:34):
All right, let's talk about Dave Scott.
Speaker 6 (35:36):
Shall we I love talking about Dave Scott, and to
honor America and the American space program, we're gonna have
some We're gonna have some Apollo fifteen highlights coming up.
I think Wes is gonna tell you about that here
at the end of the show on some of the
upcoming shows. But we have a special connection with the
Apollo fifteen astronauts here at the Coca Cola Space Science
Center in Columbus, Georgia. And that's primarily because David Scott,
(35:59):
the command under of Apollo fifteen, has donated many artifacts
to a very large collection that we now have here
at Coca Cola Space Science Center through his brother Tom.
And by the way, Tom, if you're listening to the podcast,
we really appreciate you and facilitating all of these great
donations from the American hero David Scott, commander of Apollo fifteen.
We now have so many of these pieces of memorabilia
(36:22):
and photographs from Dave's personal collection through his brother Tom,
donated to us here at Columbus State University and the
Coca Cola Space Science Center that we can't put them
all on display in our exhibit gallery. It's too small
and it's too already pack jammed with other cool fun things.
So we have a very important collaboration with the Bo
Bartlett Center, which is an art gallery at Columbus State
(36:43):
University just down the street from us about three blocks
here on Front Avenue in downtown or uptown as the
case maybe Columbus Georgia. You can walk literally three blocks
down the street from the Space Science Center, go in
and visit the Bo Bartlett Gallery between the hours of
eleven am and Tuesday through Saturday and see the extended
(37:04):
collection from astronaut David Scott, who flew on three Apollo missions,
Gemini eight, which is an adventure story all to its own,
Apollo nine, which was a very important dress rehearsal for
the moon landing, and Apollo fifteen, where Dave Scott himself
became the first American, first person at all to drive
a motorized vehicle on the surface of another world. He
(37:26):
was the first person to drive a car on the Moon,
which is pretty fun. On that mission Apollo fifteen with
Dave was Al Warden, another very important astronaut in America's
space program. Al Warden has actually visited us here at
the Coca Cola Space Science Center. He was the command
module pilot, which is what I was stumbling over only
(37:48):
moments ago. He was the command module pilot aboard the
Apollo fifteen mission. In other words, he was the ride home.
He stayed in orbit and flew and did many experiments
and took all kinds of import and topographical photographs of
the Moon from orbit in Apaula fifteen while James Irwin
and Dave Scott drove around on the surface of the Moon.
So what I'm telling you today, friends, is you can
(38:11):
see many photographs from this historic collection from David Scott.
Also a patch that went to the Moon with Dave
himself and is now on display at the bo Bartlett
Center here at Columbus State University. Check out all the
details online at our website here at the Coca Cola
Space Science Center, visit www dot cc SSC dot org,
(38:35):
Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org.
Speaker 5 (38:38):
And as Sean pointed out, we'll have that Dave Scott
tribute show coming up on July third, right before Independence Day,
and then our Al Warden interview tribute for him on
the twenty sixth of June, So those are both coming
up sewn and I thank you for listening, and we
will do this again next week. Overhead Door Company of
(39:05):
Columbus has all of your garage door needs covered, residential
and commercial service and repairs. If you need a new
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your current door, Overhead Door Company of Columbus has you covered.
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Warning.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
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 1 (00:16):
Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
When made of stars, made them stars, madies. When made
of stars, you could be from high they would New
Mexicomus where a stars?
Speaker 4 (00:43):
When we are made of stars.
Speaker 5 (00:57):
I'm Wes Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
Reisen from Columbus State Universities, Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Hey Shaan, good.
Speaker 6 (01:04):
Morning, Wes. Good to be here today.
Speaker 5 (01:06):
So we're recording a little bit early. We're doing this
on the eleventh for our show on the twelfth, and
just as just general, I don't know how important it
is that we say it, but we mentioned it because
we've got a story that relates to this for possibly
for tomorrow. As far as today goes, and then the
next several shows will be pre recorded, as many of
(01:31):
them will be because I'm going to be overseas. I'll
be in Australia doing lots of planning, for a possible
podcast and trip and visit down Under so that we
can check out totality for the eclipse happening there. And
I think it's twenty twenty nine. I forget the month,
but so I'll make sure that'll be the first question
(01:51):
I asked down there to make my trip at tax
right off?
