Speaker 1: If you thought you had a pretty solid grasp on physics,
or orbital mechanics, or even just the basic timeline of
the universe, I'm afraid twenty twenty five probably made you
rethink well, pretty much everything.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely. It was a year where all these things
that were just theoretical possibilities suddenly became observational realities, right,
And you had objects that really should have obeyed the
rules of gravity, the speed limits we thought existed, and
they just sort of shrug them off. The cosmos for
twelve straight months felt like it was playing tricks on us.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Thrilling Threads. Yeah, the show where we take
that fire hose of information you send away and in
this case, it's a really fascinating compilation from a y
On podcast and we distill it down to the most potent,
most thrilling nuggets of knowledge. Our mission today is I
guess you could say simple, but the content is, well,
it's anything, but we're going to dive into this stack
of sources detailing twenty twenty five's most bizarre cosmic observations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and these findings they cover everything we're talking about,
objects that we're hiding in plain sight for decades and
phenomena that you know, they only existed in these incredibly
complex physics papers for half a century. So the goal
here is to really get a handle on these aha moments,
not just by listing what was found, but by dissepting
why it fundamentally matters to cosmology. We're going to go
from our own cosmic backyard all the way out to
the scaffolding of the early universe.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's start right here at home, because apparently
we have a neighbor who's been quietly living next door
for sixty years and we've only just now decided to
knock on the door.
Speaker 2: That is probably the most humbling way you could put it.
Speaker 1: Yes, right.
Speaker 2: The discovery of the quasi Moon, which is officially designated
twenty twenty five p. Seven, was an absolute shocker. It
was found on August second, twenty twenty five, by the
Pants Stars Observatory in Hawaii, and the surprise wasn't just
its size or anything like that, but the realization after
they went back through old data that it has been
performing this intricate synchronized dance with Earth for nearly sixty years.
Speaker 1: Sixty years. Yeah, that's a very long time. For a
relatively big object to just go completely undetected, especially with
how much we monitor near Earth objects now, So, if
this thing is orbiting with us, why didn't we see it.
It's not like it was hiding behind the Sun the
whole time, was it?
Speaker 2: And that gets right to the heart of why a
quasei moon's orbit is so tricky. A quasi satellite or
a quasi moon isn't gravitationally bound to Earth like our
actual moon is. Okay, Instead, it's orbiting the Sun, but
its orbital period is synchronized almost perfectly with Earth's. Because
of that, it just appears to hover around us, usually
near what we call the lagrange points.
Speaker 1: Can you give us a quick breakdown of what a
lagrange point is or anyone who might not have heard
that term before.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so. In any two body system like the Earth
and the Sun, there are five specific points in space
where all the gravitational forces and the centrifugal forces just
balance out. Okay, those are the lagrange points L one
through L five. Now L one, L two, and L
five three are unstable. Think of like trying to balance
a pencil on its tip.
Speaker 1: Right, It's not going to stay there long.
Speaker 2: Exactly, but L four and L five are famously stable.
If you put something there, it tends to stick around.
Twenty twenty five P seven is doing this very large,
very wide horseshoe orbit that kind of wraps around these points,
making it look like it's trailing us.
Speaker 1: So it's using the stability of the whole system, not
a direct gravitational leash from Earth, to stay with us.
That explains why it's so camouflaged. If it's always sort
of offset and doesn't cross our orbit in a way
that really stands out against you know, the backdrop of
deep space, I can see how you'd miss it.
Speaker 2: That's precisely it. Its path is stable, but it's subtle.
So when the astronomers went back and scammed through the
old data, they found pictures of twenty twenty five PM
seven going all the way back to twenty fourteen WOW,
which confirmed that its presence wasn't some kind of mistake
or recent capture, and the orbital mechanics prove this is
long term. The investigation showed it had been in this
orbital resintor way longer than twenty fourteen, and they project
it's going to remain our cosmic hitchhiker for another sixty years.
Speaker 1: So a total of one hundred and twenty years. That
is exceptional for what we normally called the transient object.
