Speaker 1: Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
Speaker 1: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
Speaker 1: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
Speaker 1: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
Speaker 1: that's your own risk.
Speaker 2: Go ahead. When made of stars, made them stars.
Speaker 3: Made sizes. When made us stars, you could be from
Speaker 3: high they would New Mexicomus, where all stars?
Speaker 4: When we are made of stars. I'm Wes Carol, joined
Speaker 4: by my good friend doctor Sean Cruising, Executive Director or
Speaker 4: at Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Speaker 2: Hey Sean, Hey Wes, good to be here. All right.
Speaker 4: We were there for the arrival of the Artemis two
Speaker 4: core stage at the Kennedy Space Center. We did not
Speaker 4: make the venture down for Artemis three. No disrespect to
Speaker 4: Artemis three. It's an important mission. It's a very significant
Speaker 4: part of the next mission towards getting human beings with
Speaker 4: their boots on the ground on the surface of the Moon.
Speaker 4: And we know that that mission then leads to hey,
Speaker 4: let's build a house here, and then hey, let's go
Speaker 4: to Mars and let's build a house there too. So
Speaker 4: this is important. This is that bridge mission that goes
Speaker 4: between going around the Moon and then going and landing
Speaker 4: on the Moon. But as a little bit less glitz
Speaker 4: to it, because this isn't the one. Initially we thought
Speaker 4: this is the one where they were going to be
Speaker 4: feet on the ground, but this isn't that mission. But
Speaker 4: there's a lot of important things that were going to
Speaker 4: take place on that mission. But this is a test mission,
Speaker 4: something that they need to do. So we didn't make
Speaker 4: this journey. It's no offense to Artemis three. We still
Speaker 4: acknowledge how important this mission is.
Speaker 2: I mean, if the good folks at NASA Media would
Speaker 2: like to invite us down for the launch of Artemis three, ye,
Speaker 2: we would more than happily accept that invitation.
Speaker 4: We're down for that.
Speaker 2: Justin Casher listening, we're already putting the date on our
Speaker 2: calendar in the you know, summer of twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 4: Well, we'll have it circled. We're ready to go. And
Speaker 4: while we're at it, I mean, just so that we
Speaker 4: don't discriminate in any capacity at all to the folks
Speaker 4: at SpaceX, we know you just launched another Falcon heavy.
Speaker 4: We'd be down to come cover that as well. So
Speaker 4: you just let us know. Any of those big boys
Speaker 4: going up has a different has a different feel to it.
Speaker 4: It's like a Luke Carroll belch. It will shake the house,
Speaker 4: you know, those one of those big boys going up.
Speaker 4: My son is very, very good at belching. That's all.
Speaker 4: We're looking into competitions. So let's talk about Artemis three
Speaker 4: and the arrival at Kennedy. We know what it looks like,
Speaker 4: we know the visuals. We know it's coming out of
Speaker 4: that giant cigar, a cigarette cigar tube cigar, the big
Speaker 4: cigar tube coming off the off the barge, slowly coming
Speaker 4: off and then right on into the Kennedy Space Centers VAB.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The cigar carrier is the Pegasus barge. It's a
Speaker 2: weird looking ship that's made to carry big rockets like
Speaker 2: this one. And I'm glad that Luke's thinking of future careers,
Speaker 2: by the way, so that's a good thing. Career prep
Speaker 2: is important. Gotta do what you gotta do. So what allegedly,
Speaker 2: or what NASA keeps repeating is this is the top
Speaker 2: four fifths, the top four fifths. I was never great
Speaker 2: at fractions that seems like four out of five to me.
Speaker 2: The top four fifths of the agency's Space Launch System
Speaker 2: core stage for Artemis three. What's missing is the bottom
Speaker 2: fifth and the bottom fifth are the engines, right, That's
Speaker 2: that's where the power plant is down there at the bottom.
Speaker 2: That's the Mighty RS twenty five engines that go on
Speaker 2: and there's four of them that go on the bottom
Speaker 2: of that stage, and that's what they'll be attaching. One
Speaker 2: of the first things they'll be attaching to the top
Speaker 2: four fifths is that bottom fifth with all the actual
Speaker 2: engines on it. So the top four fifths more or
Speaker 2: less just a giant fuel tank and fuel routing system.
Speaker 2: So that's what's arrived down there at Kennedy Space Center.
Speaker 2: It's still a very impressive site. It's amazing to see
Speaker 2: that massive fuel tank core stage of the rocket come
Speaker 2: on shore and then all of the workers at Kennedy
Speaker 2: Space Center doing what they need to do to get
Speaker 2: it from the barge dock to the actual vertical assembly
Speaker 2: building or vehicle assembly building where they can actually take
Speaker 2: the rocket vertical and begin to assemble these other components.