Speaker 4 (01:54):
When when is this thing going to happen?
Speaker 5 (01:58):
It's the beginning of my investigator report anyway, So the
next few shows will be pre recorded and we've got
some good stuff coming up. One of the things that
we're going to be doing in a couple of weeks
is you and I what.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Was it fourteen years ago? Eleven years? How long ago
was it?
Speaker 5 (02:19):
I forgot the We interviewed al Warden for radio because
he was coming to the Cocola Space Science Center for
an event, So coming up in a few weeks, we
decided to officially make that part of the Mate of
Stars podcast by transferring that over into a podcast so
relevant because of his connections with Dave Scott. And then
(02:41):
we'll also have a show coming up around Independence Day,
a tribute for Dave Scott. So we got some cool
stuff kind of planned while I'm gone. Anytime you can
interview an astronaut and revisit an interview with an astronaut.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
That's fun.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
And then obviously Dave Scott and you guys are doing
a special thing. We'll talk about that towards the end
of the show. But what you guys are doing compliments
of the Scott family and things going on at the
Space Science Center and the Bow Bartlett Center. But we'll
get to that coming up. Before we do that, we
want to talk about a few space things because we
(03:17):
talked not long ago about the fact that we had
China and Russia trying to teaming up so that they can,
you know, they want to move forward on building a
base on the Moon, and one of the things they
wanted to do was get some kind of nuclear power
there as a something that they've teamed up to do
(03:37):
and I had questions about and it's going to be
all like, you know, robots are going to be building
this thing, AI and robots and nanobots and I don't know,
just they're going to be sending some sort of nuclear
agent to the Moon in order to do this. And
and I'd had questions then about you know, how how
(03:59):
many successful landings if we had by both of them.
I know one of them is a little better than
the other. Right now, I guess China's doing a little
better than Russia. But it's just a concern to me
when we start talking about plutonium or uranium or whatever
it is they will send to the Moon because of
the possibility of one of these crafts slamming into the Moon.
(04:20):
The Moon's kind of important for a number of reasons,
at least for our survival here on Earth, and I
just get a little nervous about it. And then that
leads us into our next story, which isn't about China
or Russia. It's about Japan. But hey, Japan just slams
something into the Moon.
Speaker 6 (04:39):
I mean, in the days of modern technology, artificial intelligence,
advanced robotics, landing on the Moon in twenty twenty five
is a piece of cake. I mean, not like back
in the sixties where it was actually hard. Now today
there is just zero problem landing anything on the Moon. Friends,
(05:00):
if you don't know what this is, this is a
scientist being sarcastic. That's what I'm saying right now, because yeah,
yet another mission has failed to successfully soft land on
the Moon. Now, let's make no mistake. They landed on
the Moon. They took a payload, launched it from Earth.
It is now on the Moon, so we can't say
(05:22):
they didn't land there. We can say that it's even
impact with the lunar surface. We can say there's embedded question.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
Embedded is a word we could say, you know, like
it's there is it is part of the Moon.
Speaker 6 (05:35):
Earlier this morning, friends, I sent my friend Wes a
text message that had a gift of Wiley coyote falling
off the cliff in a little mushroom cloud at the bottom.
That's what the latest Japanese spacecraft did. Now, let's not
make fun of the Japanese because we just had an
American company do that a few months ago. Intuitive machines,
(05:58):
this is I space. I don't know why they all
start with ie. They just seem to anyway, So I
got a good idea. Yeah, I mean, could could be
the we might be referencing some other technological advances anyway.
So then I mean, but also, you know, India and
Israel and lots of other there have been a lot
of spacecraft that have just simply ardered into the surface
(06:20):
of the Moon and made a you know, a giant
smudge yeah, and now we have one more. And as
West pointed out, it's a good thing that there's not
plutonium on it, because that site might not be acceptable
for some long period of time to even try to
go near or explore or you know, let alone build
a space station or a power plant on the Moon.
(06:43):
So yeah, there's all that. Yeah, the Moon's hard, even
with AI, even with advanced robotics technology, even though we
are just the smartest creatures that have ever lived on
planet Earth. Again scientific sarcasm landing on the hard period.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
Yeah, it is, and it's it's going to be hard
for the next long foreseeable future. Maybe we get to
a point where it's just easy. It's back and forth.
