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Speaker 3: Hey everyone, this is once again your friendly neighborhood cosmologists
Speaker 3: Katie Mack. I am giving a little bit of an
Speaker 3: update to this episode. So this episode is mostly answering
Speaker 3: questions about astrophysics and cosmology things, and since it was
Speaker 3: recorded in twenty seventeen, there have been a couple of changes,
Speaker 3: a couple of updates. One of the things that I
Speaker 3: answered questions about was asteroid searches, and I mentioned that
Speaker 3: there's a big part of the sky we're not really
Speaker 3: looking at that has gotten better in recent years. There
Speaker 3: are some new observational projects. We have a much better
Speaker 3: survey of the sky for finding potentially dangerous space rocks.
Speaker 3: There are some caveats though. One of them is that
Speaker 3: because of things like these new constellations of satellites that
Speaker 3: are going up, some of that is making those observations
Speaker 3: a little bit more difficult. I think we're still in
Speaker 3: a much better place than we were, and we're finding
Speaker 3: way more potentially hazard as objects. Nothing is a big
Speaker 3: threat at the moment, don't worry, but yeah, it'll be
Speaker 3: interesting to see how that develops in the next few years.
Speaker 3: The other update is just that my social media stuff
Speaker 3: is all different now. I'm still on Twitter as at Astrokatie,
Speaker 3: though I'm using Twitter less these days. I'm on Instagram
Speaker 3: at astro Katie Mac. So check those out, and just
Speaker 3: check out my web page astrokt dot com. That hasn't changed.
Speaker 3: You can learn about stuff like my book The End
Speaker 3: of Everything, Astrophysically Speaking, where I talk about how the
Speaker 3: universe might end and what that would look like if
Speaker 3: we could see that. And I have a newsletter now
Speaker 3: that you can also check out. There's a sign up
Speaker 3: on my website. It's called watch this space time. So
Speaker 3: thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the show.
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Ali Ward here with ologies. Now a
Speaker 1: few things up up top. If you like ologies, I
Speaker 1: personally myself would love it if you took a second
Speaker 1: to rate and or review it on iTunes? Have you
Speaker 1: done that yet? It doesn't cost any money, you just
Speaker 1: do it. And I also totally read all of your reviews.
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled by them. Today someone named smileness. There are
Speaker 1: six asses in that said the actual best, yep, the
Speaker 1: actual best. When things get all jargony, Ali fills in
Speaker 1: the gaps, great guests, great topics, and a genuinely lovable host, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I read that while walking into the
Speaker 1: post office and I almost started crying or skipping. So
Speaker 1: thank you everyone for these. When you leave reviews and
Speaker 1: you rate it, other people say, hey, what's this thing now?
Speaker 1: Cosmology Part two. If you listen to the very very
Speaker 1: end of part one last week with the just phenomenal
Speaker 1: doctor Katie Mac aka Astro Katie, then you learned a
Speaker 1: lot about particle physics and the large heart on collider string, cheese,
Speaker 1: black holes, the world's most expensive selfie, and your own
Speaker 1: aching insignificance all of ours. If you haven't listened, give
Speaker 1: to go. I also tell you of somewhat embarrassing secret
Speaker 1: at the very end of the podcast. Maybe I'll do
Speaker 1: that again. So Part two with Doctor Mac means getting
Speaker 1: right into the nitty gritty your questions and trust me,
Speaker 1: I had a million, but Katie and I were late
Speaker 1: to meet up with friends to see Murder on the
Speaker 1: Orine Express, so I could only ask about half an
Speaker 1: hour's worth of questions. So I may have to nab
Speaker 1: her in the future to ask the rest because so
Speaker 1: many good questions. I have so many questions from Okay,
Speaker 1: it's like a rapid fire around Sure, yeah, I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm here for it. Okay, I'm going to throw a
Speaker 1: bunch of questions at you. If you want to skip
Speaker 1: any of them, you can just pass. First questions I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask her from the Patreon page. So people
Speaker 1: are patrons.
Speaker 3: We appreciate them very much. They are great people. They
Speaker 3: are great people, task sick, and we want them to
Speaker 3: continue and ask lots of questions. Yes, which are all
Speaker 3: very good questions. Yes exactly.
Speaker 1: Yes, you can be a patron for twenty five cents.
Speaker 3: An episode which is an amazing deal.
Speaker 1: Isn't it a good deal?
Speaker 3: People should totally do that.
Speaker 1: I wanted to make it accessible. Yeah, if you did
Speaker 1: feel like tossing a dollar a month, then get yourself
Speaker 1: over to patreon dot com slash ologies. I post calls
Speaker 1: for questions, some behind the scene photos, or some patron
Speaker 1: only videos, and for twenty five dollars a month, I'll
Speaker 1: be your emergency contact, which I hope you never need.
Speaker 1: And also I may not be reliable. This is a question.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to say one of the questions, but
Speaker 1: three different people asked a variation of it. Aaron Herdman
Speaker 1: and Alex Introini Intoronini. Alex did that right, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Both wanted to know is there a name for the
Speaker 1: disorientation in panic one feels when considering the vastness of
Speaker 1: the universe. Also, do you know of a way to
Speaker 1: get past it? There is a name?
