July 31, 2025 • 39 mins
NASA's Crew 11 scheduled to launch today. NASA and JPL have announced their plans for a sequel to the Ingenuity helicopter. The recently discovered interstellar comet is massive. An asteroid that has a very small chance of colliding with the Moon could send a lot of lunar debris to Earth. It seems that the long speculated companion star to Betelgeuse has been confirmed.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar, asterism and uranus. Listen,
that's your own risk. Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
When made of stars, made them stars, madies. When made
of stars, you could be from high they would New Mexicomus.
Where are.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Stars?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
When we are made of stars? I'm Wes Carrol, joined
by my good friend doctor Sean Cruisin from Column State Universities,
Coca Cola Space Science Center. Morning Shawn, Good morning West.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
What a great day to talk about space.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Well, in a little while, there's a launch that's going
to be happening or scheduled to happen a little bit
later today. Because we're recording before the launch, not a
whole lot to say about it except that we'll tell
you more about it next week. I mean, that's about
the best we can do other than you know, telling
you that it's going to happen. So it's important that
we just stress because it's going to happen around lunchtime today.
We're recording in the morning and we'll give you an
(01:29):
update on that launch in a week. Now, one more
quick thing I gotta do because we're getting close to
I mean, we're recording this on the day before August,
August Eve, if you will, and August brings the role
into Labor Day weekend, and that means dragon Con at
(01:52):
in Atlanta in the this I guess there's five host
hotels now, so that's it's grown yet again. I think
the first year I was covering this, almost twenty five
years ago, I think there were two hotels. Now they're
up to five. But we do the dragon Con pregame
show on radio in about two hundred stations.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
What is the attendance of dragon Con. Oh, that's a great,
great question. I mean just an estimate.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
So let's see, in the largest year that I was
covering it, they hit close to ninety thousand, somewhere in
that range. The first year I was covering it, it was
about twenty five, maybe a little less than twenty five.
And as a member of the longest standing consecutive media
covering it all this time, I can't help but take
most of the credit for that.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
I mean, you know, just you No.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
That's natural. I think I would take credit if I
was in your position.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
The amount of money that comes into the state of
Georgia because of the convention. I mean, this is a
big deal. Obviously, every single year, one of the largest
parades that happens anywhere in the country. I know that
there's you know, we got New Orleans Marty gras and
then we've got Savannah and Saint Patrick's Day. Those are
obviously really big parades, but one of the biggest parades
(03:07):
of the year definitely the parade that has the most
people in costume. And I would make that case even
against Marty Gras so and even again even against the
you know people, if you count just wearing green in
general as a costume, then maybe not, but still so.
The event happens Labor Day weekend every year, and we
do the dragon Con pregame show, which will be on
(03:28):
about two hundred radio stations throughout Georgia and bleed over
into neighboring states. That'll happen the twenty third and twenty
fourth of August on radio, and then we'll have the
podcast version of it, which we you know, passed episodes.
You can hear right now. The dragon Con pregame show podcast,
I mention it. We talked about it last week. I
mentioned it again because you guys at the co Cola
(03:50):
Space Science Center sponsor the show every year, and as
of right now, and I only really talk about guests
once they're booked, and this year, two of the guests
that are currently booked. There's about three more I'm waiting
to find out about and I would love to talk
about them, but again not comfortable until I actually say, oh,
I have a time for those interviews. As of today,
(04:13):
I have a time for two interviews with two of
the guests, and they are both pretty currently pretty major
Star Wars guests. And I know Star Wars is one
of those things where you know, there's obviously been phases
where you say, okay, well, there's the original trilogy, and
then there were the prequel trilogies, and then there's the
TV universe, which includes the Mandalorian kind of a big deal,
(04:37):
and then the Ahsoka series also kind of a big deal.
And two of the people who I will be interviewing
this year who will be appearing at Dragon Con or
part of both of those shows, Katie Sakoff, who prior
to Star Wars big name in sci fi because of
Battlestar Galactica, and she you know, is a very accomplished
(05:00):
also interviewer. I'm excited about it. I like interviewing interviewers.
First of all. That's always fun to me because she
also does a podcast. She did the show Longmire, one
of my dad's favorite shows on TV. And then also
just found out, uh, Diana Lee in Asanto, whose dad
(05:20):
is a legend in the martial arts community as far
as you know, a martial arts choreographer and actor, and
she has very much followed in his footsteps and has
now become you know, part of the Star Wars universe
and has trained a lot of actors and things into
martial arts and choreography and movies. And by the way,
(05:43):
when I say her middle name is Lee, she's named
after her godfather. You may you may have maybe the
one that's a little bigger than than Spike Lee. She's
she's named after her godfather, Bruce Lee. So they would
you're always yeah, not not the vegan brother of Bruce
(06:07):
Lee Brock. That's a different guy altogether. So when when
Bruce Lee is your godfather and your dad is a
legend in the Dan by the way he went. There
were legends in this obviously is not just stunt men,
but performers in general, and she's followed in that suit.
(06:31):
I don't know what took so long to get her
cast in some of these shows and things. She's worked
in a lot of things, but she really was sort
of kind of waiting on that big break and then
all of a sudden, one day she hears from her manager, Hey,
I was just hanging out with some people were on
the set of one of the Star Wars shows, and
all of the producers and writers and things were just
talking about you, and she's like what. So next thing
(06:53):
you know, she's having a meeting and she gets cast
in the Ahsoka and Mandalorian series. So kind of a
cool story there. Looking forward to talking to them. But anyway,
that's to uh, two of the names that we'll be
talking with on the pregame show this year, And I
just want to again thank you for you guys supporting
what we do there and all these connections between science
and science fiction we like to talk about.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, it's it's a It's a great thing because it's
a celebration of what inspires many of us to go
into science in the first place, which is the imagination
sparking shall we say, universe of sci fi? So, and
you know, sorry about the Spike Lee joke. I could
I guess I could have said Stan, you know, but whatever.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Stan would have also been a good good name. Hey,
any having any of them if your if your goal
is to get into you know, film or to get
into science fiction, either one of those guys would have
been great. But Christopher Christopher Lee would have also been
there's a lot of good or Brock, you know, Broccoli
(07:54):
is also rock or Brock. Yeah, any of those guys,
any of those. So excited to talk about somebody who
you know. And also she worked on Walker Texas Ranger
because her dad also worked with and trained, you know,
with Walker Texas Ranger himself, Chuck Norris. So that's also
kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
I mean, if you're just gonna start throwing names around
that you're associated with, yeah, having been around Bruce Lee
and Chuck Norris, that's not a bad way to grow up.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
If Chuck Norris were a star, he'd be a supernova,
that's right, or something like that, one of those things.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
So I'm excited to talk to her.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
And also you know Katie Sackoff, which will be uh,
which will be fantastic. They both seem like they're gonna
be fun to.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Talk with on the show.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
All right, So let's go to this launch that's coming
up later today because we you know, we don't. All
we can tell you is that, you know, there's a
clock counting down at this point.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So America's ride to space for the past several years
has been a Dragon capsule. We were hitching rides with
Russians ever since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program.
But you know, SpaceX came along with there. Now we
know very reliable Dragon capsule vehicle, and this is the
eleventh official crew to be launched up to the International
(09:13):
Space Station. It's going to go up just a little
bit later today. As we're recording the podcast this morning.
