Speaker 1: Imagine looking at a photograph of this seemingly empty ancient
Speaker 1: barren desert.
Speaker 2: Right, like totally desolate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You're expecting to see what you'd always expect from a wasteland,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, rolling sand dunes, maybe some weathered bedrock,
Speaker 1: just the sheer emptiness of a landscape that hasn't seen
Speaker 1: civilization in like ten.
Speaker 2: Thousand years, Just endless sand.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: But then you take a magnifying glass to the image,
Speaker 1: you zoom in, and right there, right in the middle
Speaker 1: of this ancient nothingness is a fully constructed, gleaming, hyper
Speaker 1: modern skyscraper with the lights on.
Speaker 2: Which is just, I mean completely impossible.
Speaker 1: It makes absolutely no sense. It defies the history of
Speaker 1: the landscape, the materials available, the timeline of human engineering,
Speaker 1: just everything. Yeah, welcome to Thrilling Threads, where we take
Speaker 1: a stack of your sources and weave them into the
Speaker 1: most fascinating tapestry of knowledge. Today we are staring at
Speaker 1: the cosmic equivalent of that skyscraper.
Speaker 2: We really are.
Speaker 1: We are exploring this massive compendium of recent discoveries from
Speaker 1: the James Webspace Telescope, the JWST, and I want to
Speaker 1: be perfectly clear with you, the listener. I am not
Speaker 1: exaggerating when I tell you that these findings are quite
Speaker 1: literally breaking cosmology as we know it.
Speaker 2: Breaking it why, Okay.
Speaker 1: Sureously, we're talking about planets disintegrating into comet tales right
Speaker 1: before our eyes, mysterious radio signals screaming out of the
Speaker 1: pitch black, and the very real possibility that we are
Speaker 1: witnessing the unraveling of the fundamental laws of physics. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's unpack this.
Speaker 2: It is truly a profound moment in the history of astrophysics,
Speaker 2: and honestly a deeply humbling one. I mean, we spent
Speaker 2: decades and ten billion dollars building this magnificent instrument, right yea,
Speaker 2: launching it a million miles from Earth out to that
Speaker 2: L two orbit, specifically to look back at the dawn
Speaker 2: of time. And the explicit goal was to confirm our
Speaker 2: theoretical models of the universe, to dot the eyes and
Speaker 2: cross the t's of the standard cosmological.
Speaker 3: Model, just to prove what we already thought.
Speaker 2: We knew exactly. But instead of validating our assumptions, JWST
Speaker 2: is violently upending them. It's forcing the whole scientific community
Speaker 2: to question our most basic understanding of space, time, gravity,
Speaker 2: our entire place in this vowed architecture.
Speaker 1: Which is terrifying but also kind of amazing.
Speaker 2: Oh, the thrill here isn't just in cataloging new stars.
Speaker 2: It's the realization that the universe is far stranger, far
Speaker 2: more aggressive, and far more dynamic than our greatest minds
Speaker 2: ever modeled.
Speaker 1: And we are taking you right to the bleeding edge
Speaker 1: of that weirdness today. This is the frontier because to
Speaker 1: understand why astronomers are losing sleep, we have to start
Speaker 1: with the most fundamental crisis. JWST is triggered, which is
Speaker 1: the timeline of the early universe. Right before James web launche,
Speaker 1: we had this very neat, tidy, almost comforting story about
Speaker 1: the early days. The Big Bang happens, things cool down.
Speaker 1: Over millions of years, you get this dark age of
Speaker 1: thick hydrogen fog.
Speaker 2: And slowly, very very slowly, tiny clumps of gas pulled
Speaker 2: together to make small, messy baby galaxies. That was the
Speaker 2: textbook progression. Because of the standard cosmological model dictated that
Speaker 2: galaxy formation is strictly a bottom up process. It's this slow,
Speaker 2: agonizingly long accretion.
Speaker 1: Gravity takes its time.
Speaker 2: Gravity is a relatively weak force. Yeah, so it should
Speaker 2: take billions of years for those tiny chaotic clumps of
Speaker 2: primordial gas to merge, organize, and build the kind of massive, structured,
Speaker 2: spiraling galaxies we see today, like our Milky Way. We
Speaker 2: expected the early universe to look like a construction site,
Speaker 2: scattered with raw materials and just a few half finished foundations.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm looking at the data from Joel Lajia,
Speaker 1: an astronomian astrophysics professor at Penn State, and his team's
Speaker 1: analysis of the JWST deep field images completely nukes that
Speaker 1: construction site analogy.
Speaker 2: It really does.
Speaker 1: JWST peered back to when the universe was just five
Speaker 1: hundred to seven hundred million years old. Now to a
Speaker 1: lay person, five hundred million year sounds incredibly ancient, but
Speaker 1: Lata points out that this is when the universe was
Speaker 1: only three percent of its current age. Just three percent.
Speaker 1: It's a toddler, the literal, infant and cosmic, right, And
Speaker 1: what did we find not small messy clumps. We found
Speaker 1: ten to one hundred times more galaxies than anyone expected,
Speaker 1: and they aren't babies. We are seeing galaxies fifty times
Speaker 1: more massive than anticipated, rivaling the mass of our modern
Speaker 1: day Milky.
Speaker 2: Way, which is the core of the crisis. To return
Speaker 2: to your opening metaphor, we are finding the skyscraper in
Speaker 2: the ancient desert. Finding a galaxy with the mass of
Speaker 2: the Milky Way fully formed, existing just a few hundred
Speaker 2: million years after the Big Bang, well, it flat out
Speaker 2: defies the physics of accretion.
Speaker 3: It just shouldn't be there.
Speaker 2: No, because according to our current laws of physics, there
Speaker 2: simply has not been enough time for that much matter
Speaker 2: to gather, condense, and ignite into stars. The gravitational math
Speaker 2: just doesn't work. We expected to find small, young, hot
Speaker 2: blue stars. Finding massive populations of mature stars means our
Speaker 2: entire timeline of how matter organizes itself is fundamentally flawed.
Speaker 1: And this finding, this is the one that made me
Speaker 1: reread the source material three times just to make sure
Speaker 1: I wasn't misunderstanding the physics. Out of a sample of
Speaker 1: thirty six of these massive early galaxies, researchers single out
Speaker 1: three that they're calling red monsters.
Speaker 2: Such a great name.
Speaker 3: They've earned it.
Speaker 1: Our Milky Way is pretty conservative, right. It turns a
Speaker 1: tiny fraction of its available gas into stars every year.
Speaker 1: It's efficient, but slow, these red monsters are converting nearly
Speaker 1: fifty percent of their available material into stars.
Speaker 2: It's absurd.
Speaker 3: That is five hundred times faster than the Milky Way.
Speaker 2: But I have to push back on this though. How
Speaker 2: is that physically possible? Wouldn't the sheer kinetic energy of
Speaker 2: all those stars igniting at once just blow the rest
Speaker 2: of the gas away and shut down the galaxy entirely.
Speaker 1: That is the exact paradox astronomers are wrestling with. In astrophysics,
Speaker 1: this concept is called feedback.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Usually, when a massive burst of stars forms, they emit
Speaker 1: intense stellar winds and blistering ultraviolet radiation, and when the
Speaker 1: most massive of those new stars die quickly in supernovas,
Speaker 1: the shockwaves blast the remaining cold gas out of the galaxy,
Speaker 1: so it basically blows away its own food supply.
Speaker 2: Exactly, it starves the galaxy of fuel, creating a self
Speaker 2: regulating limit on how fast a galaxy can grow. It's
Speaker 2: an elegant natural brick pedal.
Speaker 1: So it's like a fire getting so hot and expanding
Speaker 1: so fast that it consumes all the oxygen in a
Speaker 1: room and chokes itself.
Speaker 2: Out a perfect way to visualize it. But these red
Speaker 2: monsters are somehow bypassing that natural brick pedal, they are
Speaker 2: pulling off a fifty percent conversion efficiency without blowing themselves apart.
Speaker 2: Cow Well. There are a few radical theories emerging to
Speaker 2: explain this. One is that massive cosmic filaments, these vast
Speaker 2: intergalactic highways of dark matter and gas that stretch across
Speaker 2: the universe, might be force feeding these galaxies a force
Speaker 2: feeding them. Yeah, they could be delivering cold gas so
Speaker 2: efficiently and so densely that the stellar winds simply can't
Speaker 2: blow it away. The incoming pressure overpowers the outward explosion.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Another theory is that early hyperactive supermassive black holes might
Speaker 2: be compressing the gas in their immediate dicinity, actually triggering
Speaker 2: star formation at exit accelerated rates before they eventually consume
Speaker 2: the material.
Speaker 1: Force fed galaxies the universe just shoving material down their
Speaker 1: throats faster than they can explode. That is an incredible
Speaker 1: and somewhat terrifying image, it really is.
