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.
Speaker 2: The night sky.
Speaker 3: So I want you to just imagine for a second,
Speaker 3: stepping outside on a really crisp, clear.
Speaker 2: Night mm hm, the kind of where the stars just
Speaker 2: kind of.
Speaker 3: Pop exactly, and you look up and you find the
Speaker 3: constellation Orion.
Speaker 2: Right, highly recognizable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you look at Orion's right shoulder, that glowing
Speaker 3: kind of reddish orange dot, beetle goose, beetlejuice. Right. Humanity
Speaker 3: has been staring at the specific star for millennia, But
Speaker 3: it turns out it's been keeping this absolutely massive secret,
Speaker 3: a really massive one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, think about it this way. If you took
Speaker 3: our sun, the blindingly bright center of our entire solar system,
Speaker 3: and you just dropped it right next to Beetlejuice, our
Speaker 3: Sun would be completely invisible.
Speaker 2: Entirely erased by the glare, right.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't be able to see it with the naked eye,
Speaker 3: and honestly, you would struggle to see it with our
Speaker 3: most advanced telescopes, which kind of explains this really uncomfortable
Speaker 3: reality in modern astronomy.
Speaker 2: It's very humbling, honestly, totally.
Speaker 3: For the last hundred years, a massive star up to
Speaker 3: three times the size of our Sun has just been
Speaker 3: hiding in plain sight right there, orbiting Orion's shoulder, and.
Speaker 2: We didn't definitively find it until right now.
Speaker 3: It's wild. So today we're unpacking the stunning conclusion to
Speaker 3: this century long astronomical quest. We are breaking down the
Speaker 3: definitive discovery of batel gouse b, the hidden companion star, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the hidden companion. We're going to track the historical suspicions,
Speaker 3: like why we even thought there was a hidden star
Speaker 3: in the first place.
Speaker 2: Right, because the clues were always there exactly.
Speaker 3: I will analyze the mechanics of that crazy false alarm
Speaker 3: from a few years ago.
Speaker 2: Oh, the great dimming when everyone thought it was going to.
Speaker 3: Explode, Yes, when everyone was panicking about a supernova. And
Speaker 3: then we're going deep into the specific optical physics and
Speaker 3: the planet hunting technology that finally allowed astronomers in the
Speaker 3: Atacoma Desert to capture a direct image of this thing.
Speaker 2: Because the implications here they go far beyond just solving
Speaker 2: an old mystery. Oh, for sure, finding a companion star
Speaker 2: of this magnitude hiding in the glare of a highly
Speaker 2: evolved supergen in it introduces a whole new set of
Speaker 2: incredibly high stakes physics. The eventual death of Beetlegoose, which
Speaker 2: we know is coming, is going to be fundamentally altered
Speaker 2: by the presence of this neighbor.
Speaker 3: So to understand why finding beetlejuice Bee is such a
Speaker 3: massive paradigm shift, we really have to establish the baseline
Speaker 3: of Beatleges itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have to talk about the scale.
Speaker 3: The scale is just it's hard to wrap your head around.
Speaker 3: The reason astronomers have spent nearly a century frustrat by
Speaker 3: the star comes down to sheer physical dominance. It's a
Speaker 3: red supergin, right. If you dropped Batylviews into the center
Speaker 3: of our Solar system, its surface would extend out past
Speaker 3: the orbit of Jupiter.
Speaker 2: Just swallows everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, the asteroid belt all completely
Speaker 3: gone inside the star, and that.
Speaker 2: Scale dictates everything about how we observe it. We are
Speaker 2: dealing with a bloated, highly evolved star that's in the
Speaker 2: final stages of its life cycle.
Speaker 3: Right, it's running out of gas exactly.
Speaker 2: And because it's so massive and relatively close to us,
Speaker 2: I mean roughly six hundred and fifty light years away,
Speaker 2: it is one of the brightest objects in our.
Speaker 3: Sky, with that really unmistakable reddish orange color.
Speaker 2: Right. But the defining characteristic of Beetlejuice, the quirk that
Speaker 2: caught the attention of everyone from ancient aboriginal astronomers to
Speaker 2: like Sir John Herschel in the eighteen thirties, is its variability.
Speaker 3: It doesn't just sit there.
Speaker 2: No, It's brightness is not constant.
Speaker 3: It dims and brightens. And the crucial detail here, the
Speaker 3: thing that really kicked off this whole century long hunt,
Speaker 3: is that it doesn't just flicker randomly. There's a rhythm
Speaker 3: to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In atrophysics, when you plot a star's light curve,
Speaker 2: you know the graph of its brightness over time, and
Speaker 2: you see a repeating, predictable variation, it's a massive red flag.
Speaker 3: It signals a mechanical cycle exactly.
Speaker 2: The star of that magnitude doesn't just change its luminous
Speaker 2: output on a strict schedule without a physical driver.
Speaker 3: Think of it like this. Say you look out your
Speaker 3: window right, and the street light at the end of
Speaker 3: your block.
Speaker 2: Is flickering completely randomly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if it's random, you just assume the internal mechanism
Speaker 3: is breaking down. It's a dying bulb. But if you
Speaker 3: sit there with a stockwatch and you time it, and
Speaker 3: you realize that street light is dimming on a precise,
Speaker 3: predictable schedule, like say, every four hundred days, like clockwork,
Speaker 3: you stop blaming the bolt.
Speaker 2: Right. You assume someone is messing.
Speaker 3: With the power exactly. You assume a neighbor is routinely
Speaker 3: tapping the power line. And for roughly a century, astronomers
Speaker 3: looking at the periodicity of Biddle Juice's brightness suspected a
Speaker 3: stellar neighbor was tapping the line.