We don't know the outcome of it because we can't
see the future. But if you're hearing this podcast, you
probably already know. So I'm not going to try to
tell you about it, but I can tell you who's
on board. Allegedly on board is Xena Cardman and Mike Fink,
both NASA astronauts. Xena Cardman is actually the mission commander
(09:37):
Mike Fink is the pilot aboard that vehicle. And then
we have Camilla Yui of the Japanese Space Agency called
JACKSA and cosmonaut Oleg Plotinov, and so these are the
astronauts aboard. Ui and Plotinoff are both mission specialists. They're
heading to the ISS later this day if all goes
(09:58):
well and weather holds out and all those kinds of things,
and they will spend roughly six months aboard the International
Space Station. So it's kind of a cool thing. They're
going to fly today hopefully, and then the vehicle is
scheduled to dock on Saturday around three am local time
here on the East coast of the United States. So
the Crew eleven astronauts which we just talked about, they'll
(10:21):
be replacing another team that's been up there since March.
Who are the Crew ten astronauts. Crew ten is Tokuya Onishi,
Anne McLain, Nicole Ayers, and Kareel Peskov. They've been up
there for a number of months now. They'll be heading
home within just a few days of the docking of
the Crew eleven vehicle, and so they'll be splashing down
(10:42):
somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean. By the way, there's
a whole big series of big storms out in the
Pacific Ocean. Hopefully that won't disrupt any of the operations
of SpaceX and returning those astronauts to Earth. But read
all about that on NASA dot gov. If you're getting
the early edition of this right there soon you know,
the bell rings on your phone as soon as we post.
(11:04):
You might be able to still catch the lift off.
Check out space dot com there, or you can check
out space dot com see the reruns of the launch
right there. So anyway, Crew eleven Dragon, Crew eleven NASA
astronauts going to space later today.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
All right, we've really enjoyed talking about the Ingenuity helicopter
that went to Mars and it's historic run. I mean,
you start talking about sending a helicopter to another world
and flying it around, having expectations of and I don't
think they were low expectations, but obviously they undersold it
(11:42):
when they said, hey, we're going to go up there.
We'll get a few flights out of it, we hope,
and that'll be that it outperformed what the expectations were.
I guess for it. Well, now that it has been retired,
and I guess retired from flight and it still has
another purpose up there, because I guess it's still enlisted
in doing some things. It's just not a flight vehicle anymore.
(12:05):
But now NASA and JPL have said, hey, we got
an idea on what to do next, and I can't
help but feel like maybe this time they'll have a
more realistic plan for how long this new I guess
crafts because it's plural, right, we'll be able to get
some use while they are there. And now I start wondering,
(12:26):
when you get a more realistic expectation or are they
going to overshoot how long they think that this next
Skyfall will be able to last.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yeah, So, first of all, JPL, NASA, good choice on
the name of the vehicle Skyfall. We like that it
was an okay James Bond movie. But it's a great
name for a spacecraft because see spacecraft, they fall from
the sky, right, That's how they get to the surface
of another planet. Anyway, I just kind of like that name.
(12:56):
It's pretty cool. It's developed with a US defense based
technology company called AeroVironment ink a V and so the
folks at AeroVironment Inc. Working with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
They designed this spacecraft and they just basically unveiled the
design to the community. It's not built yet, we're just
(13:18):
now seeing what the plan is for Skyfall. It's a
really cool vehicle because it looks like some kind of
round Ufoi Ring of Death, where around the bottom ring
are six very long propped helicopters that will fall from
the sky once the vehicle gets close right, and they'll
(13:38):
release airborne these six helicopters to that invade the planet Mars.
Our worst nightmares and apparitions about what Mars invaders might
be like coming to Earth from Mars and invading our planet,
Well we're doing it to them first in reality, friends,
And this is one nightmarish but really cool looking vehicle
designed by AeroVironment for NASA JPL Skyfall. Yeah, it's got
(14:02):
six copters. They plan to possibly have this concept ready
for launch by twenty twenty eight, which is in line
with the very ambitious plans to put humans on the
surface of Mars by twenty thirty. These helicopters could provide
a variety of data scouting out landing sites, just looking
(14:24):
for in C two resources which means in place like
finding all the resources, scouting areas where water might be
available below the surface of Mars. That is in hand
in hand contingency with imaging using ground penetrating radar from
space orbital vehicles. So this is a really kind of
(14:45):
a preliminary vanguard of vehicles going to the surface of Mars,
preparing the way for human beings to actually walk around
and complete the invasion of the surface of Mars. Right, So,
William Paul Rantz, head of Space Venture for Aero Environment,
says this quote, Skyfall offers a revolutionary new approach to
(15:06):
Mars exploration that is faster and more affordable than anything
that's come before it. With six helicopters, Skyfall offers a
low cost solution that multiplies the range we could cover,
the data we could collect, and the scientific research we
could conduct, making humanity's first footprints on Mars, meaning meaningfully closer.
(15:30):
That's William Palmerantz from Aero Environment. According to the website
Interesting Engineering dot Com ran a story on this, So
there it is friends, NASA JPL preparing for the human
invasion of the Red planet.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
We don't want to undersell the name Ingenuity either, because
that was a great name for the first one to
go up, and especially for it to be as successful
as it was and serve as long as it was
able to be in service there. Let me just ask
this question, and this is just kind of aulating, and
if you've heard anything official, obviously you could say, but
otherwise we're this is just us kind of I guess,
(16:07):
asking the question and speculating on it. But it seems
to me if the goal is to, you know, very
soon after this put human beings on Mars, part of
what the role that maybe this particular you mentioned some
of the things that these copters will be doing there,
but would possibly potentially one of the things they'll be
(16:28):
doing there, or possibly maybe the next version of them
actually be there to help document when people do go
to Mars, because you know, that's always been the question
of the skeptics, well how do they have the cameras
on the moon and how were they ready for that?
And obviously you can't do everything for the purposes of
trying to prevent the skeptics, because skeptics will be skeptics.
(16:52):
The tigers go tiger, right, They're going to do what
they got to do just to be skeptics, But as
far as being prepared to cover this and having the
ability to get information back and images and video and
all those sorts of things, I mean, you think there
will be a use for them in that role.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
It's just some kind of backhanded way to try to
trick me into saying the moon landings were real. I'm
just wondering what this is. No, I'm just kidding, so
I will say anything. Right, Well, you can't just because
you it's twenty twenty five, Like AI, right, can we
trust images and video in twenty twenty five?
Speaker 3 (17:32):
I mean, I mean, even these images we have of
Skyfall looks suspiciously AI generated. We were just talking about
that before we started. I just watched a clip of
an interview where someone was talking about Stanley Kubrick and
the lenses that he sometimes used in movies and how
he had gotten them when they were, you know, kind
of practicing how they were going to record things on
the Moon and all that stuff. So whether any of
(17:54):
that's true or not, who knows. But so it's just
kind of fresh on the mind. But in the sense
that you know they will need this will be as
monumental as the Moon was. This will be right there
on par with it. Obviously, with technology today, it seems
like it's maybe less of a feat, but I don't
think it really is. We're talking about landing on another
(18:17):
planet and you know, having human beings walk around. We're
gonna want to document this properly.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, sequels are rarely better than the original, by the way,
but there's always it's hard to say this is going
to be better than the Apollo eleven moon landing, you know,
because you know the original is almost always better. However,
this is a pretty good sequel because the Moon is
our moon, it's in the orbital system of the Earth,
basically a binary planet. This is actually a different planet
(18:44):
in our Solar System. And if you're going to go
along with me and believe that we actually landed on
the surface of the Moon we did, then then yeah,
it's a pretty monumental thing to say, Hey, we've expanded
that to an actual different planet in the Solar System.