Speaker 3: So a couple of names. One is cosmic rutigo okay,
Speaker 3: and the other is cosmophobia. And I don't know if
Speaker 3: these are like official names, but these are names that
Speaker 3: I've heard. There's so. A couple of friends and colleagues
Speaker 3: of mine have a podcast called cosmic urdigo where they
Speaker 3: talk about cosmology and stuff and space and things, but
Speaker 3: it's based on that topic. And cosmophobia I know about
Speaker 3: because I occasionally get emails from people who say that
Speaker 3: they have severe cases and want my help. So it
Speaker 3: is a thing. Sometimes people get really really upset about,
Speaker 3: like the fastness of space or just like the fact
Speaker 3: that we have no control over these huge forces. I
Speaker 3: mean that is something like I have moments where I'm like,
Speaker 3: WHOA right, Like, because there are things like you know,
Speaker 3: black holes are colliding with each other, and and like
Speaker 3: the universe is expanding and it's accelerating in its expansion,
Speaker 3: and like it's getting bigger and bigger and faster and faster,
Speaker 3: and like sometimes you know that stuff is really you know,
Speaker 3: I mean you think about your little life and what's
Speaker 3: going on in your day to day and at the
Speaker 3: same time, like stars are exploding, and you know, and
Speaker 3: we have we can look at we can look at
Speaker 3: the Big Bang, like we can actually see the primordial
Speaker 3: fireball of the Big Bang, Like we can see that.
Speaker 1: How ladies and gentlemen, Alley Ward zero chill.
Speaker 3: The reason is that the whole universe was hot and
Speaker 3: dense and smaller than it is now. So the Big
Speaker 3: Bang theory is just the idea that the universe in
Speaker 3: the past was smaller and denser and hotter than it
Speaker 3: is now. And so if you kind of dial back
Speaker 3: the current expansion of the universe, then you get to
Speaker 3: the universe being very very small and dense and hot.
Speaker 3: And so every point in the universe now was at
Speaker 3: some point much hotter and filled with like radiation, right, So,
Speaker 3: like this part of the universe now, in the very
Speaker 3: distant past was full of radiation and very hot and
Speaker 3: very dense. Right. But so when we look out into
Speaker 3: other parts of the universe, because light takes time to travel,
Speaker 3: every time we look farther away, we're looking farther into
Speaker 3: the past. And so we're looking at that part of
Speaker 3: the universe as it was maybe a billion years ago
Speaker 3: or five billion years ago or whatever. And there's a
Speaker 3: part of the universe that's so distant that when we
Speaker 3: look at it, we're looking at it as it was
Speaker 3: during the time was still on fire. Right, So we look,
Speaker 3: as we look into the distance in any direction, we're
Speaker 3: seeing that part of the universe as it was when
Speaker 3: it was still in that primordial fireball kind of state,
Speaker 3: which was how long ago it was, well, that was
Speaker 3: that was around So the fireball started to cool around
Speaker 3: three hundred and eighty thousand years after the big bang whatever,
Speaker 3: after the moment of the beginning whatever you call that,
Speaker 3: because this is that's still part of the hot big bang,
Speaker 3: which is like the hot phase. So we can actually
Speaker 3: see radiation coming from every direction in the sky. That
Speaker 3: is the radiation of that heat. Like that that radiation
Speaker 3: from that early time just reaching us now from really
Speaker 3: distant parts of the universe. And so we can look
Speaker 3: at it and we're looking at like the fireball universe.
Speaker 3: We're looking at that primordial plasma, and so like we
Speaker 3: see the yeah, yeah, and so like we know that
Speaker 3: it happened because we can see it. We can watch it, right,
Speaker 3: we can actually see parts of the universe that are
Speaker 3: still still there as far as we're.
Speaker 1: Concerned, and that can give you cosmic fartigogy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, just like just like thinking about like you know,
Speaker 3: that was like that was a big important event and
Speaker 3: like so this sort of like nice, gentle, stable universe
Speaker 3: is not That's not how it always was, and we
Speaker 3: don't know, you know, we think that most cosmologists think
Speaker 3: at the beginning of the universe, before that hot phase,
Speaker 3: there was a period of very rapid expansion of the
Speaker 3: universe called inflation. We don't know why that started. We
Speaker 3: don't know why that ended. We don't know that that
Speaker 3: couldn't just start happening again right here, right now. There
Speaker 3: are theories of the theories where you could have you
Speaker 3: can have the universe like and right here, right now
Speaker 3: in this room.
Speaker 2: Oh god.
Speaker 3: Oh so this is an idea called vacuum decay, where
Speaker 3: you can you can have like the universe like, have
Speaker 3: a quantum event happen where one point in the universe
Speaker 3: like transitions to this other state it's called another vacuum,
Speaker 3: a true vacuum state, and that would create this bubble
Speaker 3: of like.
Speaker 1: Death again, bubble of death.
Speaker 3: That expands out at the speed of light in every direction,
Speaker 3: so you would never see it coming. And it's a
Speaker 3: probabilistic event. It's a quantum event, so it could happen
Speaker 3: at any moment. It probably won't, oh god, you know
Speaker 3: it probably probably were just wrong about the theory. And
Speaker 3: even if we weren't wrong about the theory, like the
Speaker 3: the sort of timescale that we calculate for it. It
Speaker 3: would probably take like, you know, trillions of years or something,
Speaker 3: but like it's a probabilistic event. It could happen in
Speaker 3: any moment. Technically, it's just with very low probability. So
Speaker 3: like that could freak you out. And I've gotten emails
Speaker 3: from people like they read about that and they're like,
Speaker 3: I can't sleep, and I'm like, I'm sorry, do.