Speaker 2: So that's what we've been watching. It came in on
Speaker 2: Monday of this week, Monday, April twenty seventh, twenty twenty six,
Speaker 2: and that Artemis III will hopefully be launching astronauts to
Speaker 2: Earth orbit, not to orbit around the Moon this time,
Speaker 2: but Earth orbit, so that they can test out the
Speaker 2: Oriyan's capability to dock up with a lunar lander. Which
Speaker 2: lunar lander is it going to be SpaceX or Blue Origin? Well,
Speaker 2: that's what we're still waiting to see, and that's what
Speaker 2: the further development of the Artemis three mission is going
Speaker 2: to be all about. It's going to be about finally
Speaker 2: settling on a platform to land astronauts on the surface
Speaker 2: of the Moon. And the two platforms that are in
Speaker 2: consideration as of now SpaceX and Blue Origin. So we're
Speaker 2: going to see We're going to be keeping a very
Speaker 2: close eye on how that Artomist three mission develops, because
Speaker 2: when you're in orbit around the Moon and you're trying
Speaker 2: to land on the surface of the Moon, you want
Speaker 2: to make sure that your lander is tested and reliable.
Speaker 2: And this reminds me a lot of the Apollo ten mission,
Speaker 2: Apollo nine mission, where they were doing dress rehearsals of
Speaker 2: these very things so that they can make sure that
Speaker 2: the Apollo eleven mission went off without a hitch, and
Speaker 2: you know this one is more like the Apollo nine
Speaker 2: mission actually, which was performed in Earth orbit and which
Speaker 2: David Scott, Commander David Scott was part of that crew.
Speaker 2: Why is that important to us here at Space Science
Speaker 2: Center because we have a collection of Dave Scott artifacts
Speaker 2: on display that were donated by Dave and his family,
Speaker 2: Tom in particular, his brother. So so yeah, we like
Speaker 2: to harken back to the days of Apollo and say
Speaker 2: this next Artemiss three kind of looks a lot like
Speaker 2: Apollo nine where they did a bunch of testing of
Speaker 2: all the components in Earth orbit before actually trying to
Speaker 2: do it around the Moon.
Speaker 4: The Artemis two crew has been interviewed and they've been
Speaker 4: talking about this next mission. Obviously they could they couldn't
Speaker 4: have picked a better group of ambassadors for the whole
Speaker 4: Artemis mission than these four astronauts, but they've been now
Speaker 4: doing what you do, You talk about what you experienced,
Speaker 4: you talk about the personal side of it. I've seen
Speaker 4: them doing it, talking about their foht potos. Realizing in
Speaker 4: the moment when we take these photos with you know,
Speaker 4: a selfie that has my face in it. There was
Speaker 4: one photo that Christina took where she said, Christina cooks
Speaker 4: She basically said, I noticed it first, Hey, my hair
Speaker 4: is in the photo. We should probably retake it, and
Speaker 4: then she had the presence of mind to just say, no,
Speaker 4: leave it in there. This tells part of the story.
Speaker 4: And you know, that kind of personal side of things
Speaker 4: where they were trying to do that and let us
Speaker 4: and you and I've covered that over the past couple
Speaker 4: of weeks about that personal side the reason that's important.
Speaker 4: But I mentioned them because they, you know, looking ahead
Speaker 4: to this Artemis three mission and what it's going to
Speaker 4: be doing and ultimately Artemis four, and they talked a
Speaker 4: little bit. I've heard them talk about the importance of
Speaker 4: the South Pole and how that's ultimately where they're trying
Speaker 4: to get to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so first of all, about the Christina Cook photograph.
Speaker 2: We actually have that image blown up into a giant
Speaker 2: poster and placed in our exhibit gallery because I think
Speaker 2: I happen to think that that this is for me personally.
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the best women in science
Speaker 2: photographs that I've seen in quite some time that should
Speaker 2: be just by pure visual power a great inspiration to
Speaker 2: a new generation of females wanting to pursue flight space.
Speaker 2: You young ladies can look up to Christina Cook as
Speaker 2: a role model. See that photograph instantly identify the power
Speaker 2: of being able to pursue science and be in that
Speaker 2: kind of a venue or in that kind of a
Speaker 2: circumstance and have that be an inspiration to them. So
Speaker 2: that's why we put that up in our exhibit gallery
Speaker 2: here at our facility at Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Speaker 2: Second of all, you're right about them being tremendous ambassadors.
Speaker 2: Every interview I've heard that featured the astronauts has been astounding.
