Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
Speaker 2: Imagine looking up at the night sky. You're just staring
Speaker 2: out into deep space, right.
Speaker 3: Just a completely clear, dark night.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and suddenly you witness an explosion so unfathomably powerful,
Speaker 2: so overwhelmingly intense, that it shines ten or maybe even
Speaker 2: one hundred times brighter than a standard supernova.
Speaker 3: It's a scale of energy that's almost hard to wrap
Speaker 3: your head around.
Speaker 2: It really is. I mean, we are talking about events
Speaker 2: that outshine their entire host galaxies, and not just for
Speaker 2: a day or two, but for months at a time.
Speaker 3: Which completely breaks the standard models we have for stellar death.
Speaker 2: Yes, you are looking at one of the universe's ultimate
Speaker 2: thermodynamic mysteries. And today we are stepping into a monumental
Speaker 2: breakthrough in astrophysics. We are exploring the very first confirmed
Speaker 2: observation of the birth of a magnetar.
Speaker 3: It's an incredible milestone.
Speaker 2: It really is. It's a discovery that finally solves a
Speaker 2: sixteen year old cosmic cold case, and in the process
Speaker 2: it proves that Einstein's general relativity isn't just some elegant
Speaker 2: mathematical framework for describing gravity.
Speaker 3: No, it is actively physically shaping the light curves of
Speaker 3: exploding stars exactly.
Speaker 2: So our mission today is to unpack exactly what these
Speaker 2: bizarre cosmic engines are. We're going to analyze how a
Speaker 2: mathematically precise sort of chirp in the light of a
Speaker 2: galaxy a billion light years away cracked the case.
Speaker 3: And examine why this fundamentally shifts our entire paradigm regarding
Speaker 3: the universe's most extreme fireworks.
Speaker 2: Because the implications of this observation really just they can
Speaker 2: be overstated.
Speaker 3: They cannot. We are witnessing this incredibly rare moment where
Speaker 3: highly complex, predictive theoretical physics seamlessly aligns with observational.
Speaker 2: Reality, which doesn't happen every day.
Speaker 3: No it doesn't. For years, astrophysicists have possessed the mathematical
Speaker 3: models detailing the energy budgets required to power these events,
Speaker 3: we understood the theoretical limits of stellar collapse.
Speaker 2: The math was there on the whiteboard exactly.
Speaker 3: But possessing a theoretical model of a central engine is
Speaker 3: a far cry from empirically capturing that engine in the
Speaker 3: act of altering its surrounding environment.
Speaker 2: Right, actually seeing it happen.
Speaker 3: To finally isolate the specific relativistic mechanics powering these blinding explosions.
Speaker 3: It not only validates decades of rigorous computational work, but
Speaker 3: it forces us to reevaluate the dynamical evolution of stellar death.
Speaker 2: It takes it from theory to reality.
Speaker 3: It transitions the magnetar from a mathematical necessity to an
Speaker 3: observable mechanical reality.
Speaker 2: Okay, so to truly appreciate the magnitude of the sopsation,
Speaker 2: you really have to understand the specific thermodynamic puzzle that
Speaker 2: emerged back in the early two thousands.
Speaker 3: Right with the discovery of superluminous supernova.
Speaker 2: Exactly because anyone familiar with stellar evolution knows the standard
Speaker 2: core collapse model.
Speaker 3: The textbook definition.
Speaker 2: Right, a massive star says something twenty five times our
Speaker 2: Sun exhausts its nuclear fuel, the iron core collapses under
Speaker 2: its own gravity. And the resulting rebound drives a shockwave
Speaker 2: through the outer envelope.
Speaker 3: Creating a spectacular explosion boom supernova.
Speaker 2: Now, the energy budget for that standard event is relatively
Speaker 2: well understood, right. It relies heavily on the radioactive decay
Speaker 2: of elements like nickel fifty six.
Speaker 3: Since the size in the blast itself.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that decay powers the late stage light curve.
Speaker 2: It's what keeps it glowing. But these superluminous events, they
Speaker 2: fundamentally broke that energy budget.
Speaker 3: They absolutely shattered it.
Speaker 2: Because they were outputting these sustained luminosities that simply could
Speaker 2: not be explained by the standard mass limits of radioactive decay.
Speaker 2: Let's unpack that a bit. Why could to just be
Speaker 2: a really big normal supernova.
Speaker 3: Well, the nickel fifty six decay model works perfectly for
Speaker 3: a standard core collapse supernova because the diffusion of photons
Speaker 3: through the expanding ejecta matches the decay rate of those
Speaker 3: radioactive isotopes. Okay, But with superluminous supernova, the sheer volume
Speaker 3: of photons being emitted and over such an extended timescale
Speaker 3: it created this glaring discrepancy.
Speaker 2: Like the math just stopped working completely.
Speaker 3: If you attempt to model the light curve of a
Speaker 3: superluminous event using only nickel fifty six, the required mass
Speaker 3: of the nickel alone often exceeds the total mass of
Speaker 3: the entire progenitor star.
Speaker 2: Wow, so you'd need more nickel than the star even
Speaker 2: had stuff to begin with.
Speaker 3: Exactly, it is a physical impossibility. This meant that the
Speaker 3: kinetic energy of the initial shock wave and the subsequent
Speaker 3: radioactive decay were utterly insufficient to explain what we were seeing.
Speaker 2: So something else had to be powering it.
Speaker 3: Right, The expanding shell of stellar debris required a continuous,
Speaker 3: immense injection of fresh thermal energy a central engine, yes,
Speaker 3: an engine operating long after the initial collapse, just pumping
Speaker 3: energy in to maintain that extraordinary luminosity.
