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: I really want you to just take a moment right
Speaker 2: now and picture the moon. And I don't mean a
Speaker 2: high resolution photograph from some astronomy textbook, but the actual
Speaker 2: moon you see when you step outside on a clear
Speaker 2: night and just look up.
Speaker 3: Right, just that familiar glowing sphere we all.
Speaker 2: Know exactly to the naked eye. It's just this well,
Speaker 2: this glowing cratered ball. It's undeniably beautiful, but it also
Speaker 2: looks like a completely dead, dusty rock, just sort of
Speaker 2: floating in the cold void.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean humanity has grown up with that
Speaker 3: exact same image. Yeah, for tens of thousands of years,
Speaker 3: we look up and we basically just see a monochrome desert.
Speaker 2: We do. But okay, what if you could put on
Speaker 2: a pair of magic glasses. What if the second you
Speaker 2: slip those glasses on that pale gray rock completely transformed.
Speaker 3: Oh I love this analogy. It's like flipping a switch
Speaker 3: on the universe.
Speaker 2: Right Suddenly you know you aren't looking at a lifeless
Speaker 2: desert anymore. You're looking at this vibrant neon glowing map
Speaker 2: of hidden chemical elements spreading all across the lunar surface.
Speaker 3: You'd see pockets of brilliant blues, sweeping streaks of radiant reds,
Speaker 3: deep pools of vivid greens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, you would be seeing the actual chemical makeup
Speaker 2: of the Moon glowing in real time. It would completely
Speaker 2: rewrite our understanding of our closest celestial neighbor.
Speaker 3: It's an absolutely stunning visual to imagine it really is.
Speaker 3: What is truly incredible about where we stand right now
Speaker 3: in astrophysics is that we are no longer confined to
Speaker 3: just imagining it.
Speaker 2: We're building them.
Speaker 3: Yes, we are actively building those magic glasses.
Speaker 2: And that is the massive breakthrough we are getting into
Speaker 2: today because a team of researchers at Tokyo Metropolitan University,
Speaker 2: specifically led by Ori Tida and Professor Yuchiro Izoe, have
Speaker 2: developed something that frankly feels like it belongs in a
Speaker 2: sci fi.
Speaker 3: Novel, it really does. It sounds like pure science.
Speaker 2: Fiction, but it's real. They have created this highly compact
Speaker 2: X ray telescope that is capable of giving humanity its
Speaker 2: very first complete, comprehensive chemical map of the lunar surface.
Speaker 3: And we really need to establish the stakes here right away.
Speaker 3: This effort. It's not about capturing prettier, more colorful pictures
Speaker 3: of the Moon to just hang in a gallery or
Speaker 3: put on a magazine.
Speaker 2: Cover, right, It's not just for the aesthetics.
Speaker 3: Not at all. We are looking at a fundamental paradigm
Speaker 3: shift in space exploration. This specific technology is going to
Speaker 3: completely change how we understand the Moon's deep, violent geological history.
Speaker 2: Which is fascinating on its own. But there's a practical
Speaker 2: side too, right.
Speaker 3: Oh, massively practical, perhaps even more importantly for our lifetime.
Speaker 3: The data this telescope gathers is going to literally dictate
Speaker 3: the Moon's potential to support human life in the very
Speaker 3: near future.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's unpack this a bit because whenever someone
Speaker 2: says X ray telescope, my mind immediately goes to these massive,
Speaker 2: multi billion dollar orbital observatories.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, like Chandra or XMM Newton. Yeah, the giants.
Speaker 2: I'm picturing these instruments that are the size of a
Speaker 2: school bus, requiring the largest rockets we have just to
Speaker 2: get them off the ground. How can a single university
Speaker 2: team be building something that maps the entire Moon? Are
Speaker 2: we talking about sending a massive new space station into
Speaker 2: lunar orbit?
Speaker 3: That is the crucial engineering hurdle that makes this breakthrough
Speaker 3: so significant. If you know anything about the history of
Speaker 3: X ray astronomy, you know that traditional X ray telescopes
Speaker 3: are notoriously massive.
Speaker 2: They're huge.
Speaker 3: They are some of the heaviest, most cumbersome instruments humanity
Speaker 3: is ever put into space. And there is a very specific,
Speaker 3: unforgiving physical reason for that bulk. You can't just shrink
Speaker 3: them normally.
Speaker 2: Right. It has to do with how X rays behave
Speaker 2: compared to normal visible light, Because I know that if
Speaker 2: I take a standard telescope mirror like the kind you
Speaker 2: might have in your backyard to look at Jupiter, and
Speaker 2: I try to point it at an X ray source,
Speaker 2: it just doesn't work.
Speaker 3: It doesn't work at all. It's useless.
Speaker 2: Why is that? Why doesn't it reflect?
Speaker 3: Because X rays are incredibly high energy photons They carry
Speaker 3: so much energy, and their wavelengths are so incredibly short
Speaker 3: that if you fire an X ray at a standard
Speaker 3: curved optical mirror, it will not bounce off the surface
Speaker 3: and focus into an eyepiece like normal light does.
Speaker 2: So what does it do? Does it just break the mirror?
Speaker 3: Well, it will either be completely absorbed by the mirror's
Speaker 3: material or it will just blast right through it, almost
Speaker 3: like the mirror wasn't even there.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, So I'm imagining like trying to bounce a
Speaker 2: tennis ball off a wall. A tennis ball bounces easily.
Speaker 2: That's our visible light. But an X ray is like
Speaker 2: firing a high caliber bullet at a piece of tissue paper.
Speaker 3: That is a fantastic analogy. Yes, the tissue or doesn't
Speaker 3: stand a chance of deflecting that bullet. It just punches
Speaker 3: a hole straight through.
Speaker 2: So how do you fix that? How do you catch
Speaker 2: a bullet with a mirror.
Speaker 3: Well, because of that penetrating power, astronomers in the mid
Speaker 3: twentieth century had to completely reinvent how a telescope even works.
Speaker 3: In order to capture X rays. They had to vent
Speaker 3: something called grazing incidents.
Speaker 2: Mirror the raising incidents. Okay, I think I know where
Speaker 2: this is going. But break down the physics for me.
Speaker 2: How do you force a high energy bullet to actually bounce?
Speaker 3: You have to change the angle. Think about the angle
Speaker 3: of attack. Imagine you're standing on the shore of a
Speaker 3: completely calm lake. If you take a heavy stone and
Speaker 3: throw it straight down into the water, what happens?
Speaker 2: It just violently breaks the surface and sinks immediately exactly.
Speaker 3: That is our X ray hitting a standard mirror head on.
Speaker 3: But if you take that exact same stone, crouch down
Speaker 3: low and throw it at a very shallow, almost parallel
Speaker 3: angle to the.
Speaker 2: Water, Oh, it skips. It skips across the surfer right.
Speaker 3: It skips Even though water is soft and the stone
Speaker 3: is heavy. The extreme shallow angle forces the stone to
Speaker 3: deflect grazing incidence. Mirrors work on that exact same principle.
Speaker 2: So instead of a dish that faces the target directly,
Speaker 2: like a satellite dish on a house, what does it
Speaker 2: look like?
Speaker 3: X ray mirrors are shaped like long, hollow cylinders, and
Speaker 3: they're often nested one inside the other, kind of like
Speaker 3: Russian nesting dolls.
Speaker 2: Wait, hollow cylinders, how does the light get in?
Speaker 3: The incoming X rays enter the open top of the cylinder,
Speaker 3: and because the walls are angled, it's just a fraction
Speaker 3: of a degree. The X rays skip off the ultra
Speaker 3: smooth inside surface like the stone on the pond precisely.
Speaker 3: They skip and skip, and they are slowly funneled down
Speaker 3: a long tube until they hit a detector at the
Speaker 3: far end.
Speaker 2: I see the problem immediately, though. To skip an X
Speaker 2: ray down a tube and actually bring it to a
Speaker 2: focused point, that too has to be incredibly long.
