Astrophysicists Explore The Latest in Exoplanet Discovery

Introduction: David Kipping over billions of years the Stars will disperse they'll move into slightly separate directions and especially because of tidal forces from the from the Galaxy they'll get kind of pulled apart and could be essentially long lost siblings at this point you know spread across half the Galaxy or more and the sun given its age and its speed it's been around the center 20 times it's not just people pulling stuff out of nowhere we are all standing on the shoulders of Hardware that came before us oh yeah yeah I'm at the end of a you know this is a 12year personal Journey trying to find these EX for me at this point so we still we're still waiting we're hoping this is going to be the [Music] one this is Star Talk Neil degrass Tyson your personal astrophysicist got chuck with me how you doing man hey what's happening doing all right doing great nice feeling good nice yeah a little while ago you recorded a a comedy special I did you did but not it hasn't aired yet um we have to sell it so if anybody knows anybody at Netflix cuz I need my money back I'm tell you the truth people I was going to do like one of those like what are they called uh funme but I was like okay no listen if you believe in yourself go ahead put out the money you'll get it back you got the talent don't worry about it I should have did the GoFundMe oh you saying that about yourself exactly no no but hopefully um hopefully it'll be out very soon all right we'll look for that so it's another Cosmic queries today and it's bepoke yeah very specific it's not a grab bag that's right and the topic is cool world oo I know like a little bit about cool world but I don't know enough to do a whole Cosmic queries on it so we comb the hood yes and up the street there's an entire University right called Colombia it is that's where I got my PhD right columia yes it's uh it's the um it's the Ruckers of Harvard here in New York City what so we have a professor of astronomy from Columbia yeah David Kipping welcome the leader of all cool worlds I'm the man right here yeah thank you for having me guys yes so you have you're head of the cool worlds lab so since you're a scientist Not a Hipster I have to believe that the word cool references temperature and not attitude it's a bit playful but yeah we're not we're not dope worlds lab that's what you should have named that's that would be amazing you should have named it the dope world's lab oh my you lost that opportunity GR propos might be a bit trickier if we have that on the tagline but check my temperature yo cuz my planets are dope or sick we could go sick maybe next you're ready for this sick World there we go I'm done with the kids we got it oh my good I'm sorry you caught me on that one it's been my experience that anyone who says I'm down with the kids is not down with the kids all right so cool worlds we're Other Solar Systems referring in your particular case to Worlds outside of our solar system right exoplanets or exoplanet moons indeed anything EXO any EXO rings and exot Trojans we can throw it all in there ex comments you go okay well tell them what you mean when you say exot Trojan think you saw me I went you saw what I did so I was just like I've heard I've heard of the birth of a star I've heard of that where they don't use Trojans yes but the Trojans are like why are we going back to ancient Greek yeah this is know around Jupiter there are these additional small bodies called Trojans and they they're in the little grunge point so Jupiter as it goes around its orbit if you look 60 degre off axis on either side there's the Trojans and the Greeks it's these small collection of asteroids and small bodies and so we think we could detect those around other stars and so then there would be EXO Trojans just Trojans around EXO in front of anything and good to go put EXO in front put some EXO on it so that lrange point is the Sun and Jupiter yeah so it so that would be I guess L one two 3 4 L three four right we did a whole thing on the point yes we did we did yes this is why and people they say when I when I say things like right or okay they think I'm just playing along to look like I'm like oh I'm in on this but what they don't understand is that we've talked about this stuff and what's happening is it's coming to my memory and I'm like right okay you should have an honor PhD in astronomy you're almost there I'm not I'll find some certificate on see I'm afraid to receive that just because they're like you know you should know a lot more you should actually know a lot more than you do that's copyright exactly so our solar system is a template for you to think about and imagine what could exist in other star systems that's fair fair to say yeah exactly okay are there any super anomalous solar systems that you've come across that are just so unlike ours that it really perks things up or do most of them just kind of fall in line with I'm going to answer for him oh all of them really now go you give your answer I I would say you're not too far off yeah I would say that the majority of solar systems look radically different to that of our own so that's amazing yeah you have binary star systems which you know are very very common that's half all the stars you seen in night sky have multiple star two or more so just off the bat the Mex usual even having a Jupiter is unusual only 10% of single stars have a jupiter-like planet around them so just having not just one but two Jupiter in that solar system is already kind of unusual two Jupiters would be Jupiter