Speaker 2: Which brings us to the theoretical framework proposed back in
Speaker 2: twenty ten. We had theorists Dan Kaysen at UC Berkeley,
Speaker 2: Lars Buildston and Stan Woosley at UC Santa Cruz, brilliant minds,
Speaker 2: and they independently converged on this genuinely radical mechanism. They
Speaker 2: proposed that the necessary energy injection wasn't coming from radioactive.
Speaker 3: Decay at all, not even a little bit.
Speaker 2: It was coming from the rotational kinetic energy of a
Speaker 2: newly formed magnetar. Now, okay, let's unpack this To understand
Speaker 2: why this hypothesis was so compelling. We really need to
Speaker 2: look at the extreme parameters of what a magnetar.
Speaker 3: Actually is, especially in the immediate aftermath of a core collapse.
Speaker 2: Right, because we aren't just talking about a highly magnetized
Speaker 2: neutron star here. We are talking about an object operating
Speaker 2: at the absolute extremes of physics.
Speaker 3: That's right, When the iron core of a sufficiently massive
Speaker 3: star collapses into a neutron star, it conserves the angular
Speaker 3: momentum of the original stellar core.
Speaker 2: Like an ice skater pulling their arms in.
Speaker 3: A perfect analogy. Because the radius shrinks from thousands of
Speaker 3: kilometers down to roughly ten kilometers, the rotation rate just skyrockets.
Speaker 2: It spins up insanely fast.
Speaker 3: And if the progenitor star possessed a strong initial magnetic field,
Speaker 3: or if convective dynamos during the collapse amplify that field,
Speaker 3: you generate a magnetar.
Speaker 2: And the numbers here are just wild.
Speaker 3: We are looking at surface magnetic fields on the order
Speaker 3: of ten to the fourteenth or even ten to the
Speaker 3: fifteenth gaals.
Speaker 2: Which, to put that in perspective for you listening, that
Speaker 2: is roughly a quadrillion times stronger than Earth's magnetic field.
Speaker 3: It's almost unimaginable, and in its infancy right after the collapse,
Speaker 3: this ten kilometer wide sphere can rotate with a spin
Speaker 3: period of just one or two milliseconds.
Speaker 2: So wait, let me just make sure we're painting the
Speaker 2: right picture here. You have a mass greater than our
Speaker 2: sun correct compressed into the size of a small city. Yes,
Speaker 2: spinning a th tho times a.
Speaker 3: Second, more than a thousand sometimes.
Speaker 2: In generating a magnetic field so intense it literally distorts
Speaker 2: the electron clouds of atoms.
Speaker 3: It bends the very fabric of atomic structure.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is terrifying and amazing. So the ksin Buildston
Speaker 2: and Woosley model hypothesize that this extreme object basically acts
Speaker 2: as a macroscopic particle accelerator exactly.
Speaker 3: The rapidly spinning, hyperstrong magnetic field generates an immense electric field,
Speaker 3: and that accelerates charged particles to relativistic speeds, driving this continuous,
Speaker 3: incredibly powerful wind of high energy radiation in electron positron.
Speaker 2: Pairs and this is the mechanism known as spin down luminosity.
Speaker 3: That's the term. Yes, the magnetar is essentially breaking. As
Speaker 3: it spins, it's transferring its massive rotational kinetic energy into
Speaker 3: the surrounding environment via magnetic dipole radiation.
Speaker 2: So it's slowing down but dumping all that energy into
Speaker 2: the debris around it.
Speaker 3: Exactly, this relativistic winds slams into the inner boundary of
Speaker 3: the expanding supernova ejecta, and that generates a highly pressurized,
Speaker 3: superheated bubble.
Speaker 2: Okay, I can visualize that as.
Speaker 3: The magnetar spins down over days and weeks, it continuously
Speaker 3: pumps thermal energy into the expanding debris. Now, because the
Speaker 3: ejecta is highly opaque as a very high optical depth,
Speaker 3: this injected energy cannot escape immediately.
Speaker 2: It's trapped, right.
Speaker 3: It diffuses slowly heating the outer layers and powering the
Speaker 3: brilliant sustained light curve that defines a superluminous supernova.
Speaker 2: And Dan Kasen elegantly referred to this entire mechanism as
Speaker 2: a theorist's magic.
Speaker 3: Trick, which is such an apt description.
Speaker 2: It really is that phrasing perfectly captures the frustration and
Speaker 2: the brilliance of the model because the math checked out flawlessly.
Speaker 3: It did. If you put a one millisecond spin period
Speaker 3: and attend to the fourteenth goss magnetic field into the equations,
Speaker 3: the resulting spin down luminosity perfectly matches the light curves
Speaker 3: of Superluminus supernova.
Speaker 2: It's a perfect fit. But the trick is that the
Speaker 2: central engine is.
Speaker 3: Entirely obscured, hidden behind the cretain.
Speaker 2: Exactly, the magnetar is buried deep beneath light years of dense,
Speaker 2: optically thick stellar debris. You cannot observe the magnetar directly
Speaker 2: in the optical X ray or gamma ray spectrums because
Speaker 2: the ejecta just blocks everything.
Speaker 3: It acts as an impenetrable wall, right.
Speaker 2: So you are only seeing the glowing exhaust. You are
Speaker 2: never seeing the engine itself.