Speaker 2: They have a lot of very insightful things to say,
Speaker 2: but a lot of very level headed and serious points
Speaker 2: to make, and they've really been able to humanize this
Speaker 2: trip around the Moon, which again we've talked about a
Speaker 2: lot on this podcast, a lot, which is humans are
Speaker 2: far more inspired to see humans going out and doing
Speaker 2: adventurous things. Yes, we can send robots to do a
Speaker 2: fair amount of things, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: the thing that inspires us is to see other human
Speaker 2: beings going off and being a part of this mission,
Speaker 2: being tactically involved, because then somehow we channel their experience
Speaker 2: and we get to feel just vicariously a small slice
Speaker 2: of what that must have been like for those astronauts
Speaker 2: to experience that. So the more of those kinds of
Speaker 2: human experiences that these astronauts share, I really think, and
Speaker 2: we've really felt that we've seen this impact here at
Speaker 2: Space Science Center, the more that people just are engaged
Speaker 2: with the whole event. We've done amazing robotic contributions to science,
Speaker 2: including all the Mars Rowe and many of the other
Speaker 2: probes like Osyrus Rex and those kinds of things, and
Speaker 2: people barely they barely engage with that in terms of
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not talking when to say people, I
Speaker 2: don't mean people like me, a big space geek. I
Speaker 2: mean just your average public person off the sidewalk coming
Speaker 2: into the Space Science Center. They're vaguely aware of it,
Speaker 2: or maybe they're not aware of it at all. But
Speaker 2: suddenly when people go out and do something amazing like
Speaker 2: go to the far side of the Moon, they know
Speaker 2: their names, they know their backstories, they know all about them,
Speaker 2: and they're watching each step of that amazing adventure. And
Speaker 2: as you say that, that photograph kind of really summed
Speaker 2: up a piece of that experience just in an image,
Speaker 2: which is worth a thousand words. So check that, check
Speaker 2: that photograph out, and you know, we're excited for Artemis three.
Speaker 2: We're excited for the continuing process.
Speaker 4: Our next story is one of hope, because there was
Speaker 4: a point where you came in to the studio with
Speaker 4: me years ago and you broke the news to me, Hey,
Speaker 4: Pluto's not a planet anymore, and this is happening, and
Speaker 4: I thought, well, what do we do to stop this?
Speaker 4: How do we how do we stop these crazy people
Speaker 4: from ruining Pluto?
Speaker 1: And it's done.
Speaker 4: They've they've changed the standards, they've they've or whatever they did.
Speaker 4: They just said, we're just we don't we don't like
Speaker 4: planets discovered by Americans. I don't. I don't know what
Speaker 4: the what the deal was, but suddenly a planet that
Speaker 4: many considered their fair I know, as a kid, there
Speaker 4: were kids in school Pluto is my favorite planet, and
Speaker 4: I said, well, you know, as long as Uranus is around,
Speaker 4: you know, it's my second favorite.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: But now, I wasn't even making Uranus jokes at that age.
Speaker 4: Sorry to disappoint, but I certainly would probably giggle, but
Speaker 4: not making the jokes. But my point is now it
Speaker 4: seems we have at least one heavy hitter who's on
Speaker 4: team let's bring Pluto back, and that is Jared Isaacman,
Speaker 4: the head of NASA, and this has come up a
Speaker 4: couple of times with him. It's come up again this week.
Speaker 4: And so are we saying there's a chance that Pluto
Speaker 4: may be back. I don't know. I don't know where
Speaker 4: this is, but I don't give me hope Sean cruising.
Speaker 2: If there's no hope, let me just tell you West
Speaker 2: Carrol that I don't really think there's a lot of hope.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting. It's an interesting discussion. So all right,
Speaker 2: So first of all, first of all, sentimentally, for me personally,
Speaker 2: the planet Pluto was discovered at the Loll Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Speaker 2: Loll Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona happens to be a place
Speaker 2: where I've done a lot of my professional telescope work
Speaker 2: for my advisor, for fellow students, and published papers based
Speaker 2: on data taken at the low observatory. So I've actually
Speaker 2: been to the what they call Pluto camera, which is
Speaker 2: in its own little observatory dome I've actually been to
Speaker 2: the Pluto camera. I've touched the actual camera that Clyde
Speaker 2: Tomba an inspiring story in himself, by the way, because
Speaker 2: he was a really avid amateur astronomer who got to
Speaker 2: go pro as he joined the team at Little Observatory.
Speaker 2: Clyde Tomba then used that telescope to search for and
Speaker 2: locate what was then the ninth planet in our Solar system,
Speaker 2: which is why when it got booted out in two
Speaker 2: thousand and six and we went back to eight and
Speaker 2: all those plants were not discovered in the United States,
Speaker 2: and someone like me who's kind of a partisan, because
Speaker 2: I've actually been to that observatory, I emotionally just really
Speaker 2: wanted Pluto to stay a planet. And I've made that
Speaker 2: point clear on this podcast and on the radio broadcast
Speaker 2: before I will tell you this. There are bona fide
Speaker 2: science reasons for a reclassification, and part of that is
Speaker 2: because we started finding a bunch of other Pluto type objects,
Speaker 2: So we now know about more of those kinds of
Speaker 2: objects than we know about what we're calling planets currently.
Speaker 2: So then the question becomes, well, if you reinstate Pluto,
Speaker 2: does it bring all of its stray cat friends into
Speaker 2: the planet Club. And as I've made the point to
Speaker 2: students a long time, we can either have eight planets
Speaker 2: or we can have eight hundred planets eventually, right, And
Speaker 2: so does Pluto fall into a category that's worthwhile defining.