Speaker 3: It has to be immensely long. The focal lengths required
Speaker 3: to gently guide these high energy photons requires so much
Speaker 3: physical space, so the telescope ends up being ten, ten, fifteen,
Speaker 3: or even twenty meters long.
Speaker 2: That's the size of a building it is.
Speaker 3: And they are incredibly heavy due to the layers of
Speaker 3: dense metal required to make those nested cylindrical mirrors, which
Speaker 3: means they are astronomically expensive to launch.
Speaker 2: So if you want to put a massive X ray
Speaker 2: observatory into orbit around the Earth, you put it on
Speaker 2: top of a heavy lip rocket, blast it into low
Speaker 2: Earth orbit, and you just leave it there. And we've
Speaker 2: done that.
Speaker 3: We have. It takes massive resources, but we do it.
Speaker 2: But sending something that huge all the way to the Moon.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a completely different mathematical universe, isn't it.
Speaker 3: It is an absolute logistical nightmare. Launching a massive payload
Speaker 3: from Earth's surface is hard enough. But pushing a school
Speaker 3: bus sized instrument across the quarter million miles to.
Speaker 2: The Moon, Yeah, that takes so much fuel.
Speaker 3: And not just to get it there. You have to
Speaker 3: carry enough heavy rocket fuel to physically slow that massive
Speaker 3: object down once it arrives, so it doesn't just fly
Speaker 3: right past the Moon into deep space. Oh right, You
Speaker 3: have to hit the brakes exactly. The fuel requirements alone
Speaker 3: for lunar orbit insertion of traditional X ray observatory would
Speaker 3: bankrupt most space agencies. It's just not feasible, which.
Speaker 2: Brings us directly to the core of the Tokyo Metropolitan
Speaker 2: University breakthrough. If traditional telescopes are heavy, long, and basically
Speaker 2: impossible to maneuver into a tight lunar orbit, what did
Speaker 2: Touda and Eazoe actually build.
Speaker 3: They built a telescope that completely upends those traditional engineering constraints.
Speaker 3: The instrument they've designed is not weigh thousands of kilograms.
Speaker 3: The entire sensor payload weighs less than ten kilogram.
Speaker 2: Wall, I need to stop you their ten kilograms.
Speaker 3: Less than ten kilograms? Yes, this is.
Speaker 2: Roughly the weight of a medium sized dog, or like
Speaker 2: a couple of bags of groceries. How is it physically
Speaker 2: possible to replace a twenty meter long, multi ton orbital
Speaker 2: observatory with something I could carry on too an airplane
Speaker 2: as hand luggage.
Speaker 3: It sounds impossible.
Speaker 2: I know what is the catch here? Because you know
Speaker 2: in physics you can't shoot the rules. There is always
Speaker 2: a catch.
Speaker 3: It's the exact right question to ask. You cannot cheat physics.
Speaker 3: The high energy nature of X rays hasn't magically changed.
Speaker 3: What is fascinating here is that the catch isn't a
Speaker 3: loss of precision or some magical new element.
Speaker 2: So what is it?
Speaker 3: It is a brilliant, radical change in engineering strategy. And
Speaker 3: to understand that strategy we actually have to look at
Speaker 3: where this technology was born, because this ultra lightweight telescope
Speaker 3: was not originally invented to look at the Moon at all.
Speaker 2: Really, what was it for?
Speaker 3: It was initially developed to study Earth's magnetosphere.
Speaker 2: So this entire lunar mapping project is actually a pivot
Speaker 2: from a totally different mission.
Speaker 3: A magnificent opportunistic pivot.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: For years, researchers have been trying to figure out how
Speaker 3: to put highly sensitive, extremely lightweight X ray detectors into
Speaker 3: orbit around.
Speaker 2: Earth to monitor what exactly.
Speaker 3: A monitor how the violent solar wind interacts with our
Speaker 3: planet's magnetic shield. They needed an instrument that was nimble,
Speaker 3: something that could be launched cheaply in large clusters.
Speaker 2: Uh okay, So they needed something small, right.
Speaker 3: So material scientists and astrophysicists collaborated and they developed something
Speaker 3: called micropoor optics.
Speaker 2: Micropoor optics, Okay, I'm guessing micromeans. We are shrinking those
Speaker 2: giant skipping stones cylinders down, but how do you shrink
Speaker 2: a twenty meter telescope mirror?
Speaker 3: You basically replace those massive, heavy nested metal cylinders with
Speaker 3: incredibly thin, lightweight plates. Imagine a plate made of advanced
Speaker 3: silicon or glass that is absolutely riddled with microscopic.
Speaker 2: Holes like a sponge kind of.
Speaker 3: But much more structured. These aren't just random round holes
Speaker 3: drilled into a plate. They are perfectly structured microscopic square pores.
Speaker 2: I am struggling to visualize this a bit. Why square
Speaker 2: pores and how small are we actually talking.
Speaker 3: We are talking about pores that are fractions of a
Speaker 3: millimeter wide, tiny, and the reason they are square is
Speaker 3: critical to the physics of focusing the X ray.
Speaker 2: How does the square shape help focus it?
Speaker 3: Well? When an X ray enters a microscopic square poor,
Speaker 3: it skips off the flat internal walls of that tiny tunnel.
Speaker 3: By having a square geometry, the X ray can reflect
Speaker 3: off two adjacent walls in sequence.
Speaker 2: So it hits like the top wall and then immediately
Speaker 2: hits the sidewall exactly.
Speaker 3: This double reflection inside the microscopic pore mimics the exact
Speaker 3: same shallow grazing incidents funneling effect of the giant metal
Speaker 3: cylinders we talked about earlier.
Speaker 2: Oh, but it accomplishes it in a fraction of the distance.
Speaker 3: Yes, you get the exact same skipping stone effect, but
Speaker 3: shrunk down to the microscopic level.
Speaker 2: So instead of one giant tube slowly funneling a photon
Speaker 2: over twenty meters, you have millions of microscopic square tubes
Speaker 2: rapidly funneling millions of photons over a distance of just
Speaker 2: a few centimeters.
Speaker 3: That is the exact mechanism. You're replacing brute force mass
Speaker 3: with hyper engineer geometry. The X rays skip through these
Speaker 3: microscopic pores just like they do through the giant orbital observatories,
Speaker 3: but the whole apparatus is shrunk down.
Speaker 2: And so the weight drops from tons to kilograms.
Speaker 3: Precisely from a school bus to a bag of groceries.
Speaker 2: It sounds so Sima went to the evolution of computing.
Speaker 2: To me, like moving from those giant room size vacuum
Speaker 2: tube computers of the nineteen fifties down to a modern
Speaker 2: silicon microchip.
Speaker 3: That is a very solid parallel. You aren't changing the
Speaker 3: fundamental math of computing, or in this case, the physics
Speaker 3: of X rays. You are just miniaturizing the physical architecture
Speaker 3: that performs the task.
Speaker 2: That's brilliant.
Speaker 3: And when the team at TMU, led by Toyta and Ezoi,
Speaker 3: look at the performance specifications of this micro poor technology,
Speaker 3: they realize something profound.
Speaker 2: They realized it was perfect for.
Speaker 3: The Moon exactly. They realized they were holding the perfect
Speaker 3: tool for a lunar orbital mission. But the brilliance of
Speaker 3: their proposal doesn't stop it just sending one of these
Speaker 3: small telescopes to the Moon.
Speaker 2: What do you mean They're sending more than one.
Speaker 3: Because the individual units are so incredibly lightweight and small,
Speaker 3: A single lunar orbiting satellite doesn't have to carry just
Speaker 3: one sensor. It can carry a grid of them.
Speaker 2: Oh, they're packing multiples onto one satellite.
Speaker 3: Specifically, they have designed the system that utilizes a five
Speaker 3: y five array. That's twenty five individual micropoor X ray
Speaker 3: telescopes all mounted together on a single lightweight orbital platform.
