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Speaker 1: Okay, let's just jump right in. We're doing a deep

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dive today on something that it almost sounds like science fiction.

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It's this incredible rivalry, a sort of David versus Goliath's

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story playing out in real time across our solar system.

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Speaker 2: It really is.

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Speaker 3: On one side you have billions upon billions of dollars

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of the most advanced space technology humanity has ever built.

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Speaker 1: And on the other you have what amounts to well

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backyard ingenuity. But it's this ingenuity that's winning. We're talking

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about a battle where the stakes are and this isn't

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an exaggeration our fundamental understanding of what's flying through our

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solar systems.

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Speaker 2: It's a story of focus.

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Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, you have NASA and they've thrown literally

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everything they have at this thing. We're talking about the

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James Webbs based telescope Hubble, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, maven

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PN and c H Lucy, the.

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Speaker 1: Crown Jewels, the absolute best.

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Speaker 3: We have the best, yes, and on the other side

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a network of incredibly skilled amateur astronomers all around the world.

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Their equipment is amazing, for sure, but we're tens of

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thousand dollars, not the tens of billions. It's a tiny,

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tiny fraction.

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Speaker 2: Of the cost.

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Speaker 1: And the object at the center of all this intense

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focus is three I atlas. The eye stands for interstellar.

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So this thing, it's a visitor. It doesn't come from

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our solar system.

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Speaker 3: It was discovered back on July first. It just made

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its closest swaying by the Sun the pair helium on

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October twenty ninth, and now it's already heading back out

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into deep space and fast.

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Speaker 1: Which means that this short window, this brief visit, was

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our only chance to get a good look. And the

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data we got, well, it tells two completely different stories.

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It really depends on who you ask, doesn't.

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Speaker 3: It It absolutely does. So that's our mission today. We're

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going to dive deep into the official imagery that NASA

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just released from all those different.

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Speaker 1: Instruments after months of waiting for it.

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Speaker 3: Right after long wait, and we're going to put it

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side by side with the data that the amateur community

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has been consistently collecting. And their data is well, it's

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just superior.

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Speaker 1: It's more detailed, and we want to pick apart what

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these massive differences is in data quality. Tell us not

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just about three LS itself. It's weird physical traits, but

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also about the mystery of what's really going on with it.

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Why did billions of dollars fail where a few thousands succeeded.

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Speaker 3: And we should be clear, our entire analysis here is

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based on a really fantastic breakdown by the geophysicist Stefan Burns.

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He's the one who did the meticulous work of comparing

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NASA's official releases with the the day by day granular

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observations from people with telescopes on.

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Speaker 1: The ground, and it's a comparison that really goes beyond

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just you know, which picture is sharper. It gets into

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the core scientific assumptions that are being made when we

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find something new and strange like this exactly.

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Speaker 2: So let's start with what was supposed to be the

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main event.

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Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, let's talk about NASA's best image, the one

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they really hiked up, the one we all had to

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wait for. This was the shot from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

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Speaker 3: The MRO, specifically from its most powerful camera, the High

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Resolution Imaging Science Experiment or high Rise. The image itself

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was taken back on October.

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Speaker 1: Second, and this was billed as the shot right the

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high def, ultra clear image that was going to solve

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all the mysteries about this object.

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Speaker 2: That was the idea.

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Speaker 3: When MRO snapped that picture, three I Atlas was just

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passing Mars. It was about thirty million kilometers away or

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twenty million miles, which sounds like a lot, but for

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an instrument like high Rise.

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Speaker 1: It shouldn't be. I mean, high Rise can see a

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dinner table on the surface of Mars from orbit precisely.

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Speaker 3: It's designed for incredible geological detail. So this was supposed

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to be the moment of truth. We were finally going

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to see the nucleus, the core.

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Speaker 2: Of this thing.

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Speaker 1: But what we got back was not that. The critique

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that immediately stuck, and it was pretty brutal, was that

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it looked like a street lamp on a foggy day

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in England.

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Speaker 3: That's a perfect description. It's just a fuzzy, blurry blob.

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And when you remember the billions it costs to build

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that orbitter and get it to Mars, the lack of

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actual detail is it's kind of shocking, it really is.

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Speaker 1: It just makes you question the entire cost benefit of

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the whole operation for the specific target.

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Speaker 3: Well, to be fair, and we have to look at

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this critically. It's a very difficult observation to make. High

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Rise is fundamentally designed for mapping a stationary target Mars.