Speaker 1: You have any advice for that?
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I tell them, like they so
Speaker 3: about vacuum decay, I can tell them like a few things.
Speaker 3: One is that we don't know, we don't have any
Speaker 3: we don't know for sure that this is even possible.
Speaker 3: If it were possible, it probably would have happened in
Speaker 3: the very beginning of the universe because the conditions for
Speaker 3: it happening then were much more favorable. So it probably
Speaker 3: would have already happened if it was going to happen already,
Speaker 3: or if it if it was possible at all. And
Speaker 3: then I say, well, if it's gonna like you, there's
Speaker 3: nothing you can do. Yeah, I mean, like, like it's
Speaker 3: it's traveling at the speed of light, you won't even
Speaker 3: see it coming.
Speaker 1: That's the best way to die. Yeah, you won't.
Speaker 3: I mean you won't notice like basically, like like so
Speaker 3: it is absolutely the best because you don't see it coming,
Speaker 3: so you can't be scared of it. You don't even
Speaker 3: really notice it because it's happening at the speed of
Speaker 3: light and you're not like around afterward and nothing is around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone you love dies at the same time.
Speaker 3: Everything dies, everything's gone immediately at the same time. There's
Speaker 3: no there's no fomo, right, there's nothing. You're not missing
Speaker 3: out on anything because the whole universe is done now, right, like,
Speaker 3: and so it's kind of in some sense, it's like
Speaker 3: really in consequence because there's like no consequences of it.
Speaker 3: It's yeah, so it doesn't matter. Like you could just blink,
Speaker 3: you know, and then like like you know, you blink
Speaker 3: and like maybe you open your eyes again. Maybe you're
Speaker 3: consumed by a vacuum bubble of death, but like who cares,
Speaker 3: like who, you don't know.
Speaker 1: If I could vote on a way for everything to end,
Speaker 1: I would be like totally yeah, vacuum vacuum decay, vacuum decay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be my platform. I'm gonna run hurt twenty
Speaker 1: twenty Vacuum decay. It is my platform.
Speaker 3: It is the best way to end the universe.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's one way to chill out. Paula Herrera
Speaker 1: wants to know how scared should we be of a
Speaker 1: giant asteroid destroying Earth? Are any of the sci fi
Speaker 1: movie methods to save the planet plausible or are we
Speaker 1: basically doomed should an asteroid come our way?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's a little bit of a sadder point
Speaker 3: because like, okay, so we're basically not really monitoring about
Speaker 3: half the sky right now.
Speaker 1: What Okay, no big deal, No big deal.
Speaker 3: Because we used to have some monitoring stations in the
Speaker 3: southern hemisphere and they lost funding, So we don't have
Speaker 3: as good a handle on like the number of objects
Speaker 3: out there that could cause really big problems. There is
Speaker 3: like we have there's some kind of like goals about
Speaker 3: how many like what fraction of objects above a certain
Speaker 3: size we should be you know, aware of, right And
Speaker 3: it's like you're supposed to see ninety percent of objects
Speaker 3: above some size or whatever, and we're not really there.
Speaker 3: So I think there are programs being put together now,
Speaker 3: and there's there's efforts to have a better catalog. It's
Speaker 3: not like we're due for a giant you know, impact
Speaker 3: or anything like. It's you know, these are still things
Speaker 3: that are probably not gonna happen anytime soon. But but
Speaker 3: I can't honestly tell you that, like we're on top
Speaker 3: of it. Wow, like we have you know, we're nitor
Speaker 3: a lot, but we're not monitoring enough to say that,
Speaker 3: Like we definitely don't have anything coming in. So okay,
Speaker 3: so whether or not we could stop it, like okay,
Speaker 3: So there's there are a couple of methods. If we
Speaker 3: find out about it early enough, like five years ahead,
Speaker 3: ten years ahead, then there's a possibility of sending a
Speaker 3: spacecraft to it and changing the course of it in
Speaker 3: some way. You don't want to just blow it up,
Speaker 3: partially because some of these things are like kind of
Speaker 3: loose rebbel piles and so it wouldn't really work to
Speaker 3: try to blow it up, but also because like if
Speaker 3: you have a huge asteroid and then you blow it up,
Speaker 3: then you have like a bunch of smaller asteroids and
Speaker 3: that's not always better. Yeah, But but there there are
Speaker 3: a bunch of really cool ideas for just nudging it
Speaker 3: a little bit. And if you find out about it
Speaker 3: long enough in the you know, before it comes, then
Speaker 3: you don't have to nudge it very far at all
Speaker 3: to get it totally off course it will miss the Earth.