Some companies make it look a little easier than others,
some countries make it look a little easier than others.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Doesn't mean that it is easy.
Speaker 5 (07:19):
There's always that possibility of complications and problems.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
I just see this.
Speaker 5 (07:24):
You sent me that gift, and I sent you a
gift of you know, some sort of world ending explosion,
which wasn't I don't think the moon, but it looked
close enough, and I just thought, wow, we we we
need that. And I know it's not it's Japan. This
isn't the Russia China project. I just have concerns that
they're going to have this perfected in the next what
(07:46):
seven years or whatever it is that they're going to start.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Where's the kaboom?
Speaker 6 (07:50):
There should have been an earth shattering kaboom.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
Yes, indeed, Uh so there was that. And then now
we have another follow up story. We were telling everyone
that the uh uh ax four is was getting ready
to launch. We talked about the significance of that as
far as the passengers that we're going to be on board.
That that has been delayed, and it had been delayed
(08:19):
a few times.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
It's been delayed again.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
Uh, there's a chance that by the time we get
around to uh we'll have this up tomorrow on the
twelfth of June. And like I said, we're recording this
on the eleventh, but if we get this up on
the twelfth, well we'll have a better idea of whether
or not tomorrow's potential launch happens or is going to happen.
(08:43):
But yeah, we have a booster leak.
Speaker 6 (08:47):
Yeah, so it is Axiom space go ahead.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
Yeah, no, and it ties into this hole. This is
hard because we often hear these stories about leaks, right,
I mean, this is one of the things that is hard.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
So anyway, sorry, you have to take some.
Speaker 6 (09:02):
Of the lightest elements on the entire periodic table and
put them under extreme pressure, which if you know a
little bit about chemistry, those little molecules, those little atoms,
those little molecules of elements, they sneak out of little holes,
(09:23):
they get out really easy.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Right.
Speaker 6 (09:25):
And so if you're trying to pressurize helium, which is
necessary for these fuel tanks, or you're trying to pressurize
some fuels that are again among some of the lighter
elements on the periodic table and quite combustible, and you
put them under extreme pressure, and then you have to
stop all the leaks. I mean, we can't even stop
links under sinks sometimes, right, there's I've had links in
my lenks in my own bathroom that were difficult to
(09:46):
plug up. It's a hard job, right, And so yeah,
what happened was, well, what happened was the Falcon nine booster,
which was scheduled to take the axiom Ax four IT
astronaut mission to the International Space Station since late May.
Actually they've been having delays for one reason or another,
(10:09):
they got it out to the pad, and again this
is yesterday as we're recording the show. They got it
out to the pad, fueled it up, got ready to go,
and it had a leak. And it had a fuel leak.
And here's the interesting thing. The interesting thing is this
is a reused booster. And that's the beautiful thing about
what SpaceX is doing. They're not throwing away their main
(10:31):
stage boosters. Therefore they're making space travel a lot more
accessible and a lot more affordable. Okay, that's the upside.
The downside is the last time this same booster launched,
it was taking a Starlink constellation of satellites up to
orbit and it had a leak then two. So apparently
(10:52):
they didn't get the leak fixed in the liquid oxygen system,
in this case liquid oxygen on the Falcon nine booster.
According to Bill gersten Meyer, we haven't said Gersty's name
for a while. Ohsty, Girsty's back. He used to be
the director of Human Spaceflight for NASA. Now he is
vice president of Build and Fly Reliability at SpaceX. He's
(11:13):
got a new gig. In other words, went from the
government side to the pay dollars side. Anyway, so there
he is working at SpaceX. He came out and said this,
the liquid oxygen leak was first detected on the booster's
previous flight. We discovered we had not fully repaired the
booster during refurbishment. He said, we didn't find the leak
(11:35):
and didn't get it corrected. Well, okay, that's one of
the problems with reusability. I mean it's you know, everything's
a trade off, right, This is what we learn in physics.
Everything's a trade off. So so yeah, it's now they're
now they're actually going to address the leak. It's probably
going to take a few days. I don't think this
(11:58):
will be a quick turnaround. But they're not releasing or
not suggesting a new launch date as of the time
of the recording of this show. So we think it's
we think we're safe. We think it's gonna be a
bit probably not gonna be tomorrow, but you know who knows.
So uh. This is Dana Weigel, who's NASA's ISS program manager.