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It takes these long, steady exposures to see rock formations.

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Speaker 1: It's not built for speed, not at all.

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Speaker 3: Trying to track a tiny, fast moving object thirty million

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kilometers away is it's repurposing the instrument for something it

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was never designed to do.

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Speaker 1: Okay, behold on, I get the technical argument, but doesn't

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that point to a bigger problem. If your entire multi

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billion dollar fleet of advanced telescopes is in space and

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you decide that the Mars mapper is your best bet

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for the best shot, doesn't that feel like an institutional failure,

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a failure of planning.

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Speaker 3: That's the heart of the critique from our source. Yes,

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the issue isn't that high Rise fail at its job.

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The failure was in the institutional priority and frankly, in

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managing expectations. Tracking three I lists was treated as a

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secondary objective, something to be.

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Speaker 1: Squeezed in, while for the amate on the ground.

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Speaker 3: It was their only objective. A dedicated amateur can point

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their telescope program, their system and dedicate one hundred percent

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of their time and effort to tracking that one fast

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moving object. They optimize everything, every single second for that

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one goal. NASA couldn't or didn't.

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Speaker 1: So even with this foggy street lamp of an image,

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what did we actually learn from it? Did they get

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any usable data?

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Speaker 2: Some?

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Speaker 3: Yes, they confirmed its trajectory that on October second, it

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was still heading in towards the Sun, toward its perihelium.

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And even through the blur, the image did seem to

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confirm a sunword facing tail.

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Speaker 1: Wait, sunword facing the Sun.

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Speaker 3: Yes, or at least a significant part of the coma.

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The gas cloud was expanding in that direction. And that

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right there is a huge anomaly.

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Speaker 1: Because a normal comet tail always points away from the Sun.

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The solar wind pushes.

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Speaker 3: It back always, so scene material apparently being pushed toward

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the Sun immediately tells you something very strange is happening.

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Speaker 2: It's not simple physics anymore.

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Speaker 1: And what about the mangle sizing up the nucleus the

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rock at the center right.

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Speaker 3: That was the primary scientific objective of the higher ese image.

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They took the single brightest pixel in that glory image

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where the nucleus should be, and try to analyze it.

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And this is where the whole thing just falls apart

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from a technical standpoint. At that distance with that instrument,

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a single pixel in that image covers an area roughly

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twenty kilometers across.

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Speaker 1: Twenty kilometers, that's what over twelve miles of the one

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dot of light exactly.

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Speaker 3: So if the nucleus is say five kilometers wide or eight,

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you're not seeing it.

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Speaker 2: You can't.

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Speaker 3: You're just seeing the brightest part of this massive glowing

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cloud of gas and dust that's surrounding it.

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Speaker 1: So you can't actually measure the solid object at all, not.

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Speaker 3: With any real accuracy. The view is almost totally obscured

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by the coma. The light is from the haze, not

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reflected off a solid surface. So they had to conclude

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that resolving the nukeus was impossible.

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Speaker 1: But they still put out an official size estimate, didn't they.

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Speaker 3: They did, And this is where it gets really interesting.

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NASA is a official estimate is that the nucleus is small,

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somewhere between fourteen hundred feet and maybe three point five

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miles across at the maximum. And they also added that

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it wasn't super long or cigar shaped.

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Speaker 1: That seems incredibly specific for an object they admit they

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couldn't even see, and three point five miles feels tiny

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considering the sheer amount of gas and dust it's throwing

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off to create a cloud that big.

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Speaker 3: It's an incredibly active object. If it's that small, they're

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basically assuming it must be made of something extremely volatile,

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something that turns to gas very very easily. But you

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have to remember other scientific groups, based on its brightness

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and activity, were estimating it could be much much larger,

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maybe up to fifty kilometers across.

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Speaker 1: So there's a huge discrepancy, and NASA went with the

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smallest possible number, even though their own best image had

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a twenty kilometer wide pixel of just light.

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Speaker 3: It does raise the question of whether they were fitting

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the observation to a pre existing model, the small icy

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comet model, instead of just admitting that the data was

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well too blurry to say for sure. Certainty of their

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estimate feels at odds with the uncertainty of their image.

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Speaker 1: And MRO wasn't the only big budget instrument to come

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up short. What about the James Web the JWST that

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took a look back in August.

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Speaker 3: Right, the JWST is the most powerful telescope ever built.

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But it's designed for seeing the faintest, most distant galaxies

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deep deep space.