and Saturn yes yeah I'm going to throw Saturn in because it's the same size it's very different Mass but it's roughly the same size it be nice to it cuz Saturn's one of my see my desk lamp here oh oh you can't you guys can't see no shade on Saturn it's beautiful yeah my desk lamp I hand made in wood shop in seventh grade and it's a ring it's made of wood and it's a ball in a ring and you press down the ring and the ring tips it turns the light on so me and Saturn go way back don't just lump it in with Jupiter and he only lost one finger making that's what you so but it I also in my notes here it says there's a YouTube channel on this yeah I've got a yes my team is called the cool wars lab eom University so a research group have currently four graduate students in my team and we're studying all different projects looking for exomoons looking for these weird phenomen around these cool planets but at the same time when I first arrived at Columbia which was I think we said like eight years ago now I decided one of the things I wanted to do was also talk about science as you're well aware of the the importance of doing that in in popular culture so I started a small YouTube channel didn't think hen would watch it but during covid many people decided for whatever reason they were interested you post about it with what frequency usually once every 3 weeks or so yeah so it's I mean I have a full-time job doing my research so I can't like people moan about that all the time but you know it keeps it keeps things fresh by having war for in research and one in the scon world yeah otherwise you get stale in both perh doesn't happen yeah now you said you have four graduate students when someone boasts of how many graduate students they have it means there's actually a lot of work that needs to be done and they will do work because they need to get their degree and you alone stand between them and their degree well that's a that's too much power for one man to die oh that's terrible great power but we have evidence we have evidence that there's life after this Arrangement one of your former students we've had as a guest on Star Talk who was that did you Moya MC yes yeah Dr Mo MC yeah she was one of my first PhD came through by the way that doctor's courtesy of me Mr Kipping yeah it is it does feel like an honor to bestow you know help these students get to that point I mean I when we actually come to the defending the PHD it's not just my decision of course I'm actually supposed to keep my mouth shut and let you know the other people there's actually a committee that puts you through the ringer they're not there to be nice to you they're there to stump you right and the less stump you are the better a scientist you become I gave all my PhD students I think got lightsaber so I think MOA probably has one bur in her cover proba just in Cas yeah bestow upon her with a lightsaber her PhD no no but the thing is an actual saber will stop at your shoulder whereas a lightsaber won't this is just a toy lightsaber okay let people know that actually have real lightsabers out there right you can tell all of Dr King's students because they have a very significant burn that goes from their shoulder to their navl the any way toight so tell me before we get to our Challenges in Discovering Cool Worlds our patreon questions tell me what are some of your challenges how much of what you do is is Theory or modeling or observations what what telescopes do you use or do you have a favorite spot in the universe using Kepler data what what what feeds your operation it it's a big bag of all sorts of stuff to be honest I mean I'm kind of glad that you didn't ask are you a theorist or an observer because I really don't like labels like that I kind of feel like if you call yourself an observer and someone who goes to the telescope and looks for different objects in the sky it kind of limits your mind space right so you now you think well I can't do the hard Theory stuff because I'm an observer and vice versa I tried to keep my feet sort of in every as I can to try and stay Nimble but the the data set we're excited about the moment is jwst of course like many that's the jwst is touching everybody yeah not in that way but in in the good way you weren't thinking that what you're the you're just okay I like it though so it's infrared data yeah of what objects the observations we're planning in October will be of a Kepler Planet actually called Kepler 167 just rolls off the tongue why why Kepler why is it Kepler Kepler was great for finding cool worlds actually because it was very patient so it stared at the same time Kepler's been dead for 400 years not not Johannes kefer that's a good oh thank you okay we should not be thinking about Johan but the telesc named in his on there you go okay there's a telescope listen so we got a medium and it appears that keer says Spirit energy there this planet yeah okay but go ahead so this planet was discovered by the kep Mission I should say the NASA Kepler Mission and it was I discovered curiously enough and it turns out this is pretty much the best planet for looking for exomoons out there it is a ex moons exomoons it is a Jupiter twin it has the same mass as Jupiter within 1% the same radius within 5% has the same equilibrium temperature it's the same kind of coldness if you like as Jupiter it's in a similar kind of system a multiplet system on a c everything's just like boom boom boom everything looks like jup and Jupiter has a bajillion moons of its own and so presumably that's the case here yeah can I can I ask a maybe a dumb