Speaker 2: The reason we're talking about that on the podcast today
Speaker 2: is because the NASA Administrator, Jared Isiacman, said in a
Speaker 2: meeting on Monday with the House Appropriation Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science,
Speaker 2: and Related Agencies they were reviewing the twenty twenty seven
Speaker 2: fiscal year budget for NASA on and then in a
Speaker 2: kind of a side comment toward the end of the meeting,
Speaker 2: Republican Senator Jerry Moran asked NASA administrator his thoughts on Pluto.
Speaker 2: And here's the thing you need to know about Jerry Moran.
Speaker 2: He's from Kansas.
Speaker 4: He is one of the two senators from Kansas. That's right.
Speaker 2: So Pluto, we're not in Kansas anymore, I mean anyway,
Speaker 2: So why is Pluto tied to Kansas? Well, you see,
Speaker 2: that's the home state of Clyde Tombaugh. There's the punchline.
Speaker 2: That's Clyde Tombaugh's home state. Yes, he discovered the planet
Speaker 2: while working in Arizona, but he grew up in Kansas
Speaker 2: and attended the University of Kansas. So so, then this
Speaker 2: Republican senator from the Great State of Kansas asked the
Speaker 2: NASA administrator, what are your feelings on Pluto? What do
Speaker 2: you think about that Pluto situation. Jared Isagman responded with
Speaker 2: something kind of maybe a little bit surprising. He said, quote, Senator,
Speaker 2: I am very much in the camp of make Pluto
Speaker 2: a planet again. Does that sound like a phrase we've
Speaker 2: heard somewhere else? It does a red hat or something.
Speaker 4: Something like that. Yes, I think we've had a certain
Speaker 4: a certain president has even uttered those words before to make.
Speaker 2: A planet again. I don't know something like that anyway,
Speaker 2: all right, So so, but then Jaredisacan went on to say,
Speaker 2: we are doing some papers right now on I think
Speaker 2: a position that we would love to escalate through the
Speaker 2: scientific community to revisit this discussion. And then Jaredisigman continued,
Speaker 2: Jaredisigman being the director of NASA, by the way, NASA
Speaker 2: Administrator Jaredizegman went on to say he wanted to ensure
Speaker 2: that Clyde Tombaugh gets the credit he received once and
Speaker 2: rightly deserves to receive again unquote the credit mister Isaacman
Speaker 2: speaking of is the discoverer of a planet, a discoverer
Speaker 2: of worlds rightly should be in the discoverer of World's club.
Speaker 2: I happen to agree with this. Again. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to deny the scientific justifications out there, I get it.
Speaker 2: But maybe for historic reasons we should just make an
Speaker 2: exception for Pluto and reclassify all the rest of those
Speaker 2: buggers out there. That's kind of what I think. So anyway,
Speaker 2: this is an interesting open the chapter from two thousand
Speaker 2: and six. It feels all like two thousand and six
Speaker 2: again when we're talking about this, But all right, reopen
Speaker 2: that chapter from two thousand and six. Let's go back
Speaker 2: and maybe take one more look at the classification for
Speaker 2: what is and for what is not a planet. Wes,
Speaker 2: I think you mis mentioned this to me before we
Speaker 2: went on air today, that some of those some of
Speaker 2: those conditions don't match some of the other planets that
Speaker 2: are already in the Solar.
Speaker 4: System, including Earth, including Earth, and including Jupiter, which quite
Speaker 4: honestly is the most planity planet you can imagine. It's
Speaker 4: about as planety as you can get and of course
Speaker 4: you know the one that's got people on it. I mean,
Speaker 4: those are the two most planity planets.
Speaker 2: A couple of pretty planty planets there. So anyway, so yeah,
Speaker 2: so they're gonna go back and they're gonna look at
Speaker 2: that circumstance again. They're gonna they're gonna reevaluate that scientific
Speaker 2: criteria and maybe send one more requisition up to the
Speaker 2: International Astronomical Union the IAU, the governing body for deciding
Speaker 2: what is and what is not a planet, and maybe
Speaker 2: let them reevaluate that one more time. Now, what what
Speaker 2: do you think the odds are in twenty twenty six?
Speaker 2: The IAU going, oh, yeah, those folks over in America,
Speaker 2: they've got a good point. Let's go with what they say.
Speaker 2: Doesn't feel likely right now, but okay, there it is.
Speaker 2: Maybe it also might.
Speaker 4: And this is just you know, we don't do politics,
Speaker 4: but just on the spirit of just pointing out the
Speaker 4: pr side of it, might not be doing themselves any
Speaker 4: favors by making any sort of statement that sounds like
Speaker 4: anything on a red hat just for the purposes of
Speaker 4: international science. That might not be helping the cause. No
Speaker 4: matter where you stand on the red hat, we're not
Speaker 4: making necessarily a statement on that. We're just saying it
Speaker 4: might be a better way to word it just for
Speaker 4: the purposes of a campaign to get behind it. But
Speaker 4: that's just my two cents on them.