Speaker 3: And speaking of.
Speaker 1: Things forming in ways that shouldn't be possible, the sources
Speaker 1: highlight a specific galaxy studied by researchers at the University
Speaker 1: of Cambridge. It's got like a telephone number for a
Speaker 1: name jdsgs plus five three one.
Speaker 3: Eight three four to three. A catchy, super catchy.
Speaker 1: But they call it the inside out galaxy because normally
Speaker 1: galaxies form from the outside end, don't they. A massive
Speaker 1: cloud collapses, gets dense in the middle, and draws in
Speaker 1: the edges.
Speaker 2: The standard model suggests exactly that gas clouds collapse under
Speaker 2: their own gravity, forming a dense core of stars, and then,
Speaker 2: over billions of years, the outer regions slowly organize, cool
Speaker 2: and populate with stars. It's an outside in compaction process.
Speaker 1: But the Cambridge team says this galaxy is doing the
Speaker 1: exact opposite. It's forming in reverse. It started with a
Speaker 1: super dense core already fully in place, and now it's
Speaker 1: growing its outer regions at an unbelievably fast paced The
Speaker 1: researchers actually said, observing this was like finally being able
Speaker 1: to check your homework against theoretical models.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately for the standard model, that homework is coming
Speaker 2: back covered in red ink big red f right because
Speaker 2: the inside out formation suggests that the core of this
Speaker 2: galaxy didn't slowly accreed at all. It likely collapsed directly
Speaker 2: and violently from a massive primorial gas cloud locking in
Speaker 2: its central mass almost.
Speaker 3: Instantaneously, just boom, it's there.
Speaker 2: Yes, and now we are watching it sweep up the
Speaker 2: surrounding environment to build its suburbs. It's a completely different
Speaker 2: evolutionary pathway than what built our local neighborhood. It implies
Speaker 2: that gravity operated differently, or at least much more aggressively,
Speaker 2: in the dense conditions of the early universe.
Speaker 1: Okay, if galaxy is forming backward is weird. This next
Speaker 1: finding is the one that really trips me up.
Speaker 2: The dust, Oh, the carbon dust.
Speaker 1: Yes, JWST found massive amounts of car carbon dust in
Speaker 1: ten different galaxies that are only ten million years old.
Speaker 1: Let me frame this for you. The listener ten million
Speaker 1: years in cosmic terms, is a blink. It is practically
Speaker 1: brand new. If carbon is essentially the smoke left over
Speaker 1: from a stellar fire, the JWST is telling us we're
Speaker 1: finding a room full of thick smoke before the first
Speaker 1: match was even struck. How do we have carbon in
Speaker 1: a ten million year old galaxy?
Speaker 2: Your analogy of smoke before the fire highlights the absolute
Speaker 2: crisis this presents for stellar physics. Let's break down nuclear synthesis.
Speaker 2: Let's do it in the standard model, the Big Bang
Speaker 2: only produced hydrogen, helium, and a tiny, almost negligible trace
Speaker 2: of lithium. That's it. No carbon, no oxygen, no iron,
Speaker 2: no gold. In astrophysics, we call everything heavier than helium
Speaker 2: a metal.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Now, The only place in the universe where a heavy
Speaker 2: element like carbon can be manufactured is inside the crushing
Speaker 2: nuclear furnace at the core of a star, because.
Speaker 1: You need the insane heat and pressure to force lighter
Speaker 1: atoms to fuse together into heavier one.
Speaker 2: All right, Precisely, a star must form from primordial hydrogen,
Speaker 2: burn through that hydrogen for millions of years, start fusing
Speaker 2: the leftover helium into carbon, and then eventually die, usually
Speaker 2: in a massive supernova explosion or by violently shedding its
Speaker 2: outer layers. To distribute that carbon dust out into the
Speaker 2: interstellar medium.
Speaker 3: It takes time, a lot of time.
Speaker 2: This process of enriching a galaxy, requiring generations of stars living, fusing,
Speaker 2: and dying, is supposed to take hundreds of millions, if
Speaker 2: not billions of years. To find substantial carbon dust in
Speaker 2: a galaxy that is only ten million years old, means
Speaker 2: that entire life cycle birth, nuclear fusion, death, and spatial
Speaker 2: distribution happened at a speed that defies our understanding of
Speaker 2: stellar physics.
Speaker 1: Like watching a time lapse on fast forward.
Speaker 2: Exactly, there must be a mechanism for hyperfast massive star
Speaker 2: formation and immediate catastrophic death that we simply haven't accounted
Speaker 2: for in our models.
Speaker 1: Which naturally pivots us from the early Universe's heavy elements
Speaker 1: to its heaviest gravitational anomalies.
Speaker 3: Because if the.
Speaker 1: Galaxies in the early Universe are acting weird, the monsters
Speaker 1: lurking at their centers are even weirder. We spend so
Speaker 1: much time looking at the light of the stars, but
Speaker 1: JWST is revealing that the dark spaces between them hold
Speaker 1: the real power.
Speaker 2: It is becoming increasingly apparent that the monsters we thought
Speaker 2: were just inhabiting the dark might actually be the architects
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the supermassive black holes at the center
Speaker 1: of these galaxies. For the longest time, astrophysics had this
Speaker 1: ultimate chicken or the egg scenario. Did the galaxy form
Speaker 1: first creating a gravity well.
Speaker 3: Where a black hole slowly grew in.
Speaker 1: The middle from eating stars, or did the black hole
Speaker 1: form first acting as a gravitational anchor that pulled the
Speaker 1: galaey together around it.
Speaker 2: Historically, the assumption was the former. The timeline went like this.
Speaker 2: A massive early star dies, its core collapses, and it
Speaker 2: forms a stellar mass black hole. This is a relatively
Speaker 2: small object, maybe ten to fifty times the mass of
Speaker 2: our Sun.
Speaker 3: Still big, but not galaxy.
Speaker 2: Sized right, and over billions of years, the small seed
Speaker 2: slowly merges with other black holes and continuously consumes surrounding
Speaker 2: gas to eventually scale up and become a supermassive black
Speaker 2: hole millions billions of times our Sun's mass. It was
Speaker 2: a story of slow incremental growth.
Speaker 1: Entered JWST and a galaxy called UHZ one. This galaxy
Speaker 1: is thirteen point two billion light years away, meaning we're
Speaker 1: seeing it as it existed just four hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: million years after.
Speaker 3: The Big Bang.
Speaker 2: Extremely early.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Combining data from NASA's Chandra X ray observatory in the
Speaker 1: James Web, astronomers found a black hole in this baby galaxy.
Speaker 1: But it is absolutely not a baby black hole. It
Speaker 1: is a mass of ten to one hundred million times
Speaker 1: our Sun. And here is the kicker, the part that
Speaker 1: shatters the slow growth model. The black hole is roughly
Speaker 1: the same mass as its entire host galaxy.
Speaker 2: The ratio is what is truly staggering. Here. Let's look
Speaker 2: at a modern galaxy like our Milky Way for context,
Speaker 2: our central supermassive black hole Sagittarius. A star is a
Speaker 2: tiny fraction of a percent of the galaxy's total mass.
Speaker 2: The stars out maass it by orders of magnitude to
Speaker 2: find a black hole in uhz one that equals the
Speaker 2: mass of all the stars in its galaxy combined so
Speaker 2: incredibly early in the universe effectively kills the slow growth
Speaker 2: theory for these specific objects. A stellar mass black hole
Speaker 2: couldn't eat fast enough to reach one hundred million solar
Speaker 2: masses in just four hundred million years without blowing all
Speaker 2: its food away with radiation. This strongly supports the heavy
Speaker 2: seed or direct collapse scenario.
Speaker 1: Welk us through that mechanism, How does a black hole
Speaker 1: just bypass the starphase entirely?
Speaker 2: It requires conditions that only existed in the very early universe.
Speaker 2: Imagine a primordial cloud of pristine hydrogen gas that is
Speaker 2: unfathomably massive and incredibly.
Speaker 3: Dense, Okay, picturing it.
Speaker 2: Instead of fragmenting into thousands of smaller clumps that ignite
Speaker 2: into individual stars. The sheer overwhelming gravity of the entire
Speaker 2: cloud causes it to instantly and catastrophically collapse in on.
Speaker 3: Itself without ever sparking fusion exactly.
Speaker 2: It bypasses nuclear fusion entirely. It goes straight from a
Speaker 2: gas cloud to a massive black hole tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of times the mass of our Sun right from the start.
Speaker 2: This heavy seed then acts as the ultimate gravitational anchor,
Speaker 2: pulling in more gas to rapidly form the galaxy around it.