Speaker 3: So like one of them is to take a really
Speaker 3: really massive spacecraft and just like park it next to
Speaker 3: the asteroid in the orbit for a while and so
Speaker 3: it gets like pulled a little bit by the gravity
Speaker 3: of the spacecraft. And that can if you get it
Speaker 3: early enough. That's called gravitational tractor. Yeah, if you get
Speaker 3: it early enough, that can work. There are other ideas
Speaker 3: about like creating like a giant sack and like like
Speaker 3: capturing it in a sack, because you can't necessarily it's
Speaker 3: not necessarily like a solid thing.
Speaker 1: How are you going to make a bag? They're gonna
Speaker 1: have to put her on an asteroid.
Speaker 3: I mean it depends on the size of the asteroid, right,
Speaker 3: But I mean.
Speaker 1: I don't know, like this is made out of like
Speaker 1: my lar cat on tape.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm a little activated by this. I looked
Speaker 1: up asteroid bags. I was distracted for a few minutes
Speaker 1: on some Galaxy printed tots and duffels, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's nice, and then okay, I realized its space people
Speaker 1: call these capture bags like it's just no big deal,
Speaker 1: like just use to collect fallen leaves or a dog doodle.
Speaker 1: But NASA introduced a plant a few years ago, and
Speaker 1: I asked the search engine gods what the bag might
Speaker 1: be made of, and I found out it could be inflatable,
Speaker 1: could be metal mesh, or could just be high strength material.
Speaker 1: Sounds like they're figuring that out too. My guess is
Speaker 1: it's just a very large blue Ikia bag toe that
Speaker 1: fucker in. Those things are strong.
Speaker 3: It's another idea, which is even which is also really cool,
Speaker 3: where you like spray spray paint half of the object
Speaker 3: so that it changes like the reflectivity, and then that
Speaker 3: means that like the solar wind will push a little
Speaker 3: bit more on one half than the other in some way,
Speaker 3: and that can change the trajectory. So there are a
Speaker 3: couple of possibilities.
Speaker 1: Those are some good options.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, but you need a lot of lean time and.
Speaker 1: A lot of paint in a really big bag.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. I just can't believe that we're kind
Speaker 1: of sleeping on the job there.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like we're not. I mean, there are people,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of a lot of these things are
Speaker 3: being monitored, and there's nothing that we know about that's
Speaker 3: anytime soon coming as a threat. But there's also like
Speaker 3: we're not we're not fully on top of this in
Speaker 3: the way that I feel like we should be.
Speaker 2: Oh Man, good to know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Russell Kelly wants to know. Will the universe expand
Speaker 1: forever or will it eventually collapse in on itself?
Speaker 3: That is a great question. Based on our current understanding
Speaker 3: and the data that we have now, it looks like
Speaker 3: it will expand forever, which will lead to something called
Speaker 3: the heat death, which is the most depressing way for
Speaker 3: the universe to and which is that like that we
Speaker 3: have dark energy. Dark energy is whatever is making the
Speaker 3: universe expand faster and faster. If it's a cosmological constant,
Speaker 3: which is just a kind of dark energy that first
Speaker 3: invented by Einstein, but it seems to be the case,
Speaker 3: then what will happen is that over time the other
Speaker 3: galaxies will get farther and farther away. Not Andramata, the
Speaker 3: Andromeda galaxy is coming for us now. It's on its way.
Speaker 3: It's going to collide with the Milky Way in about
Speaker 3: four billion years. Okay, that'll be fine whatever, But then
Speaker 3: you know, the more dist galaxies will just get farther
Speaker 3: and farther away, and eventually we won't be able to
Speaker 3: see any other galaxies outside of our little local group.
Speaker 1: This is like when all your friends grow up and
Speaker 1: move out to the suburbs or like get rich and
Speaker 1: go to Santa Monica.
Speaker 3: And then you know, we won't be able to see
Speaker 3: like the cosm mic right background anymore that the after
Speaker 3: glow of the Big Bang. It'll so the universe will
Speaker 3: just get really really dark and really empty, and then
Speaker 3: our our little group of galaxies will kind of be
Speaker 3: combined to one big blob. But eventually, like all the
Speaker 3: stars will burn out because they'll run out of fuel
Speaker 3: and there's no more like gas coming in to make
Speaker 3: new stars from other galaxies, So the stars will burn out,
Speaker 3: and then like a bunch of things will collapse into
Speaker 3: black holes, and the black holes will evaporate, and like
Speaker 3: the protons will decay, and like everything will just kind
Speaker 3: of like decay into nothingness. And then then like there'll
Speaker 3: be this like it'll be this really empty, cold, dark
Speaker 3: universe with nothing in it and no like and just
Speaker 3: like this tiny amount of radiation and no ability for
Speaker 3: any new structures to form, except maybe through some kind
Speaker 3: of quantum process, which is kind of a cool thing
Speaker 3: with those is another topic.
Speaker 1: That's so goddamn lonely. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's called the heat death.
Speaker 1: So what happens when the Andromeda Galaxy collides with the
Speaker 1: Milky Way though you've cleaned right over that, What the
Speaker 1: hell is that about?
Speaker 3: That's really cool? Actually, So the Andromeda galaxy is a
Speaker 3: spiral galaxy like her own. It's it's got about it's
Speaker 3: got about a trillion stars, it's more massive than the
Speaker 3: Milky Way, and it's got a super massive black hole.
Speaker 3: And they're all coming toward us at something like I
Speaker 3: think it was like one hundred kilometers a second. Anyway,
Speaker 3: they're all they're all coming toward us right now.