That's a big day. And you better believe that. If
JPL has six functioning helicopters buzzing around up there on
(19:07):
the surface of Mars with high definition cameras, I'm pretty
sure they're gonna probably try to position one or two
of those to capture that landing on the surface of Mars,
especially I if it happens in twenty thirty, which is
just not that far away, right, and so hopefully you know,
hopefully Starship's doing well down there in Texas anyway, but
so so yeah, I would hope that they would have
(19:29):
those cameras available, maybe even set up another batch of helicopters,
just for the filming of the momentous event of human
beings setting foot on the surface of another planet, not
just another world, but another planet for the very first time.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Godfather Too, Empire Strikes Back, The Dark Night, and Return
of the King have all entered the chat.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I mean, you know they're in there. You know Rocky
two you missed that one. It's you know, I saw
them all. I watched every one of those that you
just mentioned, plus Rocky two.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
I just like the fact that, you know, Return of
the King was the third one in the trilogy and
it was the best. So, uh, coming up after a
quick break, we'll get the latest on that interstellar comt
we've recently been talking about. We'll do that next. I
(20:35):
suppose we should also mention Aliens, right, I mean you
should mention that one.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
That's all. I noticed you lopped off Gladiator too. I
mean I noticed it.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Terminator too. Anyway, I just you know, there's there's some
where they just you know, even if the original was good,
sometimes that second one is just a little bit better.
And Ghostbusters to say, there are people who actually think
Ghostbusters two was better. So you know some people, let's
I just didn't couldn't get over how you know one
(21:09):
was the better one to me. But anyway, all right,
let's talk I think there's a thing about Ghostbusters where
they say, like it depends on when you were born,
like the people who the one that they saw in
the theater, because it was a decent little gap between.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Those two movies. Anyway, all right, let's talk.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
About the interstellar comet, because yes, recently discovered and now
they know it's uh, it's it's it's big.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
I mean, it's not even the first interstellar comet. So this,
in fact is also a sequel. I will just say
that's true. This is the third in the trilogy, and
it's a big one. It's an it's not omuamua. But
you know, it's okay, it's all right. It's a good comment. Yep,
this comet is called three I Atlas, all right, So no, seriously, friends,
there is a comet zipping through our solar system right
(21:52):
now that is from another star system, the only the
third object known. And by the way, even though this
is not the original or even part two, this is
part three, third, third, one of these objects ever discovered.
This is the biggest one, and that's what this story is.
Check it out on the archive of spaceweather dot com.
(22:12):
Back on July twenty ninth, just a few days ago,
they ran a great story on that. They have an
easy to access archive on spaceweather dot com. Go visit
the July twenty ninth edition and read about comet three
I at lis because using prediscovery images from the Vera
Ruben Observatory. Now, let's let's unpack that just a little bit.
(22:36):
Prediscovery images means we realize this thing was a comet.
And then we went back and looked at the archive
from other telescopes to see if they had imaged that
part of the sky where the comet was discovered, and
sure enough, the Verra Rubin telescope, which is one of
the most prestigious new instruments coming online here for the
(22:59):
astrophysics sciences, the Vera Ruben Observatory had actually imaged that
part of the sky, and so they were able to
see in the images before that were taken before we
even knew this was a comet at all, this object,
and so with those prediscovery images they were able to
get a better look at the actual snowball that makes
(23:22):
up what we call the core of that comet, the
actual object itself, And so and why can't we see
it now? By the way, Well, it's gotten close to
the sun, a bunch of that ice is started to melt,
and now there's a giant cloud around the core of
the comet. We call that cloud the coma or the head.
But so the coma and today is preventing us from
(23:44):
getting detailed images, which is why we had to go
back and look in the archives. The archive images from
Vera Ruben showed that this object is seven miles wide,
which is not small. That's a pretty big hunk of
ice and rock out there flying through our Solar system
that didn't even come from our solar system. It came
from another star system, kind of like a weird plot
(24:08):
for a star trek motion picture anyway. So this is
the biggest interstellar object known so far, the biggest one
that we've ever discovered, hurtling through our solar system in
other words, And so there it is seven miles wide
for Comet three I atlas. Check it out on spaceweather
dot com.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
All right, we've been talking, not just us, but I
think you know, social media and the rest have been
talking about this asteroid that's looming out there. It's oh
my gosh, is it going to come? How close is
it going to come to us? Is it going to
make impact with the Moon. There's a small chance that
it will, and we'll talk about the small chance in
(24:47):
a second. But if this asteroid, this is Asteroid twenty
twenty four y R four, does in fact make contact
with the Moon in thirty two, which is wild to
me to think that we're looking at that and possibly
setting foot on Mars potentially before that, which is anyways,
(25:09):
it's just having to try to process all of that.
But if it were to happen, something kind of wild
might happen.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Yeah, well, let's not forget. We're going to be on
the moon, right, That's the plan is to be on
the moon. Itself.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
So you know we're going the motto of the Artemis
program is we're going back to stay. So you know,
we're planning to build a a moon base, right, So
if we have a moon base on the Moon in
twenty thirty two, asteroid, why are twenty twenty four y
R four has a non zero probability of impacting the
(25:45):
Moon in twenty thirty two. Now listen, if I owed
you a dollar and I paid you four cents, you
might feel a tad short changed. So there's only a
four percent chance that this asteroid will hit the Moon, right,
So what's happening right now is that scientists around the
world are saying, you know, well four percent is not zero.
(26:06):
And this is a pretty big asteroid. It's about sixty
meters wide, so that's you know, what is one hundred
and eighty feet across ish, you know, just short of
two hundred feet across. So this is a big object
and it could, you know, it could do some stuff
on the Moon. Well, the University of Western Ontario has
come out with a new estimate that if the collision
(26:28):
occurs between asteroid twenty twenty four yr four and the
lunar surface that given the speed and size of this asteroid,
it would release energy equivalent to six point five megatons
of TNT. That's a good old nuclear blast equivalent right there.
And if that impact would occur, releasing that much energy,
(26:52):
it would blast a kilometer wide crater into the Moon.
That's kind of the size of that one out there
in the Arizona Desert called meteor Crater or the Barringer Crater,
some people know it is the Winslow Crater. Anyway, that
big old hole in the ground just outside Winslow, Arizona.
So if you visited that and stood and looked from
(27:14):
one side of that massive crater to the other, you
get that visceral sense that, wow, this was a bad day.
This was a really really big impact. And so Western
Ontario University, their astronomers there, have said that we're gonna
put one in the surface of the Moon about that big.
If this one, I'm sorry, if this chance it's four
(27:34):
and one hundred or one in twenty five actually occurs
in twenty thirty two, okay, So quote Paul Wigert, the
lead of the study from the University of Western Ontario,
says this quote up to ten percent of the lunar
ejecta could reach Earth within days. The resulting meteor shower
(27:54):
could be eye catching with meteor rates orders of magnitude
above of usual background rates. So that's science he speak
for this. Hey, if this thing hits the Moon, it's
gonna throw a bunch of gravel at the Earth and
we're gonna have a meteor shower unlike anything you've ever
seen before. That's what Paul Weigert meant to say. I
(28:17):
just kind of interpreted, got him out of the science
he speak mode into the language that I speak, which
is science popularization. This is gonna happen. Friends, Well, if
that four percent probability of impact occurs, all right. So
their simulations then further suggested that meteor storm from the
impact of asteroid twenty twenty four y or four on
(28:37):
the surface of the Moon could quote go on for days.
