July 17, 2025 • 43 mins
Wes recaps stargazing in Australia before talking about the Bogong Moths that use the stars to navigate their migration patterns. Plus, Ax-4's crew is now back on Earth after making history for three countries. The DART mission has more fruit to bear. Apollo Soyuz celebrates 50 years and it's been 25 year since the Bastille Day Event.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/made-of-stars--4746260/support.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/made-of-stars--4746260/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
that's your own risk.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
When made of stars, made them stars, madies. When made
of stars, you could be from high they would New Mexicomus.
Where are stars?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
When we are made of stars?
Speaker 4 (00:55):
I'm West Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean,
cruising from Columbus State Universe These Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Hey Sean, Hey Wes, good to see you. It's good
to be back stateside doing this. We did the last
one across the planet, which is kind of appropriate every
now and then. You know, it's a technology has made
(01:17):
the world a much smaller place, and we talk about
that from time to time on the show. But it
was really good to be able to do at least
one show while I was in Australia, and the other
shows we had recorded ahead of time, as is necessary
sometimes when we're doing this so we can keep the
content coming. But I got a few little experiences to
(01:40):
share as we start, because for folks that haven't followed
the Great Adventures of the Carroll family trip to Australia,
part of which, by the way, was to do some
exploratory work on a possible made of Stars broadcast and
some other fun stuff in twenty twenty nine when there
is going to be totality of an eclipse up in
(02:02):
the Kimberly region in the northwestern part of Australia, which
happens to be very close to where Jill was born,
which is really cool, So some exploratory work on that.
So if the taxman's listening, at least part of the
trip was for that. The flight parts of it were
definitely for that. And then while I was there on
(02:26):
our vacation as a family were there for four weeks
and some of the really cool things that I can
share that I got to experience there with my in
laws and family, one dragging them all outside to watch
the International Space Station go overhead a couple of times.
They were like one of them, at least I think
my sister in law was like, I've seen it go
(02:46):
by before, but I didn't really know what it was,
and she's like, I thought maybe it was a satellite
and that's what it was. That's the exact thing that
I've seen go overhead before. And I was like, well,
there you go, now you know what it is. We
did that twice. The third night when we're gonna get
the best chance to see it. There were a lot
of clouds. I think I saw it for like maybe
(03:06):
like a second, just between a little gap in the clouds.
But I will not forget being able to introduce that
to them and to our listeners that have heard us
talk about that experience. There's apps that'll tell you where
you can when you can see it. It knows you
know geographically where you are. It'll tell you the best
times to see it, the best days to see it,
(03:27):
where in the sky to look for it, and you
can just watch it go overhead. If it's a clear
sky that night, you get a great chance to see it.
I've had some nights where it was making a perfect
pass and I got to watch it like horizon to horizon,
and it's just fun to see.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
And fun to experience. And being able to do that.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
So in introducing that to them and watching them all
download the apps right there in front of me, so
they could do it later. And then there was a
night I sent you a photo Shan, because we were
the boys and I were on this little playground that
was a little park near where my father and mother
in law live, and this playground had like a sort
(04:06):
of a net type thing made for kids to climb
on it, and the boys and I just got on
that and we were just lying down in this giant
net thing and just looking at the sky, looking at
you know, constellations that you can't see in the Northern hemisphere,
being able to introduce them to things, and of course
most notably the Southern Cross which is on the Australian flag,
(04:27):
and being able to go there it is, guys, And
we've been other times but never really had the opportunity
to have a really good sky to see it in.
And I sent you a photo of it, and I
was like, man, this is a night I will not forget,
just having this moment with them, just in a cool
evening because it's winter there, but it's not especially cold.
(04:50):
It was a good cool evening to lie outside and
stare at the sky and just you know, chat and
make observations about life and all the things that you
do when you stare at this guy and we were
doing all those things. So I had to share that
photo with you and that experience with you when I
did it, and again, not a moment that I will
ever forget in my life.
Speaker 6 (05:11):
Yeah, those are great experiences to inspire, you know, either
your kids to want to learn more about science or
you know, actually for somebody to go into astronomy or astrophysics.
Speaker 5 (05:23):
Those were the kinds of.
Speaker 6 (05:23):
Experiences that I had as a younger person that really
inspired me to pursue astronomy as a career. And and
you know, I love sharing those kinds of things with
that next generation. So it's it's one of the things
that we do a lot here at Space Science Center.
We encourage people to have those kinds of experiences and
help try to provide them. I'm glad you got to
share those memories with your own boys, because that's just
(05:46):
great stuff and great memories to latch onto. And you know, say, hey,
remember that time we were with dad out there looking
at the old Southern Cross, Right, that's a cool shared experience.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
And you know it's the uh, just that moment of
being able to point it out to him, to explain
some of the things about it that I've learned over
the years. And obviously you're looking at a different sky.
Some things or universal, but some things are very different
in the Southern Hemisphere, so kind of running through constellations
(06:17):
and things with them, and it was like, all right,
so this is me pretending to being the poor man
Sean for my in laws and my kids while we
were down there, but being able to share that with
them was just great.
Speaker 6 (06:29):
Well, that's cool. I'm glad that you and I share
this common enthusiasm for space, and it's one of the
reasons for this podcast and probably anybody who's listening to
it knows exactly what we mean.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
I think, so yep, and I don't think that's an
absurd thing, and we probably have a lot of new
Australian listeners, even some airline staff and things. I always
like when I'm on those really long flights to point
out to the people that are doing the really long
flights and I'm like, hell, how long have you been
doing this long fight?
Speaker 5 (07:00):
And they're like, oh, you know, I've been doing it
for like five years.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
And it's like, so you do this, you know, fifteen
hour flight a couple of times a week for all
these years and they're like yes, and I'm like, you know,
technically you're aging more slowly than everybody down on the planet.
Just it's very subtle, but you're you're you're earning some
extra time. And they're like what, and I start explaining
and they're like, oh wow, and I'm like, no, no, don't.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
It's not much, but it's just a little bit.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
And they're like really, and I'm like yeah, and I'm
like and if you listen to Nata Stars you can
learn all these fun things. So you know, they're like, oh,
I never really thought about that, and it's like, yeah,
you're also going to expose to more radiation, so congratulations.
Speaker 6 (07:39):
Yeah you're gonna you know, your time's running more slowly,
but you're gonna have less of it.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
So that's right.
Speaker 6 (07:46):
So just keep all that in mind, so you know,
you win some, you lose some. It's it's all. What's
remarkable about that. We actually have a story about that
later on in the show today that actually relates to
a story we have.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
To well, well we will get to that coming up
in just a little bit.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Let's first of all, start.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
The AX four crew has now returned to Earth, so's
that's a good place to start.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Yeah, I mean it is.
Speaker 6 (08:15):
And you know, if you're gonna go all the way
to the space station, you're probably gonna get even just
a little bit more of that radiation than you would
catch on a flight to Australia or something. But true,
it probably is worth it to the people who go, right,
I mean, I would think it would be worth it
to pick up a little extra space radiation to see
the Earth from orbit. So that's certainly what the AX
(08:36):
four crew just got to be experiencing. If you don't
know what AX four is, that's the Axiom Space their
fourth commercial crew flight, all commercial crew, and they went
to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX capsule. They returned.
That's the big headline right now is they returned just
a few days ago, July the fifteenth, and they were
(08:57):
wrapping up nearly three weeks. So they had a pretty
good trip for a private astronaut crew, pretty good service
time up on the International Space Station. While they were
up there, they did all manner of experiments, everything from
Earth observation to biology and just life sciences and how
(09:19):
our bodies accommodate to that space environment. Lots of really
cool things. They did over sixty studies in total that
AX four crew. So that's a really amazing feat right there,
is that they had sixty scientific studies that they carried
out in that three weeks of time up there. The
commander of that mission, now not the commander of the
(09:40):
actual space station, but the commander of the AX four
mission was Peggy Whitson, legend of the American space program,
former NASA astronaut, currently Axiom's director of Human Spaceflight, and
she extended her cumulative days in space record for American
astronauts to six one hundred and ninety five. She is
(10:02):
the American astronaut with the most most cumulative time and
space six hundred and ninety five days, which is substantial, right. So,
so talk about you know, being up there where you
might be experiencing a little extra radiation. Peggy might be
glowing in the dark just a little bit. But other
than that, she's a really cool person and she has
(10:23):
six almost seven hundred days in space.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
It's one of those things, like you said, it's worth
it because of the experience with it. Obviously, she wouldn't
continue to go back if she was too concerned about
the radiation, but I mean, you know, almost seven hundred
days in space age and more slowly, so that's good too.
Speaker 6 (10:44):
Indeed, little general relativity on her side, that's probably you know,
extending her somewhat. So the other three astronauts aboard the
AX four mission were all from countries who've never sent
anyone to the International Space Station before. These were all
first time ISS flyers from their respective countries. And by
(11:06):
the way, these were the first first time space flyers
as well, right, so they themselves had never been to
space before. So Schubhan Shu Shukla from the Indian Space
Research Organization was the pilot of the vehicle, and that's
a designated position. It's kind of like copilot on an aircraft.
So the commander is really the pilot and the pilot's
(11:27):
really the co pilot. It kind of works that way.
So that is an important person on that flight. First
Indian space astronaut spaceflight participant to go up to the
International Space Station, Slaslow Uznanski was now ski you could
say that again, I'm just I can't. I'm just glad
(11:48):
I got by at the one time. It's from the
European Space Agency, but Slaslow is from Poland, the first
person from Poland to go up to the International Space Station.
He's a European space agent astronaut. And then t Bor
Capou from the Hungarian Space Office, So Tibor Capoo from Hungary,
(12:08):
an astronaut from Poland astronaut from India. All three first
time the countries just listed were represented at the International
Space Station, all thanks to Axiom and the ax four crew.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
Good stuff.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Let's talk about the fiftieth anniversary. We just had this
of or it's today as we're recording, right, Today's the
anniversary fifty years of the Apollo Soyu's mission. I was
reading in the other story, I saw the date of
them starting to come home on July fifteenth, and I
mixed the two stories up. So today is the actual
(12:44):
fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo Soyu's test project.
Speaker 6 (12:49):
An extremely important project. We kind of think of the
Apollo missions as ending at the Moon, right, the last
Apollo flight Apollo seventeen to go to the Moon. But
that for that, you know, that ignores the Apollo Soyuz program.
So we used some of our same Moon hardware to
(13:10):
actually perform joint space projects in low Earth orbit with
the Russians. So think about that, we had just had
the Moon Race, you know, less than five years since
the Moon Race was completed, where we were racing the
Russians to the Moon, and there's a lot of you know,
it sounds friendly now, but it was anything but friendly
(13:33):
at the time. There was a lot of international intrigue,
a lot of overtones from the Cold War, a lot
of undertones of nuclear missiles being aimed at one another.
And during the midst of all of that, the two
countries scientists and space explorers actually had a cooperation in
space where they had what was called the Apollo Soyuzed
(13:56):
Test Project or ASTP, and that that project was being
able to construct the spacecraft and common docking components where
you could actually link up a Russian spaceship, a soy Use,
with an Apollo spacecraft in orbit. And so that first
(14:17):
ever mission in the Apollo Soyused Test Project occurred on
July seventeenth, nineteen seventy five, as Wes mentioned, fifty years
ago today as we're recording this podcast. And the thing
is that was the very first moment of a cooperation
and collaboration that has now led to the International Space Station.
(14:39):
So the fact that those astronauts from all those other
nations just mentioned in the previous story got to go
up to something called the International Space Station.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And hang out.
Speaker 6 (14:48):
All began with a handshake between two spacecraft from politically
very opposed countries back at nineteen seventy five. So on
the Russian side, the guy that actually opened the hatch
once the two spacecraft were docked is a very famous person.
His name is Alexei Leonov, and Alexei Leonov was the
(15:12):
first human being to ever perform a spacewalk from the
Russian Space Agency. And he said very good to see
you in English through the hatchway. And then on the
American side, US Commander Tom Stafford spoke in Russian and
said very happy, my friend, which sounds just mildly grammatically incorrect,
(15:38):
but that's what he said. And you know, the legend
is that what Tom Stafford spoke was not exactly Russian.
It's what he referred to as oklahom Ski, a special
language for those people from Oklahoma who have learned to
speak Russian so that they can participate in joint space flights.
Oklahom Ski. In his unique version of oklahoma Ski, Tom
(16:04):
Stafford who's a Paulo aspronaut himself. He's actually been on
trips to the a trip to the moon himself. With
a heavy Oklahoma drawl in Russian, said very happy, my friend,
and that began the collaboration, which then led to a handshake,
starting the collaboration between the American space program the Russian
space program that have led to many important joint ventures,
(16:26):
including and especially the International Space Station.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
A huge anniversary and a big step. For any anniversary
that ends with a zero or five is usually of
some significance. Fifty is a big one. It's always a
big one. When it's fifty, it's an important one. You know,
it's an important can't forget it.
Speaker 6 (16:46):
And then also it's really important to not underestimate how
much the space program may have tamped down certain aspects
of the Cold War that could have been catastrophic. Right,
So it's you really can't underestimate this or understate this
in terms of its importance in global geopolitical history. And
(17:10):
you know why we didn't have a hot war with
the Russians, that it stayed cold and didn't advance, might
in part have been because of these kinds of collaborations.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Coming up after a quick break, we'll talk about a
different anniversary because it's a twenty five, not a fifty.
We'll get to that right after this. So when we
(17:55):
talk about potential solar activity and possible effects of solar
activity on communications on Earth and things that could happen.
Whenever there's a very severe, very powerful storm that takes place,
sometimes we talk about it and just say, hey, this
is possibly happening. There need to be some precautions or
be aware of it. We've had times where we've talked
(18:17):
about them, and there have been some issues with outages
with things. Sometimes it's really just a caution and nothing
really happens and we can be thankful for it. We're
not quite predicting severe weather and then the kids go
home from school and everybody gets mad when there's no
severe weather. It's not that, but it is one of
those things where we have to remind people from time
to time there have been severe events because of solar storms,
(18:41):
and twenty five years ago, on July fourteenth, there was
a very significant one.
Speaker 6 (18:47):
Yeah, this is a significant storm for a variety of reasons.
So back in the year two thousand, we were approaching
a solar maximum at that time twenty five years ago
on July fourteenth. You might know, July fourteenth is an
important date in history of the country of France because
that's what they refer to as Best Steal Day, and
(19:08):
it's nothing to lose your head about, but it's something
that you want to just keep in mind. Anyway, that's
a terrible joke. So the notion is that on that
very famous day in history in the year two thousand,
the Sun contributed something that was well worth noting anyway,
which is an extremely powerful solar flare. So this extremely
powerful solar flare happened to occur from a sunspot group
(19:32):
that was directly facing the Earth. It was not a
glancing blow, it was not a side shot. It was
directly at planet Earth. And okay, so that's bad. The
we measure the intensity of these solar outbursts by a
scale that we have for the intensity of X rays
(19:55):
that come from them, and so we have a class B,
class C CL class. All of those are a logarithmic
scale and X ray intensity. Then it jumps to M
class because apparently somebody forgot the alphabet, and then it
jumps to X class, which means really bad. So a
class B, class C, class M, class X class. So
(20:20):
on this show you've probably heard us talk about a
variety of X class solar flares. We get them from
time to time during times like now, which is in
the midst of solar maximum. On the scale of X
class solar flares, the Bastile event back in two thousand
was only an X five point seven, And I say only,
(20:40):
that's an incredibly powerful solar flare. But I say only
because there's a lot more powerful solar of flares that
can occur around solar max in terms of the X
ray output. Right, So X five point seven, yes, powerful.
But we we have discussed the Carrington event on this show,
(21:02):
which would have been in the twenties within the X class.
And remember that's a logarithmic scale, so those are powers
of ten as it goes up. So compared to that flare,
this particular flare on Bastiele day of the year two
thousand was not that strong. Well wait a minute, though,
There's another effect that can happen, friends, and that's just
(21:23):
how much particle radiation a storm like this can throw
out into space. So there's the X rays, which are
a form of light and that's how we rate these
flares on that scale I was just describing. But then
there's also the particles, the amount and speed at which
these particles are tossed off. And there was a gigantic
(21:47):
amount of particle radiation associated with the Bastiel Day flare
of the year two thousand. It left the Sun and
was traveling at something like six one hundred kilometers per
second by the time it reached the edge of the
Solar System. Now that's not at the Sun at the Earth. Rather,
(22:11):
that's at the edge of the Solar System where the
Voyager one and Voyager two spacecraft that were launched in
the seventies. Remember we're talking about an event in the
year two thousand. The shockwave finally caught up with those
Voyager vehicles. One hundred and eighty days after the explosion,
(22:31):
it caught up with Voyager two, and then two hundred
and forty five days after the original explosion it caught
up with Voyager one, and even that long after the
event actually took place. The debris fields, the scattering coronal
mass ejection from this gigantic flare, we're still traveling at
(22:53):
six hundred kilometers per second. Nine billion kilometers away from
the Sun, they were still so powerful that those waves
of particles cleared out all of the intergalactic cosmic ray particles.
It just just swept the entire Solar System of those
kinds of particles. And it turns out those two Voyager
(23:15):
spacecraft both had sensors which measured the cosmic ray particle interactions,
and so these two spacecraft just said, oh wow, we
had a giant dip in cosmic radiation almost almost a year,
you know, the better part of a year after the
actual event took place. It's crazy to think. So what
(23:38):
happened on If it was that intense at the outer
reaches of the Solar System, what happened here on Earth, Well,
we had a geomagnetic storm, and we have another scale.
It goes from one to nine, one being very mild
geomagnetic storm, nine being the most intense geomagnetic storm that
(23:59):
you can have. And on July fifteenth and sixteenth, the
coronal mass ejection that was led off by the Bastile
Day event on the Sun, gigantic solar flare that by
the time it reached the Earth, traveling at fifteen hundred
kilometers per second, those solar wind particles were so strong
that it caused a nine on what we call the
(24:21):
KP scale, or the intensity of the Earth's geomagnetic storm,
was a nine out of nine. Bright auroras were visible
as far south as Texas, Florida, and even down into Mexico,
even lasting into July sixteenth, which is two days after
the original explosion took place. The intensity of that flare,
(24:45):
in terms of the energy of those particles it ejected,
was equivalent to one thousand billion World War II era
atomic bombs. So you think, you know Hirotia Nagasaki, that
level of atomic weapon, you would have to have one
thousand billion, not one hundred billion, a thousand billion of
(25:07):
those bombs to equate to the energy of the beast
deal of Bestial Day event, which is why we are
still talking about it twenty five years later.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
And if you were on a plane at that time,
you would have been definitely, even though aging more slowly,
exposed to.
Speaker 5 (25:28):
What double the radiation.
Speaker 6 (25:30):
Yeah, so every time you're on a high altitude flight, friends,
you're exposed to some level of radiation from the Sun.
You would have doubled your dose had you been on
a high altitude aircraft on July fifteenth, twenty or I
should say two thousand of the year two thousand, so
(25:51):
so and maybe you were sorry. That's just just the
way nature works sometimes. I mean, in that flow you
were in path. Had you been airborne on July fifteenth
in the year two.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Thousand, yeah, and if you were on a really long flight,
it would have been a lot of it for that
whole time that you were in the air. So I
can comfortably say at that point, looking back, I was not.
I was not personally and Jill was already here as
of earlier in that year, so we weren't on any
planes at that point.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
So that's good, good.
Speaker 6 (26:24):
Well, one last thing about the Bastilla Day event. It's
important to know that we had not had a solar
flare this strong in the space age, and so the
interesting thing about that Bastilla Day event, it's one of
the best. It's one of the first best studied major
interactions between the coronal mass ejection from a solar storm
(26:46):
and the Earth. And that's because we had instruments in
orbit like the Solar and hel helio Spheric Observatory Solar
and Helospheric Observatory, we know it better as SOHO. So
that SOHO was in orbit. We had spacecraft up there
that could monitor the intensity and level of the charge
particles coming in from the Sun, and it was the
(27:06):
first time any kind of really intense solar flare was
well studied from orbit, from space rather than just from
the ground. So that's another really important thing about the
Bastie Day event of the year two thousand.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
Let's take one more quick break when we come back,
a new surprise compliments of NASA's Dart mission. It keeps
on given. We'll talk next, all right, we love the
(27:46):
Dart mission. We're big fans of the Dart mission. We've
talked many times about our experiences while the Dart mission
was taking place and watching it live, and we've got
some new information. This is a about the third or
fourth time we've had new information complements of the Dart mission.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
So the Dart Mission, as you say, just keeps on giving.
And remember right now, there are two very small European
spacecraft on their way out from the European Space Agency,
on their way out to these asteroids to revisit them
to get an even better look at the havoc and
debris caused by slamming a spacecraft into an asteroid. So
(28:29):
we're really trying to study these effects on this asteroid
for the purpose of planetary defense. So it's actually a
very important set of studies. We need to know all
the ins and outs about what would happen if we
try to deflect an incoming asteroid with various means, including
a space collision. So this is a collision of a
(28:50):
spaceship with an asteroid, all right. So that was the
NASA DART mission, or we we shorten that to DART.
It's the double Asteroid Redirect Redirection test. That's how you
get the strained acronym of dark, all right. So the
DART mission, launched in November twenty twenty one, slammed into
this little tiny asteroid named Dimorphous, which was actually a
(29:12):
moon asteroid of another asteroid known as Didymus. It slammed
into Dimorphous on September twenty sixth, in the year twenty
twenty two. Dimorphous, Well, the effects on that little asteroid
from the collision have been surprising, and it was even
surprising from you know, sort of the day of collision,
(29:35):
because the very earliest observations showed a massive debris field
that was ejected off of that asteroid. And so even
just say the day later, the participating scientists and science
teams knew they had caused far more of an effect
on that asteroid than we thought. It turns out the
(29:55):
asteroids structure was a little bit different than what we thought.
We learned that from the collision from the after debris
in the sense that it was kind of a rubble
pile and less like a one single big rock and
more like a collection of small rocks held together by gravity,
kind of like a ballpit. Think of it that way, right,
And so you jump in the ballpit and you just
(30:15):
knock all the balls out. And so the interesting thing though,
is in the latest study, in a new analysis by
a team from the University of Maryland, they have found
that there was some strange components to the debris field.
So they're studying these huge boulders that flew off that
asteroid during the collision. And I say huge anywhere from
(30:39):
three feet to twenty three feet in diameter. So twenty
three foot boulder is a big, heavy rock, right. They
have found that at least a few of these rocks
are flying off of the asteroid dimorphous with more momentous
(31:01):
then the spaceship had when it hit the asteroid in
the first place. Now, we have this thing in physics
called the conservation of momentum, and so if it's just
a if it's just one rock running into another rock,
the second rock can't leave with more momentum than the
first rock had when it hit it. That violates the
(31:24):
conservation of momentum. So how do we get around the
conservation of momentum being violated in this collision. Well it's
not easy. But what happened was that the entire asteroid
dimorphous changed its orbit in such a way that it
actually has less orbital momentum, and that momentum was transferred
(31:51):
to some of the very large boulders that were ejected
off the asteroid. So already that's weird, right. You have
particles after the collision flying away with more momentum than
the impactor had on its way in in the first place.
Yet to have some strange physics, I mean, it's possible,
(32:11):
but it's some unlikely physics to get that to happen. Now,
let me tell you an experience I had on the
golf course once Wes. I was hitting a T shot.
I had just walked across a bridge to go to
the tea box. The bridge led to the cart path.
That bridge was at a perfect ninety degree angle from
the direction of the fairway. I wind up, I swing
(32:36):
my driver and the golf ball comes off at an angle.
That rolled that golf ball over the bridge that I
walked over on, which was a perfect ninety degree angle
from the fairway. And my friend who I was golfing
with that day said these words to me, I think
you just violated physics, which you know, there's another story
(33:02):
in there altogether. But the reason I'm telling you that
with the Dart mission is because the boulders that were
flying away with more momentum than the spacecraft had in
the first place, were also flying off at a ninety
degree angle from the direction of the impact, which is weird, Right,
(33:23):
How does that happen? You could see them flying off
in the same line that the spacecraft hit the asteroid with, right,
But why would they fly off at ninety degrees? The
answer is it's complicated, and so you have to consider
the spin rotation of the asteroid, the deflection direction of
(33:45):
the asteroid, the angle in which the spacecraft hit the
larger asteroid and then all of those momentum transfers happened.
It's not an easy thing to account for. And the
most important message from this team at the Universe to
Maryland is, Hey, if we're going to hit asteroids the
size of the Great Pyramid in Giza with spacecraft trying
(34:09):
to deflect them, the physics might be a little bit
more complicated than we think, because the momentum that was
transferred from the spacecraft to the asteroid and the deflection
that the asteroid encountered could potentially bend enough to send
(34:29):
that entire asteroid tumbling out of its orbit around another
asteroid and off in some random direction in space. Now,
that did not happen, but this team is saying it
could have happened. And so what the team is cautioning
is the effects when you hit an asteroid in the
(34:49):
eye with a spacecraft might be more complicated than you think,
and you could potentially make the situation worse. To quote
their paper, they say this, there is yet to be
a full accounting of the total momentum in all directions,
but the ejecticone spreads out sideways as well as in
the direction of the incoming spacecraft. There is a significant
(35:11):
component of momentum that was carried out perpendicular to Dimorphos's
velocity vector, which means, Wow, we saw some really strange
dynamic effects, and we need to be really careful that
we're accounting for all of the things that could happen
when we try to divert an asteroid in the future
(35:32):
that has a chance of actually coming to hit Earth,
that we don't make things worse. So there's the interesting
latest result from the Dart mission from NASA.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
Sounds like a really elaborate way for you to brag
about a golf shot. That's what it sounded like to me.
I don't know what else you said. I just heard
you bragging about a good golf shot.
Speaker 6 (35:51):
If it sounded like golf bragging, understand that it was
possibly the worst golf shot I've ever hit. In mind
would go backwards, which is close to going backwards, as
you know with a forward swing, a golf ball actually
going backwards. This is as close as I think you
can achieve with physics.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
And someone says you defied physics with your golf shot.
I think that's an impressive golf shot. That's all I
was getting at. I once played golf at Callaway Gardens,
which was the former home of the PGA Buick Challenge,
and someone said to me, Wow, you may be the
worst golfer that's ever played on this course.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
And I played that.
Speaker 6 (36:28):
One too, so I don't know. I think you run
for your money. Maybe.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
Well the person who made that observation was me, so
I'm pretty sure it was that anyway. All right, I
just wanted to brag about playing on that course because
I was excited to be invited to play there. Let's
talk about Australian moths. This is a great story to
wrap things up with now that I'm back Stateside.
Speaker 5 (36:49):
But these.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
Particular moths, which apparently people like to eat. They're a
delicacy for some, with like a nutty flavor. I know
I haven't tasted them, but that's what I've heard. But
this is a cool story about how they actually use
the sky to navigate as they do their migration patterns.
Speaker 6 (37:09):
And before I butcher it, what's the official Australian pronunciation
for the name of this.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I've heard bogong. That's what I would say.
Speaker 6 (37:17):
That's how I would have said it.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
Yeah, okay, and let's just stick with that one and
I'm pretty sure this would be an Aboriginal word, so
there may be a slight variation on it, but I
would have heard, yeah, bogong and that some people. I
guess when you're out bush you can eat these things
and they do have like a supposedly like a nutty
flavor to them or whatever.
Speaker 5 (37:36):
But anyway, I've never eaten one.
Speaker 6 (37:39):
Well neither of I, and I'm not going to probably
seek that out anytime soon.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
However, if you're out bush and you get hungry enough,
you probably would.
Speaker 5 (37:48):
But yeah, I haven't tasted one.
Speaker 6 (37:50):
It's important to know what you can and can't, you
know what I'm saying. That's right, that's very true. I
learned about these things from a great website called spaceweather
dot com. And by the way, before I get too
far afield the story we ran on the Bastille Day
a little earlier in the show that came from spaceweather
dot com. Two stories from spaceweather dot com, just because
it's one of our favorite websites of all time. Doctor
(38:11):
Tony Phillips running the spaceweather dot com website, has a
great story about moths and this This is actually a
story about a piece of research that was published in
the journal Nature, and I'm gonna give you the short
version of the story. But the short version of the
story is that moths, it has been found, navigate by
(38:33):
the stars. Now, it's long suspected that insects could it
possibly had the ability to navigate by the stars. But
I believe this is the first piece of verifiable research
that insinuates by its data that these moths can actually
they can actually navigate according to the position of bright
(38:56):
objects in the sky, including the Milky Way. Gallon friends,
And they have to navigate very well because they have
a migration that goes one thousand kilometers six hundred miles
something on that order, and they have to nail a
really small little cluster of caves in the Australian Alps,
and they have to do it with such precision that
(39:18):
they really have to know exactly where they're going. And
scientists have long thought, how do they do this? Are
they using the magnetic field of the Earth. Well it
turns out that yes, they might actually be using that
too on cloudy days, but their navigation had to be
more precise than would be facilitated simply by the magnetic field.
It looks like these moths actually use the stars. How
(39:40):
do we know. Here's how the story goes, because they
took some of these little moths and put them in
a planetarium, a special moth planetarium, and they tethered them.
They tied them with little strings, and then they put
the stars off there, and all the little moths flew
off in the same direction. They were flying off in
(40:01):
a direction that was being guided by their perception of
the objects in the sky on this virtual sky of
a moth planetarium. And it turns out when they showed
them randomized stars and different star fields that are simulated
but not actual, then they couldn't find their way around anymore.
(40:24):
Then they were not flying off all in the same
direction anymore. So it's pretty clear by this new study
that moths actually look at the sky know instinctively at
least what the Milky Way galaxy is, or another bright
object called the Karina nebula, which is the Southern Hemisphere object,
(40:44):
and from their recognition of these objects in the sky
can actually guide themselves where they need to go on
their migratory patterns. This is a fantastic story. If you're
listening to this in the future. Future future look for
the July seventh, twenty twenty five edition of spaceweather dot com.
They have an archive, go back and check it out.
(41:05):
Australian ball is navigating to where they need to go
via the Milky Way actually looking at the sky.
Speaker 5 (41:13):
I double checked it.
Speaker 4 (41:14):
Bogong is a derivative, I guess from the Aboriginal tom
term boogong bugun g, which means brown. So that's the
since it's a brown moth, so yes, bogong the common
pronunciation for it. All right, So let's talk about Kalm
State University's co Co Space Science Center, and let's talk
(41:36):
about Dave Scott again.
Speaker 6 (41:38):
Yeah, we have our full summer programs in swing. We've
been doing summer camps. We've been showing all kinds of
kids and their grandparents that their parents who are all
you know, the kids are out of school right now
and the parents and grandparents are trying to figure out
what to do with them, and they're bringing them to us,
which is the right thing to do. Friends, bring them
on down and let them see the Space Science Center.
But as Wes just mentioned, we also have a very
special exhibit from astronaut David Scott of Apollo fifteen, and
(42:02):
it's up not at the Coca Cola Space Science Center,
but just down the street at the Bow Bartlett Center,
which is an art gallery here at Columbus State University.
It's one of our sister organizations here at the university,
and they are exhibiting a collection from astronaut David Scott
that was facilitated as a donation by his brother Tom
(42:23):
Scott to the Coca Cola Space Science Center, but they
just have more pieces than we have walls, and so
we're showing it off at the art gallery for a
period of time. And you can still go down and
see that collection for the rest of the month of July,
and you can check out the hours at the bo
Bartlett Center, but they're basically from eleven am to four
(42:44):
pm Tuesday through Saturday. Check it out at our website
or at the bo Bartlett Center's website. Go down and
see the David Scott collection. He was the first person
to ever drive a car on the surface of the Moon.
Very famous astronaut, very famous collection. Check it out on
display now at the Bowl Bartlett Center here at Columbus
State University, a partner institution of CSU's Coca Cola Space
(43:08):
Science Center.
Speaker 4 (43:09):
And Sean and I thank you for listening, and we
will do this again next week. Plus, 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 to upgrade or
(43:31):
repair your current door, Overhead Door Company of Columbus has
you covered. Plus they've got your emergency repairs or service
covered as well. Seven oh six three five eight forty
five hundred seven oh six three five eight forty five
hundred Odccolumbus dot com
Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
that's your own risk.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
When made of stars, made them stars, madies. When made
of stars, you could be from high they would New Mexicomus.
Where are stars?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
When we are made of stars?
Speaker 4 (00:55):
I'm West Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean,
cruising from Columbus State Universe These Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Hey Sean, Hey Wes, good to see you. It's good
to be back stateside doing this. We did the last
one across the planet, which is kind of appropriate every
now and then. You know, it's a technology has made
(01:17):
the world a much smaller place, and we talk about
that from time to time on the show. But it
was really good to be able to do at least
one show while I was in Australia, and the other
shows we had recorded ahead of time, as is necessary
sometimes when we're doing this so we can keep the
content coming. But I got a few little experiences to
(01:40):
share as we start, because for folks that haven't followed
the Great Adventures of the Carroll family trip to Australia,
part of which, by the way, was to do some
exploratory work on a possible made of Stars broadcast and
some other fun stuff in twenty twenty nine when there
is going to be totality of an eclipse up in
(02:02):
the Kimberly region in the northwestern part of Australia, which
happens to be very close to where Jill was born,
which is really cool, So some exploratory work on that.
So if the taxman's listening, at least part of the
trip was for that. The flight parts of it were
definitely for that. And then while I was there on
(02:26):
our vacation as a family were there for four weeks
and some of the really cool things that I can
share that I got to experience there with my in
laws and family, one dragging them all outside to watch
the International Space Station go overhead a couple of times.
They were like one of them, at least I think
my sister in law was like, I've seen it go
(02:46):
by before, but I didn't really know what it was,
and she's like, I thought maybe it was a satellite
and that's what it was. That's the exact thing that
I've seen go overhead before. And I was like, well,
there you go, now you know what it is. We
did that twice. The third night when we're gonna get
the best chance to see it. There were a lot
of clouds. I think I saw it for like maybe
(03:06):
like a second, just between a little gap in the clouds.
But I will not forget being able to introduce that
to them and to our listeners that have heard us
talk about that experience. There's apps that'll tell you where
you can when you can see it. It knows you
know geographically where you are. It'll tell you the best
times to see it, the best days to see it,
(03:27):
where in the sky to look for it, and you
can just watch it go overhead. If it's a clear
sky that night, you get a great chance to see it.
I've had some nights where it was making a perfect
pass and I got to watch it like horizon to horizon,
and it's just fun to see.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
And fun to experience. And being able to do that.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
So in introducing that to them and watching them all
download the apps right there in front of me, so
they could do it later. And then there was a
night I sent you a photo Shan, because we were
the boys and I were on this little playground that
was a little park near where my father and mother
in law live, and this playground had like a sort
(04:06):
of a net type thing made for kids to climb
on it, and the boys and I just got on
that and we were just lying down in this giant
net thing and just looking at the sky, looking at
you know, constellations that you can't see in the Northern hemisphere,
being able to introduce them to things, and of course
most notably the Southern Cross which is on the Australian flag,
(04:27):
and being able to go there it is, guys, And
we've been other times but never really had the opportunity
to have a really good sky to see it in.
And I sent you a photo of it, and I
was like, man, this is a night I will not forget,
just having this moment with them, just in a cool
evening because it's winter there, but it's not especially cold.
(04:50):
It was a good cool evening to lie outside and
stare at the sky and just you know, chat and
make observations about life and all the things that you
do when you stare at this guy and we were
doing all those things. So I had to share that
photo with you and that experience with you when I
did it, and again, not a moment that I will
ever forget in my life.
Speaker 6 (05:11):
Yeah, those are great experiences to inspire, you know, either
your kids to want to learn more about science or
you know, actually for somebody to go into astronomy or astrophysics.
Speaker 5 (05:23):
Those were the kinds of.
Speaker 6 (05:23):
Experiences that I had as a younger person that really
inspired me to pursue astronomy as a career. And and
you know, I love sharing those kinds of things with
that next generation. So it's it's one of the things
that we do a lot here at Space Science Center.
We encourage people to have those kinds of experiences and
help try to provide them. I'm glad you got to
share those memories with your own boys, because that's just
(05:46):
great stuff and great memories to latch onto. And you know, say, hey,
remember that time we were with dad out there looking
at the old Southern Cross, Right, that's a cool shared experience.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
And you know it's the uh, just that moment of
being able to point it out to him, to explain
some of the things about it that I've learned over
the years. And obviously you're looking at a different sky.
Some things or universal, but some things are very different
in the Southern Hemisphere, so kind of running through constellations
(06:17):
and things with them, and it was like, all right,
so this is me pretending to being the poor man
Sean for my in laws and my kids while we
were down there, but being able to share that with
them was just great.
Speaker 6 (06:29):
Well, that's cool. I'm glad that you and I share
this common enthusiasm for space, and it's one of the
reasons for this podcast and probably anybody who's listening to
it knows exactly what we mean.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
I think, so yep, and I don't think that's an
absurd thing, and we probably have a lot of new
Australian listeners, even some airline staff and things. I always
like when I'm on those really long flights to point
out to the people that are doing the really long
flights and I'm like, hell, how long have you been
doing this long fight?
Speaker 5 (07:00):
And they're like, oh, you know, I've been doing it
for like five years.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
And it's like, so you do this, you know, fifteen
hour flight a couple of times a week for all
these years and they're like yes, and I'm like, you know,
technically you're aging more slowly than everybody down on the planet.
Just it's very subtle, but you're you're you're earning some
extra time. And they're like what, and I start explaining
and they're like, oh wow, and I'm like, no, no, don't.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
It's not much, but it's just a little bit.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
And they're like really, and I'm like yeah, and I'm
like and if you listen to Nata Stars you can
learn all these fun things. So you know, they're like, oh,
I never really thought about that, and it's like, yeah,
you're also going to expose to more radiation, so congratulations.
Speaker 6 (07:39):
Yeah you're gonna you know, your time's running more slowly,
but you're gonna have less of it.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
So that's right.
Speaker 6 (07:46):
So just keep all that in mind, so you know,
you win some, you lose some. It's it's all. What's
remarkable about that. We actually have a story about that
later on in the show today that actually relates to
a story we have.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
To well, well we will get to that coming up
in just a little bit.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Let's first of all, start.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
The AX four crew has now returned to Earth, so's
that's a good place to start.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Yeah, I mean it is.
Speaker 6 (08:15):
And you know, if you're gonna go all the way
to the space station, you're probably gonna get even just
a little bit more of that radiation than you would
catch on a flight to Australia or something. But true,
it probably is worth it to the people who go, right,
I mean, I would think it would be worth it
to pick up a little extra space radiation to see
the Earth from orbit. So that's certainly what the AX
(08:36):
four crew just got to be experiencing. If you don't
know what AX four is, that's the Axiom Space their
fourth commercial crew flight, all commercial crew, and they went
to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX capsule. They returned.
That's the big headline right now is they returned just
a few days ago, July the fifteenth, and they were
(08:57):
wrapping up nearly three weeks. So they had a pretty
good trip for a private astronaut crew, pretty good service
time up on the International Space Station. While they were
up there, they did all manner of experiments, everything from
Earth observation to biology and just life sciences and how
(09:19):
our bodies accommodate to that space environment. Lots of really
cool things. They did over sixty studies in total that
AX four crew. So that's a really amazing feat right there,
is that they had sixty scientific studies that they carried
out in that three weeks of time up there. The
commander of that mission, now not the commander of the
(09:40):
actual space station, but the commander of the AX four
mission was Peggy Whitson, legend of the American space program,
former NASA astronaut, currently Axiom's director of Human Spaceflight, and
she extended her cumulative days in space record for American
astronauts to six one hundred and ninety five. She is
(10:02):
the American astronaut with the most most cumulative time and
space six hundred and ninety five days, which is substantial, right. So,
so talk about you know, being up there where you
might be experiencing a little extra radiation. Peggy might be
glowing in the dark just a little bit. But other
than that, she's a really cool person and she has
(10:23):
six almost seven hundred days in space.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
It's one of those things, like you said, it's worth
it because of the experience with it. Obviously, she wouldn't
continue to go back if she was too concerned about
the radiation, but I mean, you know, almost seven hundred
days in space age and more slowly, so that's good too.
Speaker 6 (10:44):
Indeed, little general relativity on her side, that's probably you know,
extending her somewhat. So the other three astronauts aboard the
AX four mission were all from countries who've never sent
anyone to the International Space Station before. These were all
first time ISS flyers from their respective countries. And by
(11:06):
the way, these were the first first time space flyers
as well, right, so they themselves had never been to
space before. So Schubhan Shu Shukla from the Indian Space
Research Organization was the pilot of the vehicle, and that's
a designated position. It's kind of like copilot on an aircraft.
So the commander is really the pilot and the pilot's
(11:27):
really the co pilot. It kind of works that way.
So that is an important person on that flight. First
Indian space astronaut spaceflight participant to go up to the
International Space Station, Slaslow Uznanski was now ski you could
say that again, I'm just I can't. I'm just glad
(11:48):
I got by at the one time. It's from the
European Space Agency, but Slaslow is from Poland, the first
person from Poland to go up to the International Space Station.
He's a European space agent astronaut. And then t Bor
Capou from the Hungarian Space Office, So Tibor Capoo from Hungary,
(12:08):
an astronaut from Poland astronaut from India. All three first
time the countries just listed were represented at the International
Space Station, all thanks to Axiom and the ax four crew.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
Good stuff.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Let's talk about the fiftieth anniversary. We just had this
of or it's today as we're recording, right, Today's the
anniversary fifty years of the Apollo Soyu's mission. I was
reading in the other story, I saw the date of
them starting to come home on July fifteenth, and I
mixed the two stories up. So today is the actual
(12:44):
fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo Soyu's test project.
Speaker 6 (12:49):
An extremely important project. We kind of think of the
Apollo missions as ending at the Moon, right, the last
Apollo flight Apollo seventeen to go to the Moon. But
that for that, you know, that ignores the Apollo Soyuz program.
So we used some of our same Moon hardware to
(13:10):
actually perform joint space projects in low Earth orbit with
the Russians. So think about that, we had just had
the Moon Race, you know, less than five years since
the Moon Race was completed, where we were racing the
Russians to the Moon, and there's a lot of you know,
it sounds friendly now, but it was anything but friendly
(13:33):
at the time. There was a lot of international intrigue,
a lot of overtones from the Cold War, a lot
of undertones of nuclear missiles being aimed at one another.
And during the midst of all of that, the two
countries scientists and space explorers actually had a cooperation in
space where they had what was called the Apollo Soyuzed
(13:56):
Test Project or ASTP, and that that project was being
able to construct the spacecraft and common docking components where
you could actually link up a Russian spaceship, a soy Use,
with an Apollo spacecraft in orbit. And so that first
(14:17):
ever mission in the Apollo Soyused Test Project occurred on
July seventeenth, nineteen seventy five, as Wes mentioned, fifty years
ago today as we're recording this podcast. And the thing
is that was the very first moment of a cooperation
and collaboration that has now led to the International Space Station.
(14:39):
So the fact that those astronauts from all those other
nations just mentioned in the previous story got to go
up to something called the International Space Station.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And hang out.
Speaker 6 (14:48):
All began with a handshake between two spacecraft from politically
very opposed countries back at nineteen seventy five. So on
the Russian side, the guy that actually opened the hatch
once the two spacecraft were docked is a very famous person.
His name is Alexei Leonov, and Alexei Leonov was the
(15:12):
first human being to ever perform a spacewalk from the
Russian Space Agency. And he said very good to see
you in English through the hatchway. And then on the
American side, US Commander Tom Stafford spoke in Russian and
said very happy, my friend, which sounds just mildly grammatically incorrect,
(15:38):
but that's what he said. And you know, the legend
is that what Tom Stafford spoke was not exactly Russian.
It's what he referred to as oklahom Ski, a special
language for those people from Oklahoma who have learned to
speak Russian so that they can participate in joint space flights.
Oklahom Ski. In his unique version of oklahoma Ski, Tom
(16:04):
Stafford who's a Paulo aspronaut himself. He's actually been on
trips to the a trip to the moon himself. With
a heavy Oklahoma drawl in Russian, said very happy, my friend,
and that began the collaboration, which then led to a handshake,
starting the collaboration between the American space program the Russian
space program that have led to many important joint ventures,
(16:26):
including and especially the International Space Station.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
A huge anniversary and a big step. For any anniversary
that ends with a zero or five is usually of
some significance. Fifty is a big one. It's always a
big one. When it's fifty, it's an important one. You know,
it's an important can't forget it.
Speaker 6 (16:46):
And then also it's really important to not underestimate how
much the space program may have tamped down certain aspects
of the Cold War that could have been catastrophic. Right,
So it's you really can't underestimate this or understate this
in terms of its importance in global geopolitical history. And
(17:10):
you know why we didn't have a hot war with
the Russians, that it stayed cold and didn't advance, might
in part have been because of these kinds of collaborations.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Coming up after a quick break, we'll talk about a
different anniversary because it's a twenty five, not a fifty.
We'll get to that right after this. So when we
(17:55):
talk about potential solar activity and possible effects of solar
activity on communications on Earth and things that could happen.
Whenever there's a very severe, very powerful storm that takes place,
sometimes we talk about it and just say, hey, this
is possibly happening. There need to be some precautions or
be aware of it. We've had times where we've talked
(18:17):
about them, and there have been some issues with outages
with things. Sometimes it's really just a caution and nothing
really happens and we can be thankful for it. We're
not quite predicting severe weather and then the kids go
home from school and everybody gets mad when there's no
severe weather. It's not that, but it is one of
those things where we have to remind people from time
to time there have been severe events because of solar storms,
(18:41):
and twenty five years ago, on July fourteenth, there was
a very significant one.
Speaker 6 (18:47):
Yeah, this is a significant storm for a variety of reasons.
So back in the year two thousand, we were approaching
a solar maximum at that time twenty five years ago
on July fourteenth. You might know, July fourteenth is an
important date in history of the country of France because
that's what they refer to as Best Steal Day, and
(19:08):
it's nothing to lose your head about, but it's something
that you want to just keep in mind. Anyway, that's
a terrible joke. So the notion is that on that
very famous day in history in the year two thousand,
the Sun contributed something that was well worth noting anyway,
which is an extremely powerful solar flare. So this extremely
powerful solar flare happened to occur from a sunspot group
(19:32):
that was directly facing the Earth. It was not a
glancing blow, it was not a side shot. It was
directly at planet Earth. And okay, so that's bad. The
we measure the intensity of these solar outbursts by a
scale that we have for the intensity of X rays
(19:55):
that come from them, and so we have a class B,
class C CL class. All of those are a logarithmic
scale and X ray intensity. Then it jumps to M
class because apparently somebody forgot the alphabet, and then it
jumps to X class, which means really bad. So a
class B, class C, class M, class X class. So
(20:20):
on this show you've probably heard us talk about a
variety of X class solar flares. We get them from
time to time during times like now, which is in
the midst of solar maximum. On the scale of X
class solar flares, the Bastile event back in two thousand
was only an X five point seven, And I say only,
(20:40):
that's an incredibly powerful solar flare. But I say only
because there's a lot more powerful solar of flares that
can occur around solar max in terms of the X
ray output. Right, So X five point seven, yes, powerful.
But we we have discussed the Carrington event on this show,
(21:02):
which would have been in the twenties within the X class.
And remember that's a logarithmic scale, so those are powers
of ten as it goes up. So compared to that flare,
this particular flare on Bastiele day of the year two
thousand was not that strong. Well wait a minute, though,
There's another effect that can happen, friends, and that's just
(21:23):
how much particle radiation a storm like this can throw
out into space. So there's the X rays, which are
a form of light and that's how we rate these
flares on that scale I was just describing. But then
there's also the particles, the amount and speed at which
these particles are tossed off. And there was a gigantic
(21:47):
amount of particle radiation associated with the Bastiel Day flare
of the year two thousand. It left the Sun and
was traveling at something like six one hundred kilometers per
second by the time it reached the edge of the
Solar System. Now that's not at the Sun at the Earth. Rather,
(22:11):
that's at the edge of the Solar System where the
Voyager one and Voyager two spacecraft that were launched in
the seventies. Remember we're talking about an event in the
year two thousand. The shockwave finally caught up with those
Voyager vehicles. One hundred and eighty days after the explosion,
(22:31):
it caught up with Voyager two, and then two hundred
and forty five days after the original explosion it caught
up with Voyager one, and even that long after the
event actually took place. The debris fields, the scattering coronal
mass ejection from this gigantic flare, we're still traveling at
(22:53):
six hundred kilometers per second. Nine billion kilometers away from
the Sun, they were still so powerful that those waves
of particles cleared out all of the intergalactic cosmic ray particles.
It just just swept the entire Solar System of those
kinds of particles. And it turns out those two Voyager
(23:15):
spacecraft both had sensors which measured the cosmic ray particle interactions,
and so these two spacecraft just said, oh wow, we
had a giant dip in cosmic radiation almost almost a year,
you know, the better part of a year after the
actual event took place. It's crazy to think. So what
(23:38):
happened on If it was that intense at the outer
reaches of the Solar System, what happened here on Earth, Well,
we had a geomagnetic storm, and we have another scale.
It goes from one to nine, one being very mild
geomagnetic storm, nine being the most intense geomagnetic storm that
(23:59):
you can have. And on July fifteenth and sixteenth, the
coronal mass ejection that was led off by the Bastile
Day event on the Sun, gigantic solar flare that by
the time it reached the Earth, traveling at fifteen hundred
kilometers per second, those solar wind particles were so strong
that it caused a nine on what we call the
(24:21):
KP scale, or the intensity of the Earth's geomagnetic storm,
was a nine out of nine. Bright auroras were visible
as far south as Texas, Florida, and even down into Mexico,
even lasting into July sixteenth, which is two days after
the original explosion took place. The intensity of that flare,
(24:45):
in terms of the energy of those particles it ejected,
was equivalent to one thousand billion World War II era
atomic bombs. So you think, you know Hirotia Nagasaki, that
level of atomic weapon, you would have to have one
thousand billion, not one hundred billion, a thousand billion of
(25:07):
those bombs to equate to the energy of the beast
deal of Bestial Day event, which is why we are
still talking about it twenty five years later.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
And if you were on a plane at that time,
you would have been definitely, even though aging more slowly,
exposed to.
Speaker 5 (25:28):
What double the radiation.
Speaker 6 (25:30):
Yeah, so every time you're on a high altitude flight, friends,
you're exposed to some level of radiation from the Sun.
You would have doubled your dose had you been on
a high altitude aircraft on July fifteenth, twenty or I
should say two thousand of the year two thousand, so
(25:51):
so and maybe you were sorry. That's just just the
way nature works sometimes. I mean, in that flow you
were in path. Had you been airborne on July fifteenth
in the year two.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Thousand, yeah, and if you were on a really long flight,
it would have been a lot of it for that
whole time that you were in the air. So I
can comfortably say at that point, looking back, I was not.
I was not personally and Jill was already here as
of earlier in that year, so we weren't on any
planes at that point.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
So that's good, good.
Speaker 6 (26:24):
Well, one last thing about the Bastilla Day event. It's
important to know that we had not had a solar
flare this strong in the space age, and so the
interesting thing about that Bastilla Day event, it's one of
the best. It's one of the first best studied major
interactions between the coronal mass ejection from a solar storm
(26:46):
and the Earth. And that's because we had instruments in
orbit like the Solar and hel helio Spheric Observatory Solar
and Helospheric Observatory, we know it better as SOHO. So
that SOHO was in orbit. We had spacecraft up there
that could monitor the intensity and level of the charge
particles coming in from the Sun, and it was the
(27:06):
first time any kind of really intense solar flare was
well studied from orbit, from space rather than just from
the ground. So that's another really important thing about the
Bastie Day event of the year two thousand.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
Let's take one more quick break when we come back,
a new surprise compliments of NASA's Dart mission. It keeps
on given. We'll talk next, all right, we love the
(27:46):
Dart mission. We're big fans of the Dart mission. We've
talked many times about our experiences while the Dart mission
was taking place and watching it live, and we've got
some new information. This is a about the third or
fourth time we've had new information complements of the Dart mission.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
So the Dart Mission, as you say, just keeps on giving.
And remember right now, there are two very small European
spacecraft on their way out from the European Space Agency,
on their way out to these asteroids to revisit them
to get an even better look at the havoc and
debris caused by slamming a spacecraft into an asteroid. So
(28:29):
we're really trying to study these effects on this asteroid
for the purpose of planetary defense. So it's actually a
very important set of studies. We need to know all
the ins and outs about what would happen if we
try to deflect an incoming asteroid with various means, including
a space collision. So this is a collision of a
(28:50):
spaceship with an asteroid, all right. So that was the
NASA DART mission, or we we shorten that to DART.
It's the double Asteroid Redirect Redirection test. That's how you
get the strained acronym of dark, all right. So the
DART mission, launched in November twenty twenty one, slammed into
this little tiny asteroid named Dimorphous, which was actually a
(29:12):
moon asteroid of another asteroid known as Didymus. It slammed
into Dimorphous on September twenty sixth, in the year twenty
twenty two. Dimorphous, Well, the effects on that little asteroid
from the collision have been surprising, and it was even
surprising from you know, sort of the day of collision,
(29:35):
because the very earliest observations showed a massive debris field
that was ejected off of that asteroid. And so even
just say the day later, the participating scientists and science
teams knew they had caused far more of an effect
on that asteroid than we thought. It turns out the
(29:55):
asteroids structure was a little bit different than what we thought.
We learned that from the collision from the after debris
in the sense that it was kind of a rubble
pile and less like a one single big rock and
more like a collection of small rocks held together by gravity,
kind of like a ballpit. Think of it that way, right,
And so you jump in the ballpit and you just
(30:15):
knock all the balls out. And so the interesting thing though,
is in the latest study, in a new analysis by
a team from the University of Maryland, they have found
that there was some strange components to the debris field.
So they're studying these huge boulders that flew off that
asteroid during the collision. And I say huge anywhere from
(30:39):
three feet to twenty three feet in diameter. So twenty
three foot boulder is a big, heavy rock, right. They
have found that at least a few of these rocks
are flying off of the asteroid dimorphous with more momentous
(31:01):
then the spaceship had when it hit the asteroid in
the first place. Now, we have this thing in physics
called the conservation of momentum, and so if it's just
a if it's just one rock running into another rock,
the second rock can't leave with more momentum than the
first rock had when it hit it. That violates the
(31:24):
conservation of momentum. So how do we get around the
conservation of momentum being violated in this collision. Well it's
not easy. But what happened was that the entire asteroid
dimorphous changed its orbit in such a way that it
actually has less orbital momentum, and that momentum was transferred
(31:51):
to some of the very large boulders that were ejected
off the asteroid. So already that's weird, right. You have
particles after the collision flying away with more momentum than
the impactor had on its way in in the first place.
Yet to have some strange physics, I mean, it's possible,
(32:11):
but it's some unlikely physics to get that to happen. Now,
let me tell you an experience I had on the
golf course once Wes. I was hitting a T shot.
I had just walked across a bridge to go to
the tea box. The bridge led to the cart path.
That bridge was at a perfect ninety degree angle from
the direction of the fairway. I wind up, I swing
(32:36):
my driver and the golf ball comes off at an angle.
That rolled that golf ball over the bridge that I
walked over on, which was a perfect ninety degree angle
from the fairway. And my friend who I was golfing
with that day said these words to me, I think
you just violated physics, which you know, there's another story
(33:02):
in there altogether. But the reason I'm telling you that
with the Dart mission is because the boulders that were
flying away with more momentum than the spacecraft had in
the first place, were also flying off at a ninety
degree angle from the direction of the impact, which is weird, Right,
(33:23):
How does that happen? You could see them flying off
in the same line that the spacecraft hit the asteroid with, right,
But why would they fly off at ninety degrees? The
answer is it's complicated, and so you have to consider
the spin rotation of the asteroid, the deflection direction of
(33:45):
the asteroid, the angle in which the spacecraft hit the
larger asteroid and then all of those momentum transfers happened.
It's not an easy thing to account for. And the
most important message from this team at the Universe to
Maryland is, Hey, if we're going to hit asteroids the
size of the Great Pyramid in Giza with spacecraft trying
(34:09):
to deflect them, the physics might be a little bit
more complicated than we think, because the momentum that was
transferred from the spacecraft to the asteroid and the deflection
that the asteroid encountered could potentially bend enough to send
(34:29):
that entire asteroid tumbling out of its orbit around another
asteroid and off in some random direction in space. Now,
that did not happen, but this team is saying it
could have happened. And so what the team is cautioning
is the effects when you hit an asteroid in the
(34:49):
eye with a spacecraft might be more complicated than you think,
and you could potentially make the situation worse. To quote
their paper, they say this, there is yet to be
a full accounting of the total momentum in all directions,
but the ejecticone spreads out sideways as well as in
the direction of the incoming spacecraft. There is a significant
(35:11):
component of momentum that was carried out perpendicular to Dimorphos's
velocity vector, which means, Wow, we saw some really strange
dynamic effects, and we need to be really careful that
we're accounting for all of the things that could happen
when we try to divert an asteroid in the future
(35:32):
that has a chance of actually coming to hit Earth,
that we don't make things worse. So there's the interesting
latest result from the Dart mission from NASA.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
Sounds like a really elaborate way for you to brag
about a golf shot. That's what it sounded like to me.
I don't know what else you said. I just heard
you bragging about a good golf shot.
Speaker 6 (35:51):
If it sounded like golf bragging, understand that it was
possibly the worst golf shot I've ever hit. In mind
would go backwards, which is close to going backwards, as
you know with a forward swing, a golf ball actually
going backwards. This is as close as I think you
can achieve with physics.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
And someone says you defied physics with your golf shot.
I think that's an impressive golf shot. That's all I
was getting at. I once played golf at Callaway Gardens,
which was the former home of the PGA Buick Challenge,
and someone said to me, Wow, you may be the
worst golfer that's ever played on this course.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
And I played that.
Speaker 6 (36:28):
One too, so I don't know. I think you run
for your money. Maybe.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
Well the person who made that observation was me, so
I'm pretty sure it was that anyway. All right, I
just wanted to brag about playing on that course because
I was excited to be invited to play there. Let's
talk about Australian moths. This is a great story to
wrap things up with now that I'm back Stateside.
Speaker 5 (36:49):
But these.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
Particular moths, which apparently people like to eat. They're a
delicacy for some, with like a nutty flavor. I know
I haven't tasted them, but that's what I've heard. But
this is a cool story about how they actually use
the sky to navigate as they do their migration patterns.
Speaker 6 (37:09):
And before I butcher it, what's the official Australian pronunciation
for the name of this.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I've heard bogong. That's what I would say.
Speaker 6 (37:17):
That's how I would have said it.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
Yeah, okay, and let's just stick with that one and
I'm pretty sure this would be an Aboriginal word, so
there may be a slight variation on it, but I
would have heard, yeah, bogong and that some people. I
guess when you're out bush you can eat these things
and they do have like a supposedly like a nutty
flavor to them or whatever.
Speaker 5 (37:36):
But anyway, I've never eaten one.
Speaker 6 (37:39):
Well neither of I, and I'm not going to probably
seek that out anytime soon.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
However, if you're out bush and you get hungry enough,
you probably would.
Speaker 5 (37:48):
But yeah, I haven't tasted one.
Speaker 6 (37:50):
It's important to know what you can and can't, you
know what I'm saying. That's right, that's very true. I
learned about these things from a great website called spaceweather
dot com. And by the way, before I get too
far afield the story we ran on the Bastille Day
a little earlier in the show that came from spaceweather
dot com. Two stories from spaceweather dot com, just because
it's one of our favorite websites of all time. Doctor
(38:11):
Tony Phillips running the spaceweather dot com website, has a
great story about moths and this This is actually a
story about a piece of research that was published in
the journal Nature, and I'm gonna give you the short
version of the story. But the short version of the
story is that moths, it has been found, navigate by
(38:33):
the stars. Now, it's long suspected that insects could it
possibly had the ability to navigate by the stars. But
I believe this is the first piece of verifiable research
that insinuates by its data that these moths can actually
they can actually navigate according to the position of bright
(38:56):
objects in the sky, including the Milky Way. Gallon friends,
And they have to navigate very well because they have
a migration that goes one thousand kilometers six hundred miles
something on that order, and they have to nail a
really small little cluster of caves in the Australian Alps,
and they have to do it with such precision that
(39:18):
they really have to know exactly where they're going. And
scientists have long thought, how do they do this? Are
they using the magnetic field of the Earth. Well it
turns out that yes, they might actually be using that
too on cloudy days, but their navigation had to be
more precise than would be facilitated simply by the magnetic field.
It looks like these moths actually use the stars. How
(39:40):
do we know. Here's how the story goes, because they
took some of these little moths and put them in
a planetarium, a special moth planetarium, and they tethered them.
They tied them with little strings, and then they put
the stars off there, and all the little moths flew
off in the same direction. They were flying off in
(40:01):
a direction that was being guided by their perception of
the objects in the sky on this virtual sky of
a moth planetarium. And it turns out when they showed
them randomized stars and different star fields that are simulated
but not actual, then they couldn't find their way around anymore.
(40:24):
Then they were not flying off all in the same
direction anymore. So it's pretty clear by this new study
that moths actually look at the sky know instinctively at
least what the Milky Way galaxy is, or another bright
object called the Karina nebula, which is the Southern Hemisphere object,
(40:44):
and from their recognition of these objects in the sky
can actually guide themselves where they need to go on
their migratory patterns. This is a fantastic story. If you're
listening to this in the future. Future future look for
the July seventh, twenty twenty five edition of spaceweather dot com.
They have an archive, go back and check it out.
(41:05):
Australian ball is navigating to where they need to go
via the Milky Way actually looking at the sky.
Speaker 5 (41:13):
I double checked it.
Speaker 4 (41:14):
Bogong is a derivative, I guess from the Aboriginal tom
term boogong bugun g, which means brown. So that's the
since it's a brown moth, so yes, bogong the common
pronunciation for it. All right, So let's talk about Kalm
State University's co Co Space Science Center, and let's talk
(41:36):
about Dave Scott again.
Speaker 6 (41:38):
Yeah, we have our full summer programs in swing. We've
been doing summer camps. We've been showing all kinds of
kids and their grandparents that their parents who are all
you know, the kids are out of school right now
and the parents and grandparents are trying to figure out
what to do with them, and they're bringing them to us,
which is the right thing to do. Friends, bring them
on down and let them see the Space Science Center.
But as Wes just mentioned, we also have a very
special exhibit from astronaut David Scott of Apollo fifteen, and
(42:02):
it's up not at the Coca Cola Space Science Center,
but just down the street at the Bow Bartlett Center,
which is an art gallery here at Columbus State University.
It's one of our sister organizations here at the university,
and they are exhibiting a collection from astronaut David Scott
that was facilitated as a donation by his brother Tom
(42:23):
Scott to the Coca Cola Space Science Center, but they
just have more pieces than we have walls, and so
we're showing it off at the art gallery for a
period of time. And you can still go down and
see that collection for the rest of the month of July,
and you can check out the hours at the bo
Bartlett Center, but they're basically from eleven am to four
(42:44):
pm Tuesday through Saturday. Check it out at our website
or at the bo Bartlett Center's website. Go down and
see the David Scott collection. He was the first person
to ever drive a car on the surface of the Moon.
Very famous astronaut, very famous collection. Check it out on
display now at the Bowl Bartlett Center here at Columbus
State University, a partner institution of CSU's Coca Cola Space
(43:08):
Science Center.
Speaker 4 (43:09):
And Sean and I thank you for listening, and we
will do this again next week. Plus, 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 to upgrade or
(43:31):
repair your current door, Overhead Door Company of Columbus has
you covered. Plus they've got your emergency repairs or service
covered as well. Seven oh six three five eight forty
five hundred seven oh six three five eight forty five
hundred Odccolumbus dot com
Popular Podcasts
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com