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Speaker 1: It's made for things that are barely moving from our

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perspective exactly.

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Speaker 3: It achieves that by taking incredibly long exposures, sometimes for hours,

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just to gather enough light. If you pointed at a

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relatively close, fast moving object like three eyeaut.

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Speaker 1: Lists, you just get a streak motion blur.

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Speaker 3: You either get motion blur, or you have to use

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such a short exposure that you don't gather enough for

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red light to see any detail. The result for three

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outlets was famously described by one scientist as just a

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bunch of pixels, nothing special. Its greatest strength became its

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biggest weakness for this.

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Speaker 1: Target, and Hubble that saw it even earlier back in July.

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Speaker 2: Same story.

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Speaker 3: Really Hubble got an image not long after it was discovered,

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but it was critiques for being lurry and grainy. So

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you see this pattern emerging across all of NASA's top

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tier instruments, high hopes followed by blurry, low detail results.

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It suggests they had a systemic problem tracking this specific object.

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Speaker 1: So the visual images were, to put it mildly, a letdown.

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But that's not the whole story. We have to look

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at other wavelengths of light, and that brings us to Mavin.

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Speaker 3: Yes, Maven is another Mars orbiter, but it's special. It

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observes in ultraviolet light, and the data it collected on

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October ninth tells a very very different part of.

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Speaker 1: The story, a part that NASA doesn't seem to talk

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about very much.

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Speaker 3: Right, Mayvin gives us a unique view because UV light

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is great at seeing gases and more importantly, highly energized particles. Now,

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the scale of its image is just immense. It was

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looking at three I at lists from about thirty five

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million miles away, and the little scale bar they put

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on the image, that bar represents one hundred thousand miles.

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Speaker 1: One hundred thousand miles, that's the size of the gas cloud.

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The coma is just monumental. It dwarfs the actual rock

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at the center of whatever size it is, it's absolutely enormous.

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Speaker 3: And when they analyze the brightest pixel in their UV image,

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that single point of light was calculated to be about

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thirty three thousand miles across.

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Speaker 1: So we're not even close to seeing a nucleus here.

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We're seeing the densest part of this massive glowing gas cloud.

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Speaker 3: Exactly. The inner coma is shining incredibly brightly and ultraviolet.

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And what the USY light reveals is that this cloud

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is full of things like hydrogen water CO two. But

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they're not just neutral gas, they're energized. The hydrogen emissions

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are intensely bright, which means the atoms are being ionized.

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And this is the moment, the critical piece of evidence

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that confirms this object has a massive plasma environment.

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Speaker 1: Okay, plasma, this is the key that our source, Seff

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and Burns says is just completely ignored in the mainstream discussion.

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So let's break that down. What does that mean that

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it has a plasma environment.

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Speaker 3: The plasma is the fourth state of matter. You have solid,

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liquid gas, and then plasma. It's what happens when a

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gas gets so energize that the electrons are literally stripped

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away from the end atoms. You're left with a soup

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of positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons.

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Speaker 1: And what's stripping them. What's providing that energy so far

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out in space.

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Speaker 3: It's the Sun. There are a few ways it happens.

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The first is called photoinization. The Sun is constantly blasting

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out high energy UV and X ray light, and when

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that light hits a neutral gas atom in the coma,

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it can knock an electron right off.

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Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. What else?

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Speaker 3: There's also charge transfer. The solar wind itself is a

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stream of plasma flowing out from the Sun. When those

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high energy particles from the solar wind slam into the

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neutral gas of the coma, they can trade charges. It's

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a very efficient way to ionize a huge amount of

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gas very quickly.

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Speaker 1: And you mentioned a third way.

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Speaker 3: Yes, electron ionization. Once you have some free electrons knock

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loose by the first two processes, those energetic electrons can

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then collide with other neutral atoms, knocking off even more electrons.

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It creates a chain reaction. And crucially, it's not just

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the gas. The tiny dust grains in the coma also

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pick up a strong electrical charge.

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Speaker 1: So the comma isn't just a cloud of gas and

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dust anymore. It's a huge electrically charged sphere.

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Speaker 3: That is the absolute key takeaway. And here's the implication

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that changes everything. Where you have plasma, you have magnetic

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and electric fields, and the electromagnetic force acting on those

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charge particles can be It could be exponentially stronger than gravity.

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Speaker 1: So you're saying the main force controlling the behavior of

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this object and its tail might not be gravity or

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the gentle push of sunlight. It's electromagnetism.