Speaker 3: And that's a huge problem for astronomy. The scientific method
Speaker 3: demands empirical verification. For over a decade, this was the
Speaker 3: central observational challenge in the field. How do you confirm
Speaker 3: the existence of an engine you fundamentally cannot see.
Speaker 2: You can't just say, well, the math works, so let's
Speaker 2: call it a day.
Speaker 3: No, you absolutely cannot. The theoretical community knew that if
Speaker 3: a magnetar was responsible, its energy deposition was making the
Speaker 3: debris superluminous, but there was no secondary signature.
Speaker 2: No smoking gun, right, There's.
Speaker 3: No independent variable that could do definitively rule out other potential,
Speaker 3: albeit less likely, power sources. To confirm the magnet our hypothesis,
Speaker 3: astronomers needed a highly specific dynamic signature in the light curve.
Speaker 2: Something that could only be produced by the geometry and
Speaker 2: mechanics of a spinning, highly magnetized neutron star precisely, and
Speaker 2: that specific signature finally materialized. We fast forward to December
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, shifting this from a theoretical exercise into
Speaker 2: an unprecedented global observation.
Speaker 3: The discovery of SN twenty twenty four or five.
Speaker 2: Yes, a supernova situated at a red shift that places
Speaker 2: it roughly one billion light years from Earth, a staggering distance,
Speaker 2: and at that distance capturing the high resolution, high cadence
Speaker 2: data required to analyze the subtle dynamics of a light curve.
Speaker 2: I mean that that is an engineering marvel in itself.
Speaker 3: It truly is.
Speaker 2: This observation relied heavily on the less cumbers Observatory or LCO,
Speaker 2: which is this globally distributed network of twenty seven robotic.
Speaker 3: Telescopes, and the architecture of the LCO network is absolutely
Speaker 3: critical to this discovery. Tell us why well adding transient
Speaker 3: astronomical events. The biggest enemies of data collection are daylight
Speaker 3: and weather.
Speaker 2: Right the sun comes up and you're done, exactly.
Speaker 3: A single observatory can only track an object for a
Speaker 3: fraction of a day, leading to significant gaps in the
Speaker 3: photometric data. But by utilizing a network of robotic telescopes
Speaker 3: distributed across multiple longitudes, the LCO allows for continuous, unbroken observation.
Speaker 2: Like a relay race.
Speaker 3: Exactly like a relay, As the Earth rotates and the
Speaker 3: target dips below the horizon for a telescope in Hawaii,
Speaker 3: a telescope in Australia is already picking it up. Wow,
Speaker 3: and it's followed by South Africa and so on. This
Speaker 3: global relay enables astronomers to generate a pristine high cadence
Speaker 3: light curve documenting the exact fluctuations in brightness without the
Speaker 3: typical diurnal interruptions.
Speaker 2: It's just relentless observation. And this relentless observation capability was
Speaker 2: applied to SN twenty twenty four or five for over
Speaker 2: two hundred consecutive.
Speaker 3: Days, a massive stakeout.
Speaker 2: Basically, graduate student Joseph Fara at UC Santa Barbara, working
Speaker 2: with LCO astronomer Andy Howe, meticulously analyzed this massive data stream.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Initially, the light curve behaved exactly as expected for a
Speaker 2: super luminous event.
Speaker 3: They climbed in brightness, hitting its peak luminosity around fifty
Speaker 3: days post explosion.
Speaker 2: The energy output was staggering, entirely consistent with the magnetar
Speaker 2: spin down model, but the critical anomaly didn't appear during
Speaker 2: the peak.
Speaker 3: No, it appeared during the fading phase, the decaying tail.
Speaker 2: Of the light curve right. Normally, as the central engine
Speaker 2: spins down and the expanding edjecta cools what happens.
Speaker 3: Typically, the light curve should follow a relatively smooth, predictable
Speaker 3: exponential decay. It just slowly fades out.
Speaker 2: But the photometry for twenty twenty four A five deviated
Speaker 2: violently from a smooth fade. The luminosity began to oscillate.
Speaker 3: The brightness dropped, then spiked, then dropped again.
Speaker 2: It generated this series of discrete bumps in the light curve.
Speaker 2: And this wasn't random noise or chaotic flickering from bad
Speaker 2: weather on Earth. The data revealed exactly four distinct high
Speaker 2: amplitude bumps.
Speaker 3: And what's fascinating here is the structural nature of those forbumps.
Speaker 3: That's where the data completely diverges from standard models.
Speaker 2: Because they weren't evenly space exactly.
Speaker 3: Parah noted that the temporal spacing between these peaks was
Speaker 3: not uniform. The period of the oscillations was gradually precisely shortening, so.
Speaker 2: They were getting closer together, right.
Speaker 3: The time between the first and second bump was longer
Speaker 3: than the time between the second and third.
Speaker 2: Which was longer than the time between the third and
Speaker 2: fourth precisely.
Speaker 3: And Pharah used the perfect analogy to visualize this data set.
Speaker 3: He compared it to a chirp.
Speaker 2: I love that analogy. Let's break that down explicitly for everyone.
Speaker 2: If you look at the waveform of a bird's chirp
Speaker 2: or even a gravitational wave merger, the frequency of the
Speaker 2: oscillation increases as the event progresses.
Speaker 3: The sound gets higher pitched because the waves are compressing temporally.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and the light curve of the supernova was doing
Speaker 2: the exact same thing, accelerating its stroping effect as it faded, and.
Speaker 3: The presence of this specific accelerating periodicity immediately invalidated the
Speaker 3: leading alternative explanations for fluctuations in supernova light curves.
