Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
Speaker 2: Imagine you're just, you know, standing outside on a clear night.
Speaker 2: You're looking up at the sky, and suddenly this brilliant
Speaker 2: shooting star blazes right across the darkness.
Speaker 3: It's a beautiful sight, right.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful, and it's this completely unpredictable, uh, spontaneous.
Speaker 3: Surprise, unless it isn't a surprise at all, exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpact this, because what if humanity knew exactly
Speaker 2: when and where that rock would arrive, like down to
Speaker 2: the actual minute and the square meter on the ground.
Speaker 3: That is the reality we're stepping into. I'm excited to
Speaker 3: be here to talk about this because the mission of
Speaker 3: our conversation today is to really explore the Vera Reuben
Speaker 3: Observatory or the VRORO and.
Speaker 2: Its legacy survey of space and time.
Speaker 3: Right the lsst Yes, exactly. This is a monumental technological
Speaker 3: achievement that is about to permanently change our relationship with
Speaker 3: the sky. We're transforming Earth from a blind target into
Speaker 3: a filly aware.
Speaker 2: Planet, which is wild to think about. I mean, consider
Speaker 2: for a second how vulnerable Earth actually is. We're just
Speaker 2: spitting through a cosmic shooting gallery.
Speaker 3: We really are, and historically we've had almost zero visibility
Speaker 3: on the smaller debris crossing our path.
Speaker 2: Right and catching even those tiny, completely harmless space rocks,
Speaker 2: it completely alters our planetary defense strategy. The sheer scale
Speaker 2: of the universe is just mind boggling, and the fact
Speaker 2: that we can track a single rock out there is incredible.
Speaker 3: The scientific implications of predicting these meteorites are profound. It's
Speaker 3: a level of analytical precision that frankly borders on science fiction.
Speaker 3: But it's happening right now.
Speaker 2: So before we talk about the rocks themselves actually falling
Speaker 2: to Earth, we need to understand the machine that's watching them.
Speaker 2: We're moving from this concept of a blind Earth to
Speaker 2: the activation of humanity's newest, most powerful.
Speaker 3: Eye, waking up the giant as end looking up the giant, so.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the VRO itself. It's located down in
Speaker 2: Sarah Pachon in Chili.
Speaker 3: Right right high up in the Chilean Andes. The atmosphere
Speaker 3: conditions there are pristine for astronomy.
Speaker 2: And it recently had this explosive entry into the astronomy world.
Speaker 2: I mean, in just one single night in February of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six, the VRO sent out an astonishing eight
Speaker 2: hundred thousand alerts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that number is almost difficult to internalize.
Speaker 2: Eight hundred thousand yeah, in one night. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: my phone gets overwhelmed if I get like thirty group
Speaker 2: chat texts. How does an astronomical community even process that?
Speaker 3: Well. To understand that, you have to look at the
Speaker 3: instrument itself. The VRO is taking what they call cosmic
Speaker 3: treasure chest images. It's equipped with a three point two
Speaker 3: gigapixel camera.
Speaker 2: Wait, three point two gigapixels.
Speaker 3: Yes, it takes these incredibly deep wide field images of
Speaker 3: huge patches of the sky.
Speaker 2: That is just a massive amount of data.
Speaker 3: It is, but a static image doesn't tell you what's
Speaker 3: dangerous or what's changing. So that the software pipeline instantly
Speaker 3: takes that new image and overlays it onto a pristine,
Speaker 3: high resolution template image.
Speaker 2: Like a baseline image of that exact same patch of.
Speaker 3: Stuff, exactly, a template built from years of previous observations.
Speaker 3: It uses a technique called difference imaging, so.
Speaker 2: It's basically the ultimate spot, the difference puzzle. You take
Speaker 2: the archival photo late to night's photo on top of
Speaker 2: it and just subtract everything that matches.
Speaker 3: That is the exact mathematical process, literal pixel subtraction. The
Speaker 3: distant stars, the galaxies, they all perfectly align and cancel
Speaker 3: each other out.
Speaker 2: To zero, making them invisible in the data.
Speaker 3: Right, and whatever is left behind, whatever doesn't perfectly align
Speaker 3: glows in the data. That leftover pixel is the alert.
Speaker 2: So it means something has either changed in brightness or
Speaker 2: it physically moves exactly.
Speaker 3: But dealing with eight hundred thousand of those alerts in
Speaker 3: a few hours is a logistical nightmare.
Speaker 2: I would think. So. I mean, it's like having a
Speaker 2: security camera that doesn't just record a whole city, but
Speaker 2: instantly texts you every single time a leaf blows across
Speaker 2: any sidewalk. The signal to noise ratio must be insane.