Speaker 2: Right. The hypothesis was that as a smaller companion star
Speaker 2: orbited the supergent, its gravity would tug on the larger star.
Speaker 3: Or maybe it was periodically passing through the outer layers
Speaker 3: of the supergen's extended atmosphere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, creating those rhythmic dips in the light. We
Speaker 2: receive on Earth.
Speaker 3: But the frustration here, like the maddening part for astronomers,
Speaker 3: is the gap between mathematical suspicion and visual confirmation.
Speaker 2: Oh it's the worst.
Speaker 3: You can have the light curves, you can track the
Speaker 3: scheduled flicker, but no matter how much you upgrade your lenses,
Speaker 3: the culprit remains completely invisible because.
Speaker 2: Of the sheer luminosity of beetlejuice. I mean, the supurgeon
Speaker 2: is pumping out something like one hundred thousand times more
Speaker 2: photons than our sun. That's it's blinding. Yeah, that contrast
Speaker 2: ratio is the primary enemy of observational astronomy. When you're
Speaker 2: trying to image a faint object next to an incredibly
Speaker 2: bright one, the photons from the bright object literally spill
Speaker 2: over the pixels on your detector.
Speaker 3: It just washes out the faint signal entirely completely.
Speaker 2: So the companion was basically trapped in the mathematical realm.
Speaker 2: We could see the gravitational footprints it was leaving on beetlejuice,
Speaker 2: but we couldn't actually see the star making them.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's actually get into the mechanics of those footprints,
Speaker 3: because before they get to the direct image. They knew
Speaker 3: something was there through something called radial velocity. So how
Speaker 3: exactly does a hidden star leave a measurable footprint in
Speaker 3: the light of the main star.
Speaker 2: It really all comes down to the Doppler effect, but
Speaker 2: applied to starlight.
Speaker 3: Okay, like a police siren changing pitch when it drives
Speaker 3: past you.
Speaker 2: Precisely. So, when two stars orbit each other, they don't
Speaker 2: actually just have one sitting still while the other goes
Speaker 2: around it. They orbit their common center of mass, which
Speaker 2: we call the Berry center. Right now, even though battle
Speaker 2: Juice is immensely massive, the companion still exerts a gravitational
Speaker 2: pull on it, and this causes Bettle Juwe to wobble
Speaker 2: slightly as it moves through space.
Speaker 3: So they're both doing this kind of slightly off center
Speaker 3: waltz together exactly, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And we can measure that wobble using spectroscopy. We take
Speaker 2: the light from Batel Duice and we spread it out
Speaker 2: into a spectrum like.
Speaker 3: A rainbow, like shining it through a prism.
Speaker 2: Right and in that spectrum there are dark lines absorption
Speaker 2: lines that are created by specific elements in the star's
Speaker 2: atmosphere absorbing specific wavelengths of light, like a barcode perfect analogy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a barcode as bettle juice wobbles toward Earth, those barcode
Speaker 2: lines shift slightly toward the blue end of the spectrum
Speaker 2: because the light waves are getting.
Speaker 3: Compressed, and then as it wobbles away from us.
Speaker 2: The lines shift toward the red end because the waves
Speaker 2: are getting stretched out.
Speaker 3: So by meticulously tracking how those dark barcode lines slide
Speaker 3: back and forth over decades of observation, astronomers could calculate
Speaker 3: the exact gravitational pull required to cause that specific wobble exactly.
Speaker 2: They basically mapped the invisible orbit, could determined the orbital period,
Speaker 2: the eccentricity of the orbit, and theoretically, the mass of
Speaker 2: the hidden companion that had to be causing the wobble.
Speaker 3: Okay, but wait, I'm going to push back on this
Speaker 3: right here. Sure you just said they use this radial
Speaker 3: velocity data to calculate the mass of the companion, and
Speaker 3: based on that math, for years, the astronomical community predicted
Speaker 3: the companion would be roughly one solar mass, so about
Speaker 3: the size of our Sun. Right, but the brand new
Speaker 3: discovery that we're talking about today confirmed the star is
Speaker 3: actually two to three times that.
Speaker 2: Mass, yeah, much bigger.
Speaker 3: So how can the spectroscopic math be so perfectly accurate
Speaker 3: about the orbit and the location but miss the actual
Speaker 3: mass of the object by a factor of three?
Speaker 2: Ah. That points to one of the most notorious ambiguities
Speaker 2: in all of astrophysics. It's called the inclination angle, or
Speaker 2: often the sign do degeneracy.
Speaker 3: Okay, break that down for us. Why does the angle
Speaker 3: matter so much?
Speaker 2: Well, radio velocity only measures movement along our specific line
Speaker 2: of sight, so directly toward us or directly away from us, right,
Speaker 2: It tells us absolutely nothing about the star's movement up, down, left, right,
Speaker 2: across the sky.
Speaker 3: Okay, So imagine you're looking at a Merry Go Round.
Speaker 2: Yes, perfect, If you're.
Speaker 3: Looking at it perfectly edge on, you can clearly see
Speaker 3: the horses moving directly toward you and directly away from
Speaker 3: you exactly.
Speaker 2: That is a ninety degree inclination. You're getting the full
Speaker 2: velocity measurement.
Speaker 3: But if I'm hovering in a helicopter looking at that
Speaker 3: same Merry Go Round from directly above, so a zero
Speaker 3: degree inclination, the horses are just moving in a circle
Speaker 3: across my field of view.