Speaker 2: Because in previous observations, if a light curve exhibited may
Speaker 2: be a singular bump or a minor fluctuation, what did
Speaker 2: astronomers usually lame it on?
Speaker 3: They often attributed it to circumstellar interaction, the idea being
Speaker 3: that if the progenitor star underwent heavy mass loss episodes
Speaker 3: prior to collapsing, it would be surrounded by dense shells
Speaker 3: of gas.
Speaker 2: Like blowing smoke rings before it dies.
Speaker 3: Essentially yes, and when the highly supersonic supernova shockwave impacts
Speaker 3: one of these circumstellar shells, the kinetic energy is converted
Speaker 3: into thermal radiation that creates a temporary flare or bump
Speaker 3: in the observed light curve.
Speaker 2: But the problem with the circumstellar interaction model here is
Speaker 2: that it's inherently stochastic.
Speaker 3: It's chickotic, right.
Speaker 2: The mass loss history of a dying massive star is messy.
Speaker 2: The distribution of surrounding gas is highly irregular. You might
Speaker 2: get one collision or perhaps a couple based out completely randomly,
Speaker 2: depending on where the clumps of gas just happen to
Speaker 2: be exactly.
Speaker 3: But you absolutely do not get four massive, mathematically organized
Speaker 3: collisions that perfectly accelerate in frequency. It's just too clean,
Speaker 3: way too clean. The precise periodicity of the chirp fundamentally
Speaker 3: requires a rotating dynamic mechanical system operating from the inside out,
Speaker 3: not a random series of external collisions.
Speaker 2: Okay, So this realization forced Farah and his team to
Speaker 2: construct totally novel mechanical model, one capable of producing and
Speaker 2: accelerating strobing light effect from deep within the opaque.
Speaker 3: Ejecta, and they turn to the dynamics of fallback accretion.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about fallback accretion, because when a core collapse
Speaker 2: explosion occurs, not all of the stellar material achieves escape velocity, right.
Speaker 3: Right, A significant fraction of the inner envelope, lacking the
Speaker 3: kinetic energy to overcome the immense gravity of the newly
Speaker 3: formed neutron star, just stalls and then it falls back inward.
Speaker 2: It rains back down on the cour precisely.
Speaker 3: But due to the conservation of angular momentum from the
Speaker 3: original stars rotation. This falling material cannot drop straight down
Speaker 3: onto the neutron star's surface.
Speaker 2: It cat just plunge in No.
Speaker 3: Instead, its spirals inward, flattening into a dense, superheated accretion disc.
Speaker 2: And this is where the geometric complexities of the explosion
Speaker 2: become paramount Because a supernova is not a perfectly spherical,
Speaker 2: highly symmetrical event. It's not this neat little drawing in
Speaker 2: a textbook.
Speaker 3: Not at all. The core collapse and the subsequent neutrino
Speaker 3: driven convection are wildly turbulent. Neutron stars often receive massive
Speaker 3: kicks during formation picks. Yes, asymmetrical forces during the explosion
Speaker 3: can literally kick the neutron star, accelerating it to hundreds
Speaker 3: of kilometers per second in a specific direction.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And because of this inherent chaos and asymmetry, the angular
Speaker 3: momentum vector of the fallback material is almost never perfectly
Speaker 3: aligned with the spin axis of the central magnetar.
Speaker 2: Which creates a profound misalignment, a huge one. You have
Speaker 2: a central magnetar spinning on one axis right, surrounded by
Speaker 2: a massive superheated accretion disc rotating on an entirely different
Speaker 2: tilted axis as a.
Speaker 3: Wildly unstable geometric configuration.
Speaker 2: And this configuration, a misaligned disk orbiting a rapidly rotating
Speaker 2: ultracompact mass, is the precise environment where things get truly weird.
Speaker 2: This is where the most extreme predictions of Albert Einstein's
Speaker 2: general relativity step in and become dominant.
Speaker 3: Specifically, we have to look at the dynamics governed by
Speaker 3: the Kerr metric. The cur metric, yes, which describes the
Speaker 3: geometry of empty space time around a rotating, uncharged Axley
Speaker 3: symmetric black hole or in this case, a rapidly rotating
Speaker 3: neutron star.
Speaker 2: Okay, so Einstein's general relativity dictates something called frame dragging
Speaker 2: or lens thuring procession.
Speaker 3: That's the punchline.
Speaker 2: Yes, Let's break this down because in a classical Newtonian framework,
Speaker 2: gravity is simply a force acting across a distance, like
Speaker 2: an invisible tether.
Speaker 3: Right. Newton sees space as a static stage.
Speaker 2: But in general relativity, gravity is the curvature of space
Speaker 2: time itself. So when you have an object as dense
Speaker 2: as a magnetar spinning at incredibly high velocities, it doesn't
Speaker 2: just sit in a static depression in space time.
Speaker 3: Not at all, the mass and the extreme angular momentum
Speaker 3: of the magnetar literally grab the fabric of space time
Speaker 3: itself and drag it along in the direction of the.
Speaker 2: Rotation, like spinning a bowling ball in a vat of honey.
Speaker 3: That's a great visual. Space and time are physically twisted
Speaker 3: around the central engine.
Speaker 2: And because space time is being dragged, it exerts a
Speaker 2: profound mechanical force on anything orbiting within it.
Speaker 3: Yes, and remember our misaligned deccretion disc.
Speaker 2: It's sitting directly within this heavily twisted region of space time.
Speaker 3: Exactly because the disc's orbital plane is tilted relative to
Speaker 3: the magnetar's equatorial plane, the frame dragging effect applies a
Speaker 3: differential torque across the disc.
