Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - News from the Solar System

Episode Date: November 5, 2019

Listen for up to date news about suprising developments in our solar system.Contest for naming Saturn's newly discovered moon. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite people, an incomparable soccer icon, Megan Rapino, to the show, and we had a blast. Take a listen. Sue and I were, like, riding the lime bikes the other day,

and we're like, we're like, we're like, people ride bikes because it's fun. We got more incredible guests like Megan in store, plus news of the day and more. So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports Network. And here's Heather with the weather. Well, it's beautiful out there, sunny and 75, almost a little chilly in the shade. Now, let's get a read on the inside of your car.

It is hot. You've only been parked a short time, and it's already 99 degrees in there. Let's not leave children in the back seat while running errands. It only takes a few minutes for their body temperatures to rise. And that could be fatal. Cars get hot, fast, and can be deadly. Never leave a child in a car. A message from Nitsley and the Ad Council.

I'm Simone Boyce, host of the Brightside podcast, and on this week's episode, I'm talking to Olympian, World Cup champion, and podcast host, Ashlyn Harris. My worth is not wrapped up in how many things I've won. because what I came to realize is I valued winning so much that once it was over, I got the blues, and I was like, this is it. For me, it's the pursuit of greatness. It's the journey.

It's the people. It's the failures. It's the heartache. Listen to the bright side on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Crystal, I have a question for you. Do you believe in planet number nine? You mean the planet that robbed Pluto of its real planetary designation?

That's right. Exactly. Pluto is outsees, but I'm talking about another planet, a planet that might be hiding behind Neptune and Uranus. So just like the hottest new planet on the block. That's right. Every 10 years, there's something new, something sexy that astronomers want to talk about, something hidden out there. So, you can always be replaced by a better idea or a better planet.

That's right. No planet is safe. That's cold, man. That's right. But, you know, there's no room for sentiment out there in the far reaches of the solar system. It is a cold, cold, cold place out there. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and the co-author of the book. We have no idea, a guide to the unknown universe with my friend and frequent collaborator, Jorge Chamm. And you're listening to the podcast, Daniel and Jorge, Explain the Universe, brought to you by iHeart radio.

Jorge is still away for a little while, but don't worry, folks. He'll be back soon. And until then, we have our wonderful guest host, Crystal, here with us today. I'm Crystal Dilworth. I'm a neuroscientist by training and a AAAS if-if-then STEM ambassador. And I'm super excited to do my best to do what Jorge does and help explain the universe. Are you going to be a Jorge simulator? I could try, but I don't have any bananas with me.

Maybe offline. I want to hear your best Jorge impression. I could probably do most of his. talk. That's hilarious, but a dangerous road, so let's not go down there. But thanks for tuning in, folks. Our podcast is all about the amazing things about the universe, the crazy, bonkers stuff that we discover when we are trying to understand this universe that we find ourselves

in. And often we talk about things super far away, but sometimes we like to talk about things that are happening right in our backyard, things that are happening recently, things that are happening right here at home. because it turns out there are lots of discoveries to be made. And stuff is happening all the time. So if you haven't been keeping up with the latest, greatest, scientific news, stuff that's happening in our solar system,

we're here to break it down for you. Breaking science. Well, I know we want to break science or just break the news or maybe break people's minds. I'm on board with that. Sounds good. So today on the episode, folks, we're going to be talking about scientific news of the solar system what is out there do we really understand what the solar

system is made out of how can it be possible that we still haven't figured out what's in our own backyard what's in your backyard crystal there's lots of mysteries hiding out there there's like a lot of potted plants and bugs but nothing like new astrological or astronomical phenomenon. Are you 100% sure there are no aliens in your backyard? No, can we ever be 100% sure that there are not aliens in our backyard? Crystal admits there might be aliens in her backyard. By some definition of alien. By some definition of might. All right, but specifically today, we want to dig into some news you might have heard about, about a potential extra planet out there, and a visitor from another solar system, and new discoveries about one of the familiar

your planets, Saturn. So before we dig into that, I was wondering if people around town had heard about the news of the solar system, if they were keeping up with the latest breaking information. So I walked around UC Irvine and I asked folks if they had heard of some of this latest discoveries. Here's what people at UC Irvine had to say. I haven't heard of planet 9, but I've heard of planet X, which might be the same thing, which is a theoretical planet which nobody has seen. But they've seen. the potential effects from it to the gravitational

disruption on other bodies. I think they believe it has a very large orbit out beyond the other eight planets and probably very elliptical and even possibly on a completely different plane. No, I haven't heard of that. I just know

that we discovered it and that there could be potential to be life so I don't know that's why we're interested in it. And what about the comet from another solar system? Have you heard about that guy? I don't think so. No, no. I haven't heard of that.