And according to our friends at spaceweather dot com here's
the kicker, nearly every visible meteor in the miror in
this shower would be a piece of the Moon, so
very few pieces of the asteroid, in other words, mostly
chunks of the Moon falling in. Well, if those rocks
(28:59):
make scott or landfall. I should say, if those rocks
may landfall, they're worth a lot because they're chunks of
the moon, you see, and that's one of the most
valuable materials on the surface of the Earth. It's just
interesting to think that is possibility. Again, according to spaceweather
dot com, if it's on target, the asteroid could deliver
the largest lunar impact in approximately five thousand years, which
(29:22):
in the history of the Solar System is like yesterday,
but in our lifetimes was a long time ago. So again,
if you like the story, it's interesting, check it out
on the July twenty ninth edition of spaceweather dot Com. Again,
i'm referring you back to that day just a few
days ago. Spaceweather dot com had a great day on
July twenty ninth.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Coming up after one more quick break. First there was Beetlejuice,
and then there was the sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
We'll talk about that next.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
I enjoyed the sequel to Beetlejuice entitled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but
I don't think it was a better sequel than the original.
And I don't think I'm you know, standing like isolated
on an island to say that. So segueing from that
into let's talk about the star Beetlejuice. And there's been
questions for a long time, Hey, is there a companion
(30:26):
star there for Beetlejuice. We might have some evidence to
suggest maybe.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
So this is.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
A bit like a sequel if there's like a second one, right.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
I mean they're gonna have to name it if there
is one, and I mean naming it Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice seems appropriate.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
I mean it's no Happy Gilmore too.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
But I enjoyed that one, all right.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
So a mysterious companion star to Beetlejuice. Has it been discovered?
Question mark Check out NASA dot gov for the answer.
But I'll give you a hint right here. Yes, So
there it is. There's the end of the story. No. So,
the possibility for a companion star to Beatle Juice, a
(31:11):
small kind of a long period companion orbiting around the
larger star was first suggested back in nineteen oh eight
by English astronomer Henry Cozier Plumber, and he suggested based
on the observations of some unusual motions and cycles in
(31:32):
beetlejuice in terms of it's the way its surface expands
and contracts, and just the way it wabbles a little bit,
and its procession is it has its axial orbital access
processing a little bit, and so so, just based on
all those weird movements, this English astronomer back in nineteen
oh eight suggested, Hey, you know what could be possibly
(31:53):
causing that would be the slight tugging of a small
companion star. What do we mean by small, Well, the
size of our so to us, it's not all that small,
but compared to beetlejuice, which is about two hundred times
the diameter of our sun, it's still pretty small. So anyway,
that was suggested a long time ago, but it's been
difficult to find because that star would be super dim
(32:16):
compared to the greater bright light of the star Beetlejuice itself,
and therefore very hard to find in the glare of
that larger parent star. Okay, So, however, astronomers began to
get interested in all of this again when an event
occurred back in twenty nineteen, which Wes and I discussed
on this show. Back the way it's called the Great Diming.
(32:39):
And the interesting thing about the Great Diming was that
beetlejuice for a short period of time started behaving very
strangely and got far far dimmer as observed from Earth
than it normally is. And we actually thought, we as
human beings, actually thought we might be witnessing the end
of the life of that great red supergiant star and
(33:01):
it could actually erupt in a supernova explosion. Now that's
not what happened. What happened instead is it looks as
though beetlejuice throughout a whole bunch of material. It ejected
a dark cloud of material from the interior of the star.
But what scientists have suggested since that time. In twenty nineteen,
they brought back this, They brought back the idea of
(33:23):
this companion star and said, what if the gravitational influence
of that smaller companion star is causing beetlejuice to behave
in these weird ways and causing periodic injections of material
from the interior of the star. Okay, so now that
we have all of that in place, an astrophysicist, a
(33:45):
group of them from the Ames Research Institute in California's
Silicon Valley published a publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters
entitled Probable direct Imaging dec discovery of the stellar companion
of Beetlejuice. And it turns out that a gentleman by
the name of Steve Howell, was a senior researcher at
(34:07):
NASA Ames Research Center, used the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii,
that's one of the largest telescopes on Earth, by the way,
to directly observe this close companion to Beetlejuice. And Howell
and his team were able to publish that that observation
and you can actually go to NASA dot gov pull
up this story and see their photograph, which is, yes,
(34:31):
a bit enhanced. They did some they did some image processing.
This is different than artificial intelligence. They're not they're not
fabricating data. They're actually, uh enhancing real images, real data.
And they were able to find a very faint companion
star located in the exact predicted position where by simulations
(34:57):
by mathematical modeling scientists to predicted this little star to
be in its orbit around Beetlejuice if it was the
cause of the Great dimming event back in twenty nineteen.
So a really interesting story there. It's tying up all
kinds of loose ends, and it looks like Beetlejuice is
indeed a binary star system and does in fact have
(35:18):
a small companion star around it. All.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Right, August doesn't just mean Labor Day's coming up. It
also means kids are getting back to school. That's a
little bit of a shift in gears for you guys
at the Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Yeah, we have seasons, you know, like we have hockey season,
and we have you know, baseball season, we have back
to school season. That's what's going on. Right We're coming
out of our summer season, which is kind of our
summer camps and special programs that we have in the summertime,
and we're moving back into the time. We're preparing for
armies of invading and highly enthusiastic small children coming back
(35:52):
to our Coca Cola Space Science Center to learn all
about astronomy, space exploration, and the universe in general. And
we can't wait to welcome them again. The bigger groups
coming back beginning after Labor Day. So we're in preparations
right now. We are trying our very best to get
a few new exhibits up and running before the Labor
(36:13):
Day weekend. We're doing some upgrades on our flight simulators.
We're doing a brand new Mars Rover terrain with new
rovers and new targets and new games to play. We
have a couple of Kiosk based simulations that are going
to be put up in the gallery. All of these
things are going to be brand new for the upcoming
school year. And then we're also making preparations within our
(36:34):
theater to host the next season of Music under the Dome. Friends,
if you haven't been down and visited us in a while,
we have new things. That's the whole important part about this.
Come check us out. I'm gonna go ahead and say
we're using August for construction. Come check us out. After
Labor Day you start put a pin in the calendar. Now,
come check us out in the early parts of September,
(36:55):
and many of the things that I'm talking about right
now are going to be fully up and running. Uh tip.
August is kind of a it's a between season period
of time that we do a lot of repairs and
new installations and things like that. If you come see
us in August, We'll welcome you. We love to have
you here, but you'll be looking around. You'll see a
few construction zones throughout the exhibit gallery of the Space
(37:16):
Science Center. That's okay, come see us anyway, but for
sure come down and see us in September when we'll
have many of these new exhibits up and running.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Sean and I thank you for listening, and we'll do
this again next week.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
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Get ready for dragon Con twenty twenty five Labor Day
weekend downtown Atlanta with the dragon Con pregame show coming
August twenty third and twenty fourth to a radio station
(38:14):
near you. If you live in the state of Georgia
or one of the states near enough to the state
of Georgia to pick up a radio signal coming from
the network of stations in the state of Georgia that'll
be carrying the show, and there are many in Alabama
and Tennessee and the Carolinas that'll have a chance to
hear it, even down into Florida, or simply listen to
it on the dragon Con Pregame Show podcast. Wherever you
(38:38):
listen to your podcast, yes, where you're listening to this podcast.
You can also find past editions of the dragon Con
Pregame Show podcast with interviews with William Shatner, other stars
from Star Trek, The Walking Dead, the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
many animated stars, some of your favorite Disney stars. Chances
(39:00):
to hear interviews with them, and this year's dragon Con
Pregame Show will drop to the podcast on August twenty third,
and you can hear this year's interviews. It's sponsored by
Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center, where doctor
Sean Cruisin and I often like to discuss the science
(39:21):
behind the science fiction and the connections between where science
fiction sometimes leads to science science sometimes leads to science fiction.
It's just a weird connection. That's already there. It's built
into it. And I say it's weird, but it's really not.
It makes perfect sense. The two go together very well.
