Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomy 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. This week in Astronomy, rare
Speaker 1: black hole, moonbound telescope and interstellar object rare black hole
Speaker 1: caught feeding on a star. Scientists using NASA's Hubble Space
Speaker 1: Telescope and Chundra X ray Observatory may have found a
Speaker 1: rare type of black hole called an intermediate mass black
Speaker 1: hole IMBH. This candidate, named NGC six ninety nine hlx one,
Speaker 1: seems to be located inside a dense cluster of stars
Speaker 1: at the edge of a large elliptical galaxy known as
Speaker 1: NGC sixty nineteen nine. Back in the nineteen nineties, shortly
Speaker 1: after Hubble was launched, astronomers discover that most galaxies have
Speaker 1: supermassive black holes in their centers, with masses millions or
Speaker 1: even billions of times greater than our Sun. They also
Speaker 1: learned that galaxies contain many smaller black holes formed when
Speaker 1: massive stars die, usually weighing less than one hundred times
Speaker 1: the mass of the Sun. However, black holes that fall
Speaker 1: between those extremes, intermediate mass black holes, are much harder
Speaker 1: to detect. These imbhs weigh between a few hundred and
Speaker 1: a few hundred thousand times the mass of the Sun.
Speaker 1: Unlike supermassive black holes, they don't consume gas and stars
Speaker 1: as aggressively, so they don't emit bright radiation all the time.
Speaker 1: That makes them nearly invisible unless they're caught in the
Speaker 1: act of feeding, like when a star wander's too close
Speaker 1: and is torn apart in what's called a tidal disruption event.
Speaker 1: That kind of violent feeding produces a sudden burst of
Speaker 1: energy which we can detect. This seems to be what
Speaker 1: happened with n GC sixty ninety nine hlx one. It
Speaker 1: lies far from the center of its galaxy, around forty
Speaker 1: thousand light years out, and the galaxy itself is about
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty million light years away in the
Speaker 1: direction of the constellation Hercules. Chundra first noticed the bright
Speaker 1: X ray source in two thousand and nine, and scientists
Speaker 1: tracked its changes over time using another space telescope XM
Speaker 1: and Newton. One of the researchers, e Chi Chan, said
Speaker 1: that very bright X ray sources outside galaxy centers are
Speaker 1: rare and may be the key to finding these hidden imbhs.
Speaker 1: They're considered an important missing link between small black holes
Speaker 1: and the massive ones found in galaxy cores. The radiation
Speaker 1: coming from hlx one is extremely hot, around three million degrees,
Speaker 1: which matches what we expect from a tidal disruption event.
Speaker 1: Hubbell also found that the black hole sits inside a
Speaker 1: very compact cluster of stars, where stars are packed so
Speaker 1: closely that there are only a few light months apart.
Speaker 1: This means the black hole could have plenty of fuel
Speaker 1: to keep feeding. The black hole reached its brightest point
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve and then slowly dimmed through twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Since the optical and X ray observations weren't taken at
Speaker 1: the same times, it's tricky to say exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: The black hole may have destroyed a star and created
Speaker 1: a disk of hot gas around it, which sometimes flares
Speaker 1: up as gas falls inward. Another researcher, Robertosauria, explained that
Speaker 1: the brightness changed dramatically over the years, from fairly bright
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine to one hundred times brighter
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, and then fading again. This raises questions
Speaker 1: about whether it will flare up again or just continue
Speaker 1: to fade away. This imbh is far from the center
Speaker 1: of its galaxy, where a much bigger black hole is
Speaker 1: likely sleeping and not actively consuming anything. That difference between
Speaker 1: the center and the outskirts is interesting because it gives
Speaker 1: clues about how black holes grow over time. One theory
Speaker 1: says that imbhs are the seeds from which supermassive black
Speaker 1: holes grow. As galaxies merge over time, their central black
Speaker 1: holes could merge too. Hubble has shown that the mass
Speaker 1: of a galaxy is related to the size of its
Speaker 1: central black hole, supporting the idea that black holes grow
Speaker 1: as galaxies grow. It's possible that galaxies contain many imbh's
Speaker 1: orbiting in their outer regions that don't always fall into
Speaker 1: the center. Another theory suggests that in the early universe,
Speaker 1: dense clouds of gas and dark matter halos may have
Speaker 1: collapsed straight into huge black holes, skipping the formation of
Speaker 1: stars altogether. The James Web Space Telescope has found very
Speaker 1: distant black holes that seem too big compared to their galaxy,
Speaker 1: which might support this idea. But there's also the chance
Speaker 1: that we're only seeing the biggest black holes because smaller
Speaker 1: ones are too faint to detect at such great distances.