No. Is that Pluto? No, then I haven't. I don't think I have. No. I think I just read a headline, and that was it. No, I haven't. Heard of, yes, I'm not aware of what it is.

All right, so what did you think of those responses, Crystal? Well, it's kind of shocking that people are still associating with Pluto. Although I do get it. Pluto was charismatic. Was it, though? I mean, it's just a cold speck out there. I never really understood why Pluto struck so many heartstrings with people. Because it was tiny and cute and adorable and lonely.

Oh, is it like the baby planet or is it like the underdog planet, the scrappy little rascal? I think both, right? Like depending on which you more identified with. But now we know that Pluto's like not even by itself, but I'm sure we'll get into that. Yeah, so you think Pluto has lost some sort of special place in our hearts now that we discover there's a whole lot of cosmic junk out there. in Pluto's orbit? I think that scientists would want us to open our hearts to all of the cosmic junk. That's right. It's all part of our family, right? And do we really need to put labels on it? Every rock is just, you know, it self-identifies as a rock. We don't really care if

it's a rock or a dwarf planet or a real planet or an asteroid or whatever. It all deserves love and investigation. That's right. Every object in the solar system is worthy of our curiosity. Perfect. Right. And on that note, let's dig into some of this news. I was surprised that people hadn't heard more about this interstellar comet because that blows my mind. That kind of thing really gets me interested in potential news from other parts of the universe and sort of messages from other places that we can't normally access. It's like a special opportunity to learn something.

Wait, a comet is a messenger from the great beyond? Yeah, sort of. It's coming from a place that we can't normally get to. And so it carries with it some information, maybe about where it came from. And so because we're trapped on this little tiny rock and we can't see most of the universe very easily, we have to develop every kind of eyeball we can. And mostly we're just looking. So when something actually comes from somewhere else, carrying with it like samples and bits,

then wow, that's an incredible opportunity to really see something that otherwise would be totally invisible to us. Okay. I'm way more excited about comments now. All right. Well, you're going to have to hold your horses because we'll be talking. about that at the end of the episode. First, let's dig into planet nine. And as most of you know, we have eight planets in our solar system since Pluto was demoted. One of the things that I've always found amazing is that modern science is only responsible for discovering two of those,

Neptune and Uranus. All the planets before that were basically discovered by ancient civilizations. So from that, I must infer, it is easy to find a planet. Wow, you're really throwing some shade on those ancient civilizations, you know. No, it is not that hard to find nearby planets. And remember, the way that we spot planets is only in their reflected light, because planets don't actually glow. If you're seeing Jupiter or Mars in the sky, you're seeing the reflected sunlight off of those planets. They don't actually emit any light. And so for us to see a planet has to be close enough that that reflected light gets to Earth. And if it's far enough away from the sun, it doesn't even get much light, not to mention reflect it all the way back to Earth. So, as the

planets get further and further from the sun, they are harder and harder to spot. So yeah, the ancient civilization sort of found all the easy ones. So which ones did we find? We discovered Neptune and Uranus, and there's a really interesting story there, which is sort of going to lead into Planet 9, which is that people found Uranus, and they saw it by actually seeing it in the sky, by finding this little dot and tracking its orbit and discovering where it was. But Uranus is what gave us a clue that Neptune even existed, because we when they found Uranus, when they saw its orbit, it didn't quite make sense. They're like, huh, this doesn't move like a gravitational object.

This doesn't move the way you would expect just a rock out there to move. So those ancient scientists that I threw shade on a little bit earlier were actually amazing because they were able to predict how those objects should be moving. So we know when we see something abnormal. Is that right? Well, the ancient scientists, they could see things moving in the sky. And they deduced that Mars, for example, and Venus were not stars. They were other planets.

But it wasn't until about the 1800s that we found Uranus and that we deduced from Uranus's orbit. At that point, we had like a solid theory of gravitation and we could calculate the predictions for how these planets should move. And when we did that, we found that our predictions for Uranus weren't right. Like they just didn't add up. Uranus wasn't moving the way we expected to. And things made a lot more sense if you sort of added one more element. Like there's some chaos in Uranus's orbit.

It wasn't as simple as they expected. And that's what suggested that there might be something else out there, something tugging on it, something tweaking it, something making it so it wasn't just moving smoothly and simply. So we knew the math was right. So something about the way that we described what we were seeing had to be wrong? Yeah. Well, that's a great point. You know, whenever we have a theory and then the data disagrees with the theory, you have two questions. You're like, well, is the theory wrong?

and we were pretty sure by the theory of gravitation, so that's not the first thing we're going to go to. But the other option is, well, maybe we're missing some data. Maybe there's some missing element in our theory. Maybe there's something out there that's not in our model. And when they added the concept of another planet, like, well, what if there's another planet out there? Then it made a lot more sense.

If they put another planet, Neptune, into the model, then the orbit of Uranus makes perfect sense. And then they went and looked for Neptune and actually found it. So the cool thing about Neptune is that we suspected it was there from the gravitational hints before we found it. How long between the time when scientists are able to predict that there should be a gravitational mass in an area and the actual concrete observation of that planet or mass? Like, what should we expect that timeline to be? That's a great question. I wish I knew. It depends on a lot of things, though. It depends on the size of the planet, the distance from the sun, and its shininess, because the only way to really see it is to see it reflecting light from the sun.

And the further they are from the sun, the less light they reflect. And it also depends on the color of the planet and its shininess. Some planets absorb more light than they reflect, and so they are just harder to spot. I think scientists call this the albedo, which always makes me think of the libido. It's not that exciting. But scientists get excited about different things for different reasons. That's right. But you've got to get interested in something about science.

And the cool thing is that now we're in the same situation with Uranus and Neptune. And also all these little objects, these kind of trans-Neptune objects, a bunch of dwarf planets and weird rocks floating out there in the solar system. Deep, deep in the solar system, those orbits don't make sense. Sort of in the same way that Uranus used to not make sense. And then we found Neptune. Now we're looking at Uranus and Neptune and all these trans-Neptune objects. and we're thinking, these don't make sense.

These are weird orbits for them to have. So we're piecing the puzzle together as we go further and further away from the sun and it gets harder and harder for us to see what we're looking for. Yeah, but the story is the same. We ask, can we explain everything we're seeing in terms of the objects we have? We say, well, would it make sense if we added another object?

And this is really fun because that's a clue. If you build a model and then you're like, okay, this makes much more sense if we add this, new planet, then you can go look for. It gives you something sort of specific to look for rather than just scanning the sky and wondering if you're going to see something. If you know where to look, you have a much better chance of actually finding it. So what do we know about planet nine? We don't even know if it exists, right? We know that these trans-Neptune objects have weird orbits, like they've clustered around a common plane that's tilted with respect

to the solar system. And there's a bunch of these guys with really long orbits and they're all tilted and that's not the kind of thing you expect like it can happen but in order to get a tilt relative to the sort of solar system plane you have to have a collision or be tugged by something else and they did all these calculations and they found this like a one in 500 chance of our solar system ending up in this sort of situation without a planet nine so i wouldn't say they're pretty sure that there's a planet nine but it seems unlikely that there isn't a planet nine How do you like that sort of scientific word jumble there? That was a good hedge.

I like that. But before these calculations for Planet 9 were made and before the erratic behavior of these other bodies became so obvious that we couldn't ignore them, the existence of a ninth planet was kind of like relegated to the crazies that wear tin hats and jump around in lightning storms, wasn't it? I'm not a member of that community, so I'm not sure. But, you know, people have been wondering about a planet nine for a long time.

And when Pluto was discovered, some people thought, aha, there it is. This answers the question about Uranus and Neptune's weird orbits and this other stuff. But of course, Pluto can't actually explain that because it's too tiny. Pluto is really small. That's why it got downgraded from planet to dwarf planet. So it doesn't actually answer this question. So, yeah, I think that this idea of another planet out there, was a bit of a crazy theory.

But now that we get more information, we have better telescopes to see more of these trans-Neptune objects and people have done more careful calculations that I think they're better received. But you tell me you know some of these researchers, don't you? I do, yeah. Mike Brown, who was one of the researchers that actually worked to demote Pluto

because he found other objects that were just as big or bigger, so Pluto wasn't as exciting anymore. And Constantine Patigen, who was the theorist who helped do those calculations, are both from my institution, Caltech. So I had the opportunity to talk to them when they had first made this prediction. And they kind of knew people were going to think they were crazy,

but they are crazy, just not in a scientific way. So they were very happy to be making this outrageous statement, knowing that they could back it up with math. And they are very excited about the idea of observing what they've predicted. But in Constantine's predictions, the mass is like 5,000 times the size of Pluto. So they're looking for something that's really significantly large. That's right. Pluto cannot explain this weird stuff they're seeing out there.

And let me just say that I am so jealous of those guys because it's sort of a scientific fantasy to find evidence for something that seems bonkers. Because, you know, we know the universe is bonkers. We know it has surprises waiting for us. but you can't just make stuff up, you have to discover it. And so to be in that situation where the data are telling you something fascinating and new that you know most of the community is going to have a hard time accepting, that honestly seems like a lot of fun to me. Yeah, these two guys, they really enjoy shaking things up.

Yeah, but you asked earlier, like, what do we know about Planet 9? Well, again, we don't know that it exists, but the hypothesis, the sort of the theory that would explain these orbits more simply is that it's orbiting really far out there. It's like 400 to 800 times the radius of Earth's orbit. So really deep in space. And that far out in space, it would take like 10,000 or 20,000 years just to go around the sun one time. That is a really, really long time to wait to get data for your PhD.

I'm just saying. It's also a really long time to have a birthday. I mean, you're born on Planet 9, like your 10,000 Earth years have passed before your first birthday. Wow. And then also is going to make it really hard for us to see. Right? And like coming from a like the people's perspective, the neuroscience perspective, like the visual system is our primary system. That's how we like feel that we really know what's going on. So until scientists can really put eyes on this planet, is it going to be something that's accepted by the community, do you think? No, I think you're totally right. It's like a murder. You need a body. You know, it's until you've seen it directly, you're not sure that it exists. I totally agree. Otherwise it's sort of circumstantial or indirect evidence. It's the same deal in particle physics.

We suspected the Higgs boson was there. We had a lot of clues about where it might be and how it might work. All the other information pointed to it, but until we actually saw it, until we created it and saw it in the lab, we didn't even believe it existed. And I think in the same way, this is a great idea, but until they actually spot it, they see light reflected off of it, they see its motion and can plot its orbit, I don't think it will be accepted as a real thing. So I understand the thrill of discovery.

I understand how addictive and amazing it can be. When you make a prediction based on the things that you think you know about the universe and that prediction is true. But once we, and I'm going to be optimistic here, once we see evidence of Planet 9, what is that going to tell us other than it's there? Well, your friends are going to throw a big party and say, we told you so we told you so which is probably going to be really satisfying but it also it every piece of information we get about the nature of the solar system gives us a clue about how it

formed because it rules out a bunch of stories you know scientists work in the framework of stories i think a lot of people think of science is like super objective but in the end we're telling a story we're trying to explain the universe we're trying to say this is what happened this and then that and the other thing and right now we have lots of different ideas about how the solar system might have formed. And the more data we get, the more we can rule some of those out because they're inconsistent with that data. So the more we know about the solar system, especially out in the far reaches, the more we can get a sense for how things came together. And that's, of course, important and interesting, not just because we want to know, like, what is the context of our

existence, how is our solar system formed, but we want to know if our solar system is unusual, if other solar systems might have formed this way, if there are other planets like this out there. And so I think this touches on a lot of really deep and broad scientific questions. So does Planet 9 have to be a planet or could it be something else with like a huge mass? You put your finger right on the question there because what we know about Planet 9 if it exists comes just from its gravitational interactions. We can speculate about how much mass it has and how it's moving and how that is tugging on those other objects. But you're right, that doesn't tell us what its nature is. Is it a ball of rock?

A ball of rock or a ball of ice, for example, that have the same mass would have the same exact gravitational effects. And even something crazy like a black hole. We talked on the podcast once about what would happen if the sun became a black hole. I think a lot of people were surprised to learn that a black hole has the same gravitational force as a star of the same mass. And so if you've fixed the mass of the object, it really could be anything and have the same gravitational effects. So we won't know until we see it. We won't know until we see it. And there's been some press recently about the possibility that Planet 9 might be a black hole, which is exciting because it seems cool and wow, it'd be kind of awesome to have a black hole so nearby that we could study.