Speaker 2: They are never moving towards you or away from you right,
Speaker 2: and therefore your radio velocity measurement would be zero, even
Speaker 2: though the Merry Go Round is spinning rapidly.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when we look at a binary star system
Speaker 2: out in deep space, we almost never know the exact
Speaker 2: tilt of the orbit relative to Earth. The spectroscopic wobble
Speaker 2: only gives us the minimum possible mass of the companion.
Speaker 3: Because if the orbit is tilted relative to our line
Speaker 3: of sight, the true mass has to be higher to
Speaker 3: produce the wobble we're measuring.
Speaker 2: Ailed it. The astronomers who predicted a one solar mass
Speaker 2: companion assumed a fairly edge on orbit. But because Beetlejew's
Speaker 2: b turned out to be nearly three solar masses, we
Speaker 2: now know the orbit must be significantly tilted.
Speaker 3: So the math wasn't wrong. It was just incomplete due
Speaker 3: to our fixed vantage point in.
Speaker 2: The cosmo exactly we're stuck here on Earth.
Speaker 3: It's fascinating how a physical limitation of our perspective entirely
Speaker 3: masked the true nature of the star for one hundred years.
Speaker 3: It really is, and it's wild because just as researchers
Speaker 3: were aggressively dialing in on these orbital predictions, Beetle Jews
Speaker 3: decided to throw this massive curveball that derailed the hunt
Speaker 3: and triggered a global panic. Oh yes, we have to
Speaker 3: talk about the great dimming.
Speaker 2: This is such a critical chapter in the story because
Speaker 2: it highlights just how volatile red supergins are and it
Speaker 2: perfectly sets the stage for the specific team that ultimately
Speaker 2: found the companion.
Speaker 3: Right, So, a few years ago Beetle Jews underwent this
Speaker 3: completely unprecedented drop in luminosity.
Speaker 2: Is visible to the naked eye. Anyone could go outside
Speaker 2: and see it.
Speaker 3: The star lost a massive fraction of its brightness in
Speaker 3: a matter of weeks, and I remember the absolute frenzy
Speaker 3: in the astronomical community.
Speaker 2: Oh, Twitter was going crazy.
Speaker 3: Because Beetlejewice is a known ticking time bomb. It has
Speaker 3: exhausted the hydrogen fuel in its core, it's burning heavier elements,
Speaker 3: and it is on a one way trip to a
Speaker 3: core collapse supernova.
Speaker 2: Right, And when a star with that specific doomed profile
Speaker 2: suddenly drops in brightness, the immediate assumption is that the
Speaker 2: engine is.
Speaker 3: Failing, core is destabilizing.
Speaker 2: Exactly, the explosion is imminent.
Speaker 3: So the scientific tension centered on whether we were witnessing
Speaker 3: an intrinsic change or an extrinsic change.
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, an intrinsic change would mean the internal thermodynamics
Speaker 2: of the star were actually failing, like perhaps the outward
Speaker 2: radiation pressure that holds the star against its own gravity
Speaker 2: had suddenly dropped.
Speaker 3: Which is the precursor to collapse exactly.
Speaker 2: But an extrinsic change would mean the star's internal engine
Speaker 2: was totally fine, but something physical moved between the star
Speaker 2: and our telescopes, basically blocking the photons.
Speaker 3: So to solve this, French researcher Miguel Montage and his
Speaker 3: team secured observation time on the very large telescope the VLT,
Speaker 3: down in Chile, and they didn't just measure the light.
Speaker 3: They actually managed to resolve the surface of Beetlejuice to
Speaker 3: see what was happening.
Speaker 2: Which is incredible. Resolving the surface of any star other
Speaker 2: than our own sun is an extreme technical achievement.
Speaker 3: Because they're usually just points of light.
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, even the biggest telescopes usually you see a dot.
Speaker 2: But because Beetle Juice is so physically massive and relatively close,
Speaker 2: the VLT could capture its actual disc Wow, and what
Speaker 2: Montage's team discovered debunked the supernova panic completely. The dimming
Speaker 2: was not an internal collapse, it was a massive, localized
Speaker 2: extrinsic block.
Speaker 3: They found out the star had essentially burped out a
Speaker 3: massive cloud of gas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a huge burp. We need to look at the
Speaker 2: flow dynamics of a red supergent to understand how violent
Speaker 2: that burp actually was.
Speaker 3: Okay, set the scene.
Speaker 2: So, Unlike our Sun, which has millions of relatively small
Speaker 2: convection cells boiling on its surface kind of like a
Speaker 2: pot of boiling water, a bloated supergent, like beetlejuice, has
Speaker 2: convection cells that are just staggeringly huge. A single one
Speaker 2: can cover a huge fraction of the star's entire surface.
Speaker 2: We are talking about bubbles of boiling plasma the size
Speaker 2: of our inner solar systm.
Speaker 3: Wait, really just one bubble, Just.
Speaker 2: One bubble rising from the interior, releasing heat and sinking
Speaker 2: back down.
Speaker 3: Okay, So one of these colossal convection cells breaches the
Speaker 3: surface and violently ejects a massive plume of stellar material
Speaker 3: deep into space.
Speaker 2: Yes, a massive bubble of hot gas is blown off
Speaker 2: the star, and as this plume travels rapidly away from
Speaker 2: the intense heat the photosphere, the thermodynamics drop sharply. It
Speaker 2: cools down. It cools down very fast. And when stellar gas,
Speaker 2: which contains elements like silicon, oxygen, and carbon, cools past
Speaker 2: a specific temperature threshold, it undergoes a phase change. The
Speaker 2: gas condenses into solid particulates.
Speaker 3: So it quite literally turns into rock and soot in
Speaker 3: the vacuum of space.