It really is that immediately makes me think about future
space missions, okay, or even planetary defense. If we have
stable neighbors that are this hard to spot, what else
is out there? I mean, could we leverage these for
deep space missions? Or on the flip side, what happens
if one of these stable orbits, you know, destabilizes, Well, it.
Speaker 2: Forces us to reassess how rigorously we're searching the areas
around Earth's L four and L five points, the so
called trojans, which are these zones we've always associated with
much smaller asteroids. The fact that twenty twenty five P
seven's orbit is set to last another six decades suggests
a really high degree of orbital efficiency and understanding the
exact mechanics that keep it so stable. Could you know,
inform mission planners who are looking for long term parking
spots in space.
Speaker 1: Or it could tell us about what's collected there, right.
Speaker 2: It could give us valuable insights into the density and
composition of matter near those points. This quasi moon isn't
just a curiosity. It's a full on test bed for
orbital dynamics happening right on our doorstep.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, speaking of things that should have broken apart
but didn't, let's talk about this near Earth asteroid, the
one that'spins so fast that basically defies its own gravity.
This one really brings up a major point about structural limits.
We thought we had a decent idea of what these
asteroids are made of, and well apparently we were wrong
about some of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of those classic cases where you know,
reality just smacks the models right in the face. This
near Earth asteroid, it's just referred to as twenty twenty
five in the source material was found on July fourth,
and then they observed it more closely in August twenty
twenty five. It's pretty small, only about two hundred feet wide,
and importantly, it has a very irregular shape, and.
Speaker 1: Two hundred feet is small enough that its own gravity
is incredibly weak. So in most scenarios, if you spin
an object that size really fast, this centrifugal force should
just overwhelm gravity and poof.
Speaker 2: That's the scientist consensus. We basically had to throw out
the window at this one. This asteroid was seen completing
one full rotation every one point five.
Speaker 1: To three minutes one and a half minute.
Speaker 2: Yes, that rate is frankly bewildering to planetary scientists. For
objects this size, speeds even approaching that usually mean catastrophic fragmentation.
Its rotation speed puts it among the fastest spinning near
Earth asteroids we have ever detected, and it is somehow
surviving that immense rotational stress.
Speaker 1: So we think about most of these small asteroids. The
classic model is the rubble pile, right, just a loose
collection of rocks and dust held together by their own
weak gravity. Spinning a rubble pile that fast would be
guaranteed destruction. So what does this thing have to be
made of to survive that?
Speaker 2: It completely changes the conversation from being about gravity to
being about material strength. Its survival at that speed proves
that twenty twenty five cannot be a loosely bound rubble pile.
It has to be a single, solid, monolithic object. It
has to have significant internal tensile strength, so.
Speaker 1: It's basically one solid piece of rock.
Speaker 2: We're talking about materials that are tough enough to withstand
rotational forces. That would be like subjecting an astronaut to
crushing g forces, but apply to cross a two hundred
foot body.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating because it means our models for say, impact mitigation,
might need a serious update. If we assume all these small,
weirdly shaped asteroids or soft targets, these rubble piles we
can just nudge or break apart easily, we could be
in for a rude awakening if the next big thread
is one of these incredibly dense monolithic rotators exactly.
Speaker 2: It forces us to diversify our thinking. A monolithic structure
is incredibly rigid, Trying to disrupt it might require a
completely different amount of energy than breaking up a rubble pile.
It suggests that while the rubble pile concept is probably common,
the universe also cooks up these incredibly tough, resilient cosmic bullets.
This asteroid challenges the idea that size directly correlates with
internal weakness. Even at just two hundred feet, this thing
has structural integrity of something much much larger.
Speaker 1: So we've covered our surprisingly well hidden and surprisingly tough neighbors.
Now let's pull the camera back a bit and look
at objects coming from truly outside our solar system or
ones that survived trials that absolutely should have been lethal.
Speaker 2: Right, and the arrival of three Atlas in twenty twenty
five was a huge event, mainly because interstellar visitors are
still incredibly rare. This comment was spotted just zooming through
our solar system in July, and crucially, astronomers confirmed it
was on a hyperbolic trajectory.
Speaker 1: And that hyperbolic trajectory that's the smoking gun, isn't it.