There's not a whole lot of specific evidence pointing in that direction. But the cool thing is that if it is a black hole, there are some things we can look for. If a black hole, if it was there, would probably have a big blob of dark matter surrounding it. and we could look for dark matter smashing into itself and giving us gamma rays. And a black hole, if it's there again, because it's denser than a planet or something else, might give us some gravitational lensing. And actually, in some data, there are a few signs of sort of unexpected microlensing, like weird distortions of the background galaxies that would be consistent with a passing with black hole,

but they're not really conclusive. So it's more than like fun speculation at this point. But yeah, it's totally possible that Planet 9 is not a ball of rock with water on it, but a tiny black hole left over from the creation of the universe. I feel a little uneasy about a casual black hole in the backyard of our solar system. For all you know, you have a black hole in your backyard. It doesn't sound like you have a really good inventory of what's out there. Yeah, I'm not a big gardener.

No, you're right. A black hole does, it sounds awesome. It also sounds a little scary. But this black hole, if it exists, is orbiting really far out there and probably very stable. And so it's unlikely to come anywhere near the Earth. But yeah, if it's there, it would certainly be the closest black hole to the Earth. And then you'd have to wonder, like, what if it got tweaked out of its orbit and plunged in towards the sun? Actually just read an amazing science fiction novel of just that topic.

Yeah, I was going to say, that sounds like a movie that I'm not sure if I want to see. No, it's a great science fiction novel by one of my favorite authors, Greg Egan. He talks about what would happen if a black hole passed near the earth but didn't gobble it, and it has crazy effects on the tides and all sorts of other cool stuff. Anyway, we don't know if Planet Nine is there. If it's there, we don't know if it's a black hole or another planet. We don't even know what we would call it, right? If we actually discover it, we can't call it Planet Nine.

What do you think we should call it, Crystal? all I know is that scientists are historically I'm going to say bad at naming things I mean there's like a ligand protein like receptor pair in my field which is like Sonic and Hedgehog clearly these people were Sega fans and they couldn't think of anything on their own so I'm saying let's not let them name this planet

if it's discovered we should get all of our listeners to come together and come up with a good name I did a little survey and I think people are calling it planet nine. Some scientists call it planet X. Some scientists are calling it George. And other ones are even calling it fatty. So I think you're right. The scientists need a lot of help in this regard. George? George. George. I know. I think that shows some people sort of generic bias for objects. They need Jorge's help on like something that's really catchy and informative. We have a long list of things to talk to Jorge about when he returns, but I'll put that on the top of the list. So do we have to look that far out for things that we don't know about our solar system, or are we still learning about stuff that's closer to us?

There's a huge amount to learn about stuff that's even closer than the far, far depths of the solar system. Let's talk about that, but first, let's take a short break. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness, the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life, impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories.

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For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hola, it's HoneyGerman and my podcast. Grasasas Come Again is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment with raw and honest conversations

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But the whole pretending and coat, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasasas Come Again as part of My Cultura podcast network on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, we're back and we're talking about news of the solar system, crazy discoveries, things that we're learning just recently in the last weeks and months about our own cosmic backyard. And Crystal, you were saying, are there things we're learning that are closer to home than the far reaches of space past Pluto?

And in fact, there are. People have probably learned recently in the science news that Saturn has been upgraded. It is now the moon king of the solar system because it now has 82 moons. So it's beating Jupiter. Is Jupiter the second place moon owner? That's right. As far as we know, you know, we can't say we know all the moons that are out there because we keep finding more as we look more carefully and build new instruments. But so far, Saturn has the most moons of the solar system.

And I don't know if that's a point of pride among planets or they just don't care. How many moons does Saturn have? Saturn now has 82 moons. That's a lot. It's a lot of things to name also. I don't even know the names of all these objects. But if scientists are going to be arguing about things the way scientists usually argue about things, then this is going to be a long conversation about how to name all these moons.

Are you just going to have a lot of moons named after scientists? Or scientists dogs or family members or stuff like that. Hmm, sounds reasonable. But actually you can contribute. You listener can participate because there's a contest out there to name these moons. So if you have an idea for how to name the new moons of Saturn, you should throw your ideas into the hat. Save the scientists from themselves. Come up with a good name. That's right. We are crowdsourcing the hardest part of solar system science, which is naming all the new stuff they find. So usually when scientists are finding something new, that means there's been some type of technological advance that's allowed. them to see things that they couldn't see before or detect things that they previously couldn't detect. Is that true here? Yeah. And it's also sometimes just a question of scientific resources. Sometimes we have the device. It's just been sort of pointed somewhere else. And so here people were interested in questions about the formation of the solar system. So they wrote these proposals

to dedicate telescope time to look specifically for moons around Saturn. Moons that are sort of further out than the other moons. These moons are really far away from Saturn. They're like, in very distant orbits. So the scientific machine finally got around to thinking this was important. That's right. Exactly. Or the scientists who think this is important finally got the attention they deserve. And, you know, all these moons, they're not, like, really big objects.