Speaker 2: Exactly, it forms silicon dust. Yeah, and this immense cloud
Speaker 2: of newly formed dust happened to condense directly in our
Speaker 2: line of sight, physically eclipsing the southern hemisphere of the star.
Speaker 3: Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: It absorbed the visible light from Beetle jews and re
Speaker 2: emitted it in the infrared, which caused the dramatic dimming
Speaker 2: we saw on Earth.
Speaker 3: It basically created its own eclipse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, supernova, just localized atmospheric chaos, resulting in a
Speaker 2: dust cloud.
Speaker 3: Now, while that might have disappointed the people hoping to
Speaker 3: see a star explode in our lifetime, the scientific yield
Speaker 3: from that event.
Speaker 2: Was vital, oh absolutely crucial.
Speaker 3: Because it forced Montage and his team to become intimately
Speaker 3: familiar with the optical quirks of Beetle Juice.
Speaker 2: Right. They learned how to handle the overwhelming glare of
Speaker 2: its surface, how to process the noise in the data,
Speaker 2: and how to push the VLT to its absolute limits.
Speaker 3: They basically forged the exact specific skill set required to
Speaker 3: hunt down the companion star.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and once the dust cleared, literally, the focus shifted
Speaker 2: back to that century old.
Speaker 3: Mystery because the periodicity was still there, still there, the
Speaker 3: radial velocity wobble was still there, but they needed a
Speaker 3: highly specific window to actually attempt a direct observation. You
Speaker 3: can't just point the VLT at Beetlejuice on a random
Speaker 3: Tuesday and hope to spot the companion.
Speaker 2: No, you need a treasure map.
Speaker 3: Right, And in twenty twenty four, two robust astronomical studies
Speaker 3: essentially provided that map.
Speaker 2: They synthesized decades of astrometric and radial velocity data by
Speaker 2: meticulously mapping the gravitational wobble we talked about. They reconstructed
Speaker 2: the invisible orbit.
Speaker 3: They didn't just confirm the companion's existence, they calculated its
Speaker 3: exact orbital trajectory.
Speaker 2: Yes, and they predicted that in December of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: the companion would reach a very specific geometric point known
Speaker 2: as maximum elongation.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is the critical physical concept that made the
Speaker 3: discovery possible. Let's map out maximum elongation for everyone. Why
Speaker 3: does the physical distance the visual separation from the main
Speaker 3: star dictate whether or not we can see it.
Speaker 2: It comes right back to the contrast ratio and the
Speaker 2: physical limits of our optics. The anglier separation between the
Speaker 2: primary star and the companion, as viewed from Earth is
Speaker 2: incredibly small.
Speaker 3: Because they're six hundred and fifty light years away.
Speaker 2: Exactly so, when the companion is moving through the part
Speaker 2: of its orbit that brings it in front of or
Speaker 2: behind Beetle Juice, the angular separation is virtually zero. The
Speaker 2: light of the companion is entirely swallowed by the diffraction
Speaker 2: halo of the supergent.
Speaker 3: It's like trying to spot a single faint firefly buzzing
Speaker 3: around a massive stadium floodlight. Perfect If the firefly is
Speaker 3: hovering just an inch from the glass of the floodlight,
Speaker 3: it is completely consumed by the glare. You have absolutely
Speaker 3: zero chance of resolving the light of the insect against
Speaker 3: the millions of lumens pouring out of the bulb. Right
Speaker 3: your only hope is to wait for the exact moment
Speaker 3: the firefly flies a few feet away from the bulb
Speaker 3: out toward the very edge of the floodlight's beam.
Speaker 2: And maximum elong is that exact moment. It is the
Speaker 2: point in the orbit where the physical geometry places the
Speaker 2: companion at its widest possible apparent distance from the primary star.
Speaker 2: From our perspective here on Earth.
Speaker 3: It maximizes the angular separation. So the twenty twenty four
Speaker 3: mathematical models basically provided Montage and his team with a
Speaker 3: definitive deadline. They mapped the orbit and said the firefly
Speaker 3: will be at the edge of the floodlight's beam in
Speaker 3: December twenty twenty four. If you want to take a picture,
Speaker 3: this is your only window before the orbit carries it
Speaker 3: back into the glare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we gave them the win, but knowing when to
Speaker 2: look is useless if you lack the optical hardware to
Speaker 2: overcome the fundamental physics of light diffraction.
Speaker 3: Which is where the story shifts to the engineering marvel
Speaker 3: of the VLT and a specific instrument called sphere. Yes,
Speaker 3: let's break down the VLT, the very Large telescope located
Speaker 3: in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the location itself is
Speaker 3: basically half the technology, right.
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, yeah. You need an environment that removes it
Speaker 2: as much of Earth's atmosphere from the equation as possible.
Speaker 3: Because atmosphere is the enemy of astronomy.
Speaker 2: The ATA comma is one of the highest driest environments
Speaker 2: on the planet. Atmospheric water vapor absorbs light and atmosphere
Speaker 2: turbulence you know, hot and cold pockets of air mixing
Speaker 2: together that bends and distorted starlight.
Speaker 3: It's what causes stars to twinkle, right, And for.
Speaker 2: An astronomer, trying to resolve a faint companion star next
Speaker 2: to a supergent twinkling is catastrophic. It smears the light
Speaker 2: all across the detector.
Speaker 3: But even in the auta comma, you still have some
Speaker 3: atmosphere to punch through. You're not in space, and more importantly,
Speaker 3: you still have the overwhelming blinding glare of beetle juice
Speaker 3: itself to deal with, which.
Speaker 2: Is where the sphere instrument comes in. Anthony Baccaletti, a
Speaker 2: co author on the new study, pointed out something really fascinating.