question I just want to emphasize here that you're about to make progress using a telescope that is building on the progress of a previous telescope right right yeah so it's not just people pulling stuff out of nowhere we are all standing on the shoulders of Hardware that came before us oh yeah amazing yeah I'm at the end of a you know this is a 12E personal Journey trying to find these exes for me at this point so we still we're still waiting we're hoping this is going to be the one so this is my a question about Detecting Exomoons exomoons so now when you're looking at the planet it's pretty easy because you're looking for it to Transit the star yeah now if that's how you're finding the planet because that's how Kepler found all this plan if Kepler found all this transit's in front are you looking for the reflection of light off the planet for the moon to transit in front of the planet or are you looking for the moon itself to also Transit the star what where is the blockage of light that lets you know that this is indeed a moon translation how the hell are you detecting I'm short answer is option two you you kind of said we look for the shadow of the Moon in front of the star so if the planet it's a shadow really that blocks out Starlight that's that gives us this dip in Starlight right if there's a moon there it will either be trailing or behind and so we'll see this little extra dip in light oh and it's that so we see two dips one huge one due to the planet and then we Zoom right in on that data and hopefully we see a tiny little you know to the moood or even multiple maybe multiple depths of course right right right right yeah but wait a minute okay so you're in a Cool World's lab but all you're getting here is a cool shadow yeah right and I feel like Plato's Cave right now You Don't Know Jack about the object that's making that shadow no it's it's a limited technique I mean what we get from this is essentially the size of the object we kind of figure out how far away from its Planet it is it's some major access and maybe we could figure out some other things such as its orbital period it inclination so just the bare The Bare Bones the Bare Bones that's not a world yet to me the world is what's going on on the surface yeah but we will get there I mean we're hoping to build telescript like the uh the the habitable worlds Observatory hwo which might get rebranded one day to something else perhaps like k s you can Observatory or something sounds fun let me tell you something that's going to get you a lot more play than habital world I don't like the nameit world I can barely say habitable so I don't but this Tas would take actual photos of plants one day and so then we really would get a sense of its color atmosphere and maybe even some surface property so we'll get there but it's all baby steps you know it's it's you can't just jump you to see dinosaurs walking on it no you need a t even larger than the sun to have any chance of that yeah hey Star Talk fans I don't know if you know this but the audio version of the podcast actually posts a week in advance of the video version and you can get that in Spotify and apple podcast and most other podcast Outlets that are out there multiple ways to ingest all that is Cosmic on Star Talk well I'm I'm impressed that we were able to solicit questions on this very bespoke topic and we got a lot of them cool world I mean a lot of them so let's let's pivot people like you people love the co maybe they could be fans of your YouTube channel even there might be one or two but not don't don't sell yourself short don't sell yourself short okay here we go hello Dr Tyson Dr Kipping Lord nice I am Radio Velocity Method & Why Eclipses Are Useful Sai from kakinada India chck I thought we can test your pronunciation on names of towns this time really don't do that with these people what's going on they trying to bring you along Jack trying to help you uh my question to Dr Kipping is in your studies you've worked with the concept of uh occultations uh to detect exomoons and planets you could you paint us a picture of how this works and are these the most important Cosmic bre bread crumbs according to you there was a famous astronomer Henry Norris Russell and in the 20th century he once said that eclipses are the royal road to success interesting I love that quote it's it just goes to show you how eclipses are like a shortcut they allow us to see things that's kind of ahead of our technology yet like we shouldn't have the ability really to know anything about 5,000 exoplanets because we can barely take images of nearby Planet it's still something we're struggling to do but using this trick of seeing a planet pass in front of a star it gives us an extra window and it only works in some cases you have to have just the right alignments you have to be lucky but when you get that lucky for Tous alignment it gives you this unique ability to probe all these extra things like the period the semor AIS the size of the planet so it's our first look at these things just to be clear you're only seeing systems where that happen to be Edge on to your field of view or nearly Edge system none of the other systems are going to give you these eclipses the these Transit phenomenon and so they go undiscussed unrecognized uncataloged for now for now we'll get them look at that of course we can get some of those using other methods for instance the radial velocity method has also been very successful not as successful as transits but that's discovered hundreds of plants now you have to tell us what the radio velocity method is so this is wobbling Stars so as you see if you look at a Stars light and you see it being blue shifted a little bit then periodically red shifted now it's telling you it is moving back and forth when it's blue shifted it's coming towards you red shifted away from you so it's just like the siren of the ambulance going down the street that's oh what a nice I like the picture yeah you see you hear the pitch change when we hear that pitch change or really see a pitch change in the color of the light of the star now it's telling us that something gravitationally is tugging on that object and that's how we can infer plets indirectly so there you don't need the precise alignment although if it was completely 90° off we would see nothing because then star would be doing this it kind of wobbling in the plane and so we wouldn't have any blue shift or red shift not coming towards you or away from me yeah exactly but most of the time we can still get I think what we have in our favor because I did this calculation now 30 years ago okay haven't done it lately but I don't see why the math would change over over time but if you do this you are statistically more likely to discover Edge on systems than face on systems if you do Where Are The Sun’s Siblings? the math on that so David's looking at you like as your peer I'm gonna have to review that let go to the video Let's Go All right so what else you got another question here we go all right so this is Lisa cotton she says Dear Dr Tyson David Lord nice greetings this is Lisa from North Hero Vermont I'm a fan of both Star Talk and cool worlds and I love watching both shows on YouTube one thing that I have been pondering lately is the birth of our star the sun it seems like like a lot of talk uh happens about when the Sun dies what I would like to know is was our son born in a Star Nursery and if so would we know which one or be able to predict where it might have been or come from in the Milky Way galaxy thank you so much and uh keep up the excellent work o we love this we got good we got good fans out there for this that's a really intriguing question and it's a question that I know many of my colleagues are thinking very hard about even at Colombia so you know of course the sun must have been born we think in a in a sou Nursery so there would have been siblings born alongside with us from that giant molecular cloud that collapsed and fragmented and formed all these small Stars we don't know exactly how many but there's probably many such stars and the question is what happened to them over billions of years this the Stars will disperse they'll move into slightly separate directions and especially because of tidal forces from the from the Galaxy they'll get kind of pulled apart and could be essentially long lost siblings at this point you spread across half the Galaxy or more and the sun it given its age and its speed it's been around the center 20 times and so if it had a whole family 20 times around given everything you just said that can happen on Route you know your siblings are long gone but they they should be out there and so an interesting question guys what are we getting together yeah we want have aoup you guys never stand TI can we Zoom next time so a family reunion might be possible at least in a in a sense of discovering them by actually looking at the chemistry of those Stars so there was an active effort to well there is to measure the the detailed chemistry the abundances of every single element you can think of inside these stars and compare them to that of our sun and these sibling Stars should have not only the same age of course but also the same chemistry so a a gas cloud not that far away would still have all these elements but not in the exact amounts relative to each other yes that's like a fingerprint yes exactly so there should be a unique chemical fingerprint we got people looking to get the family back together so cool get the band back together I I don't know the latest on that but I know that there are many astronomers who are hunting hard for those and I think we'll probably hear big news when they're discovered let me restate that question but in another kind of way because we can't see the birth of the sun it having happened in our past but we see the birth of other stars nobody made a videotape unlike uh people who really disturb you by trying to show you theirs so how much Insight are we getting now that we can see stars being born with their planets how much Insight from these other systems do we then bring back to ours there are some startling things we've discovered I mean one thing from direct Imaging which actually taking photos of these young planetary systems in the process of forming planets catching in the act right I mean they they're very young hundreds of millions of years old or less young that's young in Cosmic terms one thing that's very startling about these is we see you I mentioned earlier that Jupiter's are rare but that's in mature system systems in these young systems you actually do find lots of Jupiters and what's strange is that they're really really far from their star they're order of hundreds of au so an au is the Earth's orbit around the Sun so know astronomical unit yes Jupiter is 5 Au Saturn I think about 10 you so these things are 10 times more than that there're sort of the distance where we talk about looking for planet nine you know Planet as being hypothetical plant in the solar system really really far out and we discovering Jupiter's very often that far out and they're very massive they're actually bordering on