If you're looking up in the night sky and you see our moon and you think that that's typical, remember that our moon is huge compared to most of the moons in the solar system. These moons are, like, rocks three miles wide. and some of them take like three years to go around Saturn. So it really is just more like a careful catalog of all the stuff around Saturn. Whether you call it a moon, whether you call it a rock like we were saying before, we love it all. So where do these smaller moons come from? Like how do they end up orbiting these larger planets?

Yeah, that's a great question. You might wonder like why are their moons at all? Why don't objects just coalesce into planets? And one reason is that these planets have very strong gravitational fields, and those gravitational fields provide tidal forces. If you're big enough, then there's a difference between the gravitational tug on the side of you that's close to the planet, then the gravitational tug that's on the side of you that's far from the planet.

If you're large enough for that to have a big effect, that means because there's a difference in the gravitational force from one side to the other side, that essentially the planet is pulling you apart because it's tugging on one part more than the other. part. And so if you're around a big enough planet and you're in sort of the right gravitational zone, the planet will tear you up. It will shred you. And so that's why you don't have all the stuff around Saturn just coalesce into one big moon. That's why, for example, Saturn has rings, we think, because the tidal forces are too great for those rings to coalesce into moons. So Saturn's so big that it's gravitational force is doing crazy things to what's around it, basically.

This is my technical interpretation. I heard shredding. I heard a lot of other things. I'm like, so crazy things. No, you're totally right. And it also gives us a bit of a window into the timeline of Saturn. Because some of this stuff, if it had been around since the beginning of the solar system, probably would have found a way to get into a stable place that it might have been able

to coalesce into a moon. Like, for example, we don't know how long Saturn's rings have been around, and we don't know how long they will be around. It might be that in another 100 million years or billion years, they will eventually coalesce into an object that Saturn's tidal forces won't pull apart. And so if we look at where these moons are, we don't think these moons could have been around for very long, because if so, they would have been slowed by all sorts of gas and dust that surrounds Saturn, and they would have slowed them down, and they would have been sort of drag. down into lower orbits. So by understanding sort of where the moons are, the close by ones and the far away ones, it gives us a window into the time frame, like how long this is happening and what's this sort of dynamics. Has Saturn looked the same way since the beginning of the solar system? Or are there new features that aliens from a billion years ago wouldn't recognize

if they came and visited today? Yeah, so I learned a long time ago, though when different types of scientists use time to always ask what scale we're talking about. So when an astrophysicist says, these moons haven't been around for very long. What is very long? They don't mean weeks. They don't mean months. They mean hundreds of millions of years. They mean the timescale of the solar system, which is four and a half billion years.

So they're way old, but yet young for the universe. Yeah, exactly. They are probably hundreds of millions of years old, which is pretty young compared to Saturn itself and other things in the solar system. So why does it matter to us how much? many moons Saturn has? No, I think some people out there might be excited every time we discover a moon because it's sort of a new element in the solar system. People like, like discovery, like finding things in their backyard.

That never really gets it for me because I feel like, you know, we know there's rocks out there. It doesn't really matter how many rocks there are. But it does help us scientifically. It does really give us a clue as to how things happen. Like we were saying before, there's a story about the formation of Saturn. And now some of those stories don't make sense anymore because they're inconsistent with finding these moons out there this far away.

And so the more data we get, the more we can narrow it down and find the one true story of our solar system. And hey, who doesn't want to know the story of the origin of our solar system, right? I think all of us are interested in where we came from and how we came to be. And the beginning of the solar system is like going as far back as we could possibly think. But you said that, like, everybody knows there's rocks out there.

Like, yeah, planets are just rocks. They're not that interesting. But I heard some deep, passionate excitement about comets. So tell me why comets and about this one in particular. Yeah, let's do that. Let's talk about comets and comets from other solar systems. But first, let's take another break. Your entire identity has been fabricated.

Your beloved brother goes missing without. a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness, the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life, impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangled up identities, concealed truths, and the way in which family secrets almost always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of family secrets.

Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, it's Honey German. And my podcast, Grazacus come again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment with raw and honest conversations

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New season of Grasas Has Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I had this overwhelming sensation that I had to call it right then. And I just hit call. I said, you know, hey, I'm Jacob Schick. I'm the CEO of One Tribe Foundation. And I just want to call on and let her know there's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling. And there is help out there. The Good Stuff Podcast Season 2 takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-tribe Foundation.

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and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission. Don't want to have to go to any more funerals, you know. I got blown up on a React mission. I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right leg and a traumatic brain injury, because I landed on my head. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff.

Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we're back and we're talking about exciting stuff that's been discovered in our solar system pretty recently. So we are updating you on news of our solar system. And one of the most interesting things to happen in our solar system in the last. few years was that we got a visitor. Our solar system is a little island in the middle of an enormous empty ocean of space. The next solar system over is light ears and light years away. What that means is that we don't expect a lot of messages from our solar system to the other or from other solar systems to us. We expect to basically be isolated. It should be very, very

rarely that something gets tossed out of our solar system and actually happens to land in another one. It's like if there were two basketball hoops on the earth, one here and one on the other side of the earth. And you lost your basketball and ended up somehow drifting all the way around the earth and making a slam dunk in the other basketball. Highly improbable. Highly improbable. But those of you who have listened to our podcast know that in 2017, we did get a visitor from another solar system. It was called Omuamua, and it was really weird. It was long.

It was thin. It was shiny. it seemed to accelerate as it left the solar system. Those of you interested in that, go check out our whole podcast on it. But these days, most people think it probably was a comet, a comet from another solar system. So is that when we say interstellar, that's what we mean? Yeah, interstellar means from another star. Because stars are big and they're exciting and they're bright, but they are not very dense.

You can fly through a whole galaxy and not encounter any stars because they are light years and light years apart. And that's why we thought it was very unusual for things from one solar system to end up in another one. And we talked about the solar system in terms of the planets and these objects that are sort of in the far reaches of the solar system. But there's stuff in our solar system that's even further away. There's this thing we call the Oort cloud, which is basically a huge collection of balls of ice. And that's where comets in our solar system come from. They get nudged and they fall in towards the star and they accelerate on their journey towards the under the solar system and whizz around and go all the way back.

Those where our comets come from. And the idea is maybe sometimes one of those objects in the Earth cloud gets nudged and instead of falling in, it sort of falls out. And so that would be like us sending a message. That would be us sending a message. And it's a message in the sense that it tells you something about our solar system. That comet has in it a particular mix of ice and rocks and other trace elements that tell you about the blob that formed our solar system, that huge, you know,

nebula of gas and dust and stuff that made our solar system. But because we're trapped on this one island, we never know is what we're looking at typical or unusual. That's the frustration with having n equals one, with only having a single example and trying to generalize to the whole universe because, of course, what we want to do is understand the whole universe. So if we can get comets from other solar systems and study them, then we can figure out, like, hey, does that comet look like ours?

Or is it totally weird in comparison? So how often do we have the privilege of encountering an interstellar object? It's super duper rare. Oumuua was the first one ever found. And they found it, as you said, because they turned on a new kind of telescope, a telescope that could see this kind of thing. Now, the amazing thing about that was when they turned it on, they really had no idea how often they would expect to see things,

but they expected it would be really rare. And then just days or weeks after they turned it on, they saw Omuamua. In fact, they saw it as it was leaving the solar system. So we only got this sort of trailing glimpse as it accelerated out of our field of view and we got less and less information. Now they've been watching the skies and they found a second one. So not as rare as we thought then. Yes, and that's exciting.

It's also sort of surprising. If we're getting comets from other solar systems fairly regularly, like every couple of years, That means that it can't be very unusual for these rocks to get knocked out of solar systems and end up in other solar systems because they're so far apart, it seems really unlikely. So for a couple to end up here means it must be happening all the time. So this interstellar object, this comet that we saw coming in, do we know where it came from? So this one, we don't yet know where it came from, but this is very recent. We've only got a few snapshots of it.