Speaker 2: It's twisting the disc it is.
Speaker 3: This torque forces the entire accretion disk to process so
Speaker 3: instead smoothly like a stationary record, the entire plane of
Speaker 3: the disc wabbles around the magnetar's spin axis, like a
Speaker 3: gyroscope or a spinning top that's starting to lose momentum.
Speaker 3: It wobbles, and because the inner regions of the disc
Speaker 3: are tightly coupled together magnetically and frictionally, the disc tends
Speaker 3: to process as a single rigid solid body.
Speaker 2: So you've got this tilted dick wobbling as one solid piece,
Speaker 2: and the solid body procession of the missiligned disc provides
Speaker 2: the exact mechanism needed to create the anomalous light curve.
Speaker 3: It's the lighthouse effect.
Speaker 2: Yes, let's visualize the mechanics. Here. We have the central
Speaker 2: magnetar pumping out immense spin down luminosity, thermalizing the inner
Speaker 2: region of the ejecta. It's brilliantly bright.
Speaker 3: But surrounding that central light source is this thick, opaque,
Speaker 3: tilted accretion disc.
Speaker 2: Right. And as the disc processes, as it wobbles, driven
Speaker 2: by the dragging of space time, its orientation relative to
Speaker 2: our line of sight constantly changes.
Speaker 3: It functions precisely like a cosmic lighthouse, but functioning through
Speaker 3: obscuration rather than directed.
Speaker 2: Emission, meaning it blocks the light instead of shining a beam.
Speaker 3: Exactly when the processing discs raised thicker edge wabbles into
Speaker 3: our line of sight, it heavily obscures the brilliant thermal
Speaker 3: radiation from the central engine.
Speaker 2: Which causes a sharp dip in the observed brightness.
Speaker 3: Right and then, as the disc continues its procession, and
Speaker 3: that thick edge rotates out of our view. We are
Speaker 3: granted a clearer, less obstructive view of the central engines'.
Speaker 2: Emission, resulting in a spike or a bump in the
Speaker 2: light curve.
Speaker 3: The entire inner geometry of the supernova is basically acting
Speaker 3: as a massive strobing shutter.
Speaker 2: That perfectly explains the periodic bumps. But the real genius
Speaker 2: of this model, the AHA moment, lies in how it
Speaker 2: seamlessly explains the chirp the accelerating frequency of those bumps.
Speaker 3: Because the accretion disc is not a static structure.
Speaker 2: Right, it is dynamically evolving. As the material in the
Speaker 2: disc interacts through internal friction and magnetic viscosity, it continuously
Speaker 2: loses orbital energy and angular momentum.
Speaker 3: This viscous didipation causes the material to slowly spiral inward.
Speaker 3: It's a creeding onto the magnetar.
Speaker 2: And as it loses energy and slides inward, the effective
Speaker 2: radius decreases. It shrinks tighter and tighter around the magnetar.
Speaker 3: And this is where the math locks in perfectly. The
Speaker 3: frequency of lens thiring procession is highly dependent on the radius. Specifically,
Speaker 3: the precession frequency is proportional to the inverse cube of
Speaker 3: the radius.
Speaker 2: So smaller radius means much much.
Speaker 3: Faster wabble exponentially faster. Therefore, as the viscous timescale drives
Speaker 3: the disc inward, placing it deeper into the gravitational well
Speaker 3: and deeper into the most intensely dragged regions of space,
Speaker 3: time the rate of procession dramatically accelerates.
Speaker 2: The disc shrinks, the wobble speeds up, and the strobing
Speaker 2: effect of the obscure light flashes faster and faster.
Speaker 3: Beautiful.
Speaker 2: The gradual shortening of the time between the observed bumps
Speaker 2: in the light curve is the direct observable manifestation of
Speaker 2: a shrinking accretion disc being dragged by the twisting of space.
Speaker 3: The mechanics are just so exquisitely intertwined.
Speaker 2: And Farah and his team made it a point to
Speaker 2: emphasize that this marks an unprecedented milestone in astrophysics. This
Speaker 2: is the very first time that the equations of general
Speaker 2: relativity have been absolutely required to model and explain the
Speaker 2: macroscopic light curve of a supernova.
Speaker 3: Which is a paradigm shift. We frequently rely on general
Speaker 3: relativity for modeling black hole event horizons or cosmological gravitational lensing,
Speaker 3: but utilizing the curve metric to map the mechanical thermal
Speaker 3: output of an exploding star.
Speaker 2: That is entirely novel territory.
Speaker 3: Completely and the rigor applied by Fara's team to ensure
Speaker 3: this was the only viable explanation is highly commendable in astrophysics.
Speaker 3: Invoking general relativity to explain a light curve anomaly is
Speaker 3: generally a measure of last resort.
Speaker 2: Right, you don't jump Einstein unless you have.
Speaker 3: To exactly You must definitively rule out all classical mechanics first,
Speaker 3: and they did. They exhaustively modeled the system using purely Newtonian.
Speaker 2: Parameters, trying to find an easier answer.
Speaker 3: They attempted to drive the procession via the classical quadruple
Speaker 3: moment of the neutron.
Speaker 2: Star, which is just the fact that a spinning star
Speaker 2: bulges slightly at the equator right, creating an uneven gravitational field.
Speaker 3: Correct, but the Newtonian timescale didn't fit the rapid evolution
Speaker 3: of the chirp. It was too slow.