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Speaker 3: It could easily be the dominant force. It's like trying

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to predict how a steel boat will move in a hurricane,

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but you're only looking at the wind in the ways

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and completely ignoring the giant electromagnet under the water that's

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actually pulling it.

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Speaker 1: And the critique is, why is nobody talking about this,

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whether you think it's a comet or a spaceship. The

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UV data proves there's a rich plasma environment. How can

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you ignore the fundamental physics that must be governing its behavior.

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Speaker 3: It's a huge oversight, and you see the evidence for

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it in the contradictions from NASA's on instruments the tail

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for instance.

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Speaker 1: Right, let's get into those contradictory tales. They saw it

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pointing in different directions at the same time, well.

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Speaker 3: From different spacecraft. So first you have the PNCCH satellites.

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They took images from September to October and they saw

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a very short, stubby tail pointing away from the sun.

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Speaker 1: The classic comet tail pushed by solar radiation, exactly.

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Speaker 2: The standard type two dust tail. That's what you'd expect

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to see.

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Speaker 3: But then you have the Lucy spacecraft on September sixteenth.

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It took a look from much farther away, about two

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hundred and forty.

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Speaker 1: Million miles, and what did Lucy see.

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Speaker 3: Lucy saw a prominent sunward facing tail, a smudge of

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material going towards the Sun.

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Speaker 1: That's a direct contradiction. How can it have a tail

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being pushed away from the Sun and another component being

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pushed or pulled towards it.

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Speaker 3: You can't, not with simple cometary physics. The only way

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to really make sense of that is if electromagnetism is

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in control. The anti sunward tail is the dust, but

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the sunward facing material. That suggests charged particles plasma being

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channeled along the Sun's magnetic field lines.

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Speaker 1: So it's not being pushed, it's being guided pulled along

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a magnetic highway, even if that highway leads closer to

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the Sun.

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Speaker 3: That's the most compelling theory. It explained these abnormalities that

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just defy the simple comet model.

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Speaker 1: And there is another weird thing in that pH video,

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something with the planet Mars.

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Speaker 2: Ah.

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Speaker 3: Yes, it's a subtle but very telling detail about how

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they process their images. In the PNAH composite video, you

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see Mars swing through the frame. Now, Mars at that

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point is huge and incredibly bright.

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Speaker 1: Much much brighter than three i at lists.

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Speaker 3: Orders of magnitude brighter. Yet in the final video, Mars

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looks grainy and pixelated, but three iyeautlasts, the much fainter object,

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looks sharper and more defined.

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Speaker 1: How is that possible?

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Speaker 3: It's a processing artifact. To make a faint object like

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three iatlats visible, they take hundreds of short exposure images

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and then computationally stack them. They align all the images

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based on the precise movement of their target, in this

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case three ialysts.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so everything is aligned to the comment right, but.

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Speaker 3: Mars is moving on a different path at a different

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relative speed. So when you stack all the images based

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on the comets movement, Mars get smeared and blurred across

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the frames. It's effectively treated as background noise.

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Speaker 1: So it's not that Mars looked worse, it's that they

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deliberately process the data in a way that made Mars

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look worse to make their primary target look better exactly.

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Speaker 3: It just reinforces this idea that the goal of the

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data release was to present a specific resolved image of

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three iat lists, even if it meant distorting the rest

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of the picture. It feels less like pure observation and

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more like narrative construction.

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Speaker 1: And to top it all off, there was this major

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solar event that was predicted to happen right around that time,

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a coronal mass ejection, Yes.

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Speaker 3: A huge blast of plasma from the Sun.

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Speaker 2: A CME was launched.

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Speaker 3: Ye, and it was calculated to hit three iat lists

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right around noon on October twenty second.

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Speaker 1: And given what we know about its rich plasma environment,

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that collision and should have been spectacular.

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Speaker 3: It was predicted to be a major event, possibly a

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tail disconnection where the CME's magnetic field would literally rip

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the plasma tail away from the nucleus. That would have

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been the smoking gun, undeniable proof of electromagnetic forces at play.

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And the people best positioned to see the aftermath were

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not NASA, it was the amateurs.

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Speaker 1: Which is the perfect transition. This is where the story

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completely flips. We go from institutional failure to backyard brilliance.

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Speaker 3: It's an incredible shift. We've established that NASA's multi billion

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dollar fleet gave us inconsistent, blurry, and frankly confusing images.