And to figure out where it came from, we need to sort of. of track it and understand the direction it's moving in, but this one is a very clearly an icy blob and it has a tail, it's got this sort of halo as stuff melts off of it. And that makes it harder to know its exact location. And that makes it harder to pinpoint its exact trajectory. So we don't know exactly where it came from, but we can see very clearly that its trajectory is not consistent with anything that's orbiting the sun. That's how we know that something is an interstellar object, that it just doesn't look like it's moving in an orbit around the sun. And this one in particular, if you take the plane of the solar system as sort of the palm

of your hand, this one is shooting like straight down into the palm of your hand. It's very clearly coming from somewhere else. We don't know exactly where yet. We love to like point back to the solar system it came from, but there's a lot of uncertainty still. Yeah, it like sort of conjures up these images of being able to catch it and ask it all the scientific questions that you want to ask. Like what's in your ice and what are your rocks made out of?

Yes, and we're already doing that. The lucky thing about this one is we're catching it on the way in, which means it's getting closer and closer and we can prepare and we can prepare for that moment when it comes closest to Earth, which gives us our best chance to understand it. And we can't like launch a spaceship and go visit it. We don't have the time or the expertise to do that, but we can study it just by looking at the light that reflects off of it.

That tells us about, you know, what is the atomic makeup? Does it have this kind of gas and that kind of gas? We talked on this podcast a few weeks ago about how different kinds of gas shine different kinds of lights. Just like if you put weird stuff in a Bunsen burner, it'll turn green or purple. We can look at the colors of lights coming from this thing and get a sense for what's in it. And as it gets closer and closer, we get better and better measurements. So, yeah, it's going to be visiting and we're going to be asking it a lot of questions. So we're not just figuring out things that are happening in our own solar system,

but at like the far reaches of what we have known about before. But we're also learning new things that are coming to us from other stars, other solar systems. Yeah, of course. And my fantasy is that one day one of these things will not just be a comet. It'll be some alien ship. And the physicist from that solar system will have arrived to solve all these problems and answer all of our deep questions about the nature of the universe. I've seen that movie.

It doesn't end well. I know, but there's always a moment of satisfaction when they have learned some deep secrets about the universe before the aliens eat everybody. And that's the moment I'm living for. The moment of discovery before complete and utter destruction. That's right. I will sacrifice the future of humanity

just for a fleeting glimpse at the secrets of the universe. Do you think that when the aliens that are going to come and share their physics with us before eventually destroying us all, do you think they'll have that moment of looking down on us

the way that we look up at comets and thinking, wow, the universe is pretty amazing and pretty beautiful. I hope so. I hope that being a super intelligent alien that travels the universe comes with moments of grandiose wonder and awe at this beautiful universe that we find ourselves in.

I certainly hope so. Well, I will continue to read the news looking for, well, evidence of planet nine and also contact with an alien species. Well, I think that's a good idea. And keep your ears tuned from more solar system news because that interstellar comet is coming, and it will be here. The closest approach to the Earth will be on December 7th.

So we hope to learn something. Maybe it's a comet. Maybe it's hiding an alien spaceship. We don't know. You know. Listeners know, of course, the solution we're hoping for. So until we learn more secrets about the nature of our solar system or get clues from other solar systems,

we're here to break down today's news for you. Thanks, everybody for tuning in. And thank you, Crystal, for joining us again on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Tune in next time for more crazy, amazing, mind-blowing facts about our universe. Thanks for listening. If you still have a question after listening to all these explanations,

please drop us a line we'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge, that's one word, or email us at Feedback at Danielanhorpe.com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from IHartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Get fired up, y'all.

Season 2 of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite people, an incomparable soccer icon Megan Rapino to the show and we had a blast. Take a listen. Sue and I were like riding the lime bikes the other day and we're like, we're like people ride bikes

because it's fun. We got more incredible guests like Megan in store plus news of the day and more. So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports Network.

Smokey the bear Then you know why Smokey tells you When he sees you passing through Remember please be careful It's the least that you can do Because it's what you desire Don't play with matches Don't play with fire

After 80 years of learning his wildfire prevention tips Smokey Bear lives within us all Learn more at smokybear.com And remember Only you can prevent wildfires Brought to you by the USDA Forest Service Your State Forrester and the Ad Council I'm Simone Boyce, host of the Brightside podcast, and on this week's episode, I'm talking to Olympian, World Cup champion, and podcast host Ashlyn Harris.

My worth is not wrapped up in how many things I've won, because what I came to realize is I valued winning so much that once it was over, I got the blues, and I was like, this is it. for me, it's the pursuit of greatness. It's the journey. It's the people. It's the failures. It's the heartache. Listen to The Bright Side on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.