Speaker 2: I love the elegance of this concept. If you have
Speaker 2: a ten kilogram sensor, you don't just celebrate that it's
Speaker 2: light and launch one. You take advantage of that weight
Speaker 2: savings to multiply your observational Pathwer.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it's incredibly efficient.
Speaker 2: It immediately reminds me of the compound eye of a fly.
Speaker 2: Oh how so well, a human eye is essentially one
Speaker 2: massive lens trying to take in a wide field of view.
Speaker 2: But a fly doesn't have the space or mass for
Speaker 2: a giant, heavy eye, so nature gave it thousands of tiny,
Speaker 2: highly efficient individual lenses. Right omatidia, right, the little facets. Yeah,
Speaker 2: each one captures a tiny sliver of light, but when
Speaker 2: the fly's brain stitches all those slivers together, it gets
Speaker 2: this massive, wide angle, highly sensitive view of its entire environment.
Speaker 2: The five x five array is basically a mechanical compound.
Speaker 3: Eye that analogy hits the nail right on the head.
Speaker 3: By utilizing a five y five array of micropoor telescopes,
Speaker 3: the TMU team is exponentially compounding the power of the.
Speaker 2: Instrument, because if you only had one, you'd just be
Speaker 2: looking through a straw.
Speaker 3: Exactly, if you only had one small telescope in lunar orbit,
Speaker 3: you w'ud be looking at a tiny pinprick of the
Speaker 3: lunar regolith at any given moment. You would take millennia
Speaker 3: to map the whole surface.
Speaker 2: But with the array.
Speaker 3: With the array, you are sweeping a massive, wide net
Speaker 3: across the regolith. As the satellite orbits, you dramatically increase
Speaker 3: the coverage area and the overall speed of data collection.
Speaker 2: So the catch I asked about earlier really isn't a
Speaker 2: compromise in the quality of the science at all. It
Speaker 2: is just a completely different engineering philosophy.
Speaker 3: Precisely, instead of building one giant, heavy ducat to catch
Speaker 3: X ray slowly, we are casting a wide net of tiny,
Speaker 3: hyper efficient buckets to catch them rapidly.
Speaker 2: We are utilizing a smart, distributed geometric design rather than
Speaker 2: brew force physical mass. I love that, but we have
Speaker 2: to remember the design of the telescope array itself is
Speaker 2: only half of the equation, right right.
Speaker 3: The telescope is just a passive receiver.
Speaker 2: It is essentially just a very fancy camera lens sitting
Speaker 2: in the dark. To understand how we can actually map
Speaker 2: the chemical elements of the Moon, we need to understand
Speaker 2: the source of the signal. We need a flash of light.
Speaker 3: Yes, because this telescope isn't shooting X rays down at
Speaker 3: the Moon like a radar dish.
Speaker 2: It's waiting for something to happen.
Speaker 3: It is, and that's something is an incredibly violent interaction
Speaker 3: between the Moon and the Sun.
Speaker 2: Let's dive into the cosmic physics here. Specifically, this mechanism
Speaker 2: called X ray fluorescence because this is the cool part oh.
Speaker 3: X ray fluorescence or XRF, is one of the most
Speaker 3: elegant and reliable mechanisms in all of astrophysics. It is
Speaker 3: the core physical process that makes this entire mission possible.
Speaker 2: Okay, so how does it work? How does XRF let
Speaker 2: us map a giant rock?
Speaker 3: Well, to truly grasp how it allows us to map
Speaker 3: a celestial body, we actually need to zoom all the
Speaker 3: way down to the microscopic atomic level. Think about the
Speaker 3: lunar surface.
Speaker 2: Okay, the dirt, the rocks.
Speaker 3: Every rock, every boulder, every single grain of that fine
Speaker 3: abrasive dust we call regolith is made of atoms. You
Speaker 3: have oxygen, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, iron.
Speaker 2: The fundamental building blocks of planetary geology.
Speaker 3: Correct and in a normal, calm state, these atoms are
Speaker 3: just sitting there on the lunar surface doing nothing to
Speaker 3: an X ray telescope. They are completely dark. They're not
Speaker 3: emitting any high energy radiation on their own.
Speaker 2: So the telescope would just see pitch black exactly.
Speaker 3: But our Sun is not a calm, quiet neighbor. The
Speaker 3: Sun is a raging, churning, violently magnetic ball of superheated plasma.
Speaker 2: It's basically a continuous explosion, and due.
Speaker 3: To the complex twisting of its magnetic fields, it frequently
Speaker 3: unleashes intense solar flares.
Speaker 2: These flares are massive eruptions, right like billions of megatons
Speaker 2: of energy just snapping and exploding outward into the solar system.
Speaker 3: Yes, magnetic reconnection of and during these events, the Sun
Speaker 3: throws massive amounts of extremely high energy X rays out
Speaker 3: into the void of space, traveling outward at the speed
Speaker 3: of light.
Speaker 2: I am really trying to picture the sheer scale of this.
Speaker 2: The Sun erupts and this wave of invisible high energy
Speaker 2: X rays washes over the entire inner Solar system.
Speaker 3: It's a cosmic tsunami of radiation.
Speaker 2: But here on Earth we don't really notice when a
Speaker 2: solar flares X rays hit us, unless we are looking
Speaker 2: at specific atmospheric phenomena like the auroras or monitoring satellite interference.
Speaker 2: Why is that? Why don't we get cooked?
Speaker 3: Because Earth has armor, We have a remarkably thick, dense atmosphere,
Speaker 3: and we have a powerful global magnetic field generated by
Speaker 3: our planet's spinning molten core, our shield. Right when those
Speaker 3: high energy solar X rays hit Earth, our atmosphere absorbs
Speaker 3: and scatters them long before they ever reach the surface.
Speaker 3: That atmospheric shield is the only reason complex life can
Speaker 3: exist down here.
Speaker 2: The Moon doesn't have that. The Moon has no atmosphere
Speaker 2: at all, just the hard vacuum of space right down
Speaker 2: to the dirt.
Speaker 3: None, and it has no active global magnetic field. It
Speaker 3: is completely naked and exposed.
Speaker 2: So when that wave hits and.
Speaker 3: The solar flare erupts those high energy X rays from
Speaker 3: the Sun slam unimpeded, directly into the raw, exposed lunar regolith.
Speaker 2: Okay, here's where I really need you to explain the
Speaker 2: quantum mechanics of this, because it sounds like magic if
Speaker 2: we don't break it down. What actually happens when a
Speaker 2: high energy solar X ray traveling at the speed of
Speaker 2: light slams into a single atom of say aluminum, sitting
Speaker 2: quietly on the lunar surface.
Speaker 3: It's a violent microscopic collision.
Speaker 2: Does the atom just absorb the heat? Does it shatter?
Speaker 2: What happens?
Speaker 3: It triggers a very specific atomic reaction. Think of the
Speaker 3: aluminum atom as a miniature solar system. You have it
Speaker 3: dense nucleus in the center, and you have electrons orbiting
Speaker 3: around it in different shells.
Speaker 2: Or energy level like planets around the Sun.
Speaker 3: Exactly now, the incoming solar X ray essentially acts like
Speaker 3: an unimaginably fat microscopic cubeall on a billiard table. It
Speaker 3: smashes into the aluminum atom with so much energy that
Speaker 3: it completely bypasses the outer electrons and strikes one of
Speaker 3: the atom's innermost electrons.
Speaker 2: It goes straight for the inner shell.
Speaker 3: It does, it transfers its energy and knocks that inter
Speaker 3: electron completely out of its orbit and ejects it from
Speaker 3: the atom entirely.
Speaker 2: Wow. So the atom has just been violently assaulted by
Speaker 2: this X ray. It has a gaping hole in its
Speaker 2: innermost shell. Now I imagine the atom doesn't like being
Speaker 2: in that state.
Speaker 3: It absolutely does not. In quantum mechanics, systems always seek
Speaker 3: their lowest, most stable energy state. An atom with a
Speaker 3: missing inter electron is highly unstable. It is in what
Speaker 3: we call an excited state. It wants to fix itself
Speaker 3: exactly so, almost instantaneously, an electron from a higher outer
Speaker 3: orbit falls down to fill that newly created hole in
Speaker 3: the inner shell.