Speaker 2: Uahz one suggests the monster was there from the very beginning,
Speaker 2: essentially building the house around itself.
Speaker 1: Building the house around itself. I love that visual, but
Speaker 1: the source text makes it clear that sometimes these black
Speaker 1: holes are terrible housemates. Researchers from Stanford observed a phenomenon
Speaker 1: they're calling the black hole blow torch.
Speaker 2: Oh, this one is fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's terrifying. They looked at a supermassive black hole six
Speaker 1: point five billion times the mass of our Sun that
Speaker 1: is shooting a jet of high energy plasma stretching three
Speaker 1: thousand light years long, and this jet is literally causing
Speaker 1: nearby star systems to explode. Walking past that blow torch
Speaker 1: would be like walking past a running jet engine and
Speaker 1: having your atom scrambled.
Speaker 2: It is a phenomenal display of active galactic nucleus or
Speaker 2: agn feedback. We typically think of black holes as cosmic
Speaker 2: vacuums that consume matter, but the environment just outside the
Speaker 2: event horizon is arguably the most violent place in the universe.
Speaker 3: Because everything is moving so fast.
Speaker 2: Right yes, As gas and dust spiral inward, they form
Speaker 2: an accretion disc that gets heated to millions of degrees.
Speaker 2: The magnetic fields in this plasma get twisted and tightly
Speaker 2: coiled by the rotation of the black hole. These twisted
Speaker 2: magnetic fields act like a cosmic particle accelerator, launching a
Speaker 2: fraction of that infalling material outwards at nearly the speed
Speaker 2: of light from the black hole's poles.
Speaker 1: So it's not the black hole throwing it out, it's
Speaker 1: the magnetic field around it acting like a slingshot before
Speaker 1: the material crosses the point of no return.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and these relativistic jets can extend far beyond the
Speaker 2: host galaxy itself. What the Stanford team noted, which is
Speaker 2: truly terrifying, is the specific effect this jet has on
Speaker 2: the galaxy it's piercing through Yeah.
Speaker 3: What does it actually do to the stars.
Speaker 2: Well, the jet isn't just empty radiation. It is a
Speaker 2: stream of highly energetic particles generating intense synchrotron radiation. As
Speaker 2: this blowtorch slams into cold gas clouds and nearby star systems,
Speaker 2: it compresses the gas, suddenly altering the pressure dynamics. This
Speaker 2: violent compression seems to be triggering runaway supernova events in
Speaker 2: those nearby stars. Oh, it is, for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 2: a cosmic sterilization beam sweeping through the galaxy.
Speaker 1: A sterilization beam just wiping out any chance for a
Speaker 1: stable solar system in its path. And if a localized
Speaker 1: blowtorch isn't terrifying enough. The GWST data also helped to
Speaker 1: confirm the existence of.
Speaker 3: Rogue black holes.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, we.
Speaker 1: Always picture black holes sitting in the center of galaxies
Speaker 1: or securely orbiting companion stars. But astronomers found a free,
Speaker 1: floating rogue black hole drifting through the Milky Way completely alone,
Speaker 1: moving at twenty eight meters per second. It's about five
Speaker 1: thousand light years away.
Speaker 2: But wait, I have a fundamental question about this. Sure,
Speaker 2: how do we even see something that is, by definition invisible,
Speaker 2: emitting absolutely no light, and wandering alone in the dark.
Speaker 2: It relies on one of Albert einstein Most brilliant and
Speaker 2: initially controversial predictions from his theory of general relativity, gravitational microlensing.
Speaker 3: Micro lensing.
Speaker 2: Yes, because a black hole has immense mass, it literally
Speaker 2: warps the fabric of space time around it, creating a
Speaker 2: deep gravitational well. If a rogue black hole happens to
Speaker 2: drift exactly between our telescope here on Earth and a distant,
Speaker 2: luminous background star, the black hole's gravity acts like a
Speaker 2: magnifying glass. As the light from the distant star passes
Speaker 2: through the warped space time around the black hole, the
Speaker 2: light path is bend and focused toward us.
Speaker 1: It's like looking at a distant street lamp through the
Speaker 1: bottom of a moving wineglass. You don't actually see the
Speaker 1: glass in the dark, but you see the street lamp's
Speaker 1: light distort, stretch, and suddenly brighten as the glass passes
Speaker 1: over it.
Speaker 2: That is a brilliant analogy, and by carefully measuring exactly
Speaker 2: how much that starlight bends, how bright it gets, and
Speaker 2: how long the magnification lasts, astronomers can calculate the mass
Speaker 2: and the speed of the invisible object passing in front
Speaker 2: of it. We can't see the rogue black hole, but
Speaker 2: we can see the dent it makes in the universe.
Speaker 1: And the sources suggest there could be millions of these
Speaker 1: row black holes just wandering our galaxy, millions of invisible
Speaker 1: gravitational traps drifting through the dark. It is deeply unsettling.
Speaker 2: It gives you a new perspective on the night's sky,
Speaker 2: doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, But remarkably it pales in comparison to this next
Speaker 1: concept from the source material dark stars.
Speaker 2: Ah. This is where the physics leaves the realm of
Speaker 2: the unsettling and enters the truly exotic.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty three, a report came out suggesting that
Speaker 1: some of the objects Joust identified as early massive galaxies
Speaker 1: might not be galaxies at all. They might be dark stars.
Speaker 1: And the irony is they aren't dark. They're super bright,
Speaker 1: bright enough to compete with the light output of an
Speaker 1: entire galaxy of normal stars.
Speaker 3: Yes, but they are powered by dark matter.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I need to pause here because my understanding of
Speaker 1: dark matter was that it's just the invisible gravitational glue
Speaker 1: holding spinning galaxies together so they don't fly apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how on Earth is an invisible gravitation glue power as star.
Speaker 2: To understand dark stars, we have to rethink what a
Speaker 2: star fundamentally is. A normal star like our sun, is
Speaker 2: essentially a delicate balance of terror. You have the crushing
Speaker 2: force of gravity trying to collapse the star inward, and
Speaker 2: you have the immense outward pressure of nuclear fusion in
Speaker 2: the core pushing outward. When those two forces are equal,
Speaker 2: the star is in a hydrostatic equilibrium, keeping it stable
Speaker 2: and shining.
Speaker 3: Makes sense.
Speaker 2: Now. Dark matter, which we calculate makes up about eighty
Speaker 2: five percent of the matter in the universe, is invisible
Speaker 2: because it simply doesn't interact with the electromagnetic force. It
Speaker 2: doesn't absorb, reflect or emit light. However, theoretical physicists propose
Speaker 2: that in the extremely dense primordial conditions of the very
Speaker 2: early universe, certain types of dark matter particles might interact.
Speaker 1: With themselves, so they don't interact with light, but they
Speaker 1: can crash into each.
Speaker 2: Other exactly Specifically, theories suggest they act as their own antimatter.
Speaker 2: When two dark matter particles collide, they annihilate each other.
Speaker 2: This annihilation process converts their mass directly into an enormous
Speaker 2: amount of pure heat and energy following E equals mc squared.
Speaker 2: So a dark star is fundamentally a massive cloud of
Speaker 2: normal hydrogen and helium gas, but instead of nuclear fusion
Speaker 2: powering the core, the star is kept inflated and glowing
Speaker 2: by the intense heat of dark matter particles constantly annihilating
Speaker 2: each other within it.
Speaker 1: So it's a giant hydrogen balloon being held open by
Speaker 1: exploding invisible matter.
Speaker 2: That is the mechanism. Yes, and because this dark matter
Speaker 2: annihilation process is so incredibly efficient at generating heat, these
Speaker 2: stars wouldn't be like our Sun. They could grow to
Speaker 2: be millions of times the mass of our Sun and
Speaker 2: billions of times brighter, inflating to a physical size that
Speaker 2: could swallow our entire Solar system. If JWST proves they exist,
Speaker 2: it completely solves the early galaxy problem we discussed earlier.
Speaker 2: So maybe those impossible red monster galaxies aren't massive mature
Speaker 2: galaxies at all. Maybe they are single hyperluminous dark stars.
Speaker 3: Which would be a total paradise shift.
Speaker 1: And JWST isn't just theorizing, it is actively hunting for
Speaker 1: the dark matter particles themselves. The sources mentioned theoretical physicist
Speaker 1: Elena Pinetti, and the search for axions.
Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is axions are highly unstable elementary particles
Speaker 2: that currently stand as a leading candidate for what dark
Speaker 2: matter actually is. The theoretical framework dictates that as axions
Speaker 2: drift through the cold vacuum of space, they occasionally decay
Speaker 2: into standard particles, and when they do decay, they emit
Speaker 2: a very specific, incredibly faint infrared photon.
Speaker 3: A tiny flash of eat.