Speaker 2: Sphere was not designed to look at aging superdians. No, No,
Speaker 2: it is an exoplanet hunting tool.
Speaker 3: Oh Wow, so they repurposed it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the crossover an application is brilliant. Finding a
Speaker 2: Jupiter sized planet orbiting a distant stars the exact same
Speaker 2: optical challenge as finding a massive companion star orbiting an
Speaker 2: impossibly bright supergion.
Speaker 3: Because in both cases, the primary star is billions of
Speaker 3: times brighter than the target.
Speaker 2: Exactly to reveal the target, you must artificially suppress the
Speaker 2: light of the primary star.
Speaker 3: But how exactly does sphere suppress the light of a
Speaker 3: star that bright without blinding the rest of the image.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know we can block light physically, like
Speaker 3: holding your hand up to the sun to see an airplane,
Speaker 3: but at an astronomical scale, diffraction must cause the light
Speaker 3: waves to bleed around the edges of whatever block you use, Right,
Speaker 3: how do they solve the physics of the light bending
Speaker 3: around the mass?
Speaker 2: That is the defining genius of a coronagraph, which is
Speaker 2: the absolute heart of the sphere instrument. It doesn't just
Speaker 2: use a simple physical block. It uses a series of
Speaker 2: highly engineered optical masks and stops to actively manage the
Speaker 2: diffraction of light waves.
Speaker 3: Okay, walk me through this. Walk through the path of
Speaker 3: the light as it enters the telescope.
Speaker 2: Right First, the light from beetlejuice enters the primary mirror
Speaker 2: of the VLT, but before it reaches the chronograph, it
Speaker 2: passes through an adaptive optic system.
Speaker 3: Okay, to fix the twinkling exactly.
Speaker 2: This is crucial for correcting that atmospheric smearing we just discussed.
Speaker 2: The VLT actually fires a powerful laser into the upper atmosphere.
Speaker 3: A laser.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It excites sodium atoms in the mesosphere to create
Speaker 2: an artificial guide star.
Speaker 3: A fake star that uses a reference point.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and a sensor measures exactly how the atmosphere is
Speaker 2: distorting the light of that artificial guide star thousands of
Speaker 2: times a second.
Speaker 3: That's crazy fast, it has to be ya.
Speaker 2: It feeds that distortion data to a deformable mirror inside
Speaker 2: the telescope. This mirror has hundreds of tiny actuators behind
Speaker 2: it that physically change the shape of the mirror surface
Speaker 2: in real time.
Speaker 3: Wait, they bend the mirror.
Speaker 2: They constantly ripple and bend the glass, perfectly countering the
Speaker 2: atmospheric turbulence. It essentially flattens the light waves back out,
Speaker 2: removing the twinkle entirely.
Speaker 3: So now you have a perfectly sharp, pristine beam of
Speaker 3: light from Beetlejuice entering the coronagraph.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the beam hits a focal plane mask. This
Speaker 2: is a tiny opaque dot precisely aligned to block the
Speaker 2: central core of Beetlejuice's.
Speaker 3: Light, the hand locking the sun right.
Speaker 2: But as you pointed out, light acts as a wave.
Speaker 2: When it hits the edge of that opaque dot, it diffracts.
Speaker 2: It bends around the mask, creating a series of bright
Speaker 2: concentric rings called an airy pattern.
Speaker 3: So it leaks.
Speaker 2: It leaks badly. If you stop there, those diffraction rings
Speaker 2: will completely wash out the companion star.
Speaker 3: The light bleeds over, So how do you clean up
Speaker 3: the bleed?
Speaker 2: The light passes through a second lens which refocuses the beam,
Speaker 2: and then it hits a lio stop. A lio stop, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a highly specific aperture placed further down the optical
Speaker 2: path that is mathematically designed to block those diffracted light
Speaker 2: rings while letting the rest of the light pass through.
Speaker 2: It essentially clips the noisy edges off the light beam.
Speaker 3: You are physically stripping away the glare a layer by
Speaker 3: layer using wave optics.
Speaker 2: It's pievable engineering. But even with adaptive optics in a
Speaker 2: perfect coronagraph. The suppression is never one hundred percent perfect.
Speaker 3: There's always some noise leftover.
Speaker 2: Always there are microscopic imperfections in the mirrors, slight thermal
Speaker 2: shifts in the instrument itself, resulting in a residual halo
Speaker 2: of scattered light. We call it speckel noise.
Speaker 3: And let me guess, these speckles can look exactly like
Speaker 3: a faint companion star.
Speaker 2: Exactly like it. So when Montages and his team look
Speaker 2: through Sphere in December twenty twenty four during that maximum
Speaker 2: elongation window, they don't just see a clean image of
Speaker 2: beetle juiced bee sitting there in the dark.
Speaker 3: They just see static.
Speaker 2: They capture the raw data, which looks like a chaotic,
Speaker 2: noisy halo of residual light. The actual discovery happens during
Speaker 2: the post processing phase, which takes months of intense computational labor. Months.
Speaker 2: The use a technique called angular differential imaging or EIGHTYI.
Speaker 3: How does ADI separate the fake speckles of noise from
Speaker 3: the actual light of the hidden star.
Speaker 2: It's actually brilliant. It exploits the rotation of the Earth. Okay,
Speaker 2: how as the telescope tracks beetle jews cross the sky
Speaker 2: over several hours, the optical field of view naturally rotates
Speaker 2: relative to the instrument itself. This means the actual astrophysical
Speaker 2: objects like the companion star will slowly rotate through the
Speaker 2: field of view over time.
Speaker 3: But the optical imperfections the speckles caused by the telescope's
Speaker 3: own mirrors.
