Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Take a cruise of the exoplanets

Episode Date: August 8, 2019

Put on your stretchy pants and join Daniel and Jorge while they take you a guided cruise of the exoplanets. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System

On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone.

Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Honey German, and I'm back with season two of my podcast. Grazias, come again. We got you when it comes to the latest in music and entertainment with interviews with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in like over 25 years.

Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We'll talk about all that's viral and trending with a little bit of cheesement and a whole lot of laughs. And of course, the great bevras you've come to expect. Listen to the new season of Dresses Come Again on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Jorge, I hear that you like taking cruises. I just recently took my first one last week. Well, let me ask you a question. Before you get on the cruise, do you do, like, a lot of research to figure out where the cruise is going to stop? Or you just sort of trust them to take you to nice places? Well, I think the whole point of a cruise is that you don't have to do any research or worry about anything. Oh, it's about physical and mental laziness?

You just get on and you gain weight. That's the whole point. Do they charge you per pound or? Per pound gain? Yeah, exactly. Or pound consumed. How much of it stays with you is how much they charge it. But do you like just hanging out on the boat or do you like that they take you to different places to explore?

Well, I've only done it once and it was sort of a nice mix of both. Like you spend some time at sea just hanging out on the boat and you spend some time like disembarking and exploring some new different country. And what do you look for when you're embarking and exploring a new country? Bananas. That's about all that I need. All right. Well, in that case, I have got a cruise to sell you. Do tell. How much does it cost? Well, would you buy a ticket on a cruise that stops at all sorts of alien planets outside our solar system? It depends, I guess, you know? How good is the buffet?

It does have a lot of... Is it only, like, dehydrated food, astronaut food? I don't know. It turns out it's mostly bananas. All right. Dehydrated bananas. These are harder to slip on in CRG. All right, though, listeners, there is a seat available for our cruise to exoplanets. Hi, I'm Horam, a cartoonist and the creator of Ph.D. Comics. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and the creator of Ph.D. Comics.

I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist. exist, and I might be the only person on the planet who doesn't like taking cruises. Have you been on a cruise, Daniel? I have been on exactly one cruise. Did not like it. Not a fan. No, to me, I'm not a big fan of hotels, kind of a homebody. And to me, a cruise is sort of like a floating hotel you're trapped in.

Well, anyways, we hope that you are listening to this on a cruise, or maybe not. And so welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I-Hard radio. in which we cruise around the universe, finding weird and interesting stuff to dig up and explain to you, to download into your brain the buffet of fascinating physics. That's right. So you just have to hop on board, sit back and relax, and cruise around with us through the furthest reaches of human knowledge. That's right. Today's efforts to fatten up your cerebral cortex, we are going to be zooming around the universe and wondering, What does it look like out there? So today on the podcast, we'll be talking about.

What are planets outside of our solