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Speaker 1: Good day, space fans, and welcome to Astronomy Daily, your

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daily dose of everything happening beyond our atmosphere.

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Speaker 2: I'm Ana and I'm Avery. It is Thursday, March nineteen,

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twenty twenty six, and we are recording this on what

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might be one of the most action packed days in

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recent space history, because tonight, the most powerful rocket ever

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built heads back to the launch pad.

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Speaker 1: And while that's happening, we've got particle physics bombshells from CERN,

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a galaxy next door that's been hiding a dramatic secret,

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a bold new take on the search for alien intelligence,

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and the curious hunt for asteroids that hitch a ride

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alongside planets around other stars.

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Speaker 2: Buckle in, everyone, this is Astronomy Daily, and the universe

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has been busy.

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Speaker 1: Let's start with the big live one, because as you're

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listening to this, something incredible may actually be happening right now.

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Speaker 2: Tonight, Thursday March nineteenth, NASA is planning to begin rolling

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the Artemis two space launch system rocket and the Orion

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spacecraft out of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space

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Center in Florida and transporting them on the slow journey

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to launch pad thirty nine B.

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Speaker 1: We say slow, and we mean that literally. The crawler

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transporter that carries the rocket moves at a maximum of

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about one mile per hour. The whole trip covers roughly

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four miles and is expected to take up to twelve hours.

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It's not fast, but it is spectacular.

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Speaker 2: AASA confirmed the rollout target at eight pm Eastern Time tonight,

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after a busy few days of closeout activities inside the VAB.

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There was a brief scare earlier in the week when

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engineers identified an issue with an electrical harness on the

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flight termination system of the core stage, which pushed the

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rollout day back to possibly March twentieth, but teams work

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quickly and made up the lost time.

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Speaker 1: And of course, the reason all of this matters so

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much is what comes next. Artemis two is NASA's first

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crude mission under the Artemis program, the first time human

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beings will travel to the vicinity of the Moon since

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Apollo seventeen in December nineteen seventy two, that's more than

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fifty years ago.

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Speaker 2: The crew of four commander Red Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover,

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mission specialist Christina Coach, and Canadian Space Agency Mission specialist

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Jeremy Hanson have already entered pre launch quarantine with plans

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to arrive to Kennedy Space Center on March twenty seventh.

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Speaker 1: Victor Glover will become the first person of color to

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reach deep space and the Moon's vicinity. Christina Cock will

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be the first woman to do so, and Jeremy Hanson

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will be the first non American citizen to travel to

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lunar space. This mission is genuinely historic on multiple levels.

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Speaker 2: The mission itself is a ten day free return trajectory

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around the Moon, not a landing, but a crucial crude

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test of the or B spacecraft's life support systems and

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deep space performance before later Artemis missions attempt a lunar.

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Speaker 1: Landing, and the first launch opportunity is Wednesday, April first,

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with a window that opens at six twenty four pm

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Eastern Time. Additional windows exist through April sixth, and there's

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another opportunity on April thirtieth.

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Speaker 2: This rollout itself is a milestone. It's actually the second

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time the rocket has made this journey this year. It

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rolled to the pad in January for initial testing, but

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a series of technical issues, including a liquid hydrogen leak

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and a helium flow problem required it to roll back

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to the VAB for repairs in late February.

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Speaker 1: So tonight is the comeback tour. And if you're anywhere

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near Kennedy's Space Center or just watching a live stream

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at home, this is absolutely worth staying up.

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Speaker 2: For. A fifty three year wait for humans to return

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to the Moon ends this April, and tonight the rocket

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that'll take them there is heading to the launch pad.

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That's story one.

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Speaker 1: Now, while all that Artemis excitement was building, humans were

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also doing extraordinary things in orbit in not one, but

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two space stations simultaneously.

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Speaker 2: Let's start at the International Space Station, where, yesterday, Wednesday,

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March eighteenth, NASA astronauts Jessica Mayer and Chris Williams completed

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what's known as US Spacewalk ninety four. They emerged from

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the Quest airlock at eight fifty two am Eastern Time

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and concluded their excursion at three point fifty four PM,

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a total of seven hours and two minutes spent working

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in the vacuum of space.

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Speaker 1: Their task was to prepare the ISS's to a power

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channel for the future installation of a new IROSA, an

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International Space Station rollout solar array. These rollout arrays don't

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need a motor to deploy. The potential energy stored in

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the rolled up carbon composite booms is enough to to

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unfurled full nineteen meter length and about six minutes once installed.

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It'll be the seventh of eight planned rollout arrays since

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the upgrades began in twenty twenty one.

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Speaker 2: For Jessica Mayer, this was her fourth spacewalk, bringing her

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total EVA time to twenty eight hours and forty six minutes.

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For Chris Williams, it was his very first time stepping

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outside of spacecraft into open space, and after they closed

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the hatch, Mayor had some beautiful words to mark the occasion.

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Speaker 1: She noted that March eighteenth was exactly sixty one years

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since Alexei Leonov made the very first human spacewalk back

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in nineteen sixty five. A nice piece of space history

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to carry out into the void with you.

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Speaker 2: This EVA had actually been a long time coming. It

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was originally planned for January eighth with a different crew,

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but to a medical emergency involving astronaut Mike Fink led

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to the cancelation of that spacewalk and ultimately the unprecedented

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medical evacuation of the entire crew eleven mission, so yesterday

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was the culmination of a very eventful few months at

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the station.

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Speaker 1: And while Jessica and Chris were suiting up at the

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iss over at China's tiang Goong Space station, there was

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an EVA of their own underway. On Monday, March sixteenth,

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Shenzo twenty one mission commander Zonglu and crewmate Wu Fe

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spent approximately seven hours outside Tianggung installing debris shielding to

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the exterior of the three module station.

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Speaker 2: But what made this one especially notable was the milestone

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for zang Lu. It was his sixth career spacewalk, tying

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him to fellow Chinese astronaut Chen Dong for the record

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of most EVAs ever completed by a Chinese national. Zang

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made his first trip to space on Shenzo fifteen back

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in late twenty twenty two, and completed four spacewalks during

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that mission. He's now matched Chen's tally of six.

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Speaker 1: For context, the overall record for most spacewalks belongs to

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Russian cosmonaut Anatoli Salovyev, who completed a remarkable sixteen EVAs

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during his career from nineteen eighty eight to nineteen ninety nine.

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The American record sits with Peggy Whitson at ten.

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Speaker 2: So in the space of just two days Monday and Wednesday,

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humans from two different nations conducted spacewalks from two different

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space stations orbiting Earth. That is not something that happened

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very often, even a decade ago, and it's becoming increasingly routine.

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Speaker 1: The era of humanity as a multi station spacefaring spaces

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is very much here all right.

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Speaker 2: Time to get small, very very small, because this week

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physicists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider made a significant discovery

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in the subatomic world.

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Speaker 1: The LHCb experiment, that's the Large Hadron Collider Beauty Experiment,

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has detected a new particle. It's called the Zi cc

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plus written as the Greek letter ZI with cc plus,

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and it's a proton like particle known as a baryon

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that contains two heavy charm quarks and one down cork.

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Speaker 2: To appreciate why that's exciting, a quick refresher. A proton,

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the particle at the heart of every atom, is made

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of three quarks, two up quarks and one down quark.

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Quarks come in six flavors, up, down, charm strange top

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and bottom. Most everyday matter is built from the lightest

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two up and down. The others are heavier and more exotic.

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Speaker 1: The zi cc plus is like a proton that's had

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a dramatic upgrade. Its two upquarks have been replaced by

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two heavy charm quarks, and because charm quarks are far

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more massive than upquarks, the result particle weighs roughly four

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times more than an ordinary proton.

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Speaker 2: This is actually only the second baryon ever detected that

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contains two heavy quarks. The first, also discovered at LHCb

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back in twenty seventeen, had two charm quarks and an upquark.

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This new one has a down cork instead, and despite

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the similarity, it's predicted to be up to six times

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less stable, meaning it flashes in and out of existence

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even faster than its cousin.

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Speaker 1: The discovery was announced this week at the Rencontra des

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Morion Conference, a prestigious annual gathering of particle physicists, and

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it's the first new particle found using the upgraded LHCb detector,

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which received a major overhaul completed in twenty twenty three.

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It's actually the eightieth particle ever discovered by LHCb since

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operations began.