Speaker 3: It is. The sky is littered with junk right now,
Speaker 3: lower orbit satellites, space debris, a satellite streaking across the frame,
Speaker 3: triggers and alerts.
Speaker 2: So how do you filter that out? You can't have
Speaker 2: human beings checking eight hundred thousand text messages.
Speaker 3: No, you can't. The data goes through these massive automated,
Speaker 3: machine learning driven filter systems called brokers.
Speaker 2: Okay, brokers, Yeah.
Speaker 3: These algorithms are trained to instantly recognize the geometric signature
Speaker 3: of say a satellite streak or the predictable pulsing of
Speaker 3: a variable star. They strip away the known noise in
Speaker 3: real time.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the brokers are like a massive sieve. You
Speaker 2: dump the raw alerts in the top and the true
Speaker 2: anomalies fall out the bottom.
Speaker 3: Exactly. And what's fascinating here is the vro's primary mandate.
Speaker 3: It wasn't actually built primarily for asteroid hunting.
Speaker 2: Wait really, with all this tracking tech.
Speaker 3: No, it's primary and famous targets are mapping dark energy,
Speaker 3: studying supernovae, and cataloging active galactic nuclei foundational physics.
Speaker 2: So the really big deep space Nobel Prize winning.
Speaker 3: Stuff, right, But to map dark energy, you need sweeping,
Speaker 3: rapid panoramic shots of the visible sky every few nights,
Speaker 3: which inadvertently makes the VRRO the greatest local surveillance camera
Speaker 3: ever built.
Speaker 2: It's like a accidental local surveillance exactly.
Speaker 3: While it was built for deep space foundational physics, its
Speaker 3: bycatch is arguably more important to our daily survival.
Speaker 2: By catch, I love that term, like a fishing net
Speaker 2: pulling in millions of asteroids and tens of thousands of
Speaker 2: near Earth objects or.
Speaker 3: NEOs precisely, and that sheer volume of data leads directly
Speaker 3: to a very specific, incredibly rare type of discovery.
Speaker 2: Right, objects that are on a direct collision course with us,
Speaker 2: the imminent impactors.
Speaker 3: Yes, and we need to define that term clearly. An
Speaker 3: imminent impactor is a natural body discovered in space before
Speaker 3: it hits.
Speaker 2: Earth, before being the operative word there exactly.
Speaker 3: And to understand how the VRO handles these, we have
Speaker 3: to look at the work of Ian Chow and his
Speaker 3: team at the University of.
Speaker 2: Washington at the DRAC Institute, Right.
Speaker 3: Yes, the Dirak Institute. They didn't just guess how good
Speaker 3: the VRO would be. They ran a rigorous simulation using
Speaker 3: a survey simulator called Sorcha Sortia.
Speaker 2: What exactly did that simulation.
Speaker 3: Do they programmed sorcha to virtually replicate the vro's exact schedule,
Speaker 3: it's downtime for weather, the sensitivity of its sensors, a
Speaker 3: complete digital twin.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, So they simulated the machine itself, not just
Speaker 2: the rocks.
Speaker 3: Right, and then they injected reality into it. They mapped
Speaker 3: three hundred and forty three known historical fireballs from NASA's
Speaker 3: Center for Near Earth Object Studies database.
Speaker 2: These were past fireballs spanning from nineteen ninety four to
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3: Correct, Yes, specifically, they were looking at one meter sized objects.
Speaker 3: They ran the orbital mechanics backward and asked the simulation
Speaker 3: if the VRO had been running, would its digital twin
Speaker 3: have caught them?
Speaker 2: Okay, so they're testing a new machine's capabilities against known
Speaker 2: historical data to prove its future efficacy. That makes sense.
Speaker 2: But let me put you back on something here. Sure,
Speaker 2: why do we care about a one meter rock? I mean,
Speaker 2: a rock the size of a washing machine just burns
Speaker 2: up in the atmosphere anyway, right, Why dedicate world class
Speaker 2: supercomputers to simulate harmless rocks.
Speaker 3: It's a great question, because those small rocks are the
Speaker 3: key to understanding the big picture. They provide a ground
Speaker 3: truth compositional map for the entire ANEO population.
Speaker 2: Round truth, meaning we can actually test our theories against
Speaker 2: physical evidence.
Speaker 3: Exactly, when we look at a massive five hundred meter asteroid,
Speaker 3: it's just a dot of light. We have to analyze
Speaker 3: its spectrum to guess if it's solid iron or a
Speaker 3: loose rubble pile.
Speaker 2: Which would totally change how you try to deflect it
Speaker 2: if it was heading.
Speaker 3: For us completely. Now, an imminent impactor gives us a
Speaker 3: unique value. We can track the object through three phases.
Speaker 2: Okay, what are the phases?
Speaker 3: First as a an asteroid in space, where we get
Speaker 3: that telescopic light data. Second as a meteor entering the
Speaker 3: atmosphere where we see how it burns and breaks apart.
Speaker 2: Which tells us is structural strength right.
Speaker 3: And third as a meteorite on the ground. Because we
Speaker 3: tracked it so precisely, we can calculate where it landed,
Speaker 3: picking up and take it to a lab.
Speaker 2: So you're closing the loop. You match the physical chemistry
Speaker 2: of the rock on the lab table with the light
Speaker 2: data the telescope saw days earlier.
Speaker 3: Exactly. Every time we do this with a harmless one
Speaker 3: meter rock, our predictive models for the massive dangerous asteroids
Speaker 3: become exponentially more precise.
Speaker 2: That is brilliant. It's like using the small rocks as
Speaker 2: a Rosetta stone for the big ones.
Speaker 3: Precisely and knowing how the VRO spots these leads us
Speaker 3: to the most critical metric.
Speaker 2: Of all when it spots them.
Speaker 3: Yes, time is the ultimate currency in planetary defense.
Speaker 2: So how much time are we buying here? Because the
Speaker 2: VRO is expected to find what one to two meter
Speaker 2: sized or larger NEOs each.
Speaker 3: Year, Yes, which effectively doubles the current global detection rate.
Speaker 2: Doubling the rate is great, but the warning window is
Speaker 2: what really matters. I have the numbers here, it says.
Speaker 2: The simulation showed a median discovery time of one point
Speaker 2: five seven days before.
Speaker 3: Impact, right about thirty eight hours.
Speaker 2: And a median time of first observation of three point
Speaker 2: zero six days, so anywhere from a day and a
Speaker 2: half to three days of warning.
Speaker 3: Which sounds short until you look at the historical context
Speaker 3: before this. The previous record for the longest warning time
Speaker 3: we ever had was back in twenty sixteen, and what
Speaker 3: was that record? A mere twenty one.
Speaker 2: Hours twenty one hours. That's nothing.
Speaker 3: It's barely enough time to verify the math and notify
Speaker 3: the government. VR simulations show some objects being found weeks
Speaker 3: in advance.
Speaker 2: Here's where it gets really interesting to me. I mean,
Speaker 2: think about the psychological and logistical difference between twenty one
Speaker 2: hours and one point five seven days or even weeks.
Speaker 3: It's the difference between panic and procedure exactly.
Speaker 2: It's like hurricane tracking. You know, a day and a
Speaker 2: half isn't a lot of time to move a mountain,
Speaker 2: but it's plenty of time to board up the windows, or,
Speaker 2: in a strong enemy's case, to point every telescope on
Speaker 2: Earth at the sky.
Speaker 3: That's a perfect analogy. What happens globally when that thirty
Speaker 3: eight hour clock starts ticking is a massive, coordinated pivot.
Speaker 2: Every observatory just drops what they're doing.
Speaker 3: Right. This doubling of warning time fundamentally changes astrometry from
Speaker 3: a reactive science where we just watch it fall, to
Speaker 3: a proactive one. We swarm the target with radar, infrared,
Speaker 3: optical telescope because the.
Speaker 2: More eyes you have on it, the more precise the
Speaker 2: trajectory is.
Speaker 3: Yet, but time is only half the equation. You can
Speaker 3: have all the time in the world, but it's useless
Speaker 3: if your telescopes are pointed at the wrong half of
Speaker 3: the sky.
Speaker 2: Ah the geometry problem.
Speaker 3: The hemisphere blind spot. Historically, as we discussed, only eleven
Speaker 3: imminent impactors have been detected prior to hitting Earth.
Speaker 2: Only eleven in all of human history.
Speaker 3: Yes, and there is a massive bias in those detections.
Speaker 3: Almost all capable astronomical facilities are located in the northern hemisphere.
Speaker 2: That is a terrifying blind spot.
Speaker 3: It is. Take the specific example of the impactor designated
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four XA one.
Speaker 2: Okay, what happened with that one?
Speaker 3: In December twenty twenty four. It was detected just ten
Speaker 3: hours before impact by the kit Peak Observatory in Arizona.
Speaker 2: Ten hours unbelievable.
Speaker 3: And it ended up striking the remote Sokka Republic in Russia.
Speaker 3: It was a northern hemisphere telescope catching a rock on
Speaker 3: a Northern Hemisphere trajectory at the absolute last minute.