Speaker 2: They also explored magnetically driven procession too, didn't They looking
Speaker 2: at whether the intense magnetic field of the magnetar interacting
Speaker 2: with the plasma of the disc could induce the wabble precisely.
Speaker 3: They modeled magnetic torques, but the temporal evolution of magnetic
Speaker 3: precession scales differently with the radius of the disc compared
Speaker 3: to Len's thing procession.
Speaker 2: So it wouldn't accelerate the same way.
Speaker 3: Right When they cross referenced the mathematical predictions of magnetic
Speaker 3: torques against the observational data of the four bumps, the
Speaker 3: curves diverged. It just didn't match.
Speaker 2: The puzzle pieces didn't fit.
Speaker 3: It was only when they applied the strict relativistic equations
Speaker 3: for frame dragging that the theoretical model perfectly overlay the
Speaker 3: empirical data from LCO.
Speaker 2: The timing, the acceleration, the amplitude.
Speaker 3: Everything locked into place. Andy Howell, the senior scientists at LCO,
Speaker 3: characterize it as an incredibly elegant explanation taking the best
Speaker 3: tested theory of gravity we possess and utilizing it to
Speaker 3: decode a completely opaque, chaotic system.
Speaker 2: It's just brilliant. And this is where the capability to
Speaker 2: extract hard quantitative data from a seemingly simple like curve
Speaker 2: becomes truly staggering.
Speaker 3: The numbers they pulled out are amazing.
Speaker 2: I am geeking out over these numbers. Because they isolated
Speaker 2: lens thing procession as the exclusive mechanism driving the chirp,
Speaker 2: they could literally reverse engineer the equations.
Speaker 3: Right because the rate of frame dragging is directly dictated
Speaker 3: by the angular momentum of the central mass.
Speaker 2: So by carefully measuring the precise timing of the four
Speaker 2: bumps over that two hundred day period, the astronomers were
Speaker 2: able to calculate the unseen engine's exact physical parameter.
Speaker 3: Through all that noise and across an immense.
Speaker 2: Distance a billion light years, the calculate related the newly
Speaker 2: formed neutron stars spin period to be exactly four point
Speaker 2: two milliseconds.
Speaker 3: Which is just a breath taking velocity. A four point
Speaker 3: two millisecond spin period means this stellar remnant is completing
Speaker 3: nearly two hundred and forty full rotations every single second.
Speaker 2: Two hundred and forty times a second for something the
Speaker 2: size of a city but heavier than the sun.
Speaker 3: It defies every day intuition. And furthermore, by analyzing the
Speaker 3: total energy budget required to power the peak luminosity and
Speaker 3: correlating it. With the spin down rate inferred from the
Speaker 3: discs evolution, they could constrain the magnetic field strength.
Speaker 2: And what did they find?
Speaker 3: The data yielded a surface magnetic field of approximately three
Speaker 3: times ten to the fourteenth gas or roughly three hundred
Speaker 3: trillion times of magnetic.
Speaker 2: Field of Earth three hundred trillion times. These specific parameters
Speaker 2: are not just interesting trivia. They are the absolute, undisputed
Speaker 2: theoretical hallmarks of a newly born magnetar.
Speaker 3: Yes, the numbers perfectly align with the predictions made by Kazin,
Speaker 3: Bilston and Woosley sixteen years prior.
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate validation. We didn't just find a weirdly
Speaker 2: bright supernova. We extracted the rotational holocity and the magnetic
Speaker 2: field strength of an object we cannot even directly.
Speaker 3: See, located a billion light years away.
Speaker 2: By measuring how it warped space time.
Speaker 3: It's a triumph of observation and.
Speaker 2: Theory, it really is. This is exactly why Alex Philipenko,
Speaker 2: the distinguished astronomy professor at UC Berkeley, hailed this observation
Speaker 2: as the definitive evidence the field have been waiting for.
Speaker 3: Because the twenty ten model only assumed the magnetar was there.
Speaker 3: It was operating as a black box injecting energy.
Speaker 2: But Fara's paper essentially shattered the black box. They pulled
Speaker 2: back the curtain. The intricate dynamic interaction between the magnetar,
Speaker 2: the space time metric, and the accretion desk projected the
Speaker 2: engine's shadow right onto the supernova's light curve.
Speaker 3: The magic trick is real.
Speaker 2: The magic trick is real. It is a phenomenal synthesis
Speaker 2: of theory and observation. It definitively confirms that the core
Speaker 2: collapse of a massive star can indeed produce these hypermagnetic
Speaker 2: millik second pulsars.
Speaker 3: And that the spin down luminosity of these engines is
Speaker 3: the direct mechanical cause of the super luminous phenomena.
Speaker 2: But, and this is important, we have to talk about
Speaker 2: the bigger picture and the caveats, because we need to
Speaker 2: apply the brakes gently here.
Speaker 3: Right, it is crucial that we maintain scientific rigor.
Speaker 2: We can't avoid overextrapolating from a single, albeit groundbreaking data point.
Speaker 2: Does this mean all superluminous supernovae are magnetars.
Speaker 3: No and Philipenco correctly cautioned the community against adopting a
Speaker 3: monolithic view, we cannot immediately jump to the conclusion that
Speaker 3: every single superluminous supernova observed over the past two decades
Speaker 3: is powered by a magnetar.
Speaker 2: The universe is rarely uniform in its extreme mechanics. So
Speaker 2: if we confirm the magnetar engine for this specific event,
Speaker 2: which we have, what alternative mechanisms remain viable for other
Speaker 2: supernovae ones that perhaps lack this distinct lens thiring chirp.