(12:19):
She said there is no immediate schedule pressure to launch
AX four. The station can support launch opportunities through the
end of June, and that's because you know, they're the
traffic is low right now, there's not a lot of
it's apparently not the tourist season on the ISS there's
not well except the tourist we're trying to get up there,
and they had a fuel leak other than them anyway,
(12:40):
so they're they're still waiting to fly. Now, who's on
the mission. It's Peggy Whitson. She's the actual Axiom employee. Now,
she's former NASA astronaut and a legend of American spaceflight.
So I'm just there's an avalanche of stuff in my
office right now. It's probably making a lot of noise.
Is just decided to fall against my wall. I have
(13:02):
no idea why. Peggy Whitson a legend of American space
flight and she is the commander of the AX four crew.
She's of course from the US. Shibhan Shu Schokla from
India as a mission specialist, slaswo Uzlananski is from Poland,
and Tibor Capou from Hungary. It's gonna make the first
(13:25):
Indian Poland person and Hungarian Polish person to go up
to the International Space Station. So this is gonna be
a good flight. It's packed full of interesting experiments. Actually,
the one of those experiments is our next story, but
we're gonna have to put it off for just a
little longer until they fix that fuel league, that oxygen
fuel league on that reused SpaceX Falcon nine boosters.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
Speaking of that next story, it relates to fruit flies,
and it's kind of interesting and it's funny. This story
came up because I was reading a completely different article
about something else relating to fruitflies, another study that was
being done.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Because of the.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
Similar DNA or the similarities, we're not too far off,
surprisingly from fruitflies who would have known. And my concern was,
this doesn't relate to the NASA one we're about to
talk about. But when you start saying they're doing all
this work on fruit flies and figuring out ways to
help their DNA and make them live longer, and I'm like,
(14:30):
that's not.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
A good thing.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
We don't want those out there.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
But but I suppose some of this could relate to
some of this, because they're trying to study DNA of
fruitflies in space as part of a mission. So yeah,
let's let's talk about that.
Speaker 6 (14:50):
As long as we don't share the data freely with
the fruitfly scientists. That's true, you know, begin to employ
this technology in the fruitfly society.
Speaker 5 (15:00):
Because we're gonna we're gonna be able to figure out
if there's a lab where they do experiments on fruit
flies somewhere, and then if we have a fruit fly
problem that comes out of that lab, maybe that would
be the first place we should look.
Speaker 6 (15:14):
We definitely don't want to share this with the dingy flies.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Oh, we do not.
Speaker 5 (15:18):
I'm gonna hear a lot of I'm gonna hear a
lot about dingy fever over the next few weeks, lots
about it.
Speaker 6 (15:26):
Well. This story is from the American Physical SOCIETYFIZZ dot
org phys dot org. It says this, NASA partners with Axiom. Yep,
that's right, it's the ax for mission. Friends, NASA partners
with Axiom for International Space Station DNA repair experiment. Okay,
so here's here's one of the important characteristics that we
share with fruit flies. We all like watermelon. Yes, that's
(15:50):
that must be at least one of them. That's not
in the story, by the way, I just threw that
in pro bono.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
And bananas.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
Bananas are good. Yeah, I like them. Actually, I had
a really squishy banana on my lunch yesterday, probably the
fruitflies would have liked it better than me. I'm just
thinking that's but that's too much information. Let's go back
to the story, all right. So on the AX four
flight is an experiment that NASA scientists are hoping will
help us better understand the effects of space travel on
(16:17):
the human body, particularly on something called the DNA repair process.
Here's what happens. There are elements in the space environment,
such as cosmic radiation that can damage our DNA, and
if it damages our DNA strings, that's what our body
(16:38):
uses to rep for the replication process to produce new
cells that help us rebuild our muscles and our brain
tissue and all the important parts of our organs. So
we want those DNA strands intact. We don't want them
to be disrupted by cosmic radiation because if our body
starts replicated on damage DNA, that can lead to things
(16:59):
like cams and so that's not good. So the one
thing that we share in common with fruitflies is that
they rebuild their DNA code in much the same way
that we do. It's not that we share the same
pant sizes, and we certainly can't use their glasses because
they have more eyes than us. So it's all those
(17:20):
things are not in common how and they have wings
we don't, at least most of us don't. So and
then so let's ignore those characteristics, but let's look at
the way that they replicate their DNA and how that
might be affected by the space environment. That is what
they're doing, all right. So, because humans and fruitflies share
a lot of this process of repairing their genetic codes,
(17:43):
we do a lot of experiments on the International Space
Station with fruitflies, and for one reason is they're just
cheaper to take to space than Michael Strahan. He's too big.