Speaker 2: That phrase might play well with a senator from Kansas,
Speaker 2: I'm sure it would, and it probably would play well
Speaker 2: for I don't know about half the country, but we're
Speaker 2: not talking about the country.
Speaker 4: We're talking about sending this overseas to sign serious doubts.
Speaker 2: If that's going to play well in front of the
Speaker 2: International Astronomical.
Speaker 4: Union's that's I just feel like, yeah, that's a fair
Speaker 4: way to put it. More made of stars right after this,
Speaker 4: all right, Our next story is one of those stories
Speaker 4: that you see the headline and you go, my gosh,
Speaker 4: this almost sounds like, you know, back in the day,
Speaker 4: one of those atomic era movie titles, the Arctic Tongues
Speaker 4: of Ionization.
Speaker 2: Wow, Wow, beautiful man like that could have that could
Speaker 2: have come off the trailer for the thing. It could
Speaker 2: have this or this the world in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 2: with James Arnest walking around like Frankenstein, or you know,
Speaker 2: throw the Antarctic Station of Science.
Speaker 4: Throw way past his prime. Bell Legosi in there and
Speaker 4: it could be an Edward d. Wood junior movie. You know,
Speaker 4: it's it's very possible.
Speaker 2: But this came from This came from the website spaceweather
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so what are tongues of ionization? This sounds interesting
Speaker 4: and I'm hoping to god this isn't something that they're
Speaker 4: about to reveal to us in this big, you know,
Speaker 4: information drop about aliens that's coming, because it sounds terrifying
Speaker 4: in that regard.
Speaker 2: Arcticus of ionization. Does you know? It feels enough surreal
Speaker 2: that it gives you just a little jolt of fear, like, oh,
Speaker 2: I should pay a tent. It's a news story and
Speaker 2: the headline is something about Arctic tongues of ionization. I
Speaker 2: should pay attention to that, And yeah, you probably should,
Speaker 2: so all right, our good friends from spaceweather dot com
Speaker 2: wrote this. I call them good friends not because we
Speaker 2: know them. I just like we quote them a lot
Speaker 2: on this podcast because they are one of the best
Speaker 2: space news websites out there. Go check out spaceweather dot
Speaker 2: com every chance you get, because they're just great. Doctor
Speaker 2: Tony Phillips and the crew over at space weather dot
Speaker 2: Com all right, So you and I my friend got
Speaker 2: to enjoy a phenomenon in the actual nighttime sky together
Speaker 2: back in May of twenty twenty four. In fact, it
Speaker 2: was May the tenth of twenty twenty four. I remember
Speaker 2: because we were slamming texts back and forth to each other,
Speaker 2: going why is our sky glowing? And the reason it
Speaker 2: was glowing is because there was a giant geomagnetic storm
Speaker 2: that took place on May the tenth. Oddly enough, October
Speaker 2: the tenth of the same year, that was another giant
Speaker 2: geomagnetic storm. And people might be going, okay, well a
Speaker 2: big deal. Northern lights. No, we live in Georgia. Yes,
Speaker 2: these are not northern lights. These are southern lights in
Speaker 2: the direction of north is what they are, which makes
Speaker 2: that of tad unusual. So we saw this geomagnetic storm,
Speaker 2: and the story on spaceweather dot com today is all
Speaker 2: about the big storm that happened in May of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. If you happen to be hanging out in
Speaker 2: Antarctica at that time, there were giant tongues of ionization.
Speaker 2: What does that mean? There were rivers of electric current
Speaker 2: passing through the atmosphere due to all of the impending
Speaker 2: solar radiation on the geomagnetic system here around our own
Speaker 2: Earth that bent down into our atmosphere, that caused these
Speaker 2: rivers of plasma in our own ionosphere that messed up
Speaker 2: the GPS system. Friends, And okay, well all right, can
Speaker 2: we live without you know, Google Maps for a couple hours?
Speaker 2: I mean, what's the big deal? No, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: you're thinking like an American. Think like you're in Antarctica
Speaker 2: and you're in a plane and you're flying over just
Speaker 2: endless ice sheet, and you need to know where you're going,
Speaker 2: and they're fresh out of road signs because it's Antarctica,
Speaker 2: and you're relying on the GPS system, And suddenly the
Speaker 2: GPS system gets so scrambled because of a solar storm
Speaker 2: and it's impending tongues of ionization that you have positional
Speaker 2: errors in your GPS as much as twenty eight meters. Well,
Speaker 2: wait a minue twenty eight meters? What is that ninety feet?
Speaker 2: That doesn't seem like a big deal. No, no, no,
Speaker 2: don't think that way. Think angle right, So it's ninety
Speaker 2: feet off where you're at right now. But then you
Speaker 2: set your angle in an airplane, you might miss the
Speaker 2: you might miss the Antarctic base. That's a problem, right,
Speaker 2: And so what they've done is they've gone and looked
Speaker 2: at these events in space weather that have caused deteriorations
Speaker 2: in the navigational system that is satellite based for positioning
Speaker 2: systems that affect aviation and maritime navigation at high latitudes.