It means its path is so energetic, so fast relative
to the Sun, that it's never going to get captured
into an orbit. It came from outside, it.
Speaker 2: Is the definitive proof. Yes, it means it came from
some other corner of the Milky Way, passed through our neighborhood,
and is now heading right back out into the galaxy's vastness,
which means we only get this fleeting moment to observe it.
But the data we managed to collect in that short
time was staggering, especially when it came to its age.
Speaker 1: Scaggering is an understatement. I mean the age estimate alone
puts this object in a category we've what never really
had physical access to before.
Speaker 2: Scientists estimated three Atlas to be somewhere between seven and
fourteen billion years old billion with a B yes, and
our own solar system is only about four point six
billion years old, which means this material was born before
our Sun even existed. It's not just old, it's primordial.
It's a physical link to the very earliest processes of
the Milky Way.
Speaker 1: Okay, so if this object is, let's say ten billion
years old, it must have formed from those original massive
clouds of hydrogen and helium that define the early galaxy.
What is the composition of an object that predates our sun?
Tell us about that that galactic nursery.
Speaker 2: It gives us insights into something called metallicity, which in
astronomy just means elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. Early
galactic material is expected to be very low in metals
because those heavy elements hadn't been forged yet by generations.
Speaker 1: Of supernov So it's like a pure sample.
Speaker 2: It's like finding a pristine artifact. Studying the composition of
three atlasts, especially the ice and dust it sheds as
it gets closer to the Sun, gives us a physical
sample of that presolar low metallicity environment. It shows how
matter has been continuously repurposed over unimaginable time scales and distances.
Speaker 1: And its behavior was just as bizarre. Right. It was
moving at an insane clip two hundred thousand kilometers per
hour and displaying some really strange features.
Speaker 2: The speed alone is impressive, but the observation of a
clear anti tail alongside some unusual emissions was really complex. Now,
anti tails can sometimes be a trick of perspective, where
denser dust gets left behind in the comet's orbit and
seems to point towards the Sun. Right, But a clear
anti tail suggests a more complex interplay of outgassing and rotation.
Maybe non uniform material is being ejected, or it's interacting
with local magnetic fields. And because we've only ever definitively
observed three of these interstellar objects, every little anomaly in
a three atlass's behavior becomes a major data point for
the future.
Speaker 1: Okay, So from the ancient traveler, let's turn to a
more local drama. A comet that simply refused to die.
I'm talking about comet see twenty twenty five K one atlas.
When this thing approached the Sun, all the models were predicting, well, vaporization,
What was the specific danger it was facing.
Speaker 2: It was discovered back in May twenty twenty five, and
its fate was highly anticipated because of just how tight
its orbit was. It reached perihelion, its closest approach to
the Sun, on October eighth, and it came within fifty
million kilometers of the Sun. To put that in perspective
for you, the planet Mercury orbits that around fifty eight
million kilometers. This comet was plunging inside Mercury's.
Speaker 1: Orbit fifty million kilometers. That is incredibly close. At that range,
you have the combined effects of the intense solar heating,
which would just boil off all those volatile ices, and
the gravitational sheer force from the Sun. That combination should
have been enough to tear any loosely bound comet to shreds.
Speaker 2: That was absolutely the expectation, and yet, in this spectacular
defiance of all predictions, it not only survived that initial onslaught,
but it emerged looking completely different. The sources described it
transforming into a spectacular golden ruben and exhibiting a red
brown golden color rarely seen in comets.
Speaker 1: The color shift is what I find most intriguing, most
commets we see are white or maybe blue or green
because of sunlight reflecting off gases like carbon and cyanide.
What kind of chemical composition would be left behind that
would cause that rare golden color.
Speaker 2: That is the million dollar question. The survival and the
color change strongly suggests that this comet had a highly
resilient refractory core, something made of heat resistant silicate materials
or maybe even metallic compounds.
Speaker 1: So all the icy stuff boiled off, and this is
what was left underneath.