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Speaker 2: The signal was detected with a statistical significance of seven

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sigma of the five sigma threshold required to officially claim

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a discovery, and it also settles a long standing dispute.

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Over twenty years ago, an experiment called Seleix claimed to

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have spotted the same particle at a much lower mass,

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but no other lab could confirm it. This LHCb results

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at a mass consistent with theoretical predictions finally resolves that mystery.

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Speaker 1: Why does this matter? Because studying how these exotic heavy

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quark particles behave and how they decay helps physicists better

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understand the strong nuclear force, which is the force that

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binds quirks together inside protons and neutrons. The better we

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understand that, the better we understand matter itself at its

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most fundamental level.

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Speaker 2: Particle physics doesn't always make the loudest headlines, but every

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time we add a new entry to the subatomic zoo,

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we learn a little more about what the universe is

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actually made of.

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Speaker 1: Now, let's zoom out, way way out from sub atomic

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particles to an entire galaxy.

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Speaker 2: The small Magellanic cloud a dwarf galaxy that's one of

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the Milky Way's closest neighbors, visible to the naked eye

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from the southern hemisphere, has long been one of the

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most studied objects in the sky. Astronomers have cataloged its stars,

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mapped its gas, and tracked its motion for decades, but

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one stubborn mystery has persisted. The galaxy stars simply don't

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orbit around its center the way stars in most galaxies do.

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Instead of rotating in an orderly fashion, their motions appear

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chaotic and disordered.

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Speaker 1: Now, a team of astronomers from the University of Arizona,

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led by graduate student hemansh Rethor and senior author Professor

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Gertina Besla, have cracked that mystery, and the answer is dramatic.

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The Small Magellanic Cloud crashed directly through its larger companion,

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the Large Magellanic Cloud, a few hundred million years ago,

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and it's still reeling from that collision today.

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Speaker 2: The lmc's immense gravity disrupted the SMC's internal structure, sending

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its stars into wildly different, random trajectories. At the same time,

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the dense gas of the LMC applied enormous pressure to

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the SMC's own gas as it punched through, destroying its

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gas rotation. Rathor described it beautifully. Imagine sprinkling water droplets

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on your hand and moving it through the air. As

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the air rushes past, the droplets get blown off by

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the pressure. Something similar happened to the SMC's gas on

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a galactic scale.

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Speaker 1: What's particularly fascinating is that for decades astronomers thought the

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SMC's gas was rotating. It turns out that was an

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illusion of viewing angle. The collision is actually stretching the

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SMC and gas moving toward and away from Earth along

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that stretch just looks like rotation from our perspective, one

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of those wonderful moments where what we thought we were

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seeing was something completely different.

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Speaker 2: The collision has also left some lasting scars on the

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large Magellanic cloud, including a tilted bar shaped structure at

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its center, tilted out of the plane of the galaxy

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by the impact.

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Speaker 1: And this discovery has an important implication beyond just understanding

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these two galaxies. For decades, the SMC has been used

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as a benchmark, a kind of cosmic yardstick, for understanding

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how early universe galaxies formed and evolved. Because it's small

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gas rich and low and heavy elements. But if it's

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a galaxy still recovering from a catastrophic collision, it may

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not be the clean reference point we thought it was.

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Speaker 2: As Professor Besler put it, the SMC went through a

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catastrophic crash that injected a tremendous amount of energy into

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the system. It is not a normal galaxy by any means.

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Speaker 1: The research is published in the Astrophysical Journal, and the

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Ta Teme says this is just the first step. They

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now want to build detailed models of the full collision

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to understand how it's shaped. The SMCS stars, gas, dust,

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and even its invisible halo of dark matter.

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Speaker 2: Galaxy next door transforming before our eyes.

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Speaker 1: Story five takes us from colliding galaxies to a very

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different kind of cosmic companion, tiny asteroid like objects that

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share an orbit with a planet around another star.

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Speaker 2: These are called exotrojans. To understand the concept, you first

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need to know about trojans in our own solar system,

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in our neighborhood. There are more than ten thousand confirmed

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asteroids that orbit at special gravitational sweet spots called lagrange

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points in front of and behind Jupiter on its path

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around the Sun. At these points, the gravitational polls of

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the Sun and Jupiter balance out, allowing objects to essentially

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hitch a stable ride along with the planet.