Speaker 1: And is it gonna smishy smash.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's gonna it's gonna come and in about four
Speaker 3: billion years it'll get here and it'll it'll collide with
Speaker 3: the Milky Way galaxy. And the way that galaxies collide
Speaker 3: is kind of cool. They like sort of merge and
Speaker 3: like they make these long trails of stars coming out
Speaker 3: and it'll be this sort of like really spectacular light
Speaker 3: show of like gasle collide and make new stars, and
Speaker 3: there'll be this burst of star formation, and the black
Speaker 3: holes might like turn on and start like pulling in
Speaker 3: matter and like getting really bright, and stars will be
Speaker 3: flung out into space and on these long tails.
Speaker 1: The sounds like a warehouse space rave. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 1: I'd be down for this.
Speaker 3: But because galaxy is, because there is so much space
Speaker 3: between stars in galaxies, probably our solar system will not
Speaker 3: be affected. Okay, like probably we'll just like this. The
Speaker 3: sky will get really interesting, but you know, it'll also
Speaker 3: be four billion years from now, so the Sun will
Speaker 3: be burning out, and you know, the Earth will already
Speaker 3: have its oceans boiled away and life on Earth will
Speaker 3: be impossible. But if you know, we left something here
Speaker 3: to take pictures, they would be really pretty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mike mel Choir Melchior wants to know, are uranus
Speaker 1: joke still funny? It's really urinus, isn't it.
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 3: Actually I don't know which is a better pronunciation. I
Speaker 3: usually say urinus just because I don't want to, I
Speaker 3: don't want to deal with it. But then it's got
Speaker 3: the name Urine in it too, like it doesn't really help. No,
Speaker 3: they're not. They're not particularly okay.
Speaker 1: So I use an AI for transcription for this podcast
Speaker 1: and it transcribed to you'urin ass and I'm sorry, but yes,
Speaker 1: that is funny. Megan Gerard wants to know slightly more
Speaker 1: on a local practical level. She loves stargazing, but even
Speaker 1: in a small city, it's hard to do because of
Speaker 1: light pollution. So can you recommend any tactics resources organizations
Speaker 1: for helping reduce light pollution? Also, she thinks maybe light
Speaker 1: pollution is bad for us and animals, and so good
Speaker 1: way to stargaze and good way to reduce light pollution.
Speaker 3: So there are there are national organizations for like dark Skies.
Speaker 3: I don't remember the names, but if you if you
Speaker 3: look them up, there's they have their charities that that
Speaker 3: their whole purpose is to try to get better lighting
Speaker 3: in cities so that more of the light goes down
Speaker 3: and up and changing like what the lamps are made
Speaker 3: of and stuff like that. So you can get involved
Speaker 3: in these campaigns and they're really they're really helpful. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I can't remember the name of the organizations right now,
Speaker 3: but there are a few of them out there.
Speaker 1: Dark Sky Dot org has a bunch of information on
Speaker 1: getting involved in dark sky advocacy and membership in this
Speaker 1: kind of a dark sky club, So hit that up.
Speaker 1: I will try to do my part and stop falling
Speaker 1: asleep with lights on. I fell asleep with them on
Speaker 1: again last night, but tonight Tonight to Night International Dark
Speaker 1: Sky Association. I'm gonna do my part.
Speaker 3: If you want to go start using and your city's
Speaker 3: too bright, you just have to go somewhere else. Basically,
Speaker 3: so when I was living here, when I was growing
Speaker 3: up in La in Long Beach, I was part of
Speaker 3: the La Astronomical Society and they would have Dark Sky
Speaker 3: Star Star parties where we would drive like four hours
Speaker 3: into the mountains and it would be really dark there.
Speaker 3: So you don't have to get that far out out
Speaker 3: of the city to do good stargazing.
Speaker 1: So getting the fuck out of Dodge, Yes, got it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty much it. There's a really great film
Speaker 3: called The City Dark, which is about it's about light
Speaker 3: pollution and what it does to us and what it
Speaker 3: does to astronomy, and i'd recommend checking that out.
Speaker 1: I fell sleep the lights on last night. It's not
Speaker 1: because your brain And now this said questions comes from
Speaker 1: the Facebook group. There's Ologies podcast Facebook group. But before
Speaker 1: we take questions from you, we're going to take a
Speaker 1: quick break for sponsors of the show. Sponsors. Why sponsors?
Speaker 4: You know what they do?
Speaker 1: They help us give money to different charities every week.
Speaker 1: So if you want to know where Ologies gives our money,
Speaker 1: you can go to Aliward dot com and look for
Speaker 1: the tab Ologies gives back. There's like one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty different charities that we've given to already, with more
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Speaker 1: Okay, Isabel Lauren wants to know, what do you think
Speaker 1: the ship of the universes hyperbolic terroid? What do you think?
Speaker 1: Did I sell? Did I say toroid? Okay?
Speaker 3: You saidid okay, okay, troidal is the adjective. Okay, but yeah,
Speaker 3: it's so to the taurus is a donut shape.
Speaker 1: Oh that's all, That's what.