Speaker 2: Exactly The golden hue likely came from these tougher materials
being literally baked by the extreme solar heat. The icy
layers were vaporized, stripping away the voltal compounds and leaving
behind this denser, perhaps mineral rich core that reflected the
sunlight with that red brown golden color. It showed this
commet had a much higher internal density or toughness than
astronomer's first thought.
Speaker 1: It survived the solar inferno, But the sources say that
this survival wall was ironically pretty short lived. It broke
up shortly after its close pass. What does that tell
us about the long term impact of that kind of
extreme thermal stress.
Speaker 2: It really speaks to the concept of delayed structural failure.
The initial close pass didn't immediately disintegrate it, but the
intense uneven heating likely caused thermal shock. It probably created
deep fissures and weaknesses within that newly exposed core.
Speaker 1: Ah, so the damage was already done right.
Speaker 2: Once it moved far enough away from the sun for
that thermal stress to ease up a bit, the weakened
structure just couldn't hold together anymore. It succumbed to its
own internal stresses and broke up into several large pieces.
We know at least three parts remained visible, which allowed
for even more study of its golden remnants. It's a
powerful lesson. Just because you survived the main event doesn't
mean the stress didn't fundamentally and fatally alter you.
Speaker 1: Okay, Moving from cosmic structural resilience to the fundamental laws
of gravity, twenty twenty five delivered two absolutely monumental confirmations
about black holes. The first one validates a theory that
was nearly fifty years old, linking black holes two of
all things, the laws of thermodynamics.
Speaker 2: This was a landmark event. In January of twenty twenty five.
Scientists use the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory LIGO to
detect the gravitational waves that were generated when two black
holes merging coalesced into a single gigantic object. Now LIGO
has seen hundreds of these mergers, but this particular signal
provided the hard numerical proof for Stephen Hawking's area theorem.
Speaker 1: Let's get to the core of that theorem. Hawking proposed
this back in the early nineteen seventies, and he theorized
that the surface area of a black hole's event horizon
can only ever increase after an event like a merger.
They can never decrease. It's basically the black hole equivalent
of the second law of thermodynamics, right, the one that
says the total entropy or disorder of a system has
to always increase over time.
Speaker 2: That's exactly it. The surface area of the event horizon
is directly proportional to its entropy, so if the area decreased,
you'd be losing cosmic information, which challenges some really fundamental physics.
This specific merger allowed for an unprecedented direct quantification of
that change.
Speaker 1: So what were the specific numbers? What did LEGO measure
that actually confirm this This is where the theory hits
the road with hard data.
Speaker 2: The data was definitive before the collision. The combined surface
area of the two individual black holes was calculated a
two hundred and forty three thousand square kilometers.
Speaker 1: Okay, two hundred and forty three thousand.
Speaker 2: After the merger, the new resultant black hole had a
surface area of four hundred thousand square kilometers.
Speaker 1: So we went from two hundred forty three thousand to
four hundred thousand. That is a substantial measurable increase. The
new black hole didn't just inherit the mass, It actually
increased the total system's entropy. To take a purely theoretical
idea about entropy and gravitational boundaries, and then to actually
measure it with an observatory like Lego, that must been
a moment of just collective awe in the physics community.
Speaker 2: It provided the first solid, robust observational evidence for the
area theorem. It's a massive validation not just for Hawking's work,
but for the entire framework of black hole thermodynamics. This
confirmation really reinforces the idea that black holes are governed
by laws that mirror classical thermodynamics. Cementing the role of
entropy as this fundamental concept across all scales of the universe.
The question shifts from is this true to okay, how
else does this law manifest?
Speaker 1: That was a confirmation of decades old physics. So now
let's pivot to a discovery that actively challenges our current
understanding of cosmic history, the so called impossible black hole
that grew way too fast, way too soon.
Speaker 2: This discovery, which centered on a super massive black hole
in SMBH at the heart of a very distant galaxy
named Caper's LRDZ nine, represents a critical challenge to our
models of the early universe. The problem is simple that
timing just doesn't add up.
Speaker 1: So let's define that age problem again. How early are
we talking? When did this thing show up?
Speaker 2: Based on some very sophisticated cosmological redshift data, astronomers determined
that this SMBH must have formed only five hundred million
years after the Big Bang?