Speaker 3: Well, the circumstellar interaction model we discussed earlier or means
Speaker 3: a highly viable explanation for a distinct subset of superluminous events.
Speaker 2: The shockwave hitting clumps of gas exactly if a progenitor
Speaker 2: star undergoes an extreme episodic mass loss phase, perhaps shedding
Speaker 2: multiple solar masses of material in the centuries immediately preceding
Speaker 2: core collapse, the resulting shockwave interaction can absolutely generate sustained
Speaker 2: luminosities that mimic a magnetar driven event. That the difference
Speaker 2: would be in the details, right.
Speaker 3: The difference lies in the spectral signatures and the lack
Speaker 3: of precise accelerating periodicity in the light curve. You wouldn't
Speaker 3: see the perfect chirp got it.
Speaker 2: And Furthermore, Dan Kayson himself has continuously refined his theoretical
Speaker 2: models over the years, exploring the parameter space beyond just
Speaker 2: neutron star formation. He proposed a fascinating alternative.
Speaker 3: The collapse are a black hole fallback model.
Speaker 2: Yes, let's talk about that.
Speaker 3: If the initial massive star is exceptionally massive, or if
Speaker 3: the initial explosion lacks the energy to completely unbind the
Speaker 3: stellar envelope, the fall back accretion can exceed the Tolmenoppenheimer
Speaker 3: VULCOF limit.
Speaker 2: Which is the maximum mass a neutron star can support
Speaker 2: before gravity overcomes neutron degeneracy pressure right.
Speaker 3: Correct, gravity wins. In this scenario, the newly formed neutron
Speaker 3: star rapidly collapses into a stellar mass black hole.
Speaker 2: And the black hole fallback model is incredibly compelling because
Speaker 2: it can also produce a super luminous event.
Speaker 3: It can. The immense gravitational potential energy released by solar
Speaker 3: masses of material accreting onto a newly formed black hole
Speaker 3: can drive powerful relativistic jets and massive outflows.
Speaker 2: Which heats up the surrounding.
Speaker 3: Ejecta, resulting in a highly luminous, sustained optical display, and crucially,
Speaker 3: a newly formed black hole can also possess a misaligned
Speaker 3: deccretion disc.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, So we could theoretically observe lens thing procession
Speaker 2: and a similar chirping light curve from a black hole
Speaker 2: engine too.
Speaker 3: Exactly, which raises a fascinating diagnostic challenge.
Speaker 2: For the future, because if both a magnetar and a
Speaker 2: black hole can possess a processing accretion disk, how are
Speaker 2: astronomers going to distinguish between the two central engines in
Speaker 2: future observations?
Speaker 3: It will require extremely precise analysis the timescale and the
Speaker 3: energetics of the chirp. A magna car has a solid
Speaker 3: surface and a rigid magnetic field. This leads to different
Speaker 3: viscous dissipation time scales and discoupling dynamics compared to the
Speaker 3: event horizon of a black hole. Furthermore, the total energy
Speaker 3: available from magnetar spin down is capped by its maximum
Speaker 3: rotational velocity. It has a speed limit, yes, whereas black
Speaker 3: hole accretion can theoretically tap into a much larger reservoir
Speaker 3: of gravitational potential energy.
Speaker 2: So by meticulously analyzing the rate of the chirp's acceleration
Speaker 2: and correlating it with the total integrated luminosity of the supernova.
Speaker 2: Future models should be able to differentiate the mass and
Speaker 2: the nature of the central compact object.
Speaker 3: Mystery has evolved from a question of what is the
Speaker 3: power source to a highly nuanced demographic study of stellar death.
Speaker 2: We now have confirmed proof of the magnetar mechanism, but
Speaker 2: the next phase of astrophysics really must determine the exact
Speaker 2: statistical distribution.
Speaker 3: Right what percentage of superluminous supernovae are driven by magnetars,
Speaker 3: what percentage are collapsers forming black holes? And what percentage
Speaker 3: are simply extreme examples of circumstellar collision.
Speaker 2: And Filipenco noted that while the exact demographic fractions remain unknown,
Speaker 2: the sheer elegance and the definitive nature of the data
Speaker 2: from s and twenty twenty four to five strongly suggests
Speaker 2: that the magnetar mechanism accounts for a highly significant portion
Speaker 2: of these events.
Speaker 3: We have successfully transitioned a massive unknown variable into a confirmed,
Speaker 3: observable physical mechanism, and the timing of this theoretical confirmation
Speaker 3: perfectly coincides with the massive leap forward in our observational infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about what's next, because the future of this
Speaker 2: specific branch of astrophysics is incredibly bright, largely due to
Speaker 2: the imminent operational start of the verra Cea Reuben Observatory
Speaker 2: in Chile.
Speaker 3: It's going to change everything.
Speaker 2: The legacy Survey of Space and Time or LSST, being
Speaker 2: conducted by the Ruben Observatory is preparing to come online
Speaker 2: for the most comprehensive survey of the night sky ever.
Speaker 3: It will fundamentally alter how we monitor the transient universe.
Speaker 2: We are talking about an eight point four meter telescope
Speaker 2: equipped with a three thousand, two hundred megapixel camera, just
Speaker 2: staggering specs, possessing a field of view so massive it
Speaker 2: can photograph the entire visible southern sky every few nights.
Speaker 2: The volume of photometric data, the sheer density of the
Speaker 2: alert stream is going to be unlike anything the astronomical
Speaker 2: community has ever processed.