We love that Michael Strahan went to space. We can
talk about later whether he's an astronaut or not he is,
but for sure he's not as small as a fruit fly,
(18:05):
definitely not. He's going to take a little bit more
infrastructure to go to space than a fruitfly. So, if
we're going to perform DNA experiments on someone, and your
choice is Michael Strahan, who's a big fellow, and a
fruitfly who's a small fellow, you want to take the
fruit flies and lots of their friends because you can
(18:27):
do a lot more experimenting. See, there's what we're up
to right. So, through a New Space Act agreement between
NASA and Axiom Space, Axiom is agreed to transport NASA
experiments on board the AX four flight, including the quote
vented flybox vented v n ted sounds like they might escape.
I don't know. Well, I'm not responsible for looking at over,
(18:51):
but I have some students who might be responsible for
looking at over over at their former students working over
at Marshall Space Flight Center working with the astronauts on
board the International Space Station. And if they're listening today, guys,
just make sure you check out the vented flybox, because
you know, you would just want to double check make
sure that the flies don't get out.
Speaker 5 (19:09):
We don't need super ones or anything. The article I
found the article that i'd been reading, and it's, I guess,
talking about some of those same things, but this specifically,
and I think what got my attention is it was
talking about neurodegeneration and fruitflies sort of like Alzheimer's disease,
and they're trying to figure out how that generates their
death and what we could possibly connect with all that
(19:30):
pretty fascinating stuff. I would have never guessed, Hey, fruitflies
could be the key to fighting cancer and possibly Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
That's wild.
Speaker 6 (19:38):
It's amazing, isn't it. You know, it's you know, neurodegeneration
and DNA repair. We just share a lot more with
fruitflies than I ever realized.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Me too.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
It jumped out at me and I thought, well, and
then it started talking about doing some kind of experiments
to help them live longer, and I was like.
Speaker 6 (19:56):
I mean, I don't want to harm anybody's self esteem,
but you know, if there's if you look in the
mirror and you just go wow, I just I'm a
lot like a fruit fly. It's not you, it's the
DNA code.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
Sometimes it feel like I have a hard enough time
trying to grab them when they when they're in the
kitchen somewhere, and you're you know, I don't need a
super one fighting back.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
We don't.
Speaker 6 (20:14):
They're definitely faster than I am.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
They are, no doubt.
Speaker 5 (20:18):
Coming up after a quick break, we're going to talk
about the not so pink Strawberry Moon.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
We'll do that next.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
Really bum because on this trip to Australia coming up,
I'm probably not going to get to see Graham Hobson
because he's the singer of our theme song for the show,
and I'm not going to be going to his hometown.
And we were just discussing that a couple of days ago,
and I was like, I don't think we're taking it
to Brisbane this time. So anyway, but we appreciate Graham
(21:04):
for giving us that, did he not? Yeah, we've we
really appreciate it.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
You know, Graham, you and I have never met, but
I would just like to say thank you. It's a
great theme song. It demands attention. We love the part
about New Mexico or Mars. It's just the best. So
he understood the assignment.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
Yeah, when he volunteered to do it, he listened to
like two of our shows maybe and he goes, I
got it, and then he just that was the first
thing he wrote. There was a couple two little notes
in it that we tweaked. I think that was it,
and then otherwise it was dead on it and it.
Speaker 6 (21:38):
Just captures the spirit of what we do here.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
Ninety nine percent of that is all him. So other
than my tiny little notes that were there, that was it.
So anyway, all right, So we get excited whenever there's
a story that gets people talking about anything to do
with space and staring at the sky. That's always a
good thing. It is almost always, it's usually a good thing. Now,
occasionally we get these stories that we're glad that people
(22:04):
are talking about the moon and talking about cool events,
and really there's a more significant thing to this than hey,
the moon's going to be pink, because that were the
pictures that were posted, were all these photoshop pictures of
pink moon, saying what's going to be the strawberry moon?
And I already had a couple of people go.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
It's not pink.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
I don't understand. It's a little orangeish, but it's not pink,
And it's like, hey, don't believe everything on the internet.
I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who wrote that on Twitter.
So let's talk about the strawberry moon, what it is
and why, what's actually really cool about it? More so
than just it's the strawberry moon, but the significance of
this major lunar standstill.
Speaker 6 (22:42):
I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who named the strawberry moon,
probably because I read that on Facebook.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah that's true, think he did.
Speaker 6 (22:50):
He was I can't remember Twitter, I don't know. Yeah,
it's one of those one of those something. Okay, let's
get serious. Hey, space dot com has an article about
the strawberry moon, as does everyone else. Okay, so the
strawberry moon, as we're recording the show, happened within the
last twelve hours. So it was a full moon, the
full moon of June. It's always called the strawberry moon.
(23:12):
Not because it's pink, pa nk pink. Not because it's pink,
as they say down here where we are, Not because
it's pink. It's because it's because, friends, the strawberries come
out at the same time as the full moon. See,
this is when you might start finding wild strawberries at
their peak ripeness. So found the Native Americans who began
(23:35):
to call it a strawberry moon because they knew which one.
See they knew which one, you know, because they measured
its position in the sky very very carefully. And to me,
even though you might have gone out last night looking
for a pink moon, and if you did and didn't
see one, you were disappointed about that, please don't blame astronomy,
because it's not astronomy's fault. Here's where astronomy is cool.
(23:59):
Not only was it the Strawberry Moon that happens every June,
just the nickname for the full moon in June. It
was also something called a major lunar standstill, which only
happens every eighteen point six years. In fact, it's on
an eighteen point six year cycle. Well, what in the
world is that, doctor Cruisin, I'm here to tell you.
(24:21):
Because of the position of the tilt of the axis
of the Earth in June, which tilts the northern hemisphere
toward the Sun, we have something called summer, and the
first day of summer is somewhere on or around the
twenty first of June, which is just days away, you
might notice. And so this full moon is particularly close
(24:44):
to that day that we call the summer solstice. Okay,
that's one thing, but to get a major lunar standstill,
you have to have a second thing. And the second
thing is this. The Moon is tilted in its orbit
around the Earth relative to the Earth's orbit around the Sun.
(25:07):
It's like wearing two hats and the brim of the
second hat doesn't line up with the brim of the
first hat. They're tilted relative to each other. See how
that goes. And so the Moon's orbit around Earth is
tilted relative to the Earth's orbit around the Sun, like
you're wearing two hats and their brims don't line up.
(25:27):
Now here's the fun part. When you have a particularly
high sun in the sky, like on the twenty first
of June, you have particularly low full moons. That happens
every June, so the highest that the June full moon
gets above the horizon is quite a bit lower than
it does the rest of the year. But then you
(25:49):
have that second effect of the two tilted hats, and
the moon is also at its lowest point in the
south relative to the Earth's orbit around the Sun because
of its own tilt. So it's a compounded effect, and
that only happens every roughly nineteen years. And the ancient
(26:12):
Native Americans of the American Southwest, also native cultures throughout
South America, knew this phenomenon very well and actually built
massive monuments that were aligned not just with the rising
and setting sun on certain days like the winter solstice
or the summer solstice or the equinoxes, which we've all heard,
(26:35):
but also they lined up entire structures with the moon's
major and minor lunar standstills, both north and south of
the celestial equator, which is all amazingly impressive because this
thing that I tried to explain to you the listeners
out there in the theater of the mind, I tried
(26:56):
to use the two hat example. They knew this too
within well, let's just say this a high degree of precision.
They knew the positions of these moons as they rose
and as they set on the northern and southern parts
of the western and eastern horizons. That's not a small
feat because it takes twenty years to see it once.
(27:20):
In order to get this high precision, they had to
see it maybe ten times, So that culture had to
be observing with this high rate of precision for a
couple of one hundred years before they built those monuments
that lined up with these standstills. If you want to
know more about this, go search online. A place called
(27:42):
Choco Canyon Cchaco Canyon that is in northwestern New Mexico.
I have taken college students there many times, and we've
actually measured with our modern compasses, because we have such things,
and we have math and numbers and such, we actually
measured the alignments of these structures out there in the
(28:02):
desert southwest of the United States and found indeed that
they were aligned with certain astronomical alignments like the major
lunar standstill. So if you knew all of that going
into last night's Strawberry Moon, and you weren't just looking
for the color pink, good on your friend. And I
have high confidence that that might be you, because you're
listening to this podcast.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
It's true.