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Now we turn to the amateur community. A serious setup

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might cost what thirty thousand dollars, and.

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Speaker 1: Their images, according to the source, are quite a bit

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better than what high Rise produced. But it's not just

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about a single better picture. It's about something else.

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Speaker 3: Consistency. That is the crucial factor. Consistency across time, and

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consistency across dozens of different observers.

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Speaker 1: Right if you have one blurry picture from one and satellite,

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that's one beata point. If you have twelve astronomers in

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North America and Europe, all using different telescopes, all capturing

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the exact same details on the same night, that's reliable,

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repeatable science.

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Speaker 3: That is their superpower, a globally distributed, dedicated network. And

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this became absolutely critical in the days right after the

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perihelion on October twenty ninth.

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Speaker 1: So after it swung by the Sun, it moved out

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of the glare pretty quickly because it was going so fast,

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and that's when the ground based telescopes could really lock on.

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Speaker 3: Yes, and the first really good detailed images started to

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appear around November eighth, and those images, just from that

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one night they provided more physical detail than the entire

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NASA campaign put together.

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Speaker 1: So what did they see on November eight.

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Speaker 3: They clearly saw the anti sunword tail. They saw multiple

383
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jets of material firing off the nucleus, and critically, they

384
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confirmed the existence of that weird sunword facing jet.

385
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Speaker 1: So one night of amateur observation confirmed the anomaly that

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the professional data had only hinted at.

387
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Speaker 3: And they went farther. They created a punched in, highly

388
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magnified view from that night's data, and they were able

389
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to identify five distinct jets firing from different points on

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the nucleus.

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Speaker 1: Five of them. That's incredible. We're talking about resolving five

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specific points of origin on an object millions of miles away,

393
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while NASA's best shot was a twenty kilometers wide blob.

394
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Speaker 3: It's a staggering technical achievement, and it tells us so

395
00:18:22,519 --> 00:18:26,359
much about the mechanics of these object. These aren't random outgassings.

396
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They are localized directed ejections.

397
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Speaker 1: How are they even doing this? What's the technology?

398
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Speaker 2: They're using?

399
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Speaker 3: Powerful telescopes, of course, but the real magic is in

400
00:18:36,400 --> 00:18:42,000
the modern sensors, scientific grades cmos cameras that are incredibly sensitive,

401
00:18:42,440 --> 00:18:46,240
and the software They use sophisticated tracking mounts to lock

402
00:18:46,319 --> 00:18:49,319
onto the object perfectly, and then they stack hundreds of

403
00:18:49,359 --> 00:18:53,519
images and use advanced deconvolution algorithms to computationally sharpen the

404
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final result. All their processing power is focused on maximizing

405
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that signal.

406
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Speaker 1: Okay, so what happened on the next night, ninth The.

407
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Speaker 3: View just got better as it moved into a darker

408
00:19:03,319 --> 00:19:05,680
part of the sky. The amateurs continue to track it

409
00:19:05,799 --> 00:19:08,319
and they observed clear changes in the jets and the tail,

410
00:19:08,599 --> 00:19:10,640
and they were able to correlate those changes with the

411
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object's rotation.

412
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Speaker 1: They figured out how fast I was spinning.

413
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Speaker 3: They estimated it was in a sixteen hour tumble. And

414
00:19:16,759 --> 00:19:20,440
that is scientific gold, because once you know the rotation rate,

415
00:19:20,640 --> 00:19:23,240
you can start to model the shape of the nucleus

416
00:19:23,480 --> 00:19:26,599
and you can predict why certain jets appear and then

417
00:19:26,720 --> 00:19:30,920
disappear as different active sites rotate into view. This is

418
00:19:31,279 --> 00:19:34,400
hard kinematic science from a backyard.

419
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Speaker 1: Incredible. And the day after that, November tenth.

420
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Speaker 3: The consistency continued. The images from the tenth still showed

421
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the faint tail. The wide coma and that sunward facing

422
00:19:44,440 --> 00:19:47,000
jet was still there plain as day. The fact that

423
00:19:47,039 --> 00:19:49,400
they saw it night after night after night proves it

424
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wasn't some fluke or processing air.

425
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Speaker 2: It's a real persistent feature of this object.

426
00:19:54,039 --> 00:19:56,640
Speaker 1: And the source for following mention one image in particular

427
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as being the best image.

428
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Speaker 2: I was from November sixteenth.