Speaker 2: So imagine the earth spinning. We're constantly exposing this unmonitored
Speaker 2: southern flank to the Cosmos. It's like driving a car
Speaker 2: where all the mirrors only show you the right side
Speaker 2: of the road.
Speaker 3: You're completely blind to traffic merging from the left.
Speaker 2: Exactly, You've got zero visibility until something ghets you. That's
Speaker 2: how humanity has been tracking asteroids until now.
Speaker 3: And this is where the vro's location in Chile becomes critical.
Speaker 3: It provides a powerful southern hemisphere counterpart, finally balancing our global.
Speaker 2: Vision, curing the blind spot.
Speaker 3: Yes, if we connect this to the bigger picture, global
Speaker 3: astronomical infrastructure is a shared human responsibility. International cooperation and
Speaker 3: geographic distribution of these observatories are mandatory for our survival.
Speaker 2: Because the asteroids don't care about borders. They'll hit the north,
Speaker 2: the south, the equator exactly.
Speaker 3: The VRO gives us that global visibility.
Speaker 2: So we have the extra time and we have the
Speaker 2: dual hemisphere of visibility. Now, what exactly do scientists do
Speaker 2: in those crucial hours before the rock arrives these so
Speaker 2: what figure?
Speaker 3: Well, that advance warning allows for highly detailed study. We
Speaker 3: don't just calculate where it's going. We figure out what.
Speaker 2: It is, right the pre impact observation.
Speaker 3: We measure its albedo, which is how reflective its surfaces.
Speaker 3: We study it surface roughness, it's taxonomy.
Speaker 2: It's a rotation period, right, seeing how fast it's tumbling
Speaker 2: through space.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and if it's close enough, we can bounce radar
Speaker 3: off it. The longer we observe it, the longer our
Speaker 3: observational arc becomes, and.
Speaker 2: Longer observational arcs equal highly precise trajectory.
Speaker 3: Tracking, very precise. Let me give you an example, the
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three x one event.
Speaker 2: Oh, I've heard of this one.
Speaker 3: The Global network tracked it so well that scientists predicted
Speaker 3: its impact trajectory to within an astonishing eighteen.
Speaker 2: Meters eighteen meters. So what does this all mean? I
Speaker 2: mean eighteen meters is predicting a cosmic sniper shot from
Speaker 2: millions of miles away to land within the space of
Speaker 2: a tennis court through the atmosphere, no less, with all.
Speaker 3: The chaotic fluidynamics of the atmosphere. Yes, it's an incredible
Speaker 3: feat and that precision is what makes recovery.
Speaker 2: Possible, right, going out and picking up the pieces. But wait,
Speaker 2: since most of the Earth is covered in ocean, isn't
Speaker 2: meteorte recovery usually impossible, Like if it lands in the
Speaker 2: middle of the Pacific, it's just gone normally.
Speaker 3: Yes, an ocean impact is a total loss for meteoriticists. However,
Speaker 3: the extra warning time from the VRO makes something incredible possible.
Speaker 3: Airborne dust sampling.
Speaker 2: Airborne dust sampling. Okay, break this down for me because
Speaker 2: this sounds like science fiction.
Speaker 3: When an asteroid hits the upper atmosphere, it vaporizes, It
Speaker 3: creates a massive fireball, but as that vapor cools, it
Speaker 3: condenses into microscopic dust suspended high in the stratosphere.
Speaker 2: Like a lingering smoke trail.
Speaker 3: Exactly. And because we have thirty eight hours of warning
Speaker 3: and an eighteen meter aeror margin on the trajectory, we
Speaker 3: know exactly where that smoke trail will be.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, So you scramble an aircraft.
Speaker 3: Yes, specialized aircraft like modified WB fifty seven bombers fly
Speaker 3: directly through the lingering smoke of that vaporized asteroid over
Speaker 3: the ocean.
Speaker 2: Wait, they just fly a bomber through the plasma dust cloud.
Speaker 3: They do. The planes have sticky aerogel filters on their wings.
Speaker 3: They trap the airborne dust of the fireball before it
Speaker 3: ever settles to the ground.
Speaker 2: That is absolutely mind blowing. You bypass the ocean entirely
Speaker 2: and catch the rock while it's still floating in the
Speaker 2: sky exactly.
Speaker 3: This brings physical pieces of the cosmos directly into a lab.
Speaker 3: It validates all the distant math and physics we rely on.
Speaker 3: We get our ground truth.
Speaker 2: It's an incredible scientific triumph. But getting one meter rocks
Speaker 2: and cosmic dust is just the warm up, right. The
Speaker 2: real reason this entire system exists is the ultimate goal
Speaker 2: planetary defense.