Speaker 2: It drops down to restore the balance.
Speaker 3: That makes sense, But here is the critical rule of physics.
Speaker 3: An outer electron possesses more potential energy than an inter electron.
Speaker 3: In order to drop down to that lower inner orbit,
Speaker 3: the outer electron has to shed its excess energy.
Speaker 2: It can't just take that extra energy down with it
Speaker 2: to the inner ring.
Speaker 3: No, it cannot. It has to release it, and it
Speaker 3: releases that exact specific amount of energy in the form
Speaker 3: of a brand new photon specifically an X ray photon.
Speaker 3: The atom fluoresces.
Speaker 2: Ah, hence X ray fluorescence. The atom absorbs the Sun's chaotic, violent,
Speaker 2: high energy X ray, uses it to eject an electron,
Speaker 2: and then as it heals itself, it spits out its
Speaker 2: own brand new X ray in response.
Speaker 3: And this right here is the magic key that makes
Speaker 3: the entire TMU mission possible. Because the energy of the
Speaker 3: X ray that gets spit out by the atom is
Speaker 3: not random, it is mathematically precise.
Speaker 2: Because the distance between the electron shells is fixed.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is completely unique to the specific element that
Speaker 3: created it. The energy difference between the outer shell and
Speaker 3: the inner shell of an aluminum atom is a very
Speaker 3: specific constant number.
Speaker 2: So it only ever releases that exact amount of energy.
Speaker 3: Correct. Therefore, the X ray emitted by an aliminum atom
Speaker 3: has a totally different energy level than an X ray
Speaker 3: emitted by a silicon atom, yeah, which is different from
Speaker 3: the energy emitted by oxygen, which is different from magnesium.
Speaker 2: So they act like absolute, unmistakable atomic fingerprints.
Speaker 3: They are definitive elemental signatures. An X ray detector measures
Speaker 3: the energy of these incoming photons in units called electron volts.
Speaker 3: When the detector sees a spike at a specific number
Speaker 3: of electron volts, it knows with absolute certainty that is aluminum.
Speaker 2: There is no gaswork none.
Speaker 3: When it sees a spike at a different, specific energy level,
Speaker 3: it knows that is silicon.
Speaker 2: This completely reframes the visual for me, going back to
Speaker 2: our magic glasses idea. From the beginning, it's like the
Speaker 2: Sun is acting as a giant, unpredictable cosmic black light.
Speaker 3: I love the black light comparesson all right.
Speaker 2: The moon is just sitting there in the dark, gray
Speaker 2: and monochrome. But the moment a solar flare hits, the
Speaker 2: entire surface suddenly glows in X ray wavelength.
Speaker 3: It lights up completely.
Speaker 2: And if you are orbiting overhead looking down through this
Speaker 2: ten kilogram micropore array, you aren't just seeing a flash
Speaker 2: of white light. You are seeing different colors of this
Speaker 2: invisible spectrum.
Speaker 3: You see the specific energy signatures.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you see patches of the surface glowing with the
Speaker 2: exact energetic fingerprint of aluminum, right next to pools glowing
Speaker 2: with the fingerprint of silicon.
Speaker 3: That is precisely what the instrument is designed to see.
Speaker 3: The telescope sits up there and it's stable lunar orbit,
Speaker 3: passively waiting when a flare hits. It catches these characteristic
Speaker 3: X rays as they bounce back up from the surface,
Speaker 3: sorts them by their specific energy levels, and plots them
Speaker 3: onto a geographical map of the ground directly below.
Speaker 2: Here's where it gets really interesting to me. We are
Speaker 2: literally using solar flares, these massive, violent, sometimes terrifying eruptions
Speaker 2: on our star, as a giant flashlight to read the
Speaker 2: chemical dirt on the moon. We are we are hijacking
Speaker 2: the Sun's fury to do our scientific surveying for us,
Speaker 2: basically for free. But wait, this brings up a very
Speaker 2: obvious logistical hurdle that we definitely need to address.
Speaker 3: I suspect, I know exactly what you're going to ask.
Speaker 2: Solar flares are notoriously unpredictable. I mean we cannot schedule that.
Speaker 3: No, we certainly can't.
Speaker 2: We have a general understanding of the eleven year solar cycle,
Speaker 2: you know, solar maximum and solar minimum, but we cannot
Speaker 2: predict a specific flare with pinpoint accuracy.
Speaker 3: It's space weather. It's chaotic.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the Sun is incredibly active, throwing out flares every day,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it is stubbornly quiet for weeks or even
Speaker 2: months at a time. If our telescope only works when
Speaker 2: the sun flares, doesn't that make mapping the entire Moon
Speaker 2: a massive, frustrating waiting game.
Speaker 3: It absolutely makes it a waiting game. There's no getting
Speaker 3: around that. You cannot just send this satellite up for
Speaker 3: a long weekend, snap a global picture, and come.
Speaker 2: Home because it might not flash while you're there.
Speaker 3: Exactly, you are entirely at the mercy of the space
Speaker 3: weather environment. If the sun is quiet, your highly advanced
Speaker 3: X ray telescope is essentially blind. It is seeing almost
Speaker 3: nothing but cosmic background noise.
Speaker 2: So how long does it actually take to build a
Speaker 2: complete high resolution map of an entire planetary body if
Speaker 2: you are just waiting for random, unpredictable flashes of light
Speaker 2: from a star ninety three million miles away.
Speaker 3: Well, this is exactly why the TMU team's specific approach
Speaker 3: with the five x five array is so critical. Remember
Speaker 3: when we talked about the wide net.
Speaker 2: Oh right, the flies.
Speaker 3: I Yes, If you only had one small micropore sensor
Speaker 3: and you only caught a tiny narrow sliver of the
Speaker 3: Moon's surface during a brief flare, it would take centuries
Speaker 3: of orbiting to piece together a full map.
Speaker 2: Because the odds of you looking at the right spot
Speaker 2: at the exact right millisecond are so low.
Speaker 3: The probability would be incredibly low. But because you have
Speaker 3: a wide field of view provided by the distributed array,
Speaker 3: every single time the sun flares, you cast a massive net,
Speaker 3: you illuminate and capture a huge swad of the surface.
Speaker 2: Simultaneously, you are capturing a much bigger chunk of the
Speaker 2: jigsaw puzzle with every single flash.
Speaker 3: Exactly the complex orbit simulations run by Toyta and Professor
Speaker 3: Ezoe suggests that by maintaining this orbital vigilance, just passively
Speaker 3: flying over the surface and catching these flashes whenever the
Speaker 3: Sun decides to cooperate, you could achieve a full, comprehensive
Speaker 3: map of the Moon's surface chemistry in just a few
Speaker 3: years of continuous observation.
Speaker 2: Just a few years. That's actually amazing. It is like
Speaker 2: building a massive long exposure photograph. You piece it together
Speaker 2: flare by flair, photon by photon, pixel by pixel until
Speaker 2: the entire global map comes into sharp focus.
Speaker 3: That's a great way to put it. A long exposure
Speaker 3: cosmic photograph.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we have established the brilliant engineering. We have
Speaker 2: this lightweight micropore telescope array. We understand the cosmic physics
Speaker 2: of how we use the sun as a black light
Speaker 2: to trigger these atomic fingerprints via X ray fluorescence.
Speaker 3: The mechanism is perfectly sound.
Speaker 2: The engineering is revolutionary. Yeah, but now we really have.
Speaker 3: To talk about the why, like the scientific application of
Speaker 3: all this data.
Speaker 2: Because once we spend those few years in orbit and
Speaker 2: we finally catch all these fluorescent fingerprints and we build
Speaker 2: this beautiful, colorful map of oxygen, magnesium, aluminum in silicon,
Speaker 2: what story do those colors actually tell us?
Speaker 3: He tell us the story of the Moon's birth.