Speaker 6 (28:24):
Good on you a second time.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Yeah, or you're listening and you're going but.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
I wanted a pink moon.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
I thought I was getting a pink.
Speaker 6 (28:32):
And at that point I might suggest other podcasts that
you could listen to. No, no, no, no, well this
one we'll always Lady Barry has a podcast. Maybe I
don't know.
Speaker 5 (28:43):
I'm wondering if maybe, now we've said pink so much,
maybe Pink needs to go to space and come back
and the two of them could do a show together
about me.
Speaker 6 (28:51):
She spilled her name pa n K. I'm not sure.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
Uh, actually she spells it p upside down exclamation point NK.
I know because I've got a platinum record in my
office in here on the wall. Coming up after another
quick break, we're going to talk about this mysterious planet
(29:15):
sending all kinds of fun stuff our way, including radio we.
Speaker 6 (29:18):
Love you, paint by the way, we love you.
Speaker 5 (29:35):
All Right, So I've got friends that got really excited
when they heard the story about, oh my gosh, there's
something that's blasting radio waves towards us at a very
specific frequency, like happening seemingly on a cycle, and they're going,
what's going on there. We've blasted radio waves out into
space ourselves, haven't we. So I guess that's reason enough
(29:58):
to go, huh.
Speaker 6 (30:00):
Yeah, this is a weird story because it's another one
of those that we just don't know what it is like.
So there are times when observational astronomers like myself, who
point telescopes of various kinds at the sky and actually
take data, we usually can match those right on up
(30:21):
with some physical circumstance out there in the universe that's
been predicted to exist or has been known to exist
because of the theoretical astrophysicists who do all that great
modeling and things on computers back in the day on chalkboards,
but now on computers, right. So there's just times though
(30:42):
that their math predicts something that we've never seen with
our telescopes, or as in this case, our telescopes are
seeing something that they haven't caught up with with the
math end of things yet, and that's what this story
is about. This story is about something that has been
observed by the NASA's Chandra X ray Observatory, and it's
(31:04):
caught a blasting of X ray radiation, which we've seen before,
so that alone isn't weird, but it's also blasting out
at the same time that radio waves are blasting out, which, okay,
that narrows things a little bit. Objects out there are
(31:25):
usually producing either radio waves in abundance or X rays
in abundance, but not both in abundance. They produce both,
but not both in abundance, so that already makes it
a little strange. But now here's the weird thing. It's
a flash of both radio waves and X rays for
(31:46):
a two minute period, which is a long time, and
it's happening every forty four minutes, which is also a
long time. Now you may think, well, the universe is
billions of years old, how can forty four minutes be
a long time. It's a long time for the kinds
(32:06):
of objects that usually blast out X rays and radio waves,
because usually those are the cores of collapse stars, and
they're things like neutron stars or white dwarfs or even
black holes, and those things usually spin very very rapidly,
and so if we're getting pulse radiation from space, it's
(32:27):
usually due to a collapsed object like a neutron star,
and those happen on the scales of milliseconds, so they
can be very very powerful sources of radiation like either
X rays or radio waves, usually radio waves, and they
only happen in either milliseconds or microseconds or you know,
(32:50):
some fractions. Some of them are like on the order
of one second, that's a pretty slow spinning neutron star.
But every forty four minutes, that's yirdle the turtle. Friends,
that's not something that's moving very fast. That's really slow.
And the fact that the blast of both X rays
and radio waves lasts for a period of two minutes,
(33:11):
well the period of like think of like a blinker
on a car on, off, on, off, Right, if your
blinker stays on for two minutes and it only flashes
every forty four minutes, no one's gonna know you're turning.
They're thinking that you just have a problem with your
brick light. They didn't understand that it's that actual turn indicator.
(33:32):
So that's that's kind of the situation with this weird
object called askap J eighteen thirty two dashes zero nine
eleven rolls off the tongue. Friends, that's a catalog number.
They haven't given it a name yet. It's just a
catalog number from the Chanter X ray Observatory, And so
it's one of the phenomenon that is now known as
(33:52):
long period transients, a long period transient which is both
a high energy X ray and a very low energy
radio wave burst of light simultaneously for a long period
of time, and then even longer period in between flashes.