Speaker 2: And we think when we think of high latitudes here
Speaker 2: in the North, we have this north prejudice. We think
Speaker 2: all the Arctic, like near the North Pole. Well, it's
Speaker 2: also high latitudes if you go south right, So high
Speaker 2: latitude in the southern hemisphere is Antarctica. And so they're
Speaker 2: looking at Antarctica and saying, wow, these big solar events
Speaker 2: can really cause dangerous circumstances for anybody who might be
Speaker 2: doing aviation or meritime navigation during a giant solar storm
Speaker 2: with tinging tongues of ionization in the Arctic. So there
Speaker 2: you go, friends, If that's interesting to you, check out
Speaker 2: the story on spaceweather dot com. They actually have the
Speaker 2: actual journal article linked there and check that out too.
Speaker 2: It's pretty interesting. And so you can check out all
Speaker 2: of the inform on how solar storms can wreak havoc
Speaker 2: on navigation in the Arctic and antarcticut. But really the
Speaker 2: solar storm is big enough that starts to move toward
Speaker 2: lower latitudes as well.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about Canada's Poet mission, as they are working
Speaker 4: on looking for Earth size I guess and even larger
Speaker 4: than earth sized exoplanets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of northern latitudes, let's go to Canada.
Speaker 4: There you go. Also, you could have segued it with
Speaker 4: the the art of his two crew, since there was
Speaker 4: a Canadian there on that mission.
Speaker 2: Also, I could have just said something about backbacon that's.
Speaker 4: True too, yes, yes, or silver medals in hockey. But anyway,
Speaker 4: that's probably.
Speaker 2: Still that could have gotten there.
Speaker 4: Probably still stings a mite just.
Speaker 2: A little bit, probably probably a little Yeah, wasn't shatterer yet?
Speaker 2: Never mind? All right, So Canada has proposed a novel
Speaker 2: microsatellite system and you can read about this on Universe
Speaker 2: today dot com. This mission called Poet. Poet of course
Speaker 2: an acronym. Not it's not going to be rhyming. It's
Speaker 2: not going to be laying down the rhymes up there.
Speaker 2: No no no wrap battles. Well, I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 2: it could still have a rap battle for more. But
Speaker 2: I suppose. But the acronym for POE is photometric Observations
Speaker 2: of Exoplanet transits, which has a poetry all its own
Speaker 2: in scientific lingo.
Speaker 4: You know, and as far as uh, you know, space
Speaker 4: related acronyms go, that's not too bad.
Speaker 2: Let's break this down. Photometric means the measurement of brightness.
Speaker 2: Observations means, okay, you know that one. Exoplanets are planets
Speaker 2: around other stars, and transits are when planets around other
Speaker 2: stars pass in front of the parent star or in
Speaker 2: other words, on a line between that parent star and
Speaker 2: the Earth. So as viewed from Earth, that little planet
Speaker 2: is passing in front of its parent star's face and
Speaker 2: it's blocking the parent star's face out for a bit.
Speaker 2: And we can tell that with tell scopes that do
Speaker 2: photometry and make observations so that they have poet photometric
Speaker 2: observations of exoplanet transits. This mission, however, is not just
Speaker 2: designed to find exoplanets. It's designed to find a certain
Speaker 2: class of exoplanets, and these are specifically Earth sized objects
Speaker 2: or perhaps super Earth's. What's a super Earth, Well, it's
Speaker 2: it's a rocky planet that might have some Earth like
Speaker 2: conditions that may be bigger than our planet Earth, but
Speaker 2: smaller than say, Uranus. All right, so it's that sized
Speaker 2: planet orbiting small cool stars. End of story. These are
Speaker 2: stars smaller than our sun. Why would we pick those?
Speaker 2: And by the way, they call these ultracool dwarfs, that's
Speaker 2: an astronomical term. It's not referring to people. Researchers refer
Speaker 2: to these stars as ultra cool dwarfs. Dwarf stars are
Speaker 2: the smallest of the stars that are still stars. In
Speaker 2: other words, they still have fusion going on in their core.
Speaker 2: They're not nearly as big and bright as our sun,
Speaker 2: and our sun is not nearly as big and bright
Speaker 2: as the stars on the top end of the of
Speaker 2: the categorization for stars. So the categoration for categorization for
Speaker 2: stars has a sort of non alphabet letter order to
Speaker 2: it that astronomy students in into astronomy class have had
Speaker 2: to learn for a long time, and it goes like this,
Speaker 2: ob a f gkm O b A f gkm O
Speaker 2: stars the hottest, most massive, most short lived violent stars
Speaker 2: O stars. They usually end up in supernov explosions in
Speaker 2: a very short period of time, kind of like the
Speaker 2: James Dean Live Fast Die young kinds of stars out
Speaker 2: there in the galaxy. That's the stars B like that,
Speaker 2: but a little smaller. A. It's starting to get a
Speaker 2: little bit more sunlight like Sun, like our Sun, but
Speaker 2: still fairly large ob A. They're very much like the Sun,
Speaker 2: but just a little bit bigger. OBAFG. Well that's G
Speaker 2: is the Sun. So the Sun is a G type star.