Brown dwarfs which are like sort of 10 to 20 times the mass of Jupiter and that is a mystery it's you know maybe the solar system then also formed such planets but they were somehow lost because these things are so far out that they may be tenuously held gravitationally and would be stripped away and there was an active they would be what do what you call them Vagabond planets uh Rogue World free floating planets there sometime there's recently there's discovery of what's called jumbos which is pretty interesting these are uh Jupiter that's an acronym oh Jupiter binary uh Jupiter binary Mass objects I think so these are two Jupiters and these are free floating so not just one Jupiter hanging out in Space by itself but two of them orbiting around each other and we can understand how maybe one jupit get kicked out of its solar system but how the hell do you end up with two bound to each other and they're right and they're together that's so weird we don't those that there's a jumb called discovered by jwst in the orus nebula if they do something stupid we call it a bimbo like that o what a great question good for you all right look at all these questions you're scrolling through oh I'm telling you this is like unbelievable these people uh we have great listeners that's all I can say this is Gabriel and Gabriel says hello Spinning Stars & Gyrochronology fellow Stellar satellite Riders Gabriel here from Okinawa nice uh what's the fastest rotating star we have found per uh PR NOA and what would hypothetically be the fastest possible uh how does this rotation affect the Stars atmosphere fusion and life cycle thank you and love you guys who yes SP these questions are like getting in they are laser focused questions here yeah yeah so stars all spin the sun is spinning I think its rotation period about once every 27 days something like that um and that's not untypical many stars have similar rotation periods but they they change their spin over time so actually tend to spin down so again if we go back in time to when the St was young it would have been probably spinning much much faster and probably arguably close to its breakup speed so there's a certain speed called breakup speed where it's rotating so fast that the centrifugal forces outwards are comparable to the gravitational forces inwards and so it's that break up any relationship you doubt you don't want to spin too fast exactly so stars are probably when they're very young have these Extreme rotation speeds um one thing I actually learned from one of my one of your colleagues uh right here at the Museum of Natural History in recent on my podcast and the cool Awards podcast was that the cool worlds has a podcast we do you you don't only have a lab you got a YouTube channel and a podcast yeah just slipped that okay very nice see what I did there very nice so we we had Jackie fatty on my podcast and Jackie FY yeah yeah she was telling me that some of the brown dwarfs uh rotating close to that kind of breakup speed as well and they seem to have rotation periods of order of hours which is you know incredibly fast and they are essentially almost Stars they're just below the mass of stars failed Stars so she doesn't like the word failed Stars I'm not going to repat exctly why I that's her that's exactly why I said it those are her objects of interest fail Stars exactly I was joking so you know it's interesting why do those brown doors which are presumably quite old in many cases still got their rotation and the sun has lost most of its rotation and it's we think it's probably from an effect called magnetic breaking so the sun has a strong magnetic field and from that magnetic field it accelerates ions and particles along those field lines and they basically get kind of ejected out of the solar system and once they kind of leave leave the Helia pores and get really far away from the solar system they essentially decouple from those field lines and then they just carry away what's called anglum spin energy essentially from the Sun so the sun basically by throwing stuff out I imagine you're on a mer ground and you're spinning really fast and if you start throwing stuff in the opposite direction to your direction of spin you could slow yourself down it's kind of doing the same thing and so over time these stars break and slow down and we can actually even use that effect you call it magnetic breaking magnetic breaking again another as opposed to Electric bugaloo breaking which is in the Olympics this year yes it is we have a whole episode on breaking on break break dancing so this is this is a cool effect and uh yeah I was going to say Ruth Angus who's here at the Museum as well another Museum right here at the Museum of Natural History yeah you guys have the department of astrophysics we got some good people good people and she's been showing that you can use this to age Stars so you can actually use the speed to figure out how old the star is age dat them yeah yeah yeah it's called gyro chronology wonderful gyro carology I love it what else you got all right Envisioning the Habitable Worlds Observatory here we go uh this is Zach meti or me no meti who says uh good morning or afternoon Dr Tyson uh Dr Kipping and uh Lord nice my name is Zach mey from a boring town of Hermitage PA don't dis your own out man cuz you're from Phil you're from from Philly from Pennsylvania Philly he says my question is since we've upgraded from the Hubble Space Telescope to the James web St Space Telescope in our orbit will we eventually upgrade again if we do what would be the goal of the new telescope and what