Speaker 2: In the dark precisely. JWST's mid infrared instruments are so
Speaker 2: sensitive that researchers are currently sifting through the dense infrared
Speaker 2: noise of our own Milky Way looking for the specific,
Speaker 2: uniform spectroscopic signature of axion.
Speaker 3: Decay and if they find it.
Speaker 2: If they find it, it would be the discovery of the century.
Speaker 2: We would finally transition dark matter from a mathematical ghost
Speaker 2: to a tangible particle. We know what eighty five percent
Speaker 2: of our universe is actually made of.
Speaker 1: It's detective work on the grandest, most existential scale. We
Speaker 1: spend so much time looking out, but JWST is proving
Speaker 1: that the mechanisms governing the entire cosmos are happening in
Speaker 1: the microscopic decay of invisible particles. We've talked about the Titans, right,
Speaker 1: the ancient galaxies, the supermassive black holes, the dark matter behemoths.
Speaker 2: The big stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I want to scale it down a bit
Speaker 1: to something a little more relatable, though clearly no less violent.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about planets, because JWST is showing us that
Speaker 1: the universe isn't just violent on a galactic scale, it
Speaker 1: is a brutal, unforgiving crucible for individual worlds.
Speaker 2: The planetary data coming back from JWST is arguably its
Speaker 2: most visually stunning and scientifically sobering contribution. We're watching the
Speaker 2: full life cycle of worlds.
Speaker 1: Let's start at the beginning, the cradle. JWST is letting
Speaker 1: us watch planets being born. The sources mentioned in an
Speaker 1: image of a young star called AGH thirty.
Speaker 3: It's about five.
Speaker 1: Hundred thousand years old, which is a newborn in star years,
Speaker 1: just a baby.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You can't even see the star itself because it's completely
Speaker 1: hidden behind a thick dark disk of gas and dust.
Speaker 1: Web's infrared cameras saw the actual dust grains inside that
Speaker 1: disc grains just a millionth of a meter across. These
Speaker 1: are the literal, microscopic building blocks of future planets.
Speaker 2: It is the raw mechanics of accretion. We are observing
Speaker 2: the electrostatic forces at play in the primordial disc around
Speaker 2: a baby star. Those microscopic dust grains collide and stick together,
Speaker 2: much like dust bunnies under a bed, becoming pebbles, then boulders,
Speaker 2: and eventually planetesimals.
Speaker 3: Dust bunnies building worlds.
Speaker 2: Basically, over millions of years, they sweep up enough material
Speaker 2: to form the gravitational mass of a planet. But JABST
Speaker 2: isn't just seeing the leftover dust, it's catching the process
Speaker 2: actively happening.
Speaker 1: Look at the PDA seventy system, three hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: light years away. It's a five million year old star system.
Speaker 1: A Canadian led team used JAWST to observe two giant
Speaker 1: planets actively in development. They're literally watching these planets carve
Speaker 1: through the dust disc, competing with their host star to
Speaker 1: pull in the remaining gas and dust, and they achieve
Speaker 1: this using a physical tool inside the telescope called a coronagraph.
Speaker 2: The coronograph is essential for this kind of direct exoplanet observation,
Speaker 2: and it relies on understanding the wave nature of light.
Speaker 2: A host star is so overwhelmingly bright, often millions of
Speaker 2: times brighter than any planet orbiting it, that the planet
Speaker 2: is completely lost in the glare. A coronagraph is essentially
Speaker 2: a highly engineued physical mask. A tiny opaque disc plays
Speaker 2: precisely inside the telescope's optics. It perfectly aligns to block
Speaker 2: the direct light of the star, creating an artificial eclipse
Speaker 2: inside the telescope itself. But because light diffracts or bends
Speaker 2: around edges, they also have to use complex mirrors to
Speaker 2: cancel out the scattered light waves. By successfully suppressing the
Speaker 2: blinding starlight, the incredibly faint thermal infrared glow of the
Speaker 2: young planets, and the dust disc is revealed.
Speaker 1: It's like putting your thumb up to block the blinding
Speaker 1: sun so you can see a tiny bird flying past
Speaker 1: in the distance, but engineered to the nanimure.
Speaker 2: That's exactly it.
Speaker 1: And they use this same chronograph technique to catch a
Speaker 1: f Lapor's B, a young gas giant twenty three million
Speaker 1: years old. It's the lowest mass planet ever directly observed
Speaker 1: beyond our Solar System, and the astronomers had to rush
Speaker 1: to catch it because its orbit was about to carry
Speaker 1: it behind its host star. They caught it just in
Speaker 1: time and took a spectral analysis of its atmosphere. They
Speaker 1: found it was surprisingly hyperactive, churning with carbon monoxide.
Speaker 2: Which is a vital piece of the puzzle. It tells
Speaker 2: us that young planets are incredibly chemically dynamic. They aren't
Speaker 2: just cold, static spheres of accumulated gas. They are violently
Speaker 2: churning turbulent, hot environments where complex chemistry is constantly being
Speaker 2: driven by internal heat and stellar radiation.
Speaker 1: Which brings us from the cradle to the crucible the
Speaker 1: hellish extremes. We've talked about extreme weather on this show before,
Speaker 1: but jwst is showing us planetary climates that make Venus.
Speaker 3: Look like a vacation resort. Take VHS twelve.
Speaker 2: Fourty sive ah Yes, the brown dwarf orbiting two red
Speaker 2: dwarfs an incredibly chaotic gravitational environment.
Speaker 1: The weather report for VHS twelve fifty six B is
Speaker 1: pure nightmare fuel fifteen hundred degrees fahrenheit, a rapid twenty
Speaker 1: two hour day, causing insane wind shear, and the sky
Speaker 1: is filled with swirling gritty clouds of silicate sand. It
Speaker 1: literally rains hot glass and sand on this world.
Speaker 2: You definitely wouldn't want to visit.
Speaker 3: Definitely not.
Speaker 1: Then you have TOI two seventy. It's on a tight
Speaker 1: eleven day orbit around its star. It's classified as a
Speaker 1: potential hesiene world. Now, the term hysiene sounds nice, like
Speaker 1: some tranquil oceanic paradise.
Speaker 3: I assure you as not.
Speaker 2: The term is a portmanteau of hydrogen and ocean. A
Speaker 2: hycin planet is a theoretical classification of extraplanet that is hot,
Speaker 2: covered in a global ocean of liquid water, and possesses
Speaker 2: a thick, oppressive, hydrogen rich atmosphere. They are prime targets
Speaker 2: for JWST because they might be habitable under very specific conditions.
Speaker 1: Right, but on TOI two seventy. The conditions are anything
Speaker 1: but habitable because it so close to its star that
Speaker 1: global ocean is simmering in over one hundred degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: It's a massive planet wide boiling ocean.
Speaker 2: Or worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the alternative theory presented by some researchers is that
Speaker 1: the surface is too hot for liquid water at all,
Speaker 1: and it's actually just a sweltering, super dense, supercritical fluid
Speaker 1: hydrogen atmosphere transitioning directly into a Lycky core. Either way
Speaker 1: you wouldn't survive a second. And then there's weiys P
Speaker 1: one oh seven b. This one is scientifically fascinating, so
Speaker 1: the physical size of Jupiter, but it only has a
Speaker 1: tenth of the mass. They call it a cotton candy
Speaker 1: or balloon planet. It's incredibly inflated and puffy. But jbust
Speaker 1: does something unprecedented here. It observed in east west atmospheric asymmetry.
Speaker 2: This represents a monumental technical achievement for a technique called
Speaker 2: transit spectroscopy. Normally, when a planet passes in front of
Speaker 2: its host star, we measure the starlight filtering through the
Speaker 2: entire halo of the planet's atmosphere. Different chemicals absorb different
Speaker 2: wavelengths of light, leaving dark lines in the spectrum. We
Speaker 2: read those lines to see what chemicals are.
Speaker 3: Present, right, to see what the air is made of.
Speaker 2: Yes, but wes P one oh seven b is so
Speaker 2: highly inflated and JWST is so remarkably sensitive that as
Speaker 2: the planet transited, astronomers could distinguish the specific light filtering
Speaker 2: through the eastern hemisphere's atmosphere versus the western hemisphere's atmosphere.
Speaker 3: Stop and think about that for a second.
Speaker 1: They are mapping the changing weather patterns on different sides
Speaker 1: of a world that is light years away.
Speaker 2: It is breathtaking precision because a planet this close to
Speaker 2: its star is almost certainly tidally locked, meaning the gravitational
Speaker 2: pull has forced it into a state where one hemisphere
Speaker 2: eternally faces the star in perpetual daylight and the other
Speaker 2: faces deep space and perpetual night. The atmospheric dynamics are extreme.
Speaker 1: So one side is baking and the other is freezing exactly.