Speaker 2: So you have OBAFG, and then K and M are
Speaker 2: the smallest end of that scale. Those are the dwarf stars.
Speaker 2: Giant stars are up there in the OB section. Dwarf
Speaker 2: stars are down there in the KM section, and so
Speaker 2: those are the smallest stars. Now why would the Poet
Speaker 2: Space Mission go after the dwarfs Because when an Earth
Speaker 2: sized planet passes in front of that tiny star, it
Speaker 2: makes a bigger dip in the overall stars light, and
Speaker 2: so therefore it's a little easier to detect. Plus the
Speaker 2: outcome is a little bit more interesting because then it's
Speaker 2: an Earth sized planet. And we want to know planets
Speaker 2: out there that are like Earth because we have this,
Speaker 2: we have this notion in the back of our minds
Speaker 2: that if we find planets that are about the same
Speaker 2: size as Earth and might be in that kind of
Speaker 2: Goldilocks zone around a smaller cooler star, which is a
Speaker 2: bigger Goldilocks zone by the way, because the star is cooler.
Speaker 2: Then if those are the if statements, then it might
Speaker 2: have life, right, and so these might be good planet
Speaker 2: candidates to find life. So anyway, all right, So the
Speaker 2: Poet Mission currently slated to be launched from the Great
Speaker 2: White North somewhere in twenty twenty nine, and we will
Speaker 2: hope that they are they are successful in locating Earth
Speaker 2: like planets. The most recent study done that we're discussing
Speaker 2: now again on Universeday. Dot Com a good place to
Speaker 2: go see the story. It's an effort to locate the
Speaker 2: kinds of stars and the kinds of exoplanets that we
Speaker 2: might want to look at, potential targets and potential outcomes.
Speaker 2: That's the that's the latest research coming out about the
Speaker 2: Poet Mission from Canada.
Speaker 4: Side note, My favorite UH poem of all time is
Speaker 4: by poet Rolf Nelson who did the great Haiku Hi
Speaker 4: KuPS are easy, but sometimes they don't make sense. Refrigerator.
Speaker 4: That's my kind of poem.
Speaker 2: My question is, did William Shatner ever read that on
Speaker 2: one of his albums?
Speaker 4: I mean, we could try to make it happen.
Speaker 2: He did a lot of great Canadian poetry.
Speaker 4: I'll reach out see if we can't make it happen,
Speaker 4: then I think that would be a fantastic addition to
Speaker 4: any poetry reading. More made of Stars right after this,
Speaker 4: let's talk about the floating mountains on the Sun. Is
Speaker 4: this part of the giant ionization tongues or whatever? How
Speaker 4: do we got mountains tongues? What's going on?
Speaker 2: Here's what I can tell you is there is a connection,
Speaker 2: and you are very astute. I try hear that connection out,
Speaker 2: my friend. So congratulations on being a stute and pointing
Speaker 2: out the connection between Arctic tongues of ionization and floating
Speaker 2: mountains on the Sun. Because here's what they have in common,
Speaker 2: the Sun. Yeah, they have in common. Now, what it
Speaker 2: points to is they're both connected to the activity cycle
Speaker 2: on the Sun. And as West pointed out, these giant prominences,
Speaker 2: which are features that lift off the side of the
Speaker 2: Sun and can be observed with solar telescopes. Great examples
Speaker 2: of those on Universe today dot com. Again, So a
Speaker 2: second story from Universe today dot com. The title of
Speaker 2: that article on Universityday dot com is the Sun's impossible
Speaker 2: floating mountains. But what they're really talking about are solar
Speaker 2: prominences and solar prominences. One of the reasons they're compared
Speaker 2: to mountains, you know in this headline, is that they
Speaker 2: can pain approximately the same mass as Mount Everest, so
Speaker 2: they're not small, but that mass is stretched out over
Speaker 2: a super gigantic area, so they are very low density
Speaker 2: either loops or kind of linear features sticking up off
Speaker 2: the edge of the Sun. We observe these from our
Speaker 2: own solar telescope here at the Coca Cola Space Science Center,
Speaker 2: so we actually have observations of solar prominences that our
Speaker 2: students and faculty have made right here from our observatory
Speaker 2: at Space Science Center. So the interesting thing about these,
Speaker 2: according to a new study by the Max Planck Institute
Speaker 2: for Solar System Research in Germany, is there's a reason
Speaker 2: why they hang around a long time. Some of these
Speaker 2: loops can go on for weeks or even months, suspended
Speaker 2: above the solar atmosphere, which is that kind of top
Speaker 2: layer is what we call the photosphere, and they appear
Speaker 2: to be suspended with no touching connection, so you can
Speaker 2: see them above the photosphere. Without being able to see
Speaker 2: the kind of the legs or the physical connection to
Speaker 2: that photosphere. That's because they're hanging in magnetic loops. Now, listen,
Speaker 2: that's not the new piece. We knew this already. We
Speaker 2: knew that they were in powerful magnetic fields. What we