Speaker 3: That's all she's saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a troid cake would be a donut. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I went my whole life not knowing this somehow. But
Speaker 1: also a trus apparently technically would be like an inner
Speaker 1: tube hollow, and a solid taurus is a donut. But
Speaker 1: I want to say I was on a dessert show
Speaker 1: called Unique Suites for like a lot of seasons. I
Speaker 1: have to say a cake donut seems like a solid torus.
Speaker 1: But if it's a fluffier yeast donut, there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of air pockets in there, and the volume and density
Speaker 1: seems somewhere between a taurus and a solid torus, and
Speaker 1: I need a physicist to get on this for me.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Okay, oh yeah, back to the ship of
Speaker 1: the universe.
Speaker 3: The universe the way she's asking the question. The answer
Speaker 3: is the universe is probably flat, okay, which just means
Speaker 3: it just means that there's no large scale curvature to
Speaker 3: the universe. So I said that matter curves space, so
Speaker 3: you get these like dents and space on the very
Speaker 3: large scales. The space is flat in the sense that
Speaker 3: it's not large scale curved. It's still probably three dimensional.
Speaker 3: I mean, the space part is three dimensional, and then
Speaker 3: there's time that's a fourth dimension. But you know, it's
Speaker 3: flat in the sense that if you had two beams
Speaker 3: of light that were parallel, they would stay parallel forever.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: That seems to be the case, at least as far
Speaker 3: as we can measure. There could be some larger scale
Speaker 3: curvature that we don't measure because it's just so big,
Speaker 3: Like if you have a ball that's big enough, it
Speaker 3: looks flat, like the surface of the Earth looks flat.
Speaker 3: But the universe on the whole, as far as we know,
Speaker 3: appears to be flat. There's no evidence for curvature, but
Speaker 3: it could be curved around on some really large scale.
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll find out before the stars all collapse on
Speaker 1: themselves healthily. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: PJ. King and Laur March both had kind of the
Speaker 1: same question. Is there a reason why some stars appear
Speaker 1: to twinkle more than others?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, well, so stars appear to twinkle when you're
Speaker 3: looking through the atmosphere because the atmosphere is bending the
Speaker 3: light a little bit just by being like a little
Speaker 3: bit hotter, a little bit wetter or something in different parts.
Speaker 3: And so when you look through that that sort of
Speaker 3: you know, messy air, it makes the position of the
Speaker 3: star move around a little bit from your perspective. And
Speaker 3: that means that sometimes it'll look a little bit brighter
Speaker 3: and sometimes it'll a little bit dimmer, and that makes
Speaker 3: the twinkling. So the brighter star is sometimes that makes
Speaker 3: it look less twinkly or or more. It depends on
Speaker 3: kind of what the air is doing. But planets don't twinkle.
Speaker 3: Why not? So the reason planets don't twinkle is because
Speaker 3: so the twinkling of a star comes from the fact
Speaker 3: that we like it's it's just a point of light
Speaker 3: from our perspective, it's just a single point of light,
Speaker 3: and so it can be moved around, and that little
Speaker 3: point of light can be sort of magnified a little bit,
Speaker 3: and that makes it look brighter or less. But a
Speaker 3: planet is a disc of light from our perspective, it's
Speaker 3: really really small disc. But it's a disc of light
Speaker 3: that's big enough that the little the little sort of
Speaker 3: turbulence cells or whatever in the atmosphere only like just
Speaker 3: move the light around within the disc mostly, and so
Speaker 3: it doesn't get significantly brighter or dimmer because the motion
Speaker 3: of the air is not enough to really change the
Speaker 3: sort of size and shape of that disc.
Speaker 1: So if he twinkles, you got a star. If it
Speaker 1: doesn't twinkle, you've got a planet.
Speaker 3: More or less, Yeah, more or less. So if you
Speaker 3: see something pretty bright in the sky and it's not
Speaker 3: twinkling and other things are, then you've probably seen a planet,
Speaker 3: and they're probably seeing Jupiter, Saturn, Mars or Venus.
Speaker 1: It's so great. Yeah, And if that does happen and
Speaker 1: it's the first time you've heard this, then you should
Speaker 1: high five Katie on Twitter. Lauren Oakes wants to know
Speaker 1: what is the deal with other dimensions this might not
Speaker 1: be the right part to act, but I still want
Speaker 1: to know. Okay.
Speaker 3: So we have three dimensions of space, so that's forward,
Speaker 3: back or left, right, up, and down. We also consider
Speaker 3: time to be a dimension, so when you think about
Speaker 3: things like relativity, you have to include time as like
Speaker 3: part of your coordinate grid basically, and so that coordinate
Speaker 3: grid has to have four dimensions. So the time is
Speaker 3: the fourth dimension. And the reason for that is that
Speaker 3: you know, space and time can kind of affect each other,
Speaker 3: like things like moving through space at a higher speed
Speaker 3: changes the way you move through time, and when you're
Speaker 3: close to a gravitating object that changes the way you
Speaker 3: move through time, And so it has to be part
Speaker 3: of the same sort of malleable fabric. In some mathematical sense,
Speaker 3: there could be higher there could be other dimensions of
Speaker 3: space and that we just can't interact with. We can't see,
Speaker 3: we can't perceive, and in some cases those other dimensions
Speaker 3: of space might be kind of wrapped around to themselves,
Speaker 3: which is a weird concept, but it's kind of like
Speaker 3: if you imagine, like like if you imagine a string, right,
Speaker 3: a string is a three dimensional object. Two of those
Speaker 3: dimensions are kind of wrapped around really tight, so it
Speaker 3: only has a little bit, a little direction. You can
Speaker 3: go in two of the dimensions, you can go really
Speaker 3: long way in the other one. And so it might
Speaker 3: be that in space in our universe we can go
Speaker 3: as far as we want in our three dimensions, but
Speaker 3: the other dimensions are so small that we don't notice
Speaker 3: them because they're all wrapped up. And one of the
Speaker 3: reasons that those extra dimensions are hypothesized is that it
Speaker 3: might be that all of our particle interactions of stuff
Speaker 3: can only happen in this three dimensional space, but gravity
Speaker 3: can leak out into the other ones a little bit,
Speaker 3: And so if that were happening, that would explain why
Speaker 3: gravity is so weak compared to all the other forces.