Learn more about the Coca Cola Space Science Center at
(39:41):
CCSSC dot org. Learn more about this year's dragon Con
the website, which is DragonCon dot org
Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar, asterism and uranus. Listen,
that's your own risk. Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
When made of stars, made them stars, madies. When made
of stars, you could be from high they would New Mexicomus.
Where are.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Stars?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
When we are made of stars? I'm Wes Carrol, joined
by my good friend doctor Sean Cruisin from Column State Universities,
Coca Cola Space Science Center. Morning Shawn, Good morning West.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
What a great day to talk about space.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Well, in a little while, there's a launch that's going
to be happening or scheduled to happen a little bit
later today. Because we're recording before the launch, not a
whole lot to say about it except that we'll tell
you more about it next week. I mean, that's about
the best we can do other than you know, telling
you that it's going to happen. So it's important that
we just stress because it's going to happen around lunchtime today.
We're recording in the morning and we'll give you an
(01:29):
update on that launch in a week. Now, one more
quick thing I gotta do because we're getting close to
I mean, we're recording this on the day before August,
August Eve, if you will, and August brings the role
into Labor Day weekend, and that means dragon Con at
(01:52):
in Atlanta in the this I guess there's five host
hotels now, so that's it's grown yet again. I think
the first year I was covering this, almost twenty five
years ago, I think there were two hotels. Now they're
up to five. But we do the dragon Con pregame
show on radio in about two hundred stations.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
What is the attendance of dragon Con. Oh, that's a great,
great question. I mean just an estimate.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
So let's see, in the largest year that I was
covering it, they hit close to ninety thousand, somewhere in
that range. The first year I was covering it, it was
about twenty five, maybe a little less than twenty five.
And as a member of the longest standing consecutive media
covering it all this time, I can't help but take
most of the credit for that.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
I mean, you know, just you No.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
That's natural. I think I would take credit if I
was in your position.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
The amount of money that comes into the state of
Georgia because of the convention. I mean, this is a
big deal. Obviously, every single year, one of the largest
parades that happens anywhere in the country. I know that
there's you know, we got New Orleans Marty gras and
then we've got Savannah and Saint Patrick's Day. Those are
obviously really big parades, but one of the biggest parades
(03:07):
of the year definitely the parade that has the most
people in costume. And I would make that case even
against Marty Gras so and even again even against the
you know people, if you count just wearing green in
general as a costume, then maybe not, but still so.
The event happens Labor Day weekend every year, and we
do the dragon Con pregame show, which will be on
(03:28):
about two hundred radio stations throughout Georgia and bleed over
into neighboring states. That'll happen the twenty third and twenty
fourth of August on radio, and then we'll have the
podcast version of it, which we you know, passed episodes.
You can hear right now. The dragon Con pregame show podcast,
I mention it. We talked about it last week. I
mentioned it again because you guys at the co Cola
(03:50):
Space Science Center sponsor the show every year, and as
of right now, and I only really talk about guests
once they're booked, and this year, two of the guests
that are currently booked. There's about three more I'm waiting
to find out about and I would love to talk
about them, but again not comfortable until I actually say, oh,
I have a time for those interviews. As of today,
(04:13):
I have a time for two interviews with two of
the guests, and they are both pretty currently pretty major
Star Wars guests. And I know Star Wars is one
of those things where you know, there's obviously been phases
where you say, okay, well, there's the original trilogy, and
then there were the prequel trilogies, and then there's the
TV universe, which includes the Mandalorian kind of a big deal,
(04:37):
and then the Ahsoka series also kind of a big deal.
And two of the people who I will be interviewing
this year who will be appearing at Dragon Con or
part of both of those shows, Katie Sakoff, who prior
to Star Wars big name in sci fi because of
Battlestar Galactica, and she you know, is a very accomplished
(05:00):
also interviewer. I'm excited about it. I like interviewing interviewers.
First of all. That's always fun to me because she
also does a podcast. She did the show Longmire, one
of my dad's favorite shows on TV. And then also
just found out, uh, Diana Lee in Asanto, whose dad
(05:20):
is a legend in the martial arts community as far
as you know, a martial arts choreographer and actor, and
she has very much followed in his footsteps and has
now become you know, part of the Star Wars universe
and has trained a lot of actors and things into
martial arts and choreography and movies. And by the way,
(05:43):
when I say her middle name is Lee, she's named
after her godfather. You may you may have maybe the
one that's a little bigger than than Spike Lee. She's
she's named after her godfather, Bruce Lee. So they would
you're always yeah, not not the vegan brother of Bruce
(06:07):
Lee Brock. That's a different guy altogether. So when when
Bruce Lee is your godfather and your dad is a
legend in the Dan by the way he went. There
were legends in this obviously is not just stunt men,
but performers in general, and she's followed in that suit.
(06:31):
I don't know what took so long to get her
cast in some of these shows and things. She's worked
in a lot of things, but she really was sort
of kind of waiting on that big break and then
all of a sudden, one day she hears from her manager, Hey,
I was just hanging out with some people were on
the set of one of the Star Wars shows, and
all of the producers and writers and things were just
talking about you, and she's like what. So next thing
(06:53):
you know, she's having a meeting and she gets cast
in the Ahsoka and Mandalorian series. So kind of a
cool story there. Looking forward to talking to them. But anyway,
that's to uh, two of the names that we'll be
talking with on the pregame show this year, And I
just want to again thank you for you guys supporting
what we do there and all these connections between science
and science fiction we like to talk about.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, it's it's a It's a great thing because it's
a celebration of what inspires many of us to go
into science in the first place, which is the imagination
sparking shall we say, universe of sci fi? So, and
you know, sorry about the Spike Lee joke. I could
I guess I could have said Stan, you know, but whatever.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Stan would have also been a good good name. Hey,
any having any of them if your if your goal
is to get into you know, film or to get
into science fiction, either one of those guys would have
been great. But Christopher Christopher Lee would have also been
there's a lot of good or Brock, you know, Broccoli
(07:54):
is also rock or Brock. Yeah, any of those guys,
any of those. So excited to talk about somebody who
you know. And also she worked on Walker Texas Ranger
because her dad also worked with and trained, you know,
with Walker Texas Ranger himself, Chuck Norris. So that's also
kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
You know.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
I mean, if you're just gonna start throwing names around
that you're associated with, yeah, having been around Bruce Lee
and Chuck Norris, that's not a bad way to grow up.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
If Chuck Norris were a star, he'd be a supernova,
that's right, or something like that, one of those things.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
So I'm excited to talk to her.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
And also you know Katie Sackoff, which will be uh,
which will be fantastic. They both seem like they're gonna
be fun to.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Talk with on the show.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
All right, So let's go to this launch that's coming
up later today because we you know, we don't. All
we can tell you is that, you know, there's a
clock counting down at this point.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So America's ride to space for the past several years
has been a Dragon capsule. We were hitching rides with
Russians ever since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program.
But you know, SpaceX came along with there. Now we
know very reliable Dragon capsule vehicle, and this is the
eleventh official crew to be launched up to the International
(09:13):
Space Station. It's going to go up just a little
bit later today. As we're recording the podcast this morning.
We don't know the outcome of it because we can't
see the future. But if you're hearing this podcast, you
probably already know. So I'm not going to try to
tell you about it, but I can tell you who's
on board. Allegedly on board is Xena Cardman and Mike Fink,
both NASA astronauts. Xena Cardman is actually the mission commander
(09:37):
Mike Fink is the pilot aboard that vehicle. And then
we have Camilla Yui of the Japanese Space Agency called
JACKSA and cosmonaut Oleg Plotinov, and so these are the
astronauts aboard. Ui and Plotinoff are both mission specialists. They're
heading to the ISS later this day if all goes
(09:58):
well and weather holds out and all those kinds of things,
and they will spend roughly six months aboard the International
Space Station. So it's kind of a cool thing. They're
going to fly today hopefully, and then the vehicle is
scheduled to dock on Saturday around three am local time
here on the East coast of the United States. So
the Crew eleven astronauts which we just talked about, they'll
(10:21):
be replacing another team that's been up there since March.