Speaker 1: Only five hundred million.
Speaker 2: Yes, this place is it firmly in the cosmic dawn
an eerrow, when the universe was barely past its infancy.
The first stars were just beginning to shine and come together.
Speaker 1: And what was the scale of this, this infant black hole.
Speaker 2: It's estimated to weigh up to three hundred million times
the mass of our Sun, and that is the central paradox.
How do you get to three hundred million solar masses
in just five hundred million years? The standard model of
black hole growth, which relies on a creting gas, suggests
that rate of growth is basically impossible.
Speaker 1: Why is that growth rate considered impossible under standard physics?
What's the limiting factor?
Speaker 2: The key constraint is something called the Eddington limit. When
a black hole is feeding, the immense energy that's released
by the infalling matter in the form of radiation creates
an outward pressure. The Eddington limit defines the maximum rate
an object can accrete matter before that outward radiation pressure
literally blows away the surrounding gas, which essentially starves the
black hole.
Speaker 1: So it's a natural shut off al it is.
Speaker 2: And to reach three hundred million solar masses in only
five hundred million years, this object would have had to
consistently feed at or even near its Eddington limit for
its entire existence. According to our simulations, that's highly highly improbable.
Speaker 1: So if the conventional mechanism of this slow constrained feeding
can't explain it. What was the radical alternative the study
author's reposed.
Speaker 2: Their conclusion was stark early black holes grew much faster
than we thought possible. This suggests a couple of alternative
mechanisms must have been at play. First, maybe the initial
seeds of these supermassive black holes were much larger than
we assume. They didn't start as small stellar mass black
holes of say ten solar masses. Maybe they collapsed directly
from colossal pristine gas clouds, creating what are called direct
collapse black holes that could start out at hundreds of
thousands of solar masses.
Speaker 1: It completely changes the starting line of the race.
Speaker 2: It does. The second alternative is that the conditions in
the very early universe, maybe an unusually dense supply of
gas with low metallicity that could cool very efficiently, allowed
the object to somehow get around or even briefly exceed
the Eddington limit, allowing for what we call supercritical accretion.
Either way, this discovery forces a fundamental rewrite of the
timeline for cosmic structure formation and the initial conditions needed
to build the most massive objects in the universe. It
basically proves our early universe models, while elegant, were just
too slow.
Speaker 1: We've challenged local mechanics, we've confirmed gravitational laws, and we've
rewritten early cosmology. So now let's go to the truly colossal,
jaw dropping scale. We're talking about the massive scaffolding that
holds the universe together and the boundary breaking discoveries we
made at the very edges of existence.
Speaker 2: This next discovery is about order on a scale that
is almost unimagined. Scientists detected a massive dark matter filament.
They called it a cosmic thread that stretches for fifty
million light years, And the revelation wasn't just the size,
it was the observation that this entire filament is spinning.
It is arguably the largest single spinning object ever found
in the universe.
Speaker 1: Fifty million light years. That's a distance that almost defies
human comprehension when we talk about rotation on that scale.
Is it just sort of a general messy movement or
is this highly organized and coordinated.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly coherent. This filament is located about one hundred
and forty million light years away, and it contains this
dense collection of matter roughly three hundred galaxies in total,
and the key finding is twofold. First, the large scale
filament structure itself is rotating. Second, the individual galaxies that
are embedded within the filament are also rotating in the
same direction.
Speaker 1: That coordinated movement is so critical it suggests this isn't
just a random cluster of galaxies bumping into each other.
It's a single massive dynamicsist. It's not just a collection
of threads, it's a spinning rope.
Speaker 2: And this really highlights the dominant role of dark matter.
These filaments are thought to be the vast skeletal structure
of the universe, made up mostly of dark matter, with
normal matter the visible galaxies just kind of clinging to
this invisible scaffolding. The fact that the rotation is coordinated
across fifty million light years strongly suggests that the dark
matter is the gravitational engine that's forcing this coherence. It's
the silent majority dictating the dynamics of the visible universe,
guiding the motion of hundreds of galaxies all at once.