Speaker 1: These different theories may both be true in different situations.
Speaker 1: Some black holes might grow slowly over time by eating
Speaker 1: stars in gas, while others might form rapidly in the
Speaker 1: early universe. To really understand how black holes grow, scientists
Speaker 1: hope to find more imbhs like hlx one. That means
Speaker 1: catching more tidal disruption events where a black hole suddenly
Speaker 1: lights up while eating a star. The challenge is that
Speaker 1: telescopes like Chundra and x MM Newton look at small
Speaker 1: parts of the sky, so they don't catch many of
Speaker 1: these rare events. But a new telescope in Chile, the
Speaker 1: veriicea Reuben Observatory, will skin the entire sky and might
Speaker 1: catch more of these black holes in action than Hubble
Speaker 1: and Web can zoom and to study them in more detail.
Speaker 1: Moonbound Telescope aims to unveil cosmic dark ages. Scientists in
Speaker 1: the US have built a special radio telescope called Lucy
Speaker 1: Night that will be sent to the far side of
Speaker 1: the Moon. This is a very difficult place to put
Speaker 1: any equipment because it gets extremely cold and dark for
Speaker 1: fourteen days, then extremely hot and sunny for fourteen more days,
Speaker 1: with no atmosphere to protect from radiation. But it's also
Speaker 1: the quietest place in terms of radio waves, which makes
Speaker 1: it perfect for listening to faint signals from space, especially
Speaker 1: signals from the early universe. This project is being led
Speaker 1: by Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Space Sciences Laboratory at
Speaker 1: UC Berkeley, along with help from other labs. The main
Speaker 1: goal is to detect radio waves from a time called
Speaker 1: the Dark Ages, which happened about three hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: thousand years after the Big Bang, before stars or planets
Speaker 1: had formed. These ancient citiesgals are blocked on Earth because
Speaker 1: of all the radio noise from our planet in the Sun,
Speaker 1: but the far sight of the Moon is shielded from
Speaker 1: all that noise. The telescope had to be carefully designed
Speaker 1: to be small and light enough to launch, but also
Speaker 1: strong and smart enough to survive and work on the Moon.
Speaker 1: The most important part is its spectrometer built at Brookhaven,
Speaker 1: which can detect and process very faint radio signals. It
Speaker 1: works like a super sensitive radio that can hear all
Speaker 1: frequencies at the same time. It can also adjust itself
Speaker 1: and reduce its own noise to avoid interference. This makes
Speaker 1: it much more powerful than similar instruments that can only
Speaker 1: capture a small amount of data at once. Power was
Speaker 1: one of the biggest challenges. Since the Moon is long
Speaker 1: nights with no sunlight, the telescope has to rely on
Speaker 1: a battery to stay alive and keep working. The battery
Speaker 1: itself is heavy, so they had to balance its size
Speaker 1: with the total weight of the telescope. The team also
Speaker 1: designed a special cooling and heating system to keep the
Speaker 1: telescope from freezing or overheating during the extreme moon conditions.
Speaker 1: This includes things like heat pipes and thermal switches, which
Speaker 1: work like a thermostat. Even though the goal is to
Speaker 1: run Lucynight for up to two years, the team knows
Speaker 1: the first lunar Night will be the real test. To prepare,
Speaker 1: there are running simulations here on Earth to practice controlling
Speaker 1: the telescope and analyzing the data. They've also updated the
Speaker 1: plan so the telescope will send small amounts of data
Speaker 1: earlier than originally intended. Just in case it doesn't survive
Speaker 1: the first night. Lucynight isn't just about gathering data. It's
Speaker 1: also meant to prove that it's possible to do radio
Speaker 1: astronomy from the Moon. If it works, it could lead
Speaker 1: to more missions like this in the future. The telescope
Speaker 1: is scheduled to launch in twenty twenty six aboard a
Speaker 1: lunar lander. The team is excited and hopeful, seeing this
Speaker 1: as the beginning of a new chapter in space science.