Speaker 2: The chemistry the cloud cover, and the sheer velocity of
Speaker 2: the winds transporting heat are drastically different between the morning
Speaker 2: terminator and the evening terminator. Seeing this asymmetry directly is
Speaker 2: a massive leap forward. Its the birth of true exoplanet meteorology.
Speaker 1: But at least WSP one oh seven B is surviving
Speaker 1: its weather. Here's where the data gets incredibly morbid. Some
Speaker 1: planets are actively dying. We are watching the graveyard of planets.
Speaker 1: K two twenty two B is a rocky world roughly
Speaker 1: the size of Neptune, but it is caught in a
Speaker 1: punishing nine hour orbit around its star. It is so
Speaker 1: close that the surface temperature is estimated at three three
Speaker 1: hundred degrees fahrenheit. The rock itself is.
Speaker 2: Vaporizing, having roasted alive.
Speaker 1: The planet is literally melting and spilling its guts into space,
Speaker 1: forming a massive comet like tail of vaporized rock and
Speaker 1: gas crawling behind it. JWST scanned that tail and detected
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide and nitric oxide. It's acting less like a
Speaker 1: stable planet and more like a colossal comet, where the
Speaker 1: star's radiation is boiling the mantle away.
Speaker 2: The mechanism at play here involves passing the rochial limit
Speaker 2: combined with extreme stellar irradiation. The gravitational tidal forces from
Speaker 2: the star are physically stretching and heating the planet, while
Speaker 2: the sheer thermal energy is stripping away anything that isn't
Speaker 2: heavy metal and BD plus erfy four eight six' eight
Speaker 2: A b is a system suffering a similar face. Brutal
Speaker 2: while it sounds, tragic these disintegrating planets offer a deeply
Speaker 2: invaluable scientific. Opportunity, normally our instruments can only see the
Speaker 2: outer gaseous envelopes of. Planets we can't see what's hidden
Speaker 2: inside the rocky core of an, exoplanet but by WATCHING
Speaker 2: k two twenty two b boil away and analyze the
Speaker 2: spectroscopic signature of its vaporized, mantle we are able to
Speaker 2: directly sample the deep interior composition of a rocky. Exoplanet
Speaker 2: it is a, violent catastrophic method of geological.
Speaker 1: Sampling we are dissecting a planet as it burns to.
Speaker 1: Death it's like throwing a snowball through a blast furnace
Speaker 1: to see what's inside. It and it's not just the
Speaker 1: host star is acting as the. Executioners sometimes the planets
Speaker 1: kill each. Other in The Beta pictorias system sixty three
Speaker 1: light years, AWAY jabst followed up on observations made back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and. Four back, then telescopes detected two
Speaker 1: massive distinct clouds of.
Speaker 3: Dust fast forward.
Speaker 1: TODAY jast looks at the exact same spot and the
Speaker 1: dust clouds are.
Speaker 3: Gone they dissipate.
Speaker 1: It the conclusion from the researchers we witness the aftermath
Speaker 1: of a massive cataclysmic asteroid, collision and the scale is.
Speaker 1: Incomprehensible the dust cloud they tract was one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: times the mass of the asteroid that wiped out the
Speaker 1: dinosaurs On earth one hundred thousand.
Speaker 2: Times it starkly underscores the sheer violence of planetary. Formation
Speaker 2: The Beta pictoris system is very, young only about twenty
Speaker 2: million years. Old this places it squarely in the era
Speaker 2: of heavy. Bombardment, protoplanets massive, asteroids and planetesimals haven't settled into,
Speaker 2: stable cleared orbits. Yet they are constantly, colliding shattering and
Speaker 2: reshaping the gravitational landscape of the. System it's a chaotic
Speaker 2: cosmic billiard table where the balls are exploding on, impact which.
Speaker 1: Makes you think about the relative quiet of our own.
Speaker 1: Neighborhood the source is briefly, noted almost as an aside
Speaker 1: to JWST's, capabilities THAT nasa is using The telescope's mid
Speaker 1: infrared instrument to Track Near earth asteroid twenty twenty four yr,
Speaker 1: four just tracking, it getting accurate size and thermal composition
Speaker 1: data to refine our planetary defense. Models it's a stark
Speaker 1: reminder that this violence isn't just happening light years. Away
Speaker 1: kinetic impacts are a fundamental part of celestial mechanics, everywhere
Speaker 1: which leads me to a really profound question for.
Speaker 3: You i'm.
Speaker 1: Ready if planets are this, fragile if they're getting vaporized
Speaker 1: by their host, stars gliding with one hundred thousand dinosaur killer,
Speaker 1: asteroids or trapped in boiling, oceans how does anything survive
Speaker 1: long enough to form?
Speaker 2: Life that question cuts to the heart of. Astrobiology it
Speaker 2: suggests the concept known as the great. Filter the data
Speaker 2: FROM jwst implies that while the formation of planets is
Speaker 2: incredibly common in the, universe the precise long term stability
Speaker 2: required for complex biology to take, root, evolve and survive
Speaker 2: the chaotic whims of a solar system is likely exceedingly.
Speaker 2: Rare Our, earth with its stable, orbit its protective magnetic
Speaker 2: field shielding us from solar, winds and its relatively quiet,
Speaker 2: neighborhood is a statistical anomaly of tranquility in an otherwise hostile.
Speaker 1: Void so statistical anomaly of TRANQUILITY i think that perfectly
Speaker 1: encapsulates the human. Experience we spend so much time looking
Speaker 1: for water on these cozy planets orbiting perfectly stable, stars
Speaker 1: desperately hoping we aren't the only anomaly out, here which
Speaker 1: brings us to the search for life. Itself the poster
Speaker 1: child for this search right now is an exoplanet CALLED
Speaker 1: k two EIGHTEEN. B it's a super earth about one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty light years, away sitting comfortably in its
Speaker 1: star's habitable, zone The goldilocks, zone where temperatures allow water
Speaker 1: to REMAIN liquidjwst pointed its spectrographs at this world and
Speaker 1: found a treasure trove in its atmosphere, methane carbon, dioxide
Speaker 1: and a massive.
Speaker 3: Lack of, ammonia which is very. Telling, yeah this.
Speaker 1: Chemical contail strongly supports the idea that it is another
Speaker 1: high seene, world perhaps possessing a massive liquid water ocean
Speaker 1: hiding under a hydrogen. Atmosphere but the real headline that
Speaker 1: caught everyone's attention was the potential detection OF dms dimethyl.
Speaker 1: Sulfide why did the astrobiology community collectively hold its breath.
Speaker 2: Over dms because On, earth dimethyl sulfide is a very
Speaker 2: specific bio. Signature it is a complex organic molecule, that
Speaker 2: as far as our current understanding of chemistry, goes is
Speaker 2: solely produced by biological. Processes, specifically it is emitted in
Speaker 2: massive quantities by phytoplankton in our.
Speaker 3: Oceans the stuff that smells like the beach.
Speaker 2: Exactly it's actually the chemical compound that gives the ocean that, distinct,
Speaker 2: pungent salty sea. Smell now we must exercise extreme scientific caution.
Speaker 2: Here as the researchers THAT u see riverside emphasized in
Speaker 2: the source material.
Speaker 1: Right they, said the excitement might be. Premature we need
Speaker 1: to temper our.
Speaker 2: Expectations why detecting a molecule LIKE dms at a distance
Speaker 2: of one hundred and twenty light years is incredibly. Difficult
Speaker 2: the spectroscopic signal is, faint right on the edge of
Speaker 2: the instrument's, capabilities and it is easily confused with overlapping
Speaker 2: spectral noise from other more common. Molecules the signal to
Speaker 2: noise ratio isn't high enough yet to declare a definitive,
Speaker 2: detection so it could just be a.
Speaker 3: Blip.
Speaker 2: Yes, furthermore while we only know of biological ways to
Speaker 2: produce dms On, earth we cannot definitively rule out that an,
Speaker 2: exotic purely geological or atmospheric photochemical process driven BY uv
Speaker 2: radiation heading a hydrogen rich ocean world couldn't SYNTHESIZE dms.
Speaker 2: Abiotically it is a, tantalizing heart stopping, hint but it
Speaker 2: is not yet a confirmation of. Life we need significantly
Speaker 2: more transit data to build up the, signal so we.
Speaker 1: Are cautiously optimistic waiting for more. Data but even IF
Speaker 1: K twoatenb doesn't pan, out the search for water is
Speaker 1: yielding incredible. Results look at, YOU j nine eight two
Speaker 1: seventy ninety eight light years. Away it's the smallest exoplanet
Speaker 1: known to have an atmosphere roughly twice the physical size Of,
Speaker 1: earth but the temperature is three hundred and fifty degree.
Speaker 1: Celsius they're calling it a steam. World its atmosphere is
Speaker 1: practically saturated with heavy water. Vapor, now it's almost certainly completely,
Speaker 1: inhospitable like living inside a high pressure. Cooker but it
Speaker 1: proves something vital ABOUT, jwst doesn't.
Speaker 2: It it proves a crucial technical. Milestone, previously with telescopes
Speaker 2: Like hubble Or, spitzer we could really only analyze the
Speaker 2: thick atmospheres Of jupiter sized gas. Giants proving THAT jwst
Speaker 2: can detect heavy molecules like water vapor on a, rocky
Speaker 2: terrestrial sized world means the tools are finally sharp enough
Speaker 2: when we eventually look at the right, target a True
Speaker 2: earth two point zero with the right temperature and atmospheric.
Speaker 2: PRESSURE jwst has the capability to definitively read its atmospheric.
Speaker 1: Chemistry the tools are incredibly. Sharp they even use them
Speaker 1: to solve a twenty year old. Mystery the planet fifty
Speaker 1: five Cancrete. E this, rocky super hot world was discovered
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and, four and for two decades
Speaker 1: it sents astronomers these bizarre eclipsing. Signals, sometimes when it
Speaker 1: passed behind its, star the infrared light changed in a
Speaker 1: way that suggested it had an. Atmosphere other times they
Speaker 1: looked there was, nothing a bare. Rock it was like
Speaker 1: the atmosphere was playing an elaborate game of.
Speaker 2: Peekaboo it presented a deeply perplexing thermal phase curve that
Speaker 2: defied standard planetary. Models atmospheres don't just vanish and reappear
Speaker 2: on a.
Speaker 1: Whim BUT jwst figured it, out and the mechanism is.
Speaker 3: Wild its.
Speaker 1: Volcanoes the planet is orbiting so dangerously close to its
Speaker 1: that the gravitational tidal forces trigger, massive relentless. Outgassing giant
Speaker 1: volcanoes erupt across the surface spewing carbon riche elements in,
Speaker 1: gas temporarily creating a thick. Atmosphere but the solar wind
Speaker 1: from the host star is so intense it acts like
Speaker 1: a cosmic blow. Dryer it's like a planet constantly exhaling
Speaker 1: a deep breath that instantly gets violently blown away by
Speaker 1: the solar, wind leaving the rock bear and exposed until
Speaker 1: the next massive eruption cycle.
Speaker 3: Begins it is.
Speaker 2: A stunning display of planetary. Dynamics we are watching the
Speaker 2: atmosphere of a world being constantly desperately replenished from its molten,
Speaker 2: mantle only to be subsequently stripped away by stellar radiation
Speaker 2: in real. Time it shows that planets are not static.
Speaker 2: Objects they're deeply interactive with their stellar.
Speaker 1: Environment, now speaking of things interacting with their environment and
Speaker 1: the public's perception of WHAT jwst is capable of, observing
Speaker 1: we have to address the elephant in the. Room the
Speaker 1: source material details a rumor that spread like wildfire across
Speaker 1: The internet and even bled into congressional briefings, recently a
Speaker 1: rumor that JWS he had spotted an allegedly unnatural moving
Speaker 1: object about ten light years away From.
Speaker 3: Earth.
Speaker 2: Ah, yes the cultural phenomenon surrounding unidentified a anomalist, Phenomena
Speaker 2: it was inevitable THAT jast would intersect with this.
Speaker 1: Narrative the rumor claim the object exhibited unnatural changes in,
Speaker 1: trajectory emitting signals that didn't match standard, astrophysics leading to
Speaker 1: wild speculation of an alien. Craft it got so intense
Speaker 1: THAT Us Representative Andre, carson who had previously led congressional
Speaker 1: hearings on unidentified aerial, phenomena was directly asked about a
Speaker 1: supposed CLASSIFIED jwst briefing on this specific. Object his response
Speaker 1: was a flat no, comment which naturally poured absolute gasoline
Speaker 1: on the fire for enthusiasts looking for. Disclosure, NOW nasa
Speaker 1: has not released anything confirming, this and as impartial observers
Speaker 1: of the source, text we aren't here to Validate internet.
Speaker 1: Conspiracies but it is deeply fascinating how the sheer unprecedented
Speaker 1: power OF jwst has primed the public to believe it
Speaker 1: could literally spot a spaceship moving through the void light years.
Speaker 2: Away it speaks volumes about the psychological impact the telescope
Speaker 2: has had on. Society when an instrument consistently delivers paradigm
Speaker 2: shifting impossible discoveries like the massive red monster galaxies that
Speaker 2: shouldn't exist or the inside out galaxy define gravitational. Models
Speaker 2: the public imagination naturally stretches to accommodate even the most extraordinary.
Speaker 3: Possibilities we just expect the impossible now.
Speaker 2: Exactly the boundary of what is considered impossible has been
Speaker 2: pushed so far back by actual science that fiction finds
Speaker 2: room to breathe while the scientific method demands, rigorous, verifiable
Speaker 2: pure refeued, data which is entirely absent in this. Rumor
Speaker 2: the fact that the rumor gains such traction illustrates how
Speaker 2: DEEPLY jwst has blurred the line between science fiction and
Speaker 2: science fact and the public.
Speaker 1: Consciousness we are so used TO jwst breaking the rules
Speaker 1: of nature that an alien spaceship almost feels like the
Speaker 1: logical next. Step but, frankly while looking for aliens is,
Speaker 1: fun SOMETIMES jwst finds completely natural things that by all
Speaker 1: categorization and are far more perplexing than the. Spaceship we
Speaker 1: spend so much time looking for planets orbiting perfectly stable,
Speaker 1: stars BUT jwst is proving that a star isn't a
Speaker 1: requirement for a planet to. Exist what happens to the
Speaker 1: worlds that get kicked out of the cradle, Entirely let's
Speaker 1: talk about the.
Speaker 2: Rogues this is where we leave the warmth and relative
Speaker 2: safety of the stars and head out into the, deep,
Speaker 2: dark freezing void of intercellar.
Speaker 1: Space we mentioned rogue black holes, earlier but there were
Speaker 1: rogue planets. Too jwst spotted six unbound planets nine hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty light years. Away these aren't, small rocky. Worlds,
Speaker 1: there gas giants five to ten times the mass Of
Speaker 1: jupiter are just floating completely alone in the, dark unbound
Speaker 1: to any host.
Speaker 2: Star just massive objects drifting in the. Void.
Speaker 1: Yeah one of, them NAMED s zero one three, six
Speaker 1: is spinning, furiously completing a full rotation in just two
Speaker 1: point four, hours and it has this bizarre atmosphere of
Speaker 1: iron and silicate clouds with carbon monoxide floating.
Speaker 2: Around the exist instance of rogue planets isn't an entirely new.
Speaker 2: Concept we've known for a while that gravitational, perturbations like
Speaker 2: a close encounter with another massive planet or passing, star
Speaker 2: can eject planets from their home solar. Systems it's a
Speaker 2: violent game of gravitational. Billiards but the sheer mass of
Speaker 2: these specific rogues identified BY jwst challenges that traditional ejection.
Speaker 1: Model right because usually planets formed from the leftover dust
Speaker 1: around a, star the core accretion model.
Speaker 3: We talked about.
Speaker 1: Earlier so how does The solar system inject something ten
Speaker 1: times the size Of.
Speaker 2: Jupiter that is exactly the friction point in the Physics
Speaker 2: the core accretion model says planets are the byproducts of star,
Speaker 2: Formation but these rogues are so massive approaching the boundary
Speaker 2: of brown, dwarfs that it is statistically and dynamically difficult
Speaker 2: to explain how a normal solar system could generate enough
Speaker 2: gravitational torque to eject them without completely destroying the rest
Speaker 2: of The Solar system in the.
Speaker 3: Process it would just tear everything apart.
Speaker 2: Exactly this leads astronomers to a radical alternative. Hypothesis perhaps
Speaker 2: these massive rogue planets didn't form an estellar disc at.
Speaker 2: All perhaps they formed directly from the collapse of isolated
Speaker 2: small gas clouds in deep interstellar, space exactly like stars,
Speaker 2: do but they just didn't have enough mass to ignite
Speaker 2: nuclear fusion in their.
Speaker 1: Cores so they are essentially failed stars wandering alone in the,
Speaker 1: dark rather than ejected. PLANETS i can write my head around.
Speaker 1: That but they aren't always, alone and this is the
Speaker 1: part of the deep dive that is truly. Baffling in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, THREE jwst looked at The orion nebula and
Speaker 1: found jumped Yos jupiter mass binary. Objects they didn't just
Speaker 1: find one or. Two they found forty two pairs of
Speaker 1: these massive gas giants free floating in the, nebula completely
Speaker 1: unbound to any star but orbiting each other in perfect binary.
Speaker 1: Systems how does that? Work if one rogue planet getting
Speaker 1: ejected from a star system is mathematically, hard how do
Speaker 1: you eject two of them together so perfectly that they
Speaker 1: stay locked in a delicate gravitational.
Speaker 2: Vans you've hit the exact paradox that has theoretical astrophysicists.
Speaker 2: Stumped ejecting a single massive planet is. Hard ejecting a
Speaker 2: binary pair of planets from a chaotic solar system without
Speaker 2: disrupting their delicate orbit around each other is dynamically highly,
Speaker 2: improbable to the point of. Absurdity the immense gravitational violence
Speaker 2: required to kick them out of a star system would
Speaker 2: almost certainly rip the pair, apart sending them flying in.
Speaker 3: Opposite, directions so they shouldn't be paired.
Speaker 2: Up, therefore the ejection model fails almost completely to explain.
Speaker 2: Jumbios they strongly support the direct collapse model you just.
Speaker 2: Mentioned but even, then our fluid dynamics models of gas
Speaker 2: cloud fragmentation don't easily predict the formation of stable binary
Speaker 2: objects at planetary. Masses the physics of how a small
Speaker 2: gas cloud splits to form two jupiters orbiting each other
Speaker 2: in the void is a profound unresolved, Mystery and.
Speaker 1: The mystery of The jumbo's just got a giant cosmic
Speaker 1: loud speaker attached to. It the source materials highlighted a specific,
Speaker 1: pair creatively Named jumbo twenty. Four researchers looking at archive
Speaker 1: data from The National Radio Astronomy observatory realize That jumbo
Speaker 1: twenty four is emitting incredibly, strong steady radio. Waves we're
Speaker 1: talking energy emissions equivalent to detonating a quarter ton OF tnt.
Speaker 2: Constantly that is a staggering run of.
Speaker 1: Energy so we have two giant planets alone in the absolute,
Speaker 1: dark screaming in radio. Waves NOW i Know jupiter emits
Speaker 1: radio waves because of its intense magnetic, field, right is
Speaker 1: that what's happening?
Speaker 2: Here jupiter is a great baseline for. This, Yes jupiter
Speaker 2: has a, massive powerful. Magnetosphere when charged particles from the
Speaker 2: solar wind hit, it they get, trapped spiral rapidly along
Speaker 2: the magnetic field lines toward the poles and produce intense
Speaker 2: radio emissions through a process called cyclotron.
Speaker 1: Radiation but the sources explicitly Say jumbo twenty four signals
Speaker 1: do not match that physics at. All when a planet's
Speaker 1: magnetic field creates radio waves via spiraling, electrons the signal
Speaker 1: has a specific physical pattern called circular. Polarization, Right it
Speaker 1: means the light waves are quark screwing as they, travel.
Speaker 1: Correct But jumbo twenty four signals lack this circular polarization.
Speaker 1: Completely they don't match planets aeromagnetic, fields they don't mat
Speaker 1: the rapid spinning of. Pulsars they don't manage brown. Dwarfs
Speaker 1: if we connect this to the bigger, picture what is
Speaker 1: actually happening? Here if it's not a magnetic field causing
Speaker 1: electrons to, spiral what On earth is creating quarter TON
Speaker 1: tnt radioblasts in the.
Speaker 2: Dark if we connect this to the bigger, Picture jumbo
Speaker 2: twenty four forces radio astronomers to completely reconsider the physics
Speaker 2: of electromagnetic emissions on free floating substellar. Objects if the
Speaker 2: signal lacks circular, polarization it strongly suggests the emission mechanism
Speaker 2: is not standard cyclotron or synchrotron. Radiation it means we
Speaker 2: aren't looking at electrons spiraling along a magnetic. Field and
Speaker 2: what is? It theoretical physicists are scrambling for. Explanations it
Speaker 2: could be an exotic plasma interaction between the two binary
Speaker 2: objects themselves because they are orbiting each other without a host,
Speaker 2: star perhaps that their individual magnetospheres are. Tangling it could
Speaker 2: be a massive magnetic reconnection event in the physical space between,
Speaker 2: them essentially generating a continuous solar, flare but on a
Speaker 2: planetary scale without a star to fuel. It it is
Speaker 2: entirely uncharted territory in. Physics we are observing a mechanism
Speaker 2: we do not have a textbook.
Speaker 1: For it is genuinely, spooky just two massive failed stars
Speaker 1: humming in the void with the physics we literally do not.
Speaker 1: Understand but as we move toward the culmination of these,
Speaker 1: discoveries we have to leave the, quiet spooky void of
Speaker 1: the jumbos and head into the absolute, loudest most destructive
Speaker 1: macro forces. Imaginable BECAUSE jadabst isn't just finding weird, anomalies
Speaker 1: it is tracking the events that reshape entire sectors of the.
Speaker 2: Universe we are returning to the macro, scale the, sheer
Speaker 2: unadulterated violence of the.
Speaker 1: Cosmos we talked about supernovas earlier as a mechanism for
Speaker 1: blowing gas out of, galaxies BUT jwst found a specific
Speaker 1: one at twenty twenty THREE. Adsv it is one of
Speaker 1: the most distant and oldest violent supernovas ever, detected happening
Speaker 1: eleven point four billion years. Ago the star that exploded
Speaker 1: was roughly twenty times the mass of our. Sun researchers
Speaker 1: noted that these early supernovas were fundamentally different than the
Speaker 1: ones that happened in our galaxy. Today they were, hotter more,
Speaker 1: massive and truly gargantuan. Explosions why does the star exploding
Speaker 1: eleven billion years ago behave differently than one exploding.
Speaker 2: Today it comes back to the concept of metals we
Speaker 2: discussed with the early carbon. Dust the very first generation
Speaker 2: of stars to form after The Big, bang known As
Speaker 2: population third stars were made of, pristine unlemished hydrogen and.
Speaker 2: Helium because they lacked heavy, elements the internal physics of
Speaker 2: how they managed heat and radiation was. Different they didn't
Speaker 2: have heavy elements to help cool the, star which allowed
Speaker 2: them to grow to monstrous sizes hundreds of times the
Speaker 2: mass of Our, sun before the outward radiation pressure inside
Speaker 2: them blew them.
Speaker 3: Apart so they just got too big to.
Speaker 2: Survive, exactly when one of these behemoths reached the end
Speaker 2: of its, life it didn't just explode in a standard
Speaker 2: core collapse. Supernova it obliterated itself entirely in something called
Speaker 2: a pair instability.
Speaker 1: SUPERNOVA a pair instability, supernova what is the mechanism?
Speaker 2: There the core of the star gets so unfathomably hot
Speaker 2: that the high energy gamma, rays which are providing the
Speaker 2: outward pressure holding the star, up actually begin to interact
Speaker 2: with atomic nuclei and spontaneously convert into pairs of electrons and,
Speaker 2: positrons matter and.
Speaker 3: Antimatter, wait the light turns into matter.
Speaker 2: Exactly and because the light of the gamma rays was
Speaker 2: the only thing providing outward pressure against, gravity when that
Speaker 2: light suddenly turns into, matter the outward pressure. Vanishes, instantly
Speaker 2: the entire massive star goes into a sudden catastrophic free fall.
Speaker 2: Collapse this triggers a runaway thermonuclear explosion that is so
Speaker 2: violent it completely obliterates the. Star it leaves no black,
Speaker 2: hole no neutrons star, behind just a massive spherical shock,
Speaker 2: wave seating the primordial universe with its first heavy elements
Speaker 2: with unprecedented kinetic.
Speaker 3: Force it just.
Speaker 1: Deletes itself from existence to build the next generation of.
Speaker 1: Stars and speaking of unprecedented, force even closer to, home
Speaker 1: the universe is just violently spewing. Energy last, year astronomers
Speaker 1: caught a gamma ray. Burst they dubbed the boat the
Speaker 1: brightest of all. Time it was seventy times brighter than
Speaker 1: anything ever. Seen it literally blinded the observation tools on
Speaker 1: our orbital. Satellites the source has stated that if this,
Speaker 1: explosion which occurred two billion light years, away had happened
Speaker 1: just one hundred light years, away it would have Stripped
Speaker 1: earth's ozone layer and vaporize the surface in an.
Speaker 2: Instant gamma ray, bursts or, GRBs are the most luminous
Speaker 2: electromagnetic events in the universe since The Big bang. Itself
Speaker 2: they occur when a rapidly rotating high mass star collapses
Speaker 2: to form a neutron, star a quark, star or a black.
Speaker 2: Hole right as the core, collapses it drives a highly,
Speaker 2: focused relativistic jet of radiation out of its rotational. Poles
Speaker 2: the bow was, exceptional not just because the sheer size
Speaker 2: of the collapsing, star but because of. Alignment the jet
Speaker 2: was pointed almost exactly At, earth heavily concentrating the energy we.