Speaker 2: We need to move from the how it works to
Speaker 2: the what it means, because reading these elements across the
Speaker 2: global surface is basically like reading the deep geological bones
Speaker 2: of the Moon.
Speaker 3: It is the ultimate exercise in planetary forensics. And to
Speaker 3: truly understand why this new global map is so vital
Speaker 3: to planetary scientists, we have to look honestly at the
Speaker 3: data we are currently working with.
Speaker 2: What do you mean don't we already know a lot
Speaker 2: about the Moon?
Speaker 3: We do. Humanity has actually known a fair bit about
Speaker 3: the Moon's fundamental chemistry for decades, but our knowledge is
Speaker 3: incredibly localized. It is severely limited by geography.
Speaker 2: Oh, we were talking about the physical samples we brought
Speaker 2: back the Apollo missions.
Speaker 3: Yes, the Apollo missions were a monumental, unparalleled achievement in
Speaker 3: human history. The hundreds of pounds of physic rock and
Speaker 3: regolith that those astronauts brought back to Earth completely revolutionized
Speaker 3: our understanding of the Solar System. But they only went
Speaker 3: to a few places, right, we have to remember the
Speaker 3: strict operational constraints of Apollo. The astronauts landed in very specific,
Speaker 3: carefully chosen, relatively flat and safe equatorial regions on the
Speaker 3: near side of the Moon. Think of the Sea of Tranquility.
Speaker 2: They couldn't exactly land in the middle of a jagged
Speaker 2: crater field.
Speaker 3: No, it was too dangerous, and they only had a
Speaker 3: few hours or days to scoop up material from their
Speaker 3: immediate local surroundings before they had to leave.
Speaker 2: So our current hands on understanding of the Moon's global
Speaker 2: chemical makeup is essentially based on a few tiny pinpricks
Speaker 2: of data clustered near the equator on one side of
Speaker 2: the sphere.
Speaker 3: That is the reality we have extravagated a lot from
Speaker 3: those samples, but extrapolating is not the same as observing globally.
Speaker 2: I am trying to think of a good way to
Speaker 2: conceptualize how limited that is. It feels like trying to
Speaker 2: understand the entire, complex, diverse geography of the Earth, trying
Speaker 2: to comprehend the existence of the Himalayas, the Sahara Desert,
Speaker 2: the Amazon Rainforest, the deep Marianna's Trench, the polar ice caps.
Speaker 3: Where you going with us?
Speaker 2: By only looking at a handful of dirt you scooped
Speaker 2: up from a single backyard in a suburb of Ohio.
Speaker 3: Oh that is a wonderfully apt comparison. Yes, if you
Speaker 3: only looked at the dirt from that Ohio backyard, you
Speaker 3: might reasonably conclude that the entire Earth is covered in temperate,
Speaker 3: loamy soil and green grass.
Speaker 2: You would completely miss the frozen tundra of Antarica. You'd
Speaker 2: miss the volcanic islands of Hawaii.
Speaker 3: You would miss the deep ocean trenches. And with the moon,
Speaker 3: we know from orbital imaging that there are massive physical
Speaker 3: and geographical differences between different regions.
Speaker 2: Just visually, it looks totally different depending on where you look.
Speaker 3: Exactly We know the near sight is covered in those huge, dark,
Speaker 3: flat basaltic plains we call Maria, but we know the
Speaker 3: far side looks completely different. It is heavily cratered, ancient,
Speaker 3: rugged highlands with almost no dark Maria.
Speaker 2: The two sides of the Moon barely even look like
Speaker 2: they belong to the same planet.
Speaker 3: It's true. Furthermore, we know that the South Pole Acin
Speaker 3: Basin on the far side is one of the largest
Speaker 3: deepest impact craters in the entire Solar System.
Speaker 2: How deep is it?
Speaker 3: It is so incredibly deep that it potentially excavated material
Speaker 3: from the deep lunar mantle itself. But because we only
Speaker 3: have rocks from a few backyards on the near side,
Speaker 3: we do not have a high resolution global chemical map
Speaker 3: to connect all these massive geographical pieces together. We have theories,
Speaker 3: but we lack global chemical conformation.
Speaker 2: So we have the corner pieces of a thousand piece
Speaker 2: jigsaw puzzle, but we are missing the vast majority of
Speaker 2: the picture in the middle.
Speaker 3: And a comprehensive geochemical map finally gives us the complete picture.
Speaker 3: If we can see the precise global distribution of elements
Speaker 3: like magnesium, iron, and aluminum, we can actually reverse engineer
Speaker 3: billions of years of planetary evolution.
Speaker 2: We can test if our theories are actually right.
Speaker 3: Yes, allows us to empirically test our fundamental models of
Speaker 3: how the Moon formed and how it evolved in its
Speaker 3: earliest days.
Speaker 2: Let's dig deep into that early history. When we talk
Speaker 2: about the formation of the Moon, we are talking about
Speaker 2: a cataclysmic event, right, the giant impact hypothesis followed by
Speaker 2: the magma ocean.
Speaker 3: That is the leading scientific consensus. Yes, the theory dictates
Speaker 3: that over four billion years ago, the very early proto
Speaker 3: Earth was struck by another developing planet roughly the size
Speaker 3: of Mars, which scientists call thee.
Speaker 2: Just a full on planetary collision, a.
Speaker 3: Glancing blow, but yes, yeah, the sheer kinetic energy of
Speaker 3: that collision vaporized a massive aunt of material from both bodies,
Speaker 3: blowing a ring of superheated debris into orbit around the Earth.
Speaker 3: Over time, gravity pulled that ring and debris together to
Speaker 3: form the Moon.
Speaker 2: It is a terrifying and awesome thing to visualize, just
Speaker 2: a massive glowing sphere of liquid fire coalescing in space.
Speaker 2: The entire Moon in its infancy was just a global
Speaker 2: ocean of molten rock.
Speaker 3: A global magma ocean, potentially hundreds of kilometers deep. Now,
Speaker 3: as of that magma ocean slowly radiate its heat away
Speaker 3: into the cold of space over millions of years, a
Speaker 3: profound geological process called differentiation occurred.
Speaker 2: Let's break down the mechanics of differentiation, because I am
Speaker 2: trying to picture this without wind or weather or tectonic
Speaker 2: plates like we have on modern Earth. Wouldn't a ball
Speaker 2: of liquid rock just cool down into one solid, uniform,
Speaker 2: evenly mixed sphere of gray rock. Why does it change?
Speaker 3: Because of gravity and the varying densities of different minerals.
Speaker 3: Even though it was a liquid ocean, it was a
Speaker 3: liquid suspended in a gravitational field. As the magma slowly
Speaker 3: cool different minerals began to crystallize at different temperatures.
Speaker 2: Meaning they turned from liquid to solid at different times.
Speaker 3: Right. This is a process called fractional crystallization.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the liquid rock starts turning into solid crystals,
Speaker 2: but not all at once exactly.
Speaker 3: And as these crystals form they respond to gravity. The heavier,
Speaker 3: denser minerals, specifically those rich in iron and magnesium like
Speaker 3: olivine and pyroxene, crystallized and physically sank down toward the
Speaker 3: center of the.
Speaker 2: Moon, like heavy sand sinking in a pool of water.
Speaker 3: Yes, over millions of years, this sinking material formed the deep,
Speaker 3: dense lunar mantle.
Speaker 2: The heavy stuff sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 2: What about the rest.
Speaker 3: Well, Meanwhile, lighter minerals were also crystallizing, sophifically, a mineral
Speaker 3: called plagioclase feldspar, which is heavily rich in aluminum and calcium.
Speaker 3: And because it's lighter, because this mineral was significantly lighter
Speaker 3: and less dense than the surrounding magma, it did not sink.
Speaker 3: It floated to the top of the magma ocean.
Speaker 2: Oh, like foam on top of a cappuccino, That's exactly it.
Speaker 3: It essentially formed a massive global scum of lightweight rock
Speaker 3: floating on the surface. As the ocean finally cooled completely,
Speaker 3: that sloating layer of aluminum rich rock solidified to become
Speaker 3: the primary crust of the.