Speaker 1: Strange interstellar object three ice slash Atlas baffles scientists. On
Speaker 1: July first, astronomers noticed something unusual, a fast moving object
Speaker 1: heading toward the Sun. This object was called three ice
Speaker 1: slash Atlas. What made it so interesting was that its
Speaker 1: path through space showed it had come from outside our
Speaker 1: Solar System. Only two other objects like this had ever
Speaker 1: been seen before. That made three ice slash Atlas a
Speaker 1: rare and special find, an interstellar visitor, meaning it had
Speaker 1: traveled through the space between stars before arriving here. What
Speaker 1: also made three ice slash Atlas stand out was how
Speaker 1: fast it was going. It was moving at an incredible
Speaker 1: speed of about two hundred and forty five thousand kilometers
Speaker 1: per hour. Faster than anything else we've ever seen in
Speaker 1: the Solar System. On top of that, scientists think it
Speaker 1: might be very large, possibly up to twenty kilometers acros,
Speaker 1: and maybe even older than our Sun, which is more
Speaker 1: than four point five billion years old. Whenever scientists see
Speaker 1: something new in space, the first guess is usually that
Speaker 1: it's made of rock or ice. But three ice slash
Speaker 1: Atlas is strange enough that some researchers are wondering if
Speaker 1: it could be something more unusual. One scientist, Avilobe from
Speaker 1: Harvard even raised the idea that it might not be
Speaker 1: natural at all, that it might actually be alien technology.
Speaker 1: He and his team posted a paper online suggesting this,
Speaker 1: although the paper hasn't yet been officially reviewed by other scientists.
Speaker 1: Lobe is known for making bold suggestions like this. He
Speaker 1: also previously said that another object called one ice slash Imuamua,
Speaker 1: which passed through the Solar System in twenty seventeen, might
Speaker 1: also have been a spacecraft sent by an alien civilization.
Speaker 1: In the case of three ice slash Atlas, Lobe pointed
Speaker 1: out that its path takes it unusually close to planets
Speaker 1: like Venus, Mars, and Jupiter, a detail that caught his attention.
Speaker 1: The idea of alien probes traveling through space might sound
Speaker 1: like science fiction, but humans have already done something similar.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen seventies, we launched spacecraft like Voyager one
Speaker 1: and two and Pioneer ten and eleven. These have now
Speaker 1: left or are close to leaving, our Solar System. So
Speaker 1: if other intelligent life exists out there, it's not a
Speaker 1: crazy idea that they might also send out robotic explorers.
Speaker 1: But this raises a big question. If an object like
Speaker 1: three ice slash atlas were a probe sent by aliens,
Speaker 1: how could we possibly know. It's not easy. Most of
Speaker 1: the things we detect in space don't give off flight themselves.
Speaker 1: We only see them because they reflect sunlight. Big objects
Speaker 1: reflect more light and are easier to see, especially if
Speaker 1: they're far away, but smaller objects like one the size
Speaker 1: of a spacecraft are very hard to spot unless they
Speaker 1: get relatively close to Earth. If we did find something suspicious,
Speaker 1: scientists would look for clues to figure out if it's
Speaker 1: natural or artificial. A natural object like a comet might
Speaker 1: leave behind a trail of gas, but if it were
Speaker 1: a probe, there might be other signs, like radio signals
Speaker 1: being sent out especially if the probe were still functioning.
Speaker 1: We might also notice weird flashes of energy caused by
Speaker 1: sunlight hitting metal surfaces. A really strong clue would be
Speaker 1: if the object seemed to be steering itself, changing direction,
Speaker 1: adjusting its position, or doing something that suggests it was
Speaker 1: under control. And the biggest sign of all would be
Speaker 1: if it came into orbit around Earth. That would make
Speaker 1: sense if the object was curious, since Earth has liquid water,
Speaker 1: a breathable atmosphere, a magnetic field, and life, things that
Speaker 1: would definitely interest any alien Signeen's mission. Still, unless we
Speaker 1: find one of these clear signs, it's hard to say
Speaker 1: for sure whether something like three eyed slash Atlas is
Speaker 1: natural or not. It's probably just a very old, very
Speaker 1: fast object made of ice, a rock that's been traveling
Speaker 1: through space for billions of years, but it's strange enough
Speaker 1: to keep scientists watching closely. Each object like this teaches
Speaker 1: us more about how to search for the truly unexpected.
Speaker 1: Even if three ice slash Atlas isn't an alien probe,
Speaker 1: it gives us a chance to improve the way we
Speaker 1: study space and to stay alert for anything that might
Speaker 1: turn out to be more than just a rock of
Speaker 1: the FO names,