Who are the Crew ten astronauts. Crew ten is Tokuya Onishi,
Anne McLain, Nicole Ayers, and Kareel Peskov. They've been up
there for a number of months now. They'll be heading
home within just a few days of the docking of
the Crew eleven vehicle, and so they'll be splashing down
(10:42):
somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean. By the way, there's
a whole big series of big storms out in the
Pacific Ocean. Hopefully that won't disrupt any of the operations
of SpaceX and returning those astronauts to Earth. But read
all about that on NASA dot gov. If you're getting
the early edition of this right there soon you know,
the bell rings on your phone as soon as we post.
(11:04):
You might be able to still catch the lift off.
Check out space dot com there, or you can check
out space dot com see the reruns of the launch
right there. So anyway, Crew eleven Dragon, Crew eleven NASA
astronauts going to space later today.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
All right, we've really enjoyed talking about the Ingenuity helicopter
that went to Mars and it's historic run. I mean,
you start talking about sending a helicopter to another world
and flying it around, having expectations of and I don't
think they were low expectations, but obviously they undersold it
(11:42):
when they said, hey, we're going to go up there.
We'll get a few flights out of it, we hope,
and that'll be that it outperformed what the expectations were.
I guess for it. Well, now that it has been retired,
and I guess retired from flight and it still has
another purpose up there, because I guess it's still enlisted
in doing some things. It's just not a flight vehicle anymore.
(12:05):
But now NASA and JPL have said, hey, we got
an idea on what to do next, and I can't
help but feel like maybe this time they'll have a
more realistic plan for how long this new I guess
crafts because it's plural, right, we'll be able to get
some use while they are there. And now I start wondering,
(12:26):
when you get a more realistic expectation or are they
going to overshoot how long they think that this next
Skyfall will be able to last.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yeah, So, first of all, JPL, NASA, good choice on
the name of the vehicle Skyfall. We like that it
was an okay James Bond movie. But it's a great
name for a spacecraft because see spacecraft, they fall from
the sky, right, That's how they get to the surface
of another planet. Anyway, I just kind of like that name.
(12:56):
It's pretty cool. It's developed with a US defense based
technology company called AeroVironment ink a V and so the
folks at AeroVironment Inc. Working with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
They designed this spacecraft and they just basically unveiled the
design to the community. It's not built yet, we're just
(13:18):
now seeing what the plan is for Skyfall. It's a
really cool vehicle because it looks like some kind of
round Ufoi Ring of Death, where around the bottom ring
are six very long propped helicopters that will fall from
the sky once the vehicle gets close right, and they'll
(13:38):
release airborne these six helicopters to that invade the planet Mars.
Our worst nightmares and apparitions about what Mars invaders might
be like coming to Earth from Mars and invading our planet,
Well we're doing it to them first in reality, friends,
And this is one nightmarish but really cool looking vehicle
designed by AeroVironment for NASA JPL Skyfall. Yeah, it's got
(14:02):
six copters. They plan to possibly have this concept ready
for launch by twenty twenty eight, which is in line
with the very ambitious plans to put humans on the
surface of Mars by twenty thirty. These helicopters could provide
a variety of data scouting out landing sites, just looking
(14:24):
for in C two resources which means in place like
finding all the resources, scouting areas where water might be
available below the surface of Mars. That is in hand
in hand contingency with imaging using ground penetrating radar from
space orbital vehicles. So this is a really kind of
(14:45):
a preliminary vanguard of vehicles going to the surface of Mars,
preparing the way for human beings to actually walk around
and complete the invasion of the surface of Mars. Right, So,
William Paul Rantz, head of Space Venture for Aero Environment,
says this quote, Skyfall offers a revolutionary new approach to
(15:06):
Mars exploration that is faster and more affordable than anything
that's come before it. With six helicopters, Skyfall offers a
low cost solution that multiplies the range we could cover,
the data we could collect, and the scientific research we
could conduct, making humanity's first footprints on Mars, meaning meaningfully closer.
(15:30):
That's William Palmerantz from Aero Environment. According to the website
Interesting Engineering dot Com ran a story on this, So
there it is friends, NASA JPL preparing for the human
invasion of the Red planet.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
We don't want to undersell the name Ingenuity either, because
that was a great name for the first one to
go up, and especially for it to be as successful
as it was and serve as long as it was
able to be in service there. Let me just ask
this question, and this is just kind of aulating, and
if you've heard anything official, obviously you could say, but
otherwise we're this is just us kind of I guess,
(16:07):
asking the question and speculating on it. But it seems
to me if the goal is to, you know, very
soon after this put human beings on Mars, part of
what the role that maybe this particular you mentioned some
of the things that these copters will be doing there,
but would possibly potentially one of the things they'll be
(16:28):
doing there, or possibly maybe the next version of them
actually be there to help document when people do go
to Mars, because you know, that's always been the question
of the skeptics, well how do they have the cameras
on the moon and how were they ready for that?
And obviously you can't do everything for the purposes of
trying to prevent the skeptics, because skeptics will be skeptics.
(16:52):
The tigers go tiger, right, They're going to do what
they got to do just to be skeptics, But as
far as being prepared to cover this and having the
ability to get information back and images and video and
all those sorts of things, I mean, you think there
will be a use for them in that role.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
It's just some kind of backhanded way to try to
trick me into saying the moon landings were real. I'm
just wondering what this is. No, I'm just kidding, so
I will say anything. Right, Well, you can't just because
you it's twenty twenty five, Like AI, right, can we
trust images and video in twenty twenty five?
Speaker 3 (17:32):
I mean, I mean, even these images we have of
Skyfall looks suspiciously AI generated. We were just talking about
that before we started. I just watched a clip of
an interview where someone was talking about Stanley Kubrick and
the lenses that he sometimes used in movies and how
he had gotten them when they were, you know, kind
of practicing how they were going to record things on
the Moon and all that stuff. So whether any of
(17:54):
that's true or not, who knows. But so it's just
kind of fresh on the mind. But in the sense
that you know they will need this will be as
monumental as the Moon was. This will be right there
on par with it. Obviously, with technology today, it seems
like it's maybe less of a feat, but I don't
think it really is. We're talking about landing on another
(18:17):
planet and you know, having human beings walk around. We're
gonna want to document this properly.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, sequels are rarely better than the original, by the way,
but there's always it's hard to say this is going
to be better than the Apollo eleven moon landing, you know,
because you know the original is almost always better. However,
this is a pretty good sequel because the Moon is
our moon, it's in the orbital system of the Earth,
basically a binary planet. This is actually a different planet
(18:44):
in our Solar System. And if you're going to go
along with me and believe that we actually landed on
the surface of the Moon we did, then then yeah,
it's a pretty monumental thing to say, Hey, we've expanded
that to an actual different planet in the Solar System.