Speaker 2: Moon, the ancient lunar highlands. So, according to this model,
Speaker 2: the original outer shell of the Moon should be absolutely
Speaker 2: packed with that lightweight aluminum, while all the heavy magnesium
Speaker 2: and o iron should be locked away deep underground.
Speaker 3: Yes, and this is exactly why the X ray fluorescence
Speaker 3: map from our tiny telescope is so crucial. If we
Speaker 3: can map the exact concentrations of aluminum versus magnesium globally,
Speaker 3: we can mathematically prove, refine, or even challenge the parameters
Speaker 3: of this Magna ocean model.
Speaker 2: We can see if it actually happened that way everywhere.
Speaker 3: We can see exactly how thick the aluminum crust is
Speaker 3: in different regions. We could see if the differentiation process
Speaker 3: was uniform, or if it was interrupted or altered in
Speaker 3: certain areas.
Speaker 2: But the Moon isn't just a perfectly pristine, layered jawbreaker today.
Speaker 2: That crust didn't just sit there untouched for four billion years.
Speaker 2: It has been abused.
Speaker 3: It has suffered relentless abuse, and that brings us to
Speaker 3: the second major geological gap. This X ray map will
Speaker 3: fill the violent volcanic and impact history of the Moon.
Speaker 2: Because over the last four billion years, the Moon has
Speaker 2: been relentlessly bombarded by asteroids and commets.
Speaker 3: The Late Heavy bombardment in just billions of years of
Speaker 3: random space rock smashing into it.
Speaker 2: And some of those impacts were huge.
Speaker 3: Beyond huge. Some of these astray impacts were so unimaginably
Speaker 3: colossal that They didn't just dent the surface, They punched
Speaker 3: completely through the outer light aluminum crust, and they physically
Speaker 3: excavated the heavy, dense magnesium and iron rich mantle from
Speaker 3: deep below.
Speaker 2: They essentially acted as cosmic drills, digging up the buried
Speaker 2: layers and splashing them all over the surface.
Speaker 3: Right and furthermore, later in the Moon's history, massive internal
Speaker 3: volcanic eruptions brought molten basalt from deep inside the Moon
Speaker 3: up to the surface.
Speaker 2: Is that where the dark spots come from.
Speaker 3: Yes, this heavy lava float out, filling in the giant
Speaker 3: impact basins and creating those dark patches the maria that
Speaker 3: we see from Earth today.
Speaker 2: So when our tiny TMU X ray telescope is orbiting
Speaker 2: the Moon, sweeping over a region of ancient highlands and
Speaker 2: it suddenly sees a massive, unexpected spike in the elemental
Speaker 2: signature of magnesium right in the middle of an area
Speaker 2: that should be pure aluminum crust, scientists know exactly what
Speaker 2: they're looking at.
Speaker 3: They absolutely do looking at a location where a giant
Speaker 3: asteroid penetrated the crust and brought the deep interior up
Speaker 3: to the surface for us to analyze.
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture. The entire
Speaker 2: surface of the Moon is just a written chemical record
Speaker 2: of the violent history of the early Solar System.
Speaker 3: It is a diary of catastrophe.
Speaker 2: Every single asteroid impact, every single ancient lava flow, left
Speaker 2: a permanent chemical signature. By mapping the exact distribution of
Speaker 2: these elements globally, we aren't just looking at interesting, colorful rocks.
Speaker 2: We are reading the history book of our cosmic neighborhood.
Speaker 3: We are learning the fundamental mechanics of how planets coalesce
Speaker 3: from dust, how they differentiate into layers, how they evolve
Speaker 3: over eons, and how they endure cosmic bombardment.
Speaker 2: It is incredibly profound to think about. We are using
Speaker 2: microscopic atomic fingerprints triggered by violent solar flares to read
Speaker 2: a geological history book that was written billions of years
Speaker 2: before the first single celled life even existed on Earth.
Speaker 3: It is pure awe inspiring science.
Speaker 2: But as thrilling as all that deep ancient history is,
Speaker 2: there is an entirely different side to this coin. Understanding
Speaker 2: the Moon's past is intellectually fascinating, but this chemical map
Speaker 2: has a highly practical, incredibly urgent application for humanity's immediate future.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, This isn't just academic.
Speaker 2: We aren't just matching the past. We are drawing the
Speaker 2: literal roadmap to the future.
Speaker 3: And this is where the theoretical astrophysics means hard logistical reality, because,
Speaker 3: as everyone paying attention to space exploration knows, humanity is
Speaker 3: not content to just look at the Moon through telescopes anymore.
Speaker 3: We are actively preparing to go back.
Speaker 2: We are going back, and this time we are planning
Speaker 2: to stay. We are talking about the Artemis program and
Speaker 2: the massive international effort to establish a sustained, permanent human
Speaker 2: presence on the lunar surface.
Speaker 3: It is a completely different mission profile than Apollo.
Speaker 2: Right. We are not talking about planting a flag, leaving
Speaker 2: some footprints and coming home a few days later like
Speaker 2: the Apollo era. We are talking about building base camps.
Speaker 2: We are talking about about pressurized habitats, lunar rovers power stations,
Speaker 2: a permanent foothold on another world.
Speaker 3: And establishing a permanent foothold requires a completely different operational
Speaker 3: mindset than a brief exploratory visit. Consider the logistics of
Speaker 3: exploration on Earth.
Speaker 2: Okay, like going camping.
Speaker 3: Exactly, if you go camping for the weekend, you can
Speaker 3: easily pack all your drinking water, all your food, and
Speaker 3: your nylon tent in the trunk of your car. You
Speaker 3: bring everything with you and you bring your trash home.
Speaker 2: Easy enough.
Speaker 3: But if you are moving into the deep wilderness permanently
Speaker 3: to build a cabin and live there year round, you
Speaker 3: cannot possibly bring a lifetime supply of water and lumber
Speaker 3: in your car. It's impossible.
Speaker 2: You have to learn how to live off the land.
Speaker 2: You have to chop local wood, find a local stream,
Speaker 2: hunt local food.
Speaker 3: And living off the land in the unforgiving vacuum of
Speaker 3: space is governed by a critical engineering concept. This is
Speaker 3: a very clunky acronym, but it might be the most
Speaker 3: important term in all of space exploration.
Speaker 2: Isru iru incitu resource utilization.
Speaker 3: Yes, it simply means utilizing the physical resources you find
Speaker 3: naturally occurring at your destination, rather than bringing them all
Speaker 3: the way from Earth.
Speaker 2: And ru is not just a neat idea. It is
Speaker 2: a mandatory requirement for human survival in space. Right.
Speaker 3: It is absolutely non negotiable.
Speaker 2: Let's explore why it's mandatory, because it all comes down
Speaker 2: to the brutal physics of gravity wells and the rocket equation.
Speaker 2: Bringing things from the surface of the Earth to the
Speaker 2: surface of the Moon is mine bogglingly expensive.
Speaker 3: It takes massive amounts of fuel just to lift a
Speaker 3: tiny amount of mass out of Earth's gravity. It currently
Speaker 3: costs thousands and thousands of dollars to launch a single
Speaker 3: kilogram of mass into orbit.
Speaker 2: A single kilogram. So if we want to build a
Speaker 2: sprawling lunar habitat, we simply cannot afford to launch every
Speaker 2: single steel beam, every single heavy solar panel, and every
Speaker 2: single drop of drinking water on top of a giant rocket.
Speaker 3: We would bankrupt the global economy before we even poured
Speaker 3: the concrete for the foundation.
Speaker 2: The gravity well of Earth is basically a tyrannical accountant.
Speaker 2: It punishes every ounce of mass you try to take
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 3: That's a brutal way to put it, but it's completely accurate.
Speaker 3: To survive long term on the Moon and to eventually
Speaker 3: push onward to build colonies on Mars, we have to
Speaker 3: find what we need on the Moon.