429
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Speaker 3: Yeah, ye showed everything, the coma, the tail, the multiple

430
00:20:01,799 --> 00:20:04,440
jets with stunning clarity. It was perfectly consistent with all

431
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the previous amateur observations. And to prove its accuracy, the

432
00:20:07,680 --> 00:20:10,160
image was so sharp you could see a known cluster

433
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of distant galaxies right next to it, exactly where it

434
00:20:12,920 --> 00:20:15,920
was supposed to be. No artifacts, just pure observation.

435
00:20:16,119 --> 00:20:20,119
Speaker 1: So to sum up the amateur effort, multiple clear views

436
00:20:20,400 --> 00:20:24,720
from multiple observers over multiple nights, identifying multiple jets, a

437
00:20:24,799 --> 00:20:28,519
dual component tail, and a rotating nucleus, all with a

438
00:20:28,559 --> 00:20:29,559
fraction of the budget.

439
00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:32,720
Speaker 3: The source was very blunt about it. The amateur images

440
00:20:32,759 --> 00:20:35,680
are simply quite a bit better, he said. The official

441
00:20:35,759 --> 00:20:38,799
high Rise release was kind of embarrassing to put out

442
00:20:38,880 --> 00:20:40,279
after everyone had waited so long.

443
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Speaker 1: It's a huge win for focused, passionate individuals. It proves

444
00:20:44,759 --> 00:20:49,720
that sometimes a dedicated specialist can outperform a massive multipurpose

445
00:20:49,759 --> 00:20:52,240
machine that's being used for something it wasn't built for.

446
00:20:52,640 --> 00:20:55,359
Speaker 3: It absolutely does, and this incredible data from the public

447
00:20:55,799 --> 00:20:58,160
forces us to ask the really big question.

448
00:20:58,079 --> 00:21:00,440
Speaker 1: What is this thing? We've moved beyond what it looks like.

449
00:21:00,480 --> 00:21:03,279
The question now is one of classification, and NASA's response

450
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was immediate and well aggressive. They just labeled it a comment.

451
00:21:07,519 --> 00:21:10,119
Speaker 3: Yes, the source knows how quickly they moved to normalize it,

452
00:21:10,119 --> 00:21:12,640
to slap on a familiar label. It felt like an

453
00:21:12,640 --> 00:21:15,279
attempt to shut down any conspiracy angle before it could

454
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even start.

455
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Speaker 1: But calling it a comet feels like it feels like

456
00:21:19,200 --> 00:21:22,640
forcing a square peg into a round hole. That data

457
00:21:22,680 --> 00:21:26,079
doesn't fit. It's from interstellar space, it has jets firing

458
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in multiple directions, including towards the Sun. Why does it

459
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have to be a comet?

460
00:21:30,400 --> 00:21:32,920
Speaker 3: That is the core of the scientific argument. It's about

461
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the rigidity of our definitions. Right. You brought up the

462
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Pluto analogy earlier, and it's perfect right.

463
00:21:38,240 --> 00:21:41,279
Speaker 1: Pluto is a planet for decades, then we discovered more

464
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objects like it, and science has decided the definition of

465
00:21:44,359 --> 00:21:47,680
planet needed to be updated. So they created a new category,

466
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dwarf planet.

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Speaker 3: They expanded the scientific dictionary to fit the new reality.

468
00:21:52,680 --> 00:21:55,200
So the question is, if we can change definitions when

469
00:21:55,200 --> 00:21:57,720
an object is too small, why can't we create a

470
00:21:57,759 --> 00:22:01,880
new category when an object's behavior is too strange. If

471
00:22:01,880 --> 00:22:06,119
it's interstellar and it's dominated by electromagnetic forces, maybe it

472
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deserves its own unique classification.

473
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Speaker 1: Calling it a comet just feels like an attempt to

474
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stop asking questions, to say, nothing new to see here,

475
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when the amateur data is screaming that there's something incredibly

476
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new to see here.

477
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Speaker 3: It inhibits scientific inquiry. By normalizing it, you're essentially dismissing

478
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all the abnormal data points, the five jets, the sunword

479
00:22:26,319 --> 00:22:30,039
tail as just weird commentary behavior, instead of treating them

480
00:22:30,079 --> 00:22:32,119
as clues to something fundamentally different.

481
00:22:32,440 --> 00:22:34,440
Speaker 1: So where does this leave us? What is the final

482
00:22:34,480 --> 00:22:38,319
conclusion from the geophysicist Stefan Burns whose analysis we've been following.