That's a big day. And you better believe that. If
JPL has six functioning helicopters buzzing around up there on
(19:07):
the surface of Mars with high definition cameras, I'm pretty
sure they're gonna probably try to position one or two
of those to capture that landing on the surface of Mars,
especially I if it happens in twenty thirty, which is
just not that far away, right, and so hopefully you know,
hopefully Starship's doing well down there in Texas anyway, but
so so yeah, I would hope that they would have
(19:29):
those cameras available, maybe even set up another batch of helicopters,
just for the filming of the momentous event of human
beings setting foot on the surface of another planet, not
just another world, but another planet for the very first time.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Godfather Too, Empire Strikes Back, The Dark Night, and Return
of the King have all entered the chat.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I mean, you know they're in there. You know Rocky
two you missed that one. It's you know, I saw
them all. I watched every one of those that you
just mentioned, plus Rocky two.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
I just like the fact that, you know, Return of
the King was the third one in the trilogy and
it was the best. So, uh, coming up after a
quick break, we'll get the latest on that interstellar comt
we've recently been talking about. We'll do that next. I
(20:35):
suppose we should also mention Aliens, right, I mean you
should mention that one.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
That's all. I noticed you lopped off Gladiator too. I
mean I noticed it.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Terminator too. Anyway, I just you know, there's there's some
where they just you know, even if the original was good,
sometimes that second one is just a little bit better.
And Ghostbusters to say, there are people who actually think
Ghostbusters two was better. So you know some people, let's
I just didn't couldn't get over how you know one
(21:09):
was the better one to me. But anyway, all right,
let's talk I think there's a thing about Ghostbusters where
they say, like it depends on when you were born,
like the people who the one that they saw in
the theater, because it was a decent little gap between.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Those two movies. Anyway, all right, let's talk.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
About the interstellar comet, because yes, recently discovered and now
they know it's uh, it's it's it's big.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
I mean, it's not even the first interstellar comet. So this,
in fact is also a sequel. I will just say
that's true. This is the third in the trilogy, and
it's a big one. It's an it's not omuamua. But
you know, it's okay, it's all right. It's a good comment. Yep,
this comet is called three I Atlas, all right, So no, seriously, friends,
there is a comet zipping through our solar system right
(21:52):
now that is from another star system, the only the
third object known. And by the way, even though this
is not the original or even part two, this is
part three, third, third, one of these objects ever discovered.
This is the biggest one, and that's what this story is.
Check it out on the archive of spaceweather dot com.
(22:12):
Back on July twenty ninth, just a few days ago,
they ran a great story on that. They have an
easy to access archive on spaceweather dot com. Go visit
the July twenty ninth edition and read about comet three
I at lis because using prediscovery images from the Vera
Ruben Observatory. Now, let's let's unpack that just a little bit.
(22:36):
Prediscovery images means we realize this thing was a comet.
And then we went back and looked at the archive
from other telescopes to see if they had imaged that
part of the sky where the comet was discovered, and
sure enough, the Verra Rubin telescope, which is one of
the most prestigious new instruments coming online here for the
(22:59):
astrophysics sciences, the Vera Ruben Observatory had actually imaged that
part of the sky, and so they were able to
see in the images before that were taken before we
even knew this was a comet at all, this object,
and so with those prediscovery images they were able to
get a better look at the actual snowball that makes
(23:22):
up what we call the core of that comet, the
actual object itself, And so and why can't we see
it now? By the way, Well, it's gotten close to
the sun, a bunch of that ice is started to melt,
and now there's a giant cloud around the core of
the comet. We call that cloud the coma or the head.
But so the coma and today is preventing us from
(23:44):
getting detailed images, which is why we had to go
back and look in the archives. The archive images from
Vera Ruben showed that this object is seven miles wide,
which is not small. That's a pretty big hunk of
ice and rock out there flying through our Solar system
that didn't even come from our solar system. It came
from another star system, kind of like a weird plot
(24:08):
for a star trek motion picture anyway. So this is
the biggest interstellar object known so far, the biggest one
that we've ever discovered, hurtling through our solar system in
other words, And so there it is seven miles wide
for Comet three I atlas. Check it out on spaceweather
dot com.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
All right, we've been talking, not just us, but I
think you know, social media and the rest have been
talking about this asteroid that's looming out there. It's oh
my gosh, is it going to come? How close is
it going to come to us? Is it going to
make impact with the Moon. There's a small chance that
it will, and we'll talk about the small chance in
(24:47):
a second. But if this asteroid, this is Asteroid twenty
twenty four y R four, does in fact make contact
with the Moon in thirty two, which is wild to
me to think that we're looking at that and possibly
setting foot on Mars potentially before that, which is anyways,
(25:09):
it's just having to try to process all of that.
But if it were to happen, something kind of wild
might happen.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Yeah, well, let's not forget. We're going to be on
the moon, right, That's the plan is to be on
the moon. Itself.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
So you know we're going the motto of the Artemis
program is we're going back to stay. So you know,
we're planning to build a a moon base, right, So
if we have a moon base on the Moon in
twenty thirty two, asteroid, why are twenty twenty four y
R four has a non zero probability of impacting the
(25:45):
Moon in twenty thirty two. Now listen, if I owed
you a dollar and I paid you four cents, you
might feel a tad short changed. So there's only a
four percent chance that this asteroid will hit the Moon, right,
So what's happening right now is that scientists around the
world are saying, you know, well four percent is not zero.
(26:06):
And this is a pretty big asteroid. It's about sixty
meters wide, so that's you know, what is one hundred
and eighty feet across ish, you know, just short of
two hundred feet across. So this is a big object
and it could, you know, it could do some stuff
on the Moon. Well, the University of Western Ontario has
come out with a new estimate that if the collision
(26:28):
occurs between asteroid twenty twenty four yr four and the
lunar surface that given the speed and size of this asteroid,
it would release energy equivalent to six point five megatons
of TNT. That's a good old nuclear blast equivalent right there.
And if that impact would occur, releasing that much energy,
(26:52):
it would blast a kilometer wide crater into the Moon.
That's kind of the size of that one out there
in the Arizona Desert called meteor Crater or the Barringer Crater,
some people know it is the Winslow Crater. Anyway, that
big old hole in the ground just outside Winslow, Arizona.
So if you visited that and stood and looked from
(27:14):
one side of that massive crater to the other, you
get that visceral sense that, wow, this was a bad day.
This was a really really big impact. And so Western
Ontario University, their astronomers there, have said that we're gonna
put one in the surface of the Moon about that big.
If this one, I'm sorry, if this chance it's four
(27:34):
and one hundred or one in twenty five actually occurs
in twenty thirty two, okay, So quote Paul Wigert, the
lead of the study from the University of Western Ontario,
says this quote up to ten percent of the lunar
ejecta could reach Earth within days. The resulting meteor shower
(27:54):
could be eye catching with meteor rates orders of magnitude
above of usual background rates. So that's science he speak
for this. Hey, if this thing hits the Moon, it's
gonna throw a bunch of gravel at the Earth and
we're gonna have a meteor shower unlike anything you've ever
seen before. That's what Paul Weigert meant to say. I
(28:17):
just kind of interpreted, got him out of the science
he speak mode into the language that I speak, which
is science popularization. This is gonna happen. Friends, Well, if
that four percent probability of impact occurs, all right. So
their simulations then further suggested that meteor storm from the
impact of asteroid twenty twenty four y or four on
(28:37):
the surface of the Moon could quote go on for days.
And according to our friends at spaceweather dot com here's
the kicker, nearly every visible meteor in the miror in
this shower would be a piece of the Moon, so
very few pieces of the asteroid, in other words, mostly
chunks of the Moon falling in. Well, if those rocks
(28:59):
make scott or landfall. I should say, if those rocks
may landfall, they're worth a lot because they're chunks of
the moon, you see, and that's one of the most
valuable materials on the surface of the Earth. It's just
interesting to think that is possibility. Again, according to spaceweather
dot com, if it's on target, the asteroid could deliver
the largest lunar impact in approximately five thousand years, which
(29:22):
in the history of the Solar System is like yesterday,
but in our lifetimes was a long time ago. So again,
if you like the story, it's interesting, check it out
on the July twenty ninth edition of spaceweather dot Com. Again,
i'm referring you back to that day just a few
days ago. Spaceweather dot com had a great day on
July twenty ninth.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Coming up after one more quick break. First there was Beetlejuice,
and then there was the sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
We'll talk about that next.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
I enjoyed the sequel to Beetlejuice entitled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but
I don't think it was a better sequel than the original.