(34:12):
We just don't have an explanation right now for what
is going on. There's a guy from the team of researchers,
which by the way, is down Under again. We're back
to Australia at Curtin University. His name is Andy Wong,
and Andy said in a statement, this object is unlike
anything we have seen before. Remember, friends, in the context
(34:33):
of Andy's quote, we have seen literally billions of objects.
Astronomers have observed billions of objects in the universe, and
we can almost always put them in some kind of
a bin and understand what's going on. But now let
me reread Andy's statement. This object is unlike anything we've
(34:54):
seen before. Andy goes on to say this discovery could
indicate a new type of physics or new models of
stellar evolution unquote. Those are bold claims, friends, and bold claims,
as we know, require significant evidence to back them up.
So we're just beginning this journey. We're just now heading
(35:15):
down this new road of some very entertaining physics because
we just don't know what's causing this thing to switch
on and switch off at these long intervals, but yet
regular and unusual intervals. It's a weird new branch of physics.
Read all about it on space dot com.
Speaker 5 (35:34):
All right, let's talk about Dave Scott.
Speaker 6 (35:36):
Shall we I love talking about Dave Scott, and to
honor America and the American space program, we're gonna have
some We're gonna have some Apollo fifteen highlights coming up.
I think Wes is gonna tell you about that here
at the end of the show on some of the
upcoming shows. But we have a special connection with the
Apollo fifteen astronauts here at the Coca Cola Space Science
Center in Columbus, Georgia. And that's primarily because David Scott,
(35:59):
the command under of Apollo fifteen, has donated many artifacts
to a very large collection that we now have here
at Coca Cola Space Science Center through his brother Tom.
And by the way, Tom, if you're listening to the podcast,
we really appreciate you and facilitating all of these great
donations from the American hero David Scott, commander of Apollo fifteen.
We now have so many of these pieces of memorabilia
(36:22):
and photographs from Dave's personal collection through his brother Tom,
donated to us here at Columbus State University and the
Coca Cola Space Science Center that we can't put them
all on display in our exhibit gallery. It's too small
and it's too already pack jammed with other cool fun things.
So we have a very important collaboration with the Bo
Bartlett Center, which is an art gallery at Columbus State
(36:43):
University just down the street from us about three blocks
here on Front Avenue in downtown or uptown as the
case maybe Columbus Georgia. You can walk literally three blocks
down the street from the Space Science Center, go in
and visit the Bo Bartlett Gallery between the hours of
eleven am and Tuesday through Saturday and see the extended
(37:04):
collection from astronaut David Scott, who flew on three Apollo missions,
Gemini eight, which is an adventure story all to its own,
Apollo nine, which was a very important dress rehearsal for
the moon landing, and Apollo fifteen, where Dave Scott himself
became the first American, first person at all to drive
a motorized vehicle on the surface of another world. He
(37:26):
was the first person to drive a car on the Moon,
which is pretty fun. On that mission Apollo fifteen with
Dave was Al Warden, another very important astronaut in America's
space program. Al Warden has actually visited us here at
the Coca Cola Space Science Center. He was the command
module pilot, which is what I was stumbling over only
(37:48):
moments ago. He was the command module pilot aboard the
Apollo fifteen mission. In other words, he was the ride home.
He stayed in orbit and flew and did many experiments
and took all kinds of import and topographical photographs of
the Moon from orbit in Apaula fifteen while James Irwin
and Dave Scott drove around on the surface of the Moon.
So what I'm telling you today, friends, is you can
(38:11):
see many photographs from this historic collection from David Scott.
Also a patch that went to the Moon with Dave
himself and is now on display at the bo Bartlett
Center here at Columbus State University. Check out all the
details online at our website here at the Coca Cola
Space Science Center, visit www dot cc SSC dot org,
(38:35):
Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org.
Speaker 5 (38:38):
And as Sean pointed out, we'll have that Dave Scott
tribute show coming up on July third, right before Independence Day,
and then our Al Warden interview tribute for him on
the twenty sixth of June, So those are both coming
up sewn and I thank you for listening, and we
will do this again next week. Overhead Door Company of
(39:05):
Columbus has all of your garage door needs covered, residential
and commercial service and repairs. If you need a new
garage door, 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
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