Speaker 3: That's a hypothesis, you know. So there could be other
Speaker 3: dimensions that might solve that problem.
Speaker 1: But what about multiverses? And is there another met with
Speaker 1: a better life, meaning a different dimension.
Speaker 3: So when people say dimension in that sense, they just
Speaker 3: mean another universe the dimensionality like the dimension doesn't mean
Speaker 3: space and anymore, it means something else. So there could
Speaker 3: be other universes depending on how you define a universe,
Speaker 3: because you could just define a universe to be everything,
Speaker 3: and then everything is part of the universe.
Speaker 5: By desfinition, there can't be a second everything. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 5: but you can define a universe as just the observable universe.
Speaker 5: So what's within our sort of the distance out to
Speaker 5: which we can observe anything, which is a set distance,
Speaker 5: and then there.
Speaker 3: Could be stuff beyond that. We know there's stuff beyond that,
Speaker 3: so that's kind of outside of our universe. You can
Speaker 3: think of that as another universe, and then you can
Speaker 3: have other universes that are separated by higher dimensions from us,
Speaker 3: So you can have like like our you can imagine
Speaker 3: our universe is a flat sheet and there's another flat sheet,
Speaker 3: so we've just take the one dimension down and they
Speaker 3: could collide maybe, And this is like there's a theory
Speaker 3: for the big bang that comes from these two sheets
Speaker 3: collide and that makes a big bang, and they come
Speaker 3: apart and then they collide again later on, so called
Speaker 3: the ekpyrotic model. Wow, my thesis advisor was one of
Speaker 3: the people who came up with that. So there and
Speaker 3: then there are other ways to have other universes, like
Speaker 3: with the Many World's idea of quantum mechanics, which says
Speaker 3: that every time a quantum event happens, basically another universe
Speaker 3: branches out from ours in a way that somehow makes
Speaker 3: sense mathematically but sounds ridiculous when you think about it.
Speaker 1: Is that kind of like an alternate reality?
Speaker 3: Kind of?
Speaker 1: Yeah, is there another men in another universe, in another
Speaker 1: reality who brushes her hair more regularly?
Speaker 3: Well, in the many worlds hypothesis, I guess technically that
Speaker 3: would be the case.
Speaker 1: But so if that's like a rabbit hole that you
Speaker 1: want to go into, just like start googling.
Speaker 3: Because in many worlds, like there's another universe where like
Speaker 3: a photon just went through that window or didn't, and
Speaker 3: that's the only difference.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So, like every possible thing Rik.
Speaker 1: Kyle Land wants to know, is there actual scientific proof
Speaker 1: that there might be life beyond our planet aliens?
Speaker 3: Yes? Now probably?
Speaker 1: Okay, So what does Katie hate about her job? What
Speaker 1: does she hate?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 3: What is the uncertainty of the kind of academic career? Letter? Okay,
Speaker 3: So I spent the last eight years as a postdoc,
Speaker 3: which means I had my PhD and I was doing research,
Speaker 3: but I didn't have a permanent job, and I didn't
Speaker 3: know where I was going to go next, or how
Speaker 3: long I would be there, or whether or not I
Speaker 3: would be able to continue in science, because it was
Speaker 3: just you know, applying for jobs and uh, it's just
Speaker 3: it's a it's a difficult thing to be doing. And
Speaker 3: I you know, all jobs have some uncertainty at some stage,
Speaker 3: but I feel like in academia that uncertainty and that
Speaker 3: sort of tenuousness lasts a really long time. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: if you get to the stage where you're definitely not
Speaker 3: going to get an academic job and you wanted one,
Speaker 3: then you have spent many years making not very much
Speaker 3: money when you could have done something more lucrative, and
Speaker 3: it wouldn't have it would have been better off in
Speaker 3: like every way. So you know, I mean I enjoyed
Speaker 3: doing the research, and so for me, it was like, well,
Speaker 3: I'll just keep doing science as long as I can.
Speaker 3: I enjoy it. I'm willing to make that sacrifice. But
Speaker 3: for a lot of people it's just so disruptive and
Speaker 3: it's so difficult that it's like it's it's a really
Speaker 3: high anxiety time and it's really hard, and a lot
Speaker 3: of people leave because that is just really hard to
Speaker 3: deal with.
Speaker 1: So that's the main thing.