And I don't think I'm you know, standing like isolated
on an island to say that. So segueing from that
into let's talk about the star Beetlejuice. And there's been
questions for a long time, Hey, is there a companion
(30:26):
star there for Beetlejuice. We might have some evidence to
suggest maybe.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
So this is.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
A bit like a sequel if there's like a second one, right.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
I mean they're gonna have to name it if there
is one, and I mean naming it Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice seems appropriate.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
I mean it's no Happy Gilmore too.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
But I enjoyed that one, all right.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
So a mysterious companion star to Beetlejuice. Has it been discovered?
Question mark Check out NASA dot gov for the answer.
But I'll give you a hint right here. Yes, So
there it is. There's the end of the story. No. So,
the possibility for a companion star to Beatle Juice, a
(31:11):
small kind of a long period companion orbiting around the
larger star was first suggested back in nineteen oh eight
by English astronomer Henry Cozier Plumber, and he suggested based
on the observations of some unusual motions and cycles in
(31:32):
beetlejuice in terms of it's the way its surface expands
and contracts, and just the way it wabbles a little bit,
and its procession is it has its axial orbital access
processing a little bit, and so so, just based on
all those weird movements, this English astronomer back in nineteen
oh eight suggested, Hey, you know what could be possibly
(31:53):
causing that would be the slight tugging of a small
companion star. What do we mean by small, Well, the
size of our so to us, it's not all that small,
but compared to beetlejuice, which is about two hundred times
the diameter of our sun, it's still pretty small. So anyway,
that was suggested a long time ago, but it's been
difficult to find because that star would be super dim
(32:16):
compared to the greater bright light of the star Beetlejuice itself,
and therefore very hard to find in the glare of
that larger parent star. Okay, So, however, astronomers began to
get interested in all of this again when an event
occurred back in twenty nineteen, which Wes and I discussed
on this show. Back the way it's called the Great Diming.
(32:39):
And the interesting thing about the Great Diming was that
beetlejuice for a short period of time started behaving very
strangely and got far far dimmer as observed from Earth
than it normally is. And we actually thought, we as
human beings, actually thought we might be witnessing the end
of the life of that great red supergiant star and
(33:01):
it could actually erupt in a supernova explosion. Now that's
not what happened. What happened instead is it looks as
though beetlejuice throughout a whole bunch of material. It ejected
a dark cloud of material from the interior of the star.
But what scientists have suggested since that time. In twenty nineteen,
they brought back this, They brought back the idea of
(33:23):
this companion star and said, what if the gravitational influence
of that smaller companion star is causing beetlejuice to behave
in these weird ways and causing periodic injections of material
from the interior of the star. Okay, so now that
we have all of that in place, an astrophysicist, a
(33:45):
group of them from the Ames Research Institute in California's
Silicon Valley published a publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters
entitled Probable direct Imaging dec discovery of the stellar companion
of Beetlejuice. And it turns out that a gentleman by
the name of Steve Howell, was a senior researcher at
(34:07):
NASA Ames Research Center, used the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii,
that's one of the largest telescopes on Earth, by the way,
to directly observe this close companion to Beetlejuice. And Howell
and his team were able to publish that that observation
and you can actually go to NASA dot gov pull
up this story and see their photograph, which is, yes,
(34:31):
a bit enhanced. They did some they did some image processing.
This is different than artificial intelligence. They're not they're not
fabricating data. They're actually, uh enhancing real images, real data.
And they were able to find a very faint companion
star located in the exact predicted position where by simulations
(34:57):
by mathematical modeling scientists to predicted this little star to
be in its orbit around Beetlejuice if it was the
cause of the Great dimming event back in twenty nineteen.
So a really interesting story there. It's tying up all
kinds of loose ends, and it looks like Beetlejuice is
indeed a binary star system and does in fact have
(35:18):
a small companion star around it. All.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Right, August doesn't just mean Labor Day's coming up. It
also means kids are getting back to school. That's a
little bit of a shift in gears for you guys
at the Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Yeah, we have seasons, you know, like we have hockey season,
and we have you know, baseball season, we have back
to school season. That's what's going on. Right We're coming
out of our summer season, which is kind of our
summer camps and special programs that we have in the summertime,
and we're moving back into the time. We're preparing for
armies of invading and highly enthusiastic small children coming back
(35:52):
to our Coca Cola Space Science Center to learn all
about astronomy, space exploration, and the universe in general. And
we can't wait to welcome them again. The bigger groups
coming back beginning after Labor Day. So we're in preparations
right now. We are trying our very best to get
a few new exhibits up and running before the Labor
(36:13):
Day weekend. We're doing some upgrades on our flight simulators.
We're doing a brand new Mars Rover terrain with new
rovers and new targets and new games to play. We
have a couple of Kiosk based simulations that are going
to be put up in the gallery. All of these
things are going to be brand new for the upcoming
school year. And then we're also making preparations within our
(36:34):
theater to host the next season of Music under the Dome. Friends,
if you haven't been down and visited us in a while,
we have new things. That's the whole important part about this.
Come check us out. I'm gonna go ahead and say
we're using August for construction. Come check us out. After
Labor Day you start put a pin in the calendar. Now,
come check us out in the early parts of September,
(36:55):
and many of the things that I'm talking about right
now are going to be fully up and running. Uh tip.
August is kind of a it's a between season period
of time that we do a lot of repairs and
new installations and things like that. If you come see
us in August, We'll welcome you. We love to have
you here, but you'll be looking around. You'll see a
few construction zones throughout the exhibit gallery of the Space
(37:16):
Science Center. That's okay, come see us anyway, but for
sure come down and see us in September when we'll
have many of these new exhibits up and running.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Sean and I thank you for listening, and we'll do
this again next week.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
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, or you're just looking
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Get ready for dragon Con twenty twenty five Labor Day
weekend downtown Atlanta with the dragon Con pregame show coming
August twenty third and twenty fourth to a radio station
(38:14):
near you. If you live in the state of Georgia
or one of the states near enough to the state
of Georgia to pick up a radio signal coming from
the network of stations in the state of Georgia that'll
be carrying the show, and there are many in Alabama
and Tennessee and the Carolinas that'll have a chance to
hear it, even down into Florida, or simply listen to
it on the dragon Con Pregame Show podcast. Wherever you
(38:38):
listen to your podcast, yes, where you're listening to this podcast.
You can also find past editions of the dragon Con
Pregame Show podcast with interviews with William Shatner, other stars
from Star Trek, The Walking Dead, the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
many animated stars, some of your favorite Disney stars. Chances
(39:00):
to hear interviews with them, and this year's dragon Con
Pregame Show will drop to the podcast on August twenty third,
and you can hear this year's interviews. It's sponsored by
Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center, where doctor
Sean Cruisin and I often like to discuss the science
(39:21):
behind the science fiction and the connections between where science
fiction sometimes leads to science science sometimes leads to science fiction.
It's just a weird connection. That's already there. It's built
into it. And I say it's weird, but it's really not.
It makes perfect sense. The two go together very well.
Learn more about the Coca Cola Space Science Center at
(39:41):
CCSSC dot org. Learn more about this year's dragon Con
the website, which is DragonCon dot org
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