Speaker 2: Received it was like staring directly down the barrel of
Speaker 2: a cosmic laser.
Speaker 1: Pointer the universe is just aggressively. Hostile even the dust
Speaker 1: is getting shoved around by. Light jwst saw starlight visibly
Speaker 1: moving organic dust and concentric rings around a binary star.
Speaker 3: System it's the first time we've.
Speaker 1: Seen radiation, pressure or the physical push of photons moving
Speaker 1: visible matter beyond our solar. System and then there are the,
Speaker 1: oddities the weird spewing objects closer to, home like cent
Speaker 1: to our twenty nine p a common like object out
Speaker 1: in Your neptune spewing carbon monoxide jets every six to eight.
Speaker 1: Weeks astronomers think it's a contact binary multiple primitive piece
Speaker 1: is stuck, together holding ancient clues to our solar system's,
Speaker 1: formation or THE wl twenty, system which we thought was
Speaker 1: one baby star for, decades but jwst peered through the
Speaker 1: dust and revealed it's actually a binary, pair with both
Speaker 1: stars shooting out these insane parallel energy jets from their
Speaker 1: magnetic poles into the surrounding.
Speaker 2: Nebula these, observations from the cataclysmic energy of the boet
Speaker 2: to the parallel jets OF wl twenty serve to highlight
Speaker 2: that the universe is not a static. Painting it is
Speaker 2: a violently, active relentlessly, churning fluid dynamic system driven by
Speaker 2: the interplay of gravity and.
Speaker 1: Electromagnetism but all of this, violence all of these bizarre,
Speaker 1: anomalies the red, monsters the inside out, galaxies the screaming.
Speaker 3: Jambos they all culminate.
Speaker 1: In the biggest crisis of, all the final boss of,
Speaker 1: cosmology The hubble. Tension the sources quoted a researcher saying
Speaker 1: this discrepancy is the possible end of cosmology as we know.
Speaker 1: It so what does this actually? Mean The hubble constant
Speaker 1: is the rate at which the universe is. EXPANDING i
Speaker 1: like to think of the expanding universe like a loaf
Speaker 1: of raisin bread baking in the. Oven the galaxies are
Speaker 1: the raisins embedded in the. Dough as the bread, rises
Speaker 1: the dough expands and the raisins push away from each, other.
Speaker 2: A classic and highly effective analogy for metric. Expansion the
Speaker 2: galaxies aren't moving through space, itself is expanding between.
Speaker 1: Them the problem is our measurements of the dough rising
Speaker 1: don't match. Up based on measurements of the cosmic microwave
Speaker 1: background the literal echo of The Big bang from the
Speaker 1: very early, universe the expansion rate should be about sixty
Speaker 1: eight kilometers per second per megaparsek, amegaparsec being a vast
Speaker 1: distance of about three point twenty six million light. Years
Speaker 1: but when we look at actual stars and, galaxies or
Speaker 1: by in the modern, universe the expansion rate is measured
Speaker 1: at sixty nine point eight or even up to seventy
Speaker 1: three kilometers per. Second it's like one half of the
Speaker 1: bread is rising significantly faster than the other, half despite
Speaker 1: having the exact same.
Speaker 2: Ingredients and this raise is an important question why the.
Speaker 2: Discrepancy for, years cosmologists desperately hoped that this tension was
Speaker 2: simply a measurement error and artifact of our tools to
Speaker 2: measure the local expansion, rate we use standard. Candles these
Speaker 2: are specific types of, stars like cephaide, variables that pulse
Speaker 2: at a rate directly related to their true, brightness.
Speaker 3: So they act like cosmic lighthouses.
Speaker 2: Exactly by comparing how bright they actually are to how
Speaker 2: dim they appear to, us we can calculate exactly how
Speaker 2: far away they, are and thus how fast space is.
Speaker 2: Stretching many physicists assumed that The Hubble space telescope's calibration
Speaker 2: for observing these cephaid variables was just slightly, off throwing
Speaker 2: off the.
Speaker 1: Math BUT jwst stepped in to settle the debate.
Speaker 2: EXACTLY, jwst with its unprecedented, infrarederis went back and remeasured
Speaker 2: those exact same sephide variable. Stars it peered through the
Speaker 2: dust that Confused. Hubble it triple checked the data and
Speaker 2: the results were. DEFINITIVE jwst confirmed That hubble was not.
Speaker 2: Wrong the standard candles are exactly where we thought they.
Speaker 2: Were the measurement error is completely, Negated.
Speaker 1: So if the tools are right and the measurements are,
Speaker 1: right the bread is genuinely. Broken the universe is actually
Speaker 1: expanding at two different.
Speaker 3: Skeeds.
Speaker 2: Yes if the relic radiation of the early universe tells
Speaker 2: us space should be expanding at sixty, eight but the
Speaker 2: modern universe of galaxies we observe is expanding at seventy
Speaker 2: or seventy, three it means our fundamental model of physics
Speaker 2: is failing. Us THE lamb TO cdm, model which stands
Speaker 2: for cold dark matter with a cosmological constant representing dark,
Speaker 2: energy is the mathematical framework that governs how, gravity, space
Speaker 2: and time interact on a cosmic.
Speaker 3: Scale and it's not working. Anymore.
Speaker 2: No The hubble tension verified By jawst proves THAT lamb
Speaker 2: TO cdm is fundamentally flawed or at best. Complete we
Speaker 2: are missing a massive foundational piece of the puzzle regarding
Speaker 2: what dark energy is actually doing to the fabric of space, time.
Speaker 1: The end of cosmology as we know. It we've gone
Speaker 1: from looking at impossible massive galaxies forming five hundred million
Speaker 1: years after The Big, bang two rogue black holes bending
Speaker 1: starlight to GMO's screaming in radio waves without magnetic feels
Speaker 1: all the way to the realization that the very fabric
Speaker 1: of our universe is expanding in a way that breaks
Speaker 1: our most trusted laws of.
Speaker 2: Physics The James Web Space telescope is doing exactly what a,
Speaker 2: great epic defining scientific instrument should. Do it is destroying our.
Speaker 2: Complacency it is proving that the universe is far, richer
Speaker 2: far more, complex and far more mysterious than our mathematical models.
Speaker 2: Allowed it forces us to.
Speaker 1: Grow it is the ultimate reality. Check every time we
Speaker 1: think we have the universe figured, out we build a
Speaker 1: better magnifying, glass zoom in on the barren desert and
Speaker 1: find a glowing. Skyscraper the more you, know the less you.
Speaker 2: Know we are stepping into a golden new era of,
Speaker 2: astrophysics one where we have to be willing to co
Speaker 2: completely discarred deeply held theoretical assumptions and let the, raw,
Speaker 2: unyielding bizarre data guide us to new physical.
Speaker 1: Laws and what a wild ride it is going to,
Speaker 1: be which brings us to the end of our journey.
Speaker 1: Today we started by imagining that modern skyscraper sitting in
Speaker 1: an ancient, desert something that shouldn't exist but. There it
Speaker 1: is forcing you to reconsider the entire history of the.
Speaker 1: Landscape that is what The James Web Space telescope is
Speaker 1: doing to. Humanity every single day it is finding the
Speaker 1: skyscrapers in the deep field of. Space SO i leave
Speaker 1: you with this final provocative.
Speaker 2: Thought i'm intrigued given everything we've.
Speaker 1: Talked about, today the red monster galaxies that are too
Speaker 1: big too, early the ROBE jmbo planets emitting impossible radio,
Speaker 1: signals the breaking of The hubble. Constant do you think
Speaker 1: our current laws of physics are just slightly, incomplete needing
Speaker 1: a tiny mathematical. Tweak or are we standing on the
Speaker 1: precipice of a scientific revolution where we are going to
Speaker 1: need a complete ground up rewrite of science textbooks in
Speaker 1: the next. Decade are we about to discover a new
Speaker 1: fundamental force of? Nature drop a comment with your thoughts on.
Speaker 1: THIS i really want to know where you stand on
Speaker 1: the future of, physics because it seems like the experts
Speaker 1: are as baffled as we. Are thank you to our
Speaker 1: brilliant expert for guiding us through this cosmic madness and
Speaker 1: translating the impossible into something we can almost.
Speaker 2: Understand it was an absolute. Pleasure keep looking up and
Speaker 2: keep questioning.
Speaker 1: Everything this has been thrilling. Threads thank you for joining
Speaker 1: us as we pull at the strings of the. Universe stay,
Speaker 1: curious keep exploring and we'll catch you next. Time as
Speaker 1: we continue to shine a light into the, vast mysterious
Speaker 1: dark