Speaker 2: They stay fixed in place relative to the detector.
Speaker 3: Oh that is so smart, isn't it.
Speaker 2: By taking hundreds of images over several hours, astronomers can
Speaker 2: run complex algorithms that isolate the static noise and literally
Speaker 2: subtract it out of the sequence.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Once you peel away the static speckel noise, the true
Speaker 2: light of the companion star, which rotated with the sky,
Speaker 2: is finally revealed.
Speaker 3: I really want to focus on the psychological weight of
Speaker 3: those months of data processing for a second. It must
Speaker 3: have been excruciating, right you are, Miguel Montage. Use the
Speaker 3: exact window predicted by the twenty twenty four orbital models.
Speaker 3: You used sphere, the most advanced coronograph on the planet.
Speaker 3: But you also know that for one hundred years, this
Speaker 3: star has defeated every single astronomer who tried to find
Speaker 3: its companion.
Speaker 2: Every single one, and you.
Speaker 3: Were sitting at a computer running eighty I algorithms, ruthlessly
Speaker 3: doubting your own findings, wondering if a speck of light
Speaker 3: on the screen is a thermal artifact or a century
Speaker 3: old ghost.
Speaker 2: The rigor required in that phase is immense. You have
Speaker 2: to prove to yourself that you haven't just manufactured a
Speaker 2: star at a statistical noise. You have to be your
Speaker 2: own harshest critic.
Speaker 3: Until the final algorithm finishes and the residual light of
Speaker 3: beetlejuice is completely digitally subtracted, and there, sitting in the
Speaker 3: dark space exactly where the math predicted it would be,
Speaker 3: is a distinct, undeniable source of light.
Speaker 2: And Montage has actually described his reaction to seeing the
Speaker 2: final processed image. He said, he jumped from his chair.
Speaker 3: I would have screamed.
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate vindication of predictive science. The light
Speaker 2: of the Companions star traveling across six hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: light years of space, finally extracted from the glare by
Speaker 2: human engineering.
Speaker 3: But the discovery immediately pivoted from a technological victory into
Speaker 3: a massive scientific shock, A huge shock because they found it. Yes,
Speaker 3: but the reality of what beetlejewics Be actually has wildly
Speaker 3: contradicted the long standing theories.
Speaker 2: Oh totally threw the models out the window.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Montage admitted he honestly didn't think spear had the
Speaker 3: sensitivity to detect the star based on those earlier predictions.
Speaker 2: Because the predictive math was flawless regarding the location of
Speaker 2: the companion, but it was drastically wrong about the nature
Speaker 2: of the companion.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: If beetlejews Bee had been a one solar mass star,
Speaker 2: as the radial velocity models initially suggested, its luminosity would
Speaker 2: have been too faint to pierce through the residual speckel
Speaker 2: noise even at maximum elongation.
Speaker 3: Even with all that incredible tech. Exactly so, why could
Speaker 3: they see it because it.
Speaker 2: Wasn't one solar mass. The VLT data confirmed that beatlejewics
Speaker 2: B is actually two to three times the.
Speaker 3: Mass of our That is a massive difference.
Speaker 2: It really is. The increase in mass corresponds to an
Speaker 2: exponential increase in luminosity. It was significantly brighter than anyone anticipated,
Speaker 2: pushing it above the detection threshold of these seas vera.
Speaker 3: Instrument which goes right back to your point about the
Speaker 3: orbital tilt the cyanide degeneracy exactly. Because the orbit was
Speaker 3: highly tilted relative to Earth, the actual mass had to
Speaker 3: be much higher to produce the wobble We measured precisely.
Speaker 2: And finding a three solar mass star hiding next to
Speaker 2: Beetlejews forces a total recalibration of our understanding of the
Speaker 2: entire system. Now, there were previous hints, like a possible
Speaker 2: direct detection using the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't definitive, right.
Speaker 2: This ease Fear image is the definitive proof. It completely
Speaker 2: removes the ambiguity.
Speaker 3: Let's grasp the sheer scale of this. Again, a star
Speaker 3: three times the mass of our entire Sun has been
Speaker 3: hiding in plain sight for a century. I mean, if
Speaker 3: you replaced our Sun with Beetletre's be the Earth would
Speaker 3: be instantly vaporized.
Speaker 2: One.
Speaker 3: It is a massive, intensely bright star in its own right.
Speaker 3: How does something that massive remain hidden?
Speaker 2: It just highlights the monstrous immensity of the primary star. Yes,
Speaker 2: Beetlejuice Bee is highly luminous, but Beetlejuice itself is emitting
Speaker 2: roughly one hundred thousand times more light.
Speaker 3: It's like trying to hear a whisper next to a
Speaker 3: jet engine exactly.
Speaker 2: Even a three solar mass star is completely lost in
Speaker 2: that deluge of photons. You think you understand a stellar
Speaker 2: neighborhood because you've observed it for hundreds of years, and
Speaker 2: then you discover a mansion hidden behind a billboard you
Speaker 2: never managed to look around.
Speaker 3: Okay, so we have definitively found the hidden companion. We
Speaker 3: know its mass, its orbit, and its reality. But in astrophysics,
Speaker 3: answering a century old question immediately spawns a drastically more
Speaker 3: complex set of physical problems.
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, the future of this system is fascinating because
Speaker 2: we have to.
Speaker 3: Look at the future of this binary system. But before
Speaker 3: we get into the explosive stuff, we should mention the caveats.
Speaker 2: Right, yes, rigorous scientific caveats. First, the team notes that
Speaker 2: to achieve absolute certainty regarding the exact orbital mechanics, they
Speaker 2: do need to observe it again in a year or so.