Speaker 3: Yes, we want to protect humanity from the rocks that
Speaker 3: don't just.
Speaker 2: Right, because catching a one meter rock is cool, but
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty meter rock will flatten state exactly.
Speaker 3: The one to two meter sized detections per year act
Speaker 3: as a baseline. They are a training ground for the
Speaker 3: global network.
Speaker 2: It's a fire drill.
Speaker 3: It is because for the rarer, much larger and far
Speaker 3: more dangerous impactors, the VROs sensitivity will extend that warning
Speaker 3: time from days.
Speaker 2: To weeks weeks of warning for a major asteroid that
Speaker 2: changes everything it does.
Speaker 3: It allows for coordinated worldwide observing campaigns. We can determine
Speaker 3: the exact orbit and most importantly, mount actual planetary defense initiatives.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what does a planetary defense initiative actually look
Speaker 2: like with three weeks of warning? Because You can't build
Speaker 2: and launch a deflection rocket in twenty one days.
Speaker 3: No, you can't deflect it with that short of a window.
Speaker 3: But you can mobilize geopolitical and scientific resources. You can
Speaker 3: initiate massive civil defense and evacuation protocol.
Speaker 2: Moving millions of people out of the impact ceone.
Speaker 3: Exactly. If we know a city killer asteroid is going
Speaker 3: to hit a specific coastline in three weeks, we can
Speaker 3: empty that coastline. This is where the simulation of the
Speaker 3: harmless one meter rocks pays.
Speaker 2: Off by perfectly rehearsing the exact communication and governance protocols
Speaker 2: needed for the Big one.
Speaker 3: Precisely. The data pipeline is the same, only the payload
Speaker 3: is different.
Speaker 2: It's just so ironic, isn't it. We built this massive
Speaker 2: telescope carved off the top of a mountain in the
Speaker 2: desert to look at the absolute edge of the universe,
Speaker 2: to look at dark energy and billions of years into
Speaker 2: the past, and its most practical use might literally be
Speaker 2: saving our own backyards from a falling rock.
Speaker 3: It is a beautiful irony of foundational science. But this
Speaker 3: raises an important question. How will humanity govern and coordinate
Speaker 3: this information when a real threat is detected weeks out.
Speaker 2: That's the real test, isn't it. The telescope just gives
Speaker 2: us the math. It's up to human beings to actually
Speaker 2: figure out the geopolitics of an evacuation without causing global panic.
Speaker 3: The machine worked perfectly. The human element is the variable.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's an incredible journey we've mapped out here. We
Speaker 2: went from a single observatory high in the mountains of Chile,
Speaker 2: processing eight hundred thousand difference imaging alerts a single.
Speaker 3: Night, through the broker algorithms filtering out the noise.
Speaker 2: Right to a global network that is capable of catching
Speaker 2: incoming fireballs days or even weeks before they strike, curing
Speaker 2: our southern hemisphere blind spot, and giving us the power
Speaker 2: to fly bombers through cosmic smoke.
Speaker 3: It is a total paradigm shift in our situational awareness.
Speaker 2: It really is, and for you listening, it really changes
Speaker 2: how you think about your place in this newly monitored
Speaker 2: solar system. The sky above us is no longer this unknown,
Speaker 2: chaotic frontier.
Speaker 3: It's an actively mapped, highly surveilled.
Speaker 2: Neighborhood exactly which leads me with this sort of provocative
Speaker 2: thought to ponder as our technology improves and the sky
Speaker 2: becomes entirely mathematically predictable. We kind of lose something.
Speaker 3: Don't we, a mystery of it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we lose the spontaneous magic of a surprise shooting stars.
Speaker 2: Serendipity is going to be replaced by a push notification
Speaker 2: telling you exactly where and when to look.
Speaker 3: We trade the romance of the unknown for the security of.
Speaker 2: The known, beautifully put, but in exchange we gain the
Speaker 2: ultimate power, the power to survive the cosmos. When we
Speaker 2: finally know exactly what the universe is throwing at us,
Speaker 2: how will that change our perception of our place in it?
Speaker 3: We evolve from passive targets to active participants.
Speaker 2: Exactly. We are no longer just along for the ride
Speaker 2: in the dark. We are finally learning how to read
Speaker 2: the maps and maybe just maybe learning how to steer
Speaker 2: the ship. Next time you stand outside in the dark,
Speaker 2: remember that there are massive digitalized staring right back, making
Speaker 2: sure the road ahead is clear. Keep asking to big questions,
Speaker 2: keep looking up, and we'll see you next time. Last
Speaker 2: pass