Speaker 2: We have to become cosmic scavengers and miners.
Speaker 3: We do, and this is exactly where our ten kilogram
Speaker 3: micropore x ray telescope suddenly transitions from a purely scientific
Speaker 3: instrument into the most valuable prospecting tool in the Solar system.
Speaker 2: Because it isn't just looking for common rocks to validate
Speaker 2: ancient geological theories. It is actively globally hunting for the
Speaker 2: vital resources hidden in the dusty regolith.
Speaker 3: It's looking for the gold mines.
Speaker 2: So what specific resources are we talking about here? When
Speaker 2: a mission planner at NASA looks at this glowing X
Speaker 2: ray map, what are the gold mines they are desperately
Speaker 2: searching for.
Speaker 3: There are two main categories of resources that are absolutely
Speaker 3: critical for ISRU. First, we are looking for the widespread
Speaker 3: distribution of specific industrial metals and rare earth elements. We're
Speaker 3: looking for high concentrations of titanium, iron, and aluminum.
Speaker 2: Structural metals, things we can build with.
Speaker 3: Exactly, if we're going to build robust structures on the Moon, habitats,
Speaker 3: landing pads, blast shields, we need to know where the
Speaker 3: highest concentrations of structural metals are located.
Speaker 2: And what about power?
Speaker 3: If we want to build sprawling fields of solar panels
Speaker 3: to generate power during leaner day, we need to locate
Speaker 3: massive deposits of silicon. The technology exists to literally scoop
Speaker 3: up the lunar regolith, refine it using solar furnaces, extract
Speaker 3: the metals, and three D print our habitats directly from
Speaker 3: the lunar dirt.
Speaker 2: That is wild three D printing a house from moon dirt.
Speaker 3: But that entire industrial process only works if we know
Speaker 3: exactly where the richest, most accessible veins of ore are located.
Speaker 3: You don't build a massive mining facility in an area
Speaker 3: with low grade dirt.
Speaker 2: Okay, so building materials and power generation. That makes perfect
Speaker 2: logistical sense. But there is something even more fundamental than
Speaker 2: building materials and survive without a steel beam for a
Speaker 2: few days, But there is one resource you cannot survive without.
Speaker 3: The most universally valuable substance in the cosmos for human
Speaker 3: beings water Water.
Speaker 2: Every deep space mission, every search for life, every colonization plan,
Speaker 2: it always always comes back to water.
Speaker 3: Because it is the foundation of human biology and surprisingly
Speaker 3: the foundation of our spacefaring infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Now, the X ray telescope itself is primarily looking for
Speaker 2: elemental fingerprints like oxygen right, not water molecules directly.
Speaker 3: Correct, and while oxygen is locked up in silicate rocks
Speaker 3: everywhere on the Moon, scientists are specifically hoping to correlate
Speaker 3: these highly detailed elemental maps of oxygen and other trace
Speaker 3: elements with existing data from other orbiters to find the
Speaker 3: water Yes, to locate high concentrations of water related compounds.
Speaker 3: Finding the precise location and volume of water is the
Speaker 3: key to unlocking the entire solar system.
Speaker 2: Let's really break down why water is so critical, because
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people just assume it's only
Speaker 2: for astronauts to drink. Obviously, biological hydration is paramount. But
Speaker 2: water in a space colony is basically a miraculous Swiss
Speaker 2: Army knife.
Speaker 3: It truly is. Yes, you need it for direct life support, drinking, sanitation,
Speaker 3: and growing food in hydroponic or aeroponic agricultural base. But
Speaker 3: water has incredible physical properties that make it essential for survival.
Speaker 2: Physical properties like what.
Speaker 3: It is incredibly dense, and its molecular structure makes it
Speaker 3: one of the absolute best available shields against dangerous cosmic radiation.
Speaker 2: Wait, let me stop you there. Water acts as armor.
Speaker 2: How does water stop radiation better than say, a thick
Speaker 2: sheet of lead.
Speaker 3: It has to do with the specific type of radiation
Speaker 3: astronauts face in deep space. They're bombarded by galactic cosmic
Speaker 3: rays and solar particle events, which are essentially high energy
Speaker 3: protons screaming through space at near the speed of light.
Speaker 2: Okay, so these protons are just flying everywhere.
Speaker 3: Yes, if a high energy proton hits a heavy element
Speaker 3: like lead, it can actually shatter the lead nucleus, creating
Speaker 3: a shower of secondary radiation that is incredibly dangerous to
Speaker 3: human tissue. It makes it worse in a way. Yes,
Speaker 3: but water is H two O two parts hydrogen. A
Speaker 3: hydrogen nucleus is basically just a single proton, So when
Speaker 3: a high energy cosmic proton hits the hydrogen in water,
Speaker 3: it's like two billiard balls of the exact same mass colliding.
Speaker 2: The incoming proton just stops.
Speaker 3: The incoming proton transfers its energy efficiently, slowing down rapidly
Speaker 3: without creating a dangerous shower of secondary radiation.
Speaker 2: That is fascinating. So if you want to build a
Speaker 2: safe liner habitat, you don't necessarily need to drag massive
Speaker 2: lead plates from Earth. You just build double walled habitats
Speaker 2: and pump your water supply into the walls.
Speaker 3: You literally live inside a giant protective water balloon.
Speaker 2: That is brilliant, So it is hydration, it is agriculture,
Speaker 2: and it is vital armor. But there is one more massive,
Speaker 2: game changing application for water on the Moon, and it
Speaker 2: relies on the basic chemistry of the molecule itself. H
Speaker 2: two two parts hydrogen, one cart oxygen.
Speaker 3: I know exactly where this is going.
Speaker 2: If you have a sprawling field of solar panels providing
Speaker 2: abundant electricity during the two week lunar day, you can
Speaker 2: pass a strong electric current directly through that water, a.
Speaker 3: Simple, well understood process called electrolysis. When you pass electricity
Speaker 3: through water, you break the chemical bonds. You split the
Speaker 3: water molecule apart into its constituent gases hydrogen gas and
Speaker 3: oxygen gas.
Speaker 2: And what do you get when you capture a liquid
Speaker 2: hydrogen and liquid oxygen, pipe them into a combustion chamber
Speaker 2: and ignite them.
Speaker 3: You get rocket fuel, specifically hydrolocks. It is the most powerful,
Speaker 3: most efficient chemical propellant humanity currently possesses. It is the
Speaker 3: exact same fuel that powered the Space Shuttle main engines
Speaker 3: in the core stage of the massive Artemis SLS rocket.
Speaker 2: This is the absolute game changer for human expansion. If
Speaker 2: we find abundant accessible water on the Moon, and we
Speaker 2: use solar power to refine it into fuel. The Moon
Speaker 2: stops being just a remote scientific outpost.
Speaker 3: It becomes a cosmic gas station exactly.
Speaker 2: It becomes the critical port from which we launch massive
Speaker 2: missions to Mars, the Asteroid Belt, and the outer Solar System.
Speaker 3: Because the economics of space travel completely change at that point.
Speaker 3: Launching a fully fueled massive rocket from the deep gravity
Speaker 3: well of Earth requires an agonizing amount of energy.
Speaker 2: It's so hard to get off this planet.
Speaker 3: It really is. But launching that same rocket from the Moon,
Speaker 3: which has only one sixth of Earth's gravity and no
Speaker 3: atmospheric drag to fight against it, takes a tiny fraction
Speaker 3: of the fuel. You can launch massive payloads across the
Speaker 3: Solar System if you just fuel up at the Moon first.
Speaker 2: But we can only turn the Moon into a gas station,
Speaker 2: a shipyard, and a permanent thriving colony if we know
Speaker 2: exactly where the resources are physically located exactly.
Speaker 3: And that brings us to the ultimate impact of the
Speaker 3: TM emission.
Speaker 2: So what does this all mean for the immediate future
Speaker 2: of the Artemis program? If we send this ten kilogram
Speaker 2: micropoor array up into orbit and it spends a few
Speaker 2: years meticulously mapping the surface, reading the atomic fingerprints triggered
Speaker 2: by solar flares.