Speaker 3: When the orbit carries beetlejuice Bee to the opposite side.
Speaker 2: Of the supergent right, tracking it across multiple points in
Speaker 2: its orbit locks in the kinematics. However, as Montage stated,
Speaker 2: there is very little space left for doubt.
Speaker 3: Okay, So, assuming Beetlejuice BEE is exactly what this data shows,
Speaker 3: we face a monumental physical dilemma. We do Beetlejuice is
Speaker 3: an evolved red supergent. It is on an irreversible path
Speaker 3: to a core collapse supernova. How does the confirmed presence
Speaker 3: of a massive three solar mass companion star alter the
Speaker 3: explosive fate of the supergent.
Speaker 2: It changes the entire paradigm of stellar death for.
Speaker 3: This system because it's not alone anymore.
Speaker 2: Exactly when a single isolated massive star goes supernova, the
Speaker 2: physics are relatively straightforward.
Speaker 3: Straightforward for a supernova anyway, fair point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But basically, the core runs out a new clear fuel,
Speaker 2: the outward radiation pressure stops, gravity takes over, and the
Speaker 2: core collapses inward at a fraction of the speed.
Speaker 3: Of light, just a catastrophic free fall.
Speaker 2: Right. The core compresses until it hits quantum degeneracy, basically
Speaker 2: bounces off itself, rebounds, and sends a shockwave outward that
Speaker 2: blows the outer layers of the star into a spherical,
Speaker 2: expanding nebula.
Speaker 3: But when you introduce a massive companion star into the
Speaker 3: immediate vicinity.
Speaker 2: The dynamics of that collapse become infinitely more chaotic.
Speaker 3: We enter the realm of binary stellar evolution.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the most critical factor here is gravity and
Speaker 2: a concept known as the rochlobe.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's explore the roach slobe. How does gravity fundamentally
Speaker 3: alter the shape and behavior of the supergent before it
Speaker 3: even explodes.
Speaker 2: Well, In a binary system, each star exerts a gravitational pull.
Speaker 2: The roachlobe is basically the tear drop shaped region of
Speaker 2: space around a star where its own gravity is dominant
Speaker 2: over the companion's gravity.
Speaker 3: It's like a gravitational boundary line.
Speaker 2: Yes. When Beetlegoose was a younger, smaller star, it sat
Speaker 2: comfortably deep within its own roachlobe.
Speaker 3: All of its gas and plasma were securely bound to
Speaker 3: its own gravitational center exactly.
Speaker 2: But as it evolved into a red supergient, it expanded massively.
Speaker 2: Its outer atmosphere puffed up to an incredible degree. Now,
Speaker 2: if the outer layers of beetle Jews expands so much
Speaker 2: that they breached the boundary of its roachlobe, the material
Speaker 2: is no longer gravitationally bound to the suburgent. It crosses
Speaker 2: the tipping.
Speaker 3: Point, which is the l one Lagrangeen point right, Yes,
Speaker 3: the l one Lagrangian point yea.
Speaker 2: At that point, the gravitational pull of beetlejuice B actually
Speaker 2: takes over.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: The three solar mass companion can begin actively stripping the
Speaker 2: outer layers of hydrogen away from the dying supergent. We
Speaker 2: call this rochlobe overflow or mass transfer.
Speaker 3: So the companion is essentially cannibalizing the supergen's atmosphere before
Speaker 3: the core even collapses.
Speaker 2: Actively pulling material onto itself.
Speaker 3: Yes, how to stripping those outer layers change the mechanics
Speaker 3: of the eventual supernova?
Speaker 2: It can fundamentally alter the classification in the light curve
Speaker 2: of the explosion.
Speaker 3: Okay, how so.
Speaker 2: If red supergen explodes with its massive outer envelope of
Speaker 2: hydrogen mostly intact, it typically produces what we call a
Speaker 2: TYPEIP supernova. The P stands for plateau.
Speaker 3: Meaning the brightness stays stable for a while.
Speaker 2: Exactly, the explosion stays incredibly bright for months as the
Speaker 2: shockwave slowly pushes through that thick, dense hydrogen envelope.
Speaker 3: But if Beetleg's B has stripped a significant portion of
Speaker 3: that hydrogen envelope away beforehand.
Speaker 2: Then the shockwave encounters much less resistance. You might get
Speaker 2: a totally different light curve, potentially closer to a tybil
Speaker 2: or even pushing toward a stripped envelope supernova if enough
Speaker 2: mass is transferred so.
Speaker 3: The neighbor changes the whole explosion profile.
Speaker 2: Right, The total mass of the star at the absolute
Speaker 2: moment of core collapse dictates how the explosion unfolds, how
Speaker 2: bright it gets, and what specific heavy elements are synthesized
Speaker 2: and ejected out into the interstellar medium.
Speaker 3: Let's use an analogy for this. Imagine you were watching
Speaker 3: the scheduled demolition of a massive, derelict skyscraper.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm picturing it.
Speaker 3: You have the blueprints, you know exactly where the demolition
Speaker 3: charges replaced, and you can calculate exactly how it's going
Speaker 3: to fall into its own footprint. It's a known quantity,
Speaker 3: very predictable. But right before they push the plunger, you
Speaker 3: suddenly realize there is a highly pressurized, fully fueled gas
Speaker 3: station sitting directly on the property line, deeply entangled with
Speaker 3: the structural supports of the skyscraper.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a brilliant way to put it.
Speaker 3: The demolition is still going to happen, right The core
Speaker 3: collapse is inevitable, but the dynamics of the fall, the
Speaker 3: structural integrity of the outer walls, and the ensuing shockwave
Speaker 3: just became infinitely more unpredictable because of that massive gravitational
Speaker 3: anchor sitting.