would be expected of it for Discovery I like people like that that never rest whatever you have like good for you I'm on to the next what have you done for me lately I'm done with J what's next I'm done with this what have you done for me L what you done for me lately what what's next man and what are we going to expect from the next I get that I get that we always want to see the trailer for the next the next sequel right so this is it so uh people are thinking about that really hard right now and it seems like uh a lot of people are converging around the idea of some kind of direct Imaging Mission so we want to actually take photos of these distant exoplanets and the leading candidate that people are currently converging on is called the habitable world's Observatory hwo and it may be rebranded we'll see I don't really like that name too much at the moment um but it might be rebranded and the plan is to build something that's about six meters is what the decad or survey recommended this is every 10 years astronomers come together and they all pitch in their ideas and try to converge upon what they think the best ideas are and the one that that's why you rarely see us fighting with each other about what should get funded we go through this very elaborate process where our most trusted Among Us are put in a room and they don't come out until they agree on G of six astronomers enter one Astron leaves it's the funding Thunderdome reality show speaking of the decadal surveys has the habitable world's Observatory showed up in one of them yet yeah it was the top recommendation in the last DEC the very the most recent and jwst would have been in previous ones so they they they're coming in before that decade or two before the real thing happen so anyone wants to EAS drop on what we're thinking right that's how you this is how you do it I kind of like that though because you're zooming in with each one so each iteration is a closer look of what's out there so it kind of makes sense in terms of the progression yeah and this is by the way just what we call the flagship Mission so NASA always has like this one means expensive yeah one with the biggest price exactly SLI that in there so funny jwst because it's the infrared and because it was conceived to be able to observe the birth of galaxies which in the early Universe emitted ultraviolet but then red shifted to the infrared in today's epic but the infrared also let you see inside gas clouds so J jwst is serving early Universe astrophysicist as well as looking into gas clouds that are sitting in front of our nose I ask you jwst serves many branches of astrophysics people who would not otherwise ever be talking to one another in their research projects does this next Generation Flagship Mission also serve people who are studying large scale universe or is it just your people who are studying habitable worlds I think we'll see but obviously the primary focus is Imaging exoplant but that also means it has amazing abilities for example to image stuff in the solar system and depends whether you call that a separate field but planetry scientists and exoplanetary scientists actually tend not to talk to each other too much on top of that it will hopefully have ultraviolet capability so when you go to the ultraviolet rather than the infrared that gives you access to the high energy Universe yes it does like black holes and stuff yeah yeah good so I think in that sense it will be I'm glad to hear that because one of the great things about jwst is because of how many different branches how many different sub Fields within astrophysics it serves correct yeah yeah as did Hubble yeah we want this we want you're going to put a mission of this kind of price tag up there you want the whole Community behind it so you can't just go singly on a single billions price tag but the smaller missions are how much just oh maybe hundred million oh my God that something basos could actually do himself write a lunch check for why are we waiting for a commission Jeff we need some money would be nice yeah and he likes space By the way yeah exactly okay you ever wanted one of your questions on the universe answered we all have questions about the universe black holes to quazars quantum entanglement wormholes there is no end to the depths of cosmic curiosity well the entry level of patreon membership with Star Talk gets you just that I think it starts at $5 a month you have access to the question line that reaches our Cosmic query programming and not only that we produce a special Cosmic queries installment just for patreon members if you weren't the director of the Hayden planetarium what do you think you would be doing okay but this have to be another Universe it in this universe I'd be I'd be a songwriter for Broadway musicals o so that's the entry level and the perks ascend from there uh there's a level in fact where we send you a an autographed copy of one of my latest books uh right now it's Star Messenger Cosmic perspectives on civilization and it's signed with my fancy fountain pen with purple ink so so I I invite you to just check the link below and all of that money goes to our ability to experiment with new ways of bringing the universe down to earth so thank you for those who have already joined and we welcome others to participate in this Grand Adventure of what it is to bring the universe down to earth as always keep looking up CN Scott says hello Dr Tyson uh Dr nice Dr Kipping Life on Exomoons cinnamon from Roseville California here my question is about cinnamon cinnamon my question is about the L had