Speaker 3: And it builds that complete map.
Speaker 2: Right and what if it finds incredibly high concentrations of
Speaker 2: water related compounds or easily accessible shallow veins of structural
Speaker 2: titanium in a specific, unexpected region. Does this fundamentally change
Speaker 2: where humanity decides to build its first permanent base.
Speaker 3: I would argue it changes everything. Right now, almost all
Speaker 3: the focus for Artemis is targeted at the lunar South Pole.
Speaker 2: Why the South Pole.
Speaker 3: Because radar and neutron spectrometers have hinted at the presence
Speaker 3: of water ice hidden deep inside permanently shadowed craters there.
Speaker 2: But I've read about those craters. They are nightmarish environments
Speaker 2: to operate in. They are freezing, plunged in eternal darkness,
Speaker 2: and the terrain is incredibly rugged and dangerous for landers
Speaker 2: and rovers.
Speaker 3: They are arguably the most hostile environment we could possibly
Speaker 3: choose to build our first colony. We are targeting them
Speaker 3: out of desperation, basically because we think that's where the
Speaker 3: only water is.
Speaker 2: Oh, what if the map changes that?
Speaker 3: What if the high resolution global chemical map generated by
Speaker 3: TOYDA and the Ezoe's telescope reveals a completeletely different reality.
Speaker 3: What if it finds a massive, easily extractable concentration of
Speaker 3: vital elements right near the equator in a flat, safe
Speaker 3: area bathed in constant, predictable sunlight for endless solar power.
Speaker 2: The map dictates the real estate.
Speaker 3: The map is everything. This data is essentially the ultimate
Speaker 3: real estate guide for future lunar colonies. You do not
Speaker 3: build a massive, complex mining town in a perilous ravine
Speaker 3: if there's no gold there. You build it where the
Speaker 3: resources are richest, safest, and most accessible.
Speaker 2: It makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3: The data provided by this specific revolutionary technological breakthrough from
Speaker 3: Tokyo Metropolitan University will be the foundational text that mission
Speaker 3: planners at NASA, EASA, JXAS, and commercial spaceflight companies use
Speaker 3: to literally draw the physical borders of humanity's first off
Speaker 3: world settlements.
Speaker 2: It is stunning to take a step back and think
Speaker 2: about the chain of events.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 2: We are talking about a piece of technology that weighs
Speaker 2: less than a bag of groceries, a piece of technology
Speaker 2: that was originally designed for a completely different purpose to
Speaker 2: look at Earth's magnetic field and solar wind interactions.
Speaker 3: This incredible pivot.
Speaker 2: But through brilliant observation and adaptation, it pivots to lunar orbit,
Speaker 2: uses the violent eruptions of the Sun as a tool,
Speaker 2: maps the atomic history of a dead world, and ultimately
Speaker 2: becomes the compass that guides humanity's permanent settlement of the
Speaker 2: Solar System.
Speaker 3: It is the perfect beautiful example of how the scientific
Speaker 3: pursuit operates. Discovery is rarely a straight line, It really
Speaker 3: Isn't You solve a complex engineering problem in one specific field,
Speaker 3: like how to make a lightweight X ray sensor for
Speaker 3: the magnetosphere, and it unexpectedly unlocks the door to a
Speaker 3: completely different monumental achievement in planetary geology and human survival.
Speaker 2: Tools like this compact X ray telescope are the absolutely
Speaker 2: necessary precursors to humanity transitioning from a single planet species
Speaker 2: into a true multiplanetary civilization.
Speaker 3: They absolutely are.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's take a breath and recap the incredible multi
Speaker 2: billion year journey we've just been on today. We started
Speaker 2: with a ten kilogram bundle of microscopic square pores, a
Speaker 2: brilliant pivot by the team at Tokyo Metropolitan University that
Speaker 2: solved the crushing weight problem of traditional X ray astronomy.
Speaker 3: We explore the deep quantum mechanics of how this tiny
Speaker 3: array utilizes the violent, unpredictable solar flares of our Sun
Speaker 3: as a cosmic flashlight.
Speaker 2: Triggering microscopic atomic reactions to reveal the invisible fingerprints of
Speaker 2: the lunar dust.
Speaker 3: We saw how those specific fingerprints oxygen, magnesium, aluminum, silicon
Speaker 3: allow us to peel back billions of years of silent.
Speaker 2: History, revealing the chaotic story of a molten magma ocean,
Speaker 2: planetary differentiation driven by gravity and cataclysmic asteroid impacts that
Speaker 2: relentlessly churned the lunar crust.
Speaker 3: And finally, we connected that ancient, violent history to our
Speaker 3: immediate ambitious future.
Speaker 2: Seeing how mapping those exact same elements will guide the
Speaker 2: artemis missions, locate the vital resources needed for NC two
Speaker 2: resource utilization, and really draw the map for where humanity
Speaker 2: will build its permanent homes on the Moon. It is
Speaker 2: a profound convergence of cutting edge engineering, deep astrophysics, ancient geology,
Speaker 2: and bold human ambition.
Speaker 3: It represents a turning point in our relationship with the cosmos.
Speaker 2: It really does, and before we wrap up today, I
Speaker 2: want to leave you with one final mind expanding idea
Speaker 2: to ponder. We spend this entire time talking about the Moon,
Speaker 2: our closest neighbor, but think about the scale and the
Speaker 2: modularity of this new text.
Speaker 3: Oh, this is the really exciting part.
Speaker 2: If a single ten kilogram telescope array can map the
Speaker 2: entire chemical composition of an entire Moon using just the
Speaker 2: ambient background radiation of our Sun, what happens next?
Speaker 3: The implications for the rest of the Solar System are staggering.
Speaker 2: Imagine what happens when we start mass producing these tiny,
Speaker 2: highly efficient micropore sensors. We do not have to stop
Speaker 2: at the Moon. What happens when we send swarms of
Speaker 2: these arrays out to map the thousands of unprobed asteroids
Speaker 2: in the main asteroid belt looking for incredibly valuable deposits
Speaker 2: of platinum, palladium, and rare earth metals.
Speaker 3: We're sending them further out.
Speaker 2: Exactly what happens when we send them into orbit around
Speaker 2: Phobos and Deimos, the tiny mysterious moons of Mars, to
Speaker 2: see if they hold the specific resources we need to
Speaker 2: fuel and build a sprawling Martian colony.
Speaker 3: Because they are so incredibly lightweight and draw so little power.
Speaker 3: They do not require massive, multi billion dollar flagship missions
Speaker 3: of their own. They can simply hitch a ride as
Speaker 3: secondary payloads on almost any interplanetary probe we launch in
Speaker 3: the future.
Speaker 2: They just become standard equipment.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: We aren't just looking at a new way to understand
Speaker 2: our moon. We are looking at the exact blueprint for
Speaker 2: how humanity will eventually prospect, map, and utilize the entire
Speaker 2: solar system. The technology developed by Toyda and Ezo is
Speaker 2: the key that unlocks the door to an age of
Speaker 2: true sustainable cosmic exploration.
Speaker 3: It changes our relationship with space from one of brief,
Speaker 3: tentative observation to one of deep, sustainable interaction. We move
Speaker 3: from being temporary visitors to becoming permanent residents.
Speaker 2: And it all starts with looking at things just a
Speaker 2: little differently, taking the tools we have and applying them
Speaker 2: in bold new ways. Thank you so much for joining
Speaker 2: us on this exploration today. The next time you step
Speaker 2: outside on a clear night and look up at that
Speaker 2: seemingly dead, dusty, gray sphere in the sky, I want
Speaker 2: you to remember what is really up there. Think about
Speaker 2: the hidden elements, think about the atomic fingerprints waiting to
Speaker 2: be illuminated by the fire of the sun, and keep
Speaker 2: wondering what vibrant hidden colors are glowing right beneath the dust,
Speaker 2: waiting for us to finally put on the magic glasses
Speaker 2: and see them