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Speaker 1: Virtually every planet in our Solar system has trojans, though

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none come close to Jupiter's impressive collection, and for years

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astronomers have theorized that similar co orbital companions exotrojans, should

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exist around planets orbiting other stars. After all, if the

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physics works here, it should work everywhere.

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Speaker 2: The problem no one has confirmed one yet. Projects like

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the Troy Initiative have been specifically hunting for exotrojans, but

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these objects are extraordinarily difficult to detect. They're small, they

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don't produce much of a signal, and disentangling their presence

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from other noise is genuinely challenging.

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Speaker 1: A new paper in the Astrophysical Journal by Jackson Taylor

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of West Virginia University and a team of co authors

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has pushed that hunt into some of the most extreme

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environments astronomers can imagine the teams searched for exotrojans in

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conditions far more intense and exotic than anything in our

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own Solar system. Taking this search to new limits.

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Speaker 2: While no confirmed detection has been announced, research like this

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is essential for two reasons. First, finding exotrojans would tell

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us a huge amount about how planetary systems formed and evolved.

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Trojans are essentially preserved remnants of the early Solar System

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little time capsules of planetary formation history. Second, some researchers

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have speculated that trojan regions around habitable zone planets could

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themselves be interesting places in the context of astrobiology.

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Speaker 1: The first confirmed exotrojan will be a landmark discovery, and

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research like this is steadily narrowing down where and how

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to look.

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Speaker 2: And we round out today's episode with a big question

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about an even bigger search. Humanities hunt for signals from

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alien civilizations.

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Speaker 1: The search for extraterrestrial intelligence SETI has been underway in

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various forms for decades. The classic approach has focused on

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scanning the sky for radio or microwave signals in very

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narrow frequency bands. The reasoning was that any technological civilization

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might use these wavelengths to communicate, and narrowband signals are

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easier to distinguish from natural cosmic noise.

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Speaker 2: But a new paper is arguing that this long established approach,

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maybe leaving us blind to a huge swath of potential signals.

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The researcher suggests it's time to broaden the electromagnetic search dramatically,

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moving beyond just radio and microwave into a much wider

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range of the spectrum.

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Speaker 1: The logic is intuitive once you think about it. Our

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own civilizations communications have changed dramatically, even just over the

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past few decades. We've moved from narrowband AM radio broadcasts

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to broadband Internet signals, which are spread across wide frequency

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ranges and might actually look more like background noise to

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an outside observer. A civilization more advanced than ours might

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communicate in ways that look nothing like what we've been

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searching for.

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Speaker 2: There's also the question of what we might be missing

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in other parts of the spectrum, entirely infrared, optical, ultraviolet,

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even higher energy bands. All that these could theoretically carry

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engineered signals that we simply haven't been systematically scanning for.

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Speaker 1: This doesn't mean that traditional radio SETI searches have been wrong.

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They've been enormously valuable, and the infrastructure built for them

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has led to real astronomical discoveries. But as our tools

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and computing power improve, expanding the search makes sense.

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Speaker 2: The universe is enormous, intelligent life, if it exists elsewhere,

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might communicate in ways we haven't yet imagined, and the

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electromagnetic spectrum is vast. Casting a wider net seems like

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exactly the right thing to do.

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Speaker 1: If there's someone out there trying to reach us, Let's

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make sure we're actually listening on the right channels. And

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that's our episode.

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Speaker 2: What an extraordinary day to be following the Cosmos, a

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moon rocket rolling to the pad, two space stations running

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EVA simultaneously, a new particle from CERN, a galaxy in transformation,

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and humanity still reaching out into the dark hoping to

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hear something back.

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Speaker 1: This is why we do this every day. Thanks so

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much for spending part of your Thursday with us. Everyone.

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Speaker 2: You'll find links to all of today's stories in the

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show notes, along with our blog posts and all the

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ways to follow us on social media.

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Speaker 1: Astronomy Daily is part of the bytes dot com podcast network.

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Find us at Astronomydaily dot io and on x, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube,

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and tumbler at at astro Daily Pod.

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Speaker 2: Until tomorrow, keep looking.

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Speaker 1: Up clear skys. Everyone.

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Speaker 2: Sunday, start st the story is the soul. Story is

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the soul.