a hamster named Cinnamon this is a human being named Cinnamon okay fine okay that's fine who knows maybe this is a hamster very smart don't say that I can't get that out of my head smart hamster just sitting here and actually you know the translation is you know that's the translation it's a little click on the computer anyway my question is about luminous fast blue Optical transients or LF Bots have astronomers astrophysicists come to the determination as to what they are is it a supernova kinova intermediate black hole shredding a star also why do you think that the L fbot ts are so different than others or one particular one which is at uh 2000 too first of all it needs a different name okay yeah yeah cuz that sounds like a '90s boy band yeah that's a lfb yo what's up it's me Jimmy from lfb girls okay I haven't heard of these have do you know anything about them I don't know a lot about this particular uh phenomena to be honest but I think it's it's another like another example similar to this is sort of fast radio bursts where there's these very strange uh observations which we are still don't really have a good explanation for I think it's just a nice example I would say of the fact that there is still a huge amount about the universe that astronomers do not agree about what's really going on and that's kind of what makes astronomy interesting that's what's great yeah yeah and every new frontier of observations will bring more of these mysterious things into our awareness that's very that's that's that's very telling I like that yeah yeah because you see things you know you didn't even know you didn't even know to know you didn't know you didn't know L new questions too exactly all right that's very cool very Richard Hart says hello fellow Astro explor explorers Richard here from El Grove California my son Kevin Hart what I'm sorry I don't know why that made me laugh his name is Richard Hart his son is Kevin my son Kevin Hart wants to know why we're made of star stuff okay what are the elements that are made in Stars my daughter also wants to know her name is kirne if all moons have a frozen core and does that mean that they have a frozen heart oh K Kar and the answer is yes they hate you no I'm joking I'm joking I'm sorry I should done that so why why are we made of star stuff because me let me preface that these cool worlds you're looking for can I presume that some of the motivation is there might be places where you'd find life oh yeah for sure that's one of the main reasons we're interested otherwise it's just an object out there okay so that so you then care deeply about the ingredients of Life correct okay and the search for it yeah so I I would just put like this like there isn't really that many ways to make heavy metals heavy what we call Metals heavy atoms inside your body inside planets and stars are the main manufacturing method which the universe creates these things so why we star stuff is because there's basically no other way to make the stuff in your room and in your body without having a star it's all manufactured inside the core of those Stars oh that's a that's so wonderful that's a little cop outy you're saying why well because he's saying of course we made of stars because there's nothing else we could be made out of I mean that's an answer but I it depends what you mean by the why I mean that's how I would interpret that question of the why but if you don't know the how that's a different question maybe I think that's that's the disconnect here so cuz I was going to say I'm ho it you're whing exactly cuz I was going to say if all the stuff in the universe is in the star when then that's all we could be made of yeah but how did that stuff get from Stars into US is another question gotcha because if it all stayed in the star this would be a boring univers there's nothing going on so got it okay very good and so you care that all those same ingredients are on your cool world absolutely yeah I mean that what we're hoping is to detect those molecules in exoplant atmospheres which will be our first hint of complex chemistry and life potentially in those planets there you go we don't know that all moons have a frozen core because we only know about the the moons in our own solar system what about the moons out there in the rest of the universe and then you've got moons like IO which are being actively squished and squashed due to the gravity and the tidle field from around Jupiter exactly so it's not obvious that IO would have a frozen core either because of all the tidal deformation it's going under and we know it certainly has volcanism so it must have some layer of uh magma underneath its surface but would any moon have a frozen core if it collapsed from something bigger doesn't it get hotter in the middle so everything be but over time oh then it would it cool it could cool to just being a rock floating and boom Frozen and that's it but you saying most things then would have a warm or maybe oh maybe so everything's like a medium rare steak right I'd say got a warm pink Center but go far enough into the future and everything will be frozen there well there you go oh oh there you're right thank you far enough thank you for that very Bleak Outlook that's what I'm here for world will not end in fire but in ice oh boy CH just one more question all right here we go um he says Atypical Rotations & Maximum Planets this is Andrew o hello Dr T Dr K and Chuck okay we just know you're Lord Chuck but I like it he says uh how common is it for planets to have atypical rotations do they always occur typical like not