Speaker 2: Next door exactly, which brings up the ultimate question regarding
Speaker 2: the fate of Beetlejeos B itself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what happens to the neighbor when the core of
Speaker 3: the supergent collapses and unleashes literally the most violent event
Speaker 3: in the universe. What happens to the companion stars sitting
Speaker 3: right in the blast zone.
Speaker 2: This is one of the most intense areas of study
Speaker 2: in binary astrophysics right now. The survival of the companion
Speaker 2: depends on several factors. Its orbital distance at the absolute
Speaker 2: moment of explosion, its own density, and the sheer kinetic
Speaker 2: energy of the supernova ejecta.
Speaker 3: Is it possible the shockwave vaporizes the companion entirely?
Speaker 2: Vaporization of a three solar mass star is unlikely given
Speaker 2: its own significant gravitational binding energy.
Speaker 3: It's so it'll survive.
Speaker 2: But the supernova shockwave slamming into the companion will cause
Speaker 2: extreme structural damage. It will likely strip away the outer
Speaker 2: layers of beetlejuice B, injecting massive amounts of heavy radioactive
Speaker 2: elements from the supernova directly into the companion's.
Speaker 3: Atmosphere, just blasting it with radioactive shrapnel.
Speaker 2: Essentially, Yes, it will heavily pollute the surviving star.
Speaker 3: But beyond the physical damage, the orbital mechanics completely shatter instantly.
Speaker 2: This is what we call the slingshot effect.
Speaker 3: Now, how Beatlege's B is being held in orbit by
Speaker 3: the immense gravitational mass of the succursion.
Speaker 2: Yes, but when the supernova occurs, the primary star ejects
Speaker 2: a massive percentage of its total mass outward at significant
Speaker 2: fractions of the speed of light.
Speaker 3: The gravitational anchor just disappears almost instantaneously.
Speaker 2: And because of the conservation of momentum, Beetlegbe will no
Speaker 2: longer have a central mass to orbit. It's just gone.
Speaker 3: So what does it do.
Speaker 2: It will continue moving along its orbital trajectory at whatever
Speaker 2: velocity it had at the exact moment of the explosion.
Speaker 2: It will literally be launched out of the binary system
Speaker 2: like a cannon ball.
Speaker 3: It becomes a runaway star exactly.
Speaker 2: Depending on its orbital velocity, it could become a hypervelocity
Speaker 2: star shooting across the galaxy entirely unbound from its previous neighborhood.
Speaker 3: That is wild to think about.
Speaker 2: The discovery of this hidden companion has provided astrophysicists with
Speaker 2: the ultimate real time laboratory to study the chaotic interplay
Speaker 2: of mass transfer, orbital dynamics, and stellar death at the
Speaker 2: extreme edge of physics.
Speaker 3: It's just the scope of this entire journey forces a
Speaker 3: complete shift in perspective.
Speaker 2: It really does.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 3: We began with a brilliant, blinking red dot in the
Speaker 3: winter sky, observed by generations of ancient astronomers who carefully
Speaker 3: tracked its rhythmic variations just using their ice right. And
Speaker 3: then we moved through a century of mathematical frustration, watching
Speaker 3: light curves and radial velocity wobbles, mathematically proving a ghost
Speaker 3: was in the machine, but lacking the optical hardware to
Speaker 3: actually see it.
Speaker 2: Then we analyzed the fluid dynamics of a subpergion, watching
Speaker 2: a massive convective plume condense into a dust cloud that
Speaker 2: triggered a global false alarm.
Speaker 3: But which ultimately trained a specific team on how to
Speaker 3: observe this exact, tricky system.
Speaker 2: Yes, and we followed the predictive power of celestial mechanics,
Speaker 2: calculating the exact window of maximum elongation in December twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Four, and finally, using advanced coronagraphs, adaptive optics correcting atmospheric
Speaker 3: turbulence thousands of times a second, and months of angular
Speaker 3: differential imaging algorithms to digitally strip away the diffraction glare,
Speaker 3: human engineering pierced the veil.
Speaker 2: We finally saw it.
Speaker 3: We didn't just find a tiny rock. We confirmed a
Speaker 3: massive three solar mass star hiding in plain sight.
Speaker 2: It is a profound reminder that our models of the
Speaker 2: universe are constantly subject to revision. The cosmos is inherently
Speaker 2: more complex and more dramatic than our initial assumptions ever allow.
Speaker 3: So the next time you step outside on a clear night,
Speaker 3: allow your eyes to adjust to the dark and look
Speaker 3: up at Orion's right shoulder. The relationship you have with
Speaker 3: that ruby red point of light must change.
Speaker 2: You're no longer looking at a solitary, dying giant quietly
Speaker 2: waiting to collapse.
Speaker 3: You are witnessing a high stakes gravitational dance. You are
Speaker 3: looking at a system actively exchanging mass, altering its own
Speaker 3: fate across the centuries.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
Speaker 3: Completely consider the reality of that impending explosion when the
Speaker 3: core of beetlegists finally fails, when the outward pressure drops
Speaker 3: in a shockwave tears through the hydrogen envelope to light
Speaker 3: up our night sky. Whether that happens tomorrow or one
Speaker 3: hundred thousand years from now, we won't just be watching
Speaker 3: the death of a single star.
Speaker 2: No we won't.
Speaker 3: We will be witnessing the violent, chaotic, and incredibly complicated
Speaker 3: climax of a cosmic relationship that managed to stay entirely
Speaker 3: hidden from human eyes for one hundred years.