Speaker 2: didn't know is how long they could be sustained and
Speaker 2: what is actually causing the sustaining processes. Well, the new
Speaker 2: research from Max Blanc Institute is that there are on
Speaker 2: the surface supporting loops of magnetic field that feed into
Speaker 2: that prominence and continue to supply the material that hangs
Speaker 2: in that solar loop for those weeks or even months
Speaker 2: of time. And we didn't really understand that that was
Speaker 2: the flow process. But now it looks like, based on
Speaker 2: new computer simulations from Moxplunk, that it's those ground loops
Speaker 2: are not ground, but the photosphere level loops that are
Speaker 2: feeding the giant floating loops with new material that cause
Speaker 2: them to hang for such long periods of time and
Speaker 2: sustain them for more than you know, hours or days,
Speaker 2: but on into weeks or months. So a much more
Speaker 2: complicated process than we understood being explored and sorted out
Speaker 2: by the folks at Max plumkins toute. Remember that when
Speaker 2: these loops collapse, that's when you have giant solar flares
Speaker 2: that occur. So that's one of the ways that solar
Speaker 2: flares can be initiated on the Sun. And when they
Speaker 2: are initiated, then they can have coronal mass ejections as
Speaker 2: the result of that, which then throws all that particle
Speaker 2: radiation at the Earth and causes you guessed it, arctic
Speaker 2: tongues of ionization in Antarctica. So it is all tied,
Speaker 2: as mister Carroll has suggested. And so there you go.
Speaker 2: We're all connected. Friends, You me, loops on the Sun,
Speaker 2: Arctic tongues of ionization. We're all just one big, one
Speaker 2: big solar system out there.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about what's going on at Columbus State University's
Speaker 4: Coca Cola Space Science Center. A concert is just days
Speaker 4: away now.
Speaker 2: And that's part of the solar system too, along with Pluto.
Speaker 4: It is all just and when you can connect a
Speaker 4: musical instrument to graphics on a screen above, it's kind
Speaker 4: of the same thing, right.
Speaker 2: It's good, it's good, And that's exactly what's gonna happen
Speaker 2: the next Tuesday coming up, which is May the fifth,
Speaker 2: We're gonna on Tuesday evening, we're gonna be having our
Speaker 2: next Music under the Dome concert event. But this one's
Speaker 2: going to be just a little bit different. It's going
Speaker 2: to feature a special guest and musical artist, Dan Tepfer
Speaker 2: from New York City coming down to visit us here
Speaker 2: a Coca Cola Space Science Center and Columbus, Georgia. The
Speaker 2: reason Dan's coming is because in our planetarium we have
Speaker 2: a disc Levier nine foot concert grand piano from Yamaha,
Speaker 2: a very generous gift to clumb State University from Gail Greenblatt,
Speaker 2: who's one of CSU's amazing supporters. That piano has a
Speaker 2: unique feature. It is a concert grand and it plays
Speaker 2: just fine all on its own when people are playing it,
Speaker 2: but it has the additional capability of being hooked up
Speaker 2: to electronics and being able to send out electronic control
Speaker 2: signals that can generate images on the dome of the
Speaker 2: planetarium as well. And the world's leading expert in interfacing
Speaker 2: these kinds of digital instruments with large format screens like
Speaker 2: our planetarium is Dan Teffer and that's who's going to
Speaker 2: be here. So Dan will be performing our music under
Speaker 2: the Dome Concert on May fifth. That concert begins about
Speaker 2: five thirty if you buy tickets, the reception begins at
Speaker 2: five with wine and cheese. There are still a handful
Speaker 2: of tickets left online. However, there are a few tickets
Speaker 2: left day of the show as well. Friends, this is
Speaker 2: an amazing concert experience, unlike anything that you've seen before.
Speaker 2: You might say, well, wait a minute, I saw dot
Speaker 2: Dan Tepfer last year when he came, Yes you did.
Speaker 2: Dan was performing solo at that concert. This time, he's
Speaker 2: actually going to be performing in conjunction with the students
Speaker 2: and faculty from the Shwob School of Music. So they're
Speaker 2: gonna have a few of the musicians from Schwob here
Speaker 2: at Columbus State University performing live with Dan Tepfer at
Speaker 2: that event. It's a one off. It's unique. Come down
Speaker 2: and check it out. You can find out more about
Speaker 2: this concert and all the ticket information at our website.
Speaker 2: Visit www dot cc s SC dot org. Charlie Charlie
Speaker 2: SamSam Charlie dot org. And yes, I know you no
Speaker 2: longer have to type the w's, but I still say
Speaker 2: it that way anyway, just to get your attention so
Speaker 2: you don't say, what was that first letter? He said,
Speaker 2: just www dot Here comes cc SSC dot org.
Speaker 4: Sean, and I thank you for listening, and we will
Speaker 4: do this again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbus
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