typical as in yeah aypal as in not as right atypical um do they always occur due to external forces can it happen to other astronomical bodies have we observed a planet that rotates in the same odd manner as Uranus uh but in the opposite direction ooh maybe they're also referencing the orbit right but there rotation revolution revolution and reolution and rotation right counter rotating and counter revolving that's if they exist they should be showing up in your data yeah so in terms of the orbit yes we can measure that we can tell if it's going backwards around its star and there are some cases we use this Effect called the Ros mlal effect that essentially looks at the red shift and blue shift off patches of the surface of the Star as the planet passes in front of it using this effect you can actually tell which way the planet is going over the face of the Star by looking at those little shifts so that's pretty cool and we have seen some planets people clever I got to tell you we got the cleverest people using just light and I keep getting blown Away by like how much you it's like either and he can't he can't go out there and manipulate it he can't put it in a Petri dish he can't just tilt it in another Direction he's got to sit there wait for the light whatever the data from the light is that's it and you know what kills me is like I look at this and I'm like you people are the most resourceful people ever or you are just making this crap up it feels a bit like being Sherlock Holmes is the analog it we're not we we have these Clues and we have to think really hard about unpingco to try and measure so beta Pictoria B so beta is the Greek sequence of the lettered stars and for many constellations it's lettered in sequence of bright brightest to dimus so there' be Alpha pictoris and then beta pictoris would extensively be the second brightest star so pictoris is the genor form of pictor which is a painters easel that's a constellation painters easel and then and then your your regular regular letter your your Roman letter was what b b a lowercase b yes and that's the first planet discovered the first planet discovered around it and a you give to the star the star itself okay and so who's got the most planets out there that would be the Bob Ross constellation which is in front of the pitor uh constell I think the record is a trapis trapis one is a very famous star system that has seven sometimes called the Seven Dwarfs cuz they're all such small rocky plants but I think there is a another star that has eight plants that's been discovered but that's just what we know of so there surely are even more that you you if he discovers one that has nine planets the Pluto people will rise up again we want to keep them tamped [Music] down that's wild well let me reflect on this briefly and then we call it quit all right so every generation of telescopes WR trying to answer questions A Cosmic Perspective that we posed but you know what happens those questions and our attempts to answer them take us up to the limits of what that telescope can deliver and those are the seeds for a next layer of creative thinking about what science can be discovered and what new tools and Technology may be necessary to discover at any given moment we have smart people and great technology trying to figure out how this world works but there comes a time where the technology can only take you so far maybe there are questions you had but remained unanswered because you're awaiting a next generation of Technologies to get you there and maybe you're awaiting more than that maybe you're awaiting a next generation of thinkers students you have trained that will come after you and carry on questions that you've begun or better yet maybe with new technologies new science new ways of thinking there are questions you will ask that you didn't even know oh so when I think of David Kipping efforts with the James web Space Telescope there's some questions he couldn't answer with previous technology they tried couldn't answer now they're flowing but what happens next he sees things that are at the edge of what this technology can deliver and now he's looking to the Horizon is there another kind of telescope that can hone in on these unanswered questions and maybe that'll take me there you step back and you see this exercise and you say that's how science works one idea Builds on another one bit of Technology surpasses what came before it enabling you to answer questions you have posed and to pose questions you never thought to ask I wouldn't have it any other way that is a cosmic perspective thank you for being on Star Talk dude it's my pleasure you just right up the street yeah you know if you discover Life you're going to give us a call oh you'll be on the phone first call me you'll be the 27th person I let know no it wouldn't be Little Green Men necessarily but you might discover something in the atmosphere using the jwst data we want to hear about it because that'll make headlines and we want to be there right with you okay he wants to put on his own podcast first of course then is on his YouTube channel right and then on and then maybe world news then he wants to call his mother call his mother okay then call okay we'll be fifth know all right this has been Star Talk cos M quarius with my friend and colleague David kicking Kipping right up there at Columbia University Ivy leag school right here in Manhattan yes in the middle of the city Chuck always good to have you man always all right this has been Star Talk yeld of grass Tyson keep looking up [Music] [Music] [Music]