483
00:22:38,920 --> 00:22:41,240
He says it's not a comet, but he's also not

484
00:22:41,279 --> 00:22:42,240
saying it's aliens.

485
00:22:42,480 --> 00:22:46,680
Speaker 3: His conclusion is very careful and very scientific. He says, quote,

486
00:22:46,880 --> 00:22:49,039
I don't think it's a comet. I also don't think

487
00:22:49,039 --> 00:22:52,440
it's aliens or technology. Based on all the available data,

488
00:22:52,559 --> 00:22:54,480
the strongest theory is that we are looking at a

489
00:22:54,680 --> 00:22:57,400
very unusual thing flying through the Solar System of interstellar

490
00:22:57,440 --> 00:23:00,839
origin that definitely has a very rich plasma environment.

491
00:23:00,480 --> 00:23:03,000
Speaker 1: To it, and that rich plasma environment is what opens

492
00:23:03,039 --> 00:23:05,880
the door to the most fascinating and most speculative idea

493
00:23:05,960 --> 00:23:08,359
of all, the concept of a plasma beyond.

494
00:23:08,759 --> 00:23:10,480
Speaker 3: And we need to be clear this is stepping into

495
00:23:10,480 --> 00:23:13,680
the realm of speculative physics, but it's speculation that is

496
00:23:13,759 --> 00:23:18,559
driven by the observations. The idea refers to a hypothetical

497
00:23:18,720 --> 00:23:21,759
entity that isn't biological in the way we understand it,

498
00:23:21,920 --> 00:23:25,759
and it isn't technological. It's a complex, self organizing structure

499
00:23:25,799 --> 00:23:26,599
made of plasma.

500
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:30,559
Speaker 1: So if three iatlas's behavior is being controlled by electromagnetic

501
00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:34,279
forces and those forces are being directed in a way

502
00:23:34,279 --> 00:23:39,480
to create five specific localized jets, that implies a level

503
00:23:39,480 --> 00:23:42,240
of internal organization that a simple chunk of ice and

504
00:23:42,359 --> 00:23:43,160
rock just doesn't have.

505
00:23:43,400 --> 00:23:46,400
Speaker 3: It implies some form of localized energy management. For a

506
00:23:46,440 --> 00:23:49,440
structure like that to survive a trip across interstellar space,

507
00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:52,920
it would need to be incredibly stable. An electrically organized

508
00:23:52,960 --> 00:23:56,640
plasma structure could theoretically be far more resilient to radiation

509
00:23:56,720 --> 00:23:59,599
and temperature extremes than a chemically bound object.

510
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:02,720
Speaker 1: That's onward facing jet. It suggests the interaction with our

511
00:24:02,759 --> 00:24:04,759
Sun isn't just passive, as not just being heated up.

512
00:24:04,839 --> 00:24:07,759
Speaker 3: It could be actively interacting with the Sun's magnetic field,

513
00:24:08,079 --> 00:24:11,240
perhaps even drawing energy from it, channeling it to maintain

514
00:24:11,279 --> 00:24:13,759
its own structure or to power those ejections.

515
00:24:14,039 --> 00:24:16,400
Speaker 1: If an object can manage its own energy and direct

516
00:24:16,440 --> 00:24:19,519
its own outgassing with that much precision, then calling it

517
00:24:19,519 --> 00:24:22,480
a dead rock just completely misses the point. The data,

518
00:24:22,720 --> 00:24:26,119
especially the amateur data, forces us to at least consider

519
00:24:26,319 --> 00:24:30,359
that there might be forms of complex, non biological organization

520
00:24:30,480 --> 00:24:33,279
out there that exist entirely in the realm of plasma

521
00:24:33,319 --> 00:24:34,680
and magnetism, and that.

522
00:24:34,759 --> 00:24:37,839
Speaker 3: Is the ultimate takeaway. The difference in data quality between

523
00:24:37,960 --> 00:24:41,240
NASA and the amateurs wasn't just about pretty pictures. It

524
00:24:41,279 --> 00:24:45,200
was a failure of institutional methodology, But the scientific result

525
00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:48,880
is profound. The amateur data proved that three iatlysts is

526
00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:53,920
dynamically complex, heavily ionized, and does not fit our existing models.

527
00:24:54,079 --> 00:24:56,720
Speaker 1: The public release from NASA was, as the source said,

528
00:24:56,799 --> 00:25:00,240
embarrassing because it tried to simplify and minimize a reality

529
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:03,240
that is complex and challenging to our definitions of what

530
00:25:03,319 --> 00:25:04,400
matter can do in space.