Speaker 3: And then the other thing is that, like it's just
Speaker 3: it's really easy to have a lot of like self
Speaker 3: doubt and have to be very kind of self driven,
Speaker 3: and it's hard to know if you're doing a good job.
Speaker 3: And like it's it's academia can be very competitive and
Speaker 3: you don't get a lot of like positive feedback, and
Speaker 3: so it can be just hard to kind of like
Speaker 3: keep doing what you're doing and know that you're doing
Speaker 3: it well or know how to do it well or
Speaker 3: you know, all of that stuff can.
Speaker 1: Be difficult, which is great that you're a science communicator
Speaker 1: as well, because you get to get a lot of
Speaker 1: feedback from the public. Imagine, I know, yeah, I mean that,
Speaker 1: and that does help a lot.
Speaker 3: Like if if I'm you know, sitting in my office
Speaker 3: banging my head again something that I feel like I
Speaker 3: really should know this thing or I really should understand it,
Speaker 3: that this should come more easily, and then you know,
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm a total failure and I don't
Speaker 3: know anything. And then I go talk to you know,
Speaker 3: a room full of school kids and suddenly like I'm
Speaker 3: an expert. Like then I feel like I know a
Speaker 3: lot of things. And then it helps a lot. So yeah,
Speaker 3: for me, it's it's made a big difference in like
Speaker 3: just keeping me from getting too depressed about, you know,
Speaker 3: not understanding the universe as well as I wanted to.
Speaker 1: What about your favorite thing about the job or cosmology
Speaker 1: or physics.
Speaker 3: Or my favorite thing is that I get to ponder
Speaker 3: the deep questions of reality as my job, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 3: and it was most of the topics in this conference
Speaker 3: were not stuff I work on. So it was like
Speaker 3: really deep questions about the nature of reality and like
Speaker 3: whether or not space time is really a thing, and
Speaker 3: how particles really work and all of that, and I
Speaker 3: was just like, like, I didn't it's not the area
Speaker 3: I work in. So there was a lot I didn't
Speaker 3: understand about it, but I could grasp some of it,
Speaker 3: and I felt like I just felt so privileged to
Speaker 3: be able to be in that room and to think
Speaker 3: about these things and to have some grasp of these
Speaker 3: huge concepts, and like I get to that that was
Speaker 3: part of my work, you know, and that was just
Speaker 3: an amazing That's just an every time that happens, it's
Speaker 3: an amazing feeling that I get to do these mental
Speaker 3: exercises and learn about the fundamental properties of the universe,
Speaker 3: and that's my job. I mean, and you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: writing the papers and teaching and all of that stuff
Speaker 3: is also my job. So there's a lot of other
Speaker 3: aspects to it, but just learning about the universe is
Speaker 3: a big part of my job and I love that.
Speaker 1: It's so baller. Yeah, all right, thank you for letting
Speaker 1: me talk to you for so long. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: That's the longest interview I've ever done because there's too
Speaker 1: many questions. Okay, let's go to a movie.
Speaker 3: Okay, bye.
Speaker 1: So we barely made the movie, which was a very
Speaker 1: forgettable mystery romp about a train stuck in the snow,
Speaker 1: but stellar mustaches and I will remain forever shook it
Speaker 1: by this conversation. I'm glad we took as long as
Speaker 1: we did.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: To follow doctor Mack, you can find her on Twitter
Speaker 1: as astro Katie or.
Speaker 3: On Instagram at Ostro Katie Mac.
Speaker 1: And this podcast is at Ology's on Twitter and Instagram,
Speaker 1: and I'm at Ali Ward on both and for t
Speaker 1: shirts and tots and mugs and to support the podcast,
Speaker 1: while also covering your nude body. Go to ologiesmerch dot
Speaker 1: com and of course, if you like the podcast and
Speaker 1: want to support, just tell a friend or make a
Speaker 1: post about it or rate it on iTunes. That's huge,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I'll give you a secret this week. This
Speaker 1: week's secret is that I record all the narration in
Speaker 1: my closet because the sound is pretty good, there's all
Speaker 1: these clothes to dampen it. But the real nugget here
Speaker 1: is that I have a real laundry situation and about
Speaker 1: half my body currently sitting on a pile of towels,
Speaker 1: which I will get to this weekend after I obtain
Speaker 1: some soap. So yeah, I'm podcasting from a laundry nest.
Speaker 1: I'm like a cozy little woodland rodent talking at you
Speaker 1: through a machine. Big huge thanks to Stephen Ray, Morris
Speaker 1: Pare and Saint of Podcasts for editing this episode, and
Speaker 1: to Shannon Felds and Bonnie Dutch for all of their
Speaker 1: help with merch and Aaron for running the Ologies podcast
Speaker 1: Facebook group. And the theme song was composed and performed
Speaker 1: by Nick Thorburn aka Nick Diamonds of the band Islands.
Speaker 1: He's great check out his music. Until then, ask smart
Speaker 1: people all the dumb questions you want. The universe is big,
Speaker 1: and regret is maybe the scariest thing there is.
Speaker 4: Okay, Brebright Pacaderman College, Bombiology, crypto zoology, lithologyinology, meteorology, fology, anthology, seriology, selinology.
Speaker 1: Get value.
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