Speaker 1: To help visualize that scale, the sources mention a specific
substructure within it, a row of fourteen galaxies spanning five
point five million light years long in about one hundred
and seventeen thousand light years wide, all inside this larger
spinning filament. That level of organized structure on a universal scale,
it just fundamentally challenges the idea that the largest structures
are chaotic.
Speaker 2: It forces cosmologists to refine their simulations of how structure forms.
A lot of early models of the cosmic ward predicted
these filaments would be relatively static or maybe chaotic, but
observing such a colossal, dynamically organized, rotating structure indicates that
rotational energy plays a far more significant role in the
assembly of large scale cosmic architecture than we previously modeled.
The universe, even at its largest scales, has these balletic, choreographed.
Speaker 1: Movements from that spinning structure. Let's look at something that
represents the destructive yet also evolutionary side of galactic interactions.
A million light year long bridge of stellar destruction. This
involves the galaxy cluster Able three sixty sixty.
Speaker 2: Seven right Able three six sixty seven is about seven
hundred million light years from Earth. In twenty twenty five,
scientists spotted this faint glow forming a vast bridge between
two of the major galaxies in that cluster. This glow
is the observational proof of what we call galactic cannibalism.
Speaker 1: And what exactly is making that glow? Are we looking
at gas or dust or something else.
Speaker 2: We're seeing stars stray stars. Specifically, the glow comes from
stars that are being gravitationally ripped toa or tidally stripped
from their home galaxy by the intense competing gravity of
a neighboring galaxy in the cluster. And this bridge of
stellar debris spans an incredible one million light years, so.
Speaker 1: We're literally observing a cosmic mugging in progress, where one
massive object is actively pulling the contents right out of another.
But if this process is ongoing, what does the bridge
itself tell us about the clusters past the bridge?
Speaker 2: Is fossil evidence These title tales and stellar bridges, they
don't last forever. They disperse over hundreds of millions of years.
So research is determined that the existence and the specific
shape of this million light year structure mean that a
ball three six x sixty seven wasn't formed all at once.
It's the result of a merger between two smaller distinct
galaxy clusters that happened about a billion years ago. The
stellar bridge is the leftover evidence of that violent billion
year old cosmic collision that.
Speaker 1: Is just profound. It's like finding a massive impact crater
on Earth and being able to definitively date the collision
that caused it. This observation gives astronomers a verifiable mechanism
for how these large galaxy clusters evolve through these violent,
messy mergers that leave behind these stunning trails of stars.
Speaker 2: Now we can transition from the largest structures to some
of the rarest satellites. We've identified nearly six thousand exoplanets,
but the search for an eximoon a moon orbiting a
planet outside our Solar system has been incredibly elusive until
twenty twenty five. That is when a group of scientists
propose the first really strong candidate.
Speaker 1: Why are exomoons so incredibly difficult to confirm? They both
have to be just massive for us to even have
a chance of seeing them.
Speaker 2: They are inherently difficult because their signal is, well, it's
a secondary signal. When we're observing a distant system, we're
looking for these tiny changes in the light from a transit,
or these slight gravitational tugs. An ximoon's effect is minuscule
compared to its massive host planet and both their light
years away. Any signal is usually just buried in the
noise from the primary planet's orbit.
Speaker 1: So tell us about this candidate system the masses involves
sound absolutely staggering.
Speaker 2: This potential exomoon orbits a massive Jupiter like exoplanet called
HD two over a six' eight nine THREE, b which
is about one hundred and thirty three light years From.
Earth and to emphasize the scale, here the exoplanet itself
has the mass of twenty eight.
Speaker 1: Jupiters twenty, eight so it's a super giant.
Speaker 2: Planet it, Is and the potential exouin candidate is arounder
point Four jupiter.
Speaker 1: Masses so a moon that's almost half the mass of Our.
Jupiter that's barely a moon that's almost the second planet
orbiting the first. ONE i guess that underscores why this
specific candidate is even, detective but so massive it gives
off a, distinct though still very faint.
Speaker 2: Signal it's the sheer scale that gives us a fighting
chance for. Confirmation if this finding holds, up it would
be the first confirmed, exomoon and it would open up
an entirely new field of. Study, however the sources were
very careful to include the necessary critical. Caveat the findings
still need to be confirmed through further, observation probably through
gravitational modeling or seeing repeat. Transits the stakes are huge
because a confirmation would prove that the same satellite formation
processes we see Here moon's orbiting planets are common across the.
Speaker 1: Galaxy and, finally we wrap up with an observation that
captures the very beginning of the, end the first moments
of a star's violent. Death getting that kind of snapshot
has to be a matter of pure luck and perfect.
Speaker 2: Timing it is truly like hitting the cosmic. Lottery scientists
at The European Southern observatory THE, eso captured what they're
calling the first moments of a dying star for the
very first. Time, now the actual observation was made in
twenty twenty, four but the key analysis and the findings
were officially released in twenty twenty, five which cemented it
as one of the year's most important.
Speaker 1: Revelations why is capturing that very initial stage of a
supernova so? Difficult we see the aftermath all the.
Speaker 2: Time because the core collapse and the rebound that triggers
the supernova is instantaneous on a cosmic. Scale when the core,
collapses a shockwave races to the, surface and the resulting
light explosion expands so rapidly that it just overwhelms any
visual detail of the star's initial. Structure to catch the
earliest ephemeral stage means catching the star right as its,
surfaces meeting that violent, end but before the explosion is fully, luminous.
Speaker 1: And that ephemeral stage it gives us information about the
mechanics of the explosion that we'd miss if we only
see the light curve after the fact.
Speaker 2: Exactly this observation gave astronomers a critical real time peek
into the immediate geometry of the. Explosion it shows us
how the star is tearing itself. Apart is the explosion perfectly,
symmetrical or is the shockwave propagating unevenly because of internal
rotation or magnetic. Fields the specific shape and expansion dynamics
they captured in those first moments are vital for validating
our theoretical models of how massive stars, die particularly the
models involving core collapse. Mechanisms it helps us understand the
transition from a stable star to a catastrophic runaway.
Speaker 1: Event so if we synthesize everything we've, covered it feels
like twenty twenty five was the year of defying. Expectations
it was the year of impossible, survival where commet baked
gold near The sun proved far more resilient than its icy.
Cousins it was the year of impossible speed seen in
asteroid spinning without just fragmenting in black, holes growing three
hundred million times the mass of The sun in just
five hundred million.
Speaker 2: Years and, crucially twenty twenty five was the year where
theories that were half a century, old Like hawking's area,
theorem were finally confirmed with tangible physical evidence captured by
instruments Like. Lego these, discoveries from a local quasi moon
trailing us for sixty years to massive cosmic filaments spinning
across fifty million light, years they fundamentally challenged the boundaries
we thought we.
Speaker 1: Understood it feels like we are constantly finding that the
theoretical impossibilities we might have written off or simply objects
we hadn't been clever enough or lucky enough to. Find
yet it means the universe is far more inventive than
our mathematical models sometimes.
Speaker 2: Allowed, for and it raises an important and continuous question
for critical thinking in. Science if twenty twenty five showed
us that things we thought were restricted by speed limits
or stability, requirements we're just hiding in plain sight or
growing faster than we ever. Anticipated what known cosmic theory
do you think is next in line to be either
validated or completely upended by a bizarre?
Speaker 1: Discovery, yeah will The James Web Space telescope find evidence
of life on an exoplanet we previously ruled out because
OF i don't, know gravitational, Instability or will gravity waves
reveal something completely new about the nature of dark, energy
which is still the most mysterious substance in the. Cosmos
we want you.
Speaker 2: To really consider the weight of these. Findings if speed
limits and structural resilience are constantly being tested by, observation
what long held assumption about the universe do you believe
is about to be proven?
Speaker 1: Wrong share your ponderables with. Us thank you for joining
us on this deep exploration of twenty twenty five's strangest cosmic.
Speaker 2: Observations we hope this was a thrilling look into the
threads of the cosmos that keep us all.
Speaker 1: Captivated we'll see you next time On Thrilling. Threads