531
00:25:04,799 --> 00:25:06,799
Speaker 3: In the end, the story of three Atlas is a

532
00:25:06,880 --> 00:25:10,640
huge victory for focused, dedicated open increy over a massive

533
00:25:10,720 --> 00:25:12,680
but ultimately unfocused budget.

534
00:25:12,839 --> 00:25:15,519
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's try to wrap this all up. Let's

535
00:25:15,519 --> 00:25:19,799
summarize the key takeaways from this really extensive deep dive. First,

536
00:25:20,039 --> 00:25:23,599
and most obviously, we have this just staggering contrast in

537
00:25:23,640 --> 00:25:25,799
image quality versus the money spent.

538
00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:30,079
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it proves that sometimes passion, focus and a global

539
00:25:30,079 --> 00:25:33,680
network can outperform even the most expensive.

540
00:25:33,039 --> 00:25:34,200
Speaker 2: Repurposed tools.

541
00:25:34,759 --> 00:25:37,759
Speaker 3: It's a big lesson in how we prioritize scientific observation.

542
00:25:38,079 --> 00:25:41,480
Speaker 1: Second, the object itself is a profound physical mystery. You

543
00:25:41,559 --> 00:25:45,119
have what is supposedly a small nucleus, but it's completely obscured.

544
00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:47,960
You have tails pointing in opposite directions, and now the

545
00:25:47,960 --> 00:25:50,720
conformation of five separate directed jets.

546
00:25:50,920 --> 00:25:53,039
Speaker 3: It's just not standard comet behavior.

547
00:25:53,200 --> 00:25:54,359
Speaker 2: It's screaming out.

548
00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:57,799
Speaker 3: For a new physical explanation, one that goes beyond simple models.

549
00:25:58,160 --> 00:26:00,440
Speaker 1: And Third, and this feels like the most import point,

550
00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:04,160
the critical role of plasma. The UV data confirmed it's there,

551
00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:07,279
and all the bizarre movements, especially that persistent sunward push,

552
00:26:07,559 --> 00:26:11,160
demand that we start including electromagnetic forces in our models

553
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:12,720
for these interstellar objects. Y.

554
00:26:12,960 --> 00:26:16,279
Speaker 3: We simply can't keep treating them like giant innert snowballs.

555
00:26:16,880 --> 00:26:21,039
They are massive electrically charged bodies interacting with the Sun's

556
00:26:21,160 --> 00:26:23,599
own electrical environment in complex.

557
00:26:23,200 --> 00:26:26,720
Speaker 1: Ways, and really the detailed work from Stefan Burns and

558
00:26:26,759 --> 00:26:30,319
the incredible pictures from the amateur community should be an inspiration.

559
00:26:30,960 --> 00:26:33,440
It backs up his final recommendation, which is for people

560
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:35,599
to look at the data themselves, do your.

561
00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:38,960
Speaker 3: Own research, don't just take the official press release, look

562
00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:41,440
at the images side by side, and make up your

563
00:26:41,440 --> 00:26:44,519
own mind based on the evidence. The difference in quality

564
00:26:44,599 --> 00:26:46,680
is right there for everyone to see.

565
00:26:46,559 --> 00:26:49,119
Speaker 1: Which brings us to our final provocative thought to leave

566
00:26:49,119 --> 00:26:52,000
you with. Given all this powerful evidence for a rich

567
00:26:52,039 --> 00:26:55,799
plasma environment and the highly organized, almost managed behavior of

568
00:26:55,839 --> 00:26:59,319
three ialis, how do our definitions of objects in space

569
00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:00,000
need to change?

570
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:03,359
Speaker 3: If these plasma structures can hold themselves together across the

571
00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:06,920
vast emptiness between stars and then interact with the star

572
00:27:07,039 --> 00:27:10,319
in a way that shows localized energy control, maybe we

573
00:27:10,359 --> 00:27:13,519
do need a whole new scientific category, something that accounts

574
00:27:13,519 --> 00:27:17,240
for complex, self organizing plasma phenomena that are neither simple

575
00:27:17,279 --> 00:27:20,839
geology nor manufactured technology. What else might the universe hold

576
00:27:20,839 --> 00:27:24,480
that exists completely outside are rigid, carbon based definitions of

577
00:27:24,519 --> 00:27:27,839
life and matter. That's the question this strange visitor has

578
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:28,359
left us with