Speaker 3: The Ruben Observatory represents a paradigm shift from targeted observation
Speaker 3: to high cadence wide field statistical surveying. Fair and his
Speaker 3: colleagues anticipate that the LSST alert stream will completely revolutionize
Speaker 3: our detection rates.
Speaker 2: They won't have to rely on serendipitous targeting by the
Speaker 2: LCO network anymore.
Speaker 3: No, Instead, the Ruben Observatory will systematically catalog the light
Speaker 3: curves of millions of transients. Fara expects that within the
Speaker 3: first few years of operation they will identify not just
Speaker 3: one or two, but dozens, perhaps hundreds, of these chirping
Speaker 3: superluminous supernovae.
Speaker 2: Finding dozens of these events means dozens of opportunities to
Speaker 2: extract the spin periods and magnetic fields of newly born magnetars.
Speaker 3: It provides dozens of independent test beds for general relativity
Speaker 3: in the most extreme gravitational environments in the universe.
Speaker 2: It moves the study of lens thiring procession in supernovae
Speaker 2: from a singular anomaly to a robust statistical science.
Speaker 3: It's an incredibly exciting time to be an astronomer.
Speaker 2: It truly is. And when you look at the sheer
Speaker 2: scale of the physics involved, the twisting of space time,
Speaker 2: magnetic fields, and the hundreds of trillions of goths the
Speaker 2: explosive death of stars, it is really easy to lose
Speaker 2: the human element.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 2: But Joseph Farah provided a quote regarding his work on
Speaker 2: this observation that deeply grounds the science. He stated, this
Speaker 2: is the most exciting thing I have ever had the
Speaker 2: privilege to be a part of. This is the science
Speaker 2: I dreamed of as a kid.
Speaker 3: And that sentiment perfectly captures the fundamental drive of scientific inquiry.
Speaker 3: We build these incredibly complex theoretical frameworks, and we engineer
Speaker 3: these massive robotic telescope networks not merely to catalog data,
Speaker 3: but to probe the boundaries of our understanding. The initial
Speaker 3: mystery of the superluminous energy budget, the unexpected detection of
Speaker 3: the four bumps, the realization that spacetime dragging was the
Speaker 3: only solution. These moments represent the universe pushing back against
Speaker 3: our current models.
Speaker 2: As Farah insightfully noted, anomalies like the chirp are the
Speaker 2: universe telling us, out loud and in our face that
Speaker 2: we don't fully understand it yet, and challenging us to
Speaker 2: explain it. It is the ultimate intellectual gauntlet. So let's
Speaker 2: look back at the immense scope of the incredible journey
Speaker 2: you've just been on today.
Speaker 3: It's been quite a ride.
Speaker 2: We began with this seemingly impossible thermodynamic puzzle, a persistent
Speaker 2: glaring luminosity a billion light years away, that completely shattered
Speaker 2: the standard models of read active decay.
Speaker 3: We trace that excess energy back to the sixteen year
Speaker 3: old theoretical predictions of Kazin, Buildsten, and Woosley, a.
Speaker 2: Hidden city sized magnetar spinning one thousand times a second,
Speaker 2: and ultimately, through the rigorous analysis of a subtle accelerating
Speaker 2: oscillation in the fading light, we arrive at a wobbling
Speaker 2: superheated accretion disc.
Speaker 3: Physically forced into solid body procession by the relativistic twisting
Speaker 3: of space time itself.
Speaker 2: It is the definitive proof of Einstein's cerr metric operating
Speaker 2: directly in the heart of an exploding star, proving Einstein
Speaker 2: write yet again.
Speaker 3: It serves as a profound demonstration of the deep interconnectedness
Speaker 3: of physical laws.
Speaker 2: It really does.
Speaker 3: The macroscare observation of a supernovas's light curve across a
Speaker 3: billion light years of space is ultimately governed by the
Speaker 3: microscale quantum state of neutron degeneracy pressure and the geometric
Speaker 3: warping of local space time. It illustrates that the universe
Speaker 3: operates on a unified mechanical framework, regardless of the extreme
Speaker 3: scales involved, and.
Speaker 2: That is precisely why the space civic discovery matters so much.
Speaker 2: It's not just abstract math. It is a testament to
Speaker 2: humanity's capacity to decode the invisible mechanics of the cosmos.
Speaker 3: We are sitting on this small, rocky planet utilizing mathematics
Speaker 3: and networked optics to reverse engineer the exact rotational velocity
Speaker 3: and magnetic field of an invisible stellar core.
Speaker 2: Based entirely on how it distorts the space around it.
Speaker 2: We are effectively reading the physical fingerprints of gravity embedded
Speaker 2: in the decaying light of a dead star.
Speaker 3: It's poetry, honestly it is.
Speaker 2: And as we conclude our analysis of this incredible event,
Speaker 2: we want to leave you with one final lingering question.
Speaker 2: Tom all over.
Speaker 3: Right, think about this the next time you look up
Speaker 3: at the night sky. The definitive proof of this massive
Speaker 3: hypermagnetic engine was hidden entirely within the subtle accelerating rhythm
Speaker 3: of a fading light.
Speaker 2: If the precise quickening chirp of a wobbling accretion disc
Speaker 2: was all it took to finally pull back the curtain
Speaker 2: and reveal a magnetar hiding inside a supernova, what
Speaker 3: Other bizarre, extreme currently invisible cosmic monsters might be actively
Speaker 3: hiding behind the blinding light of the stars you see
Speaker 3: in the night sky right now, simply waiting for us
Speaker 3: to develop the correct mathematical tools to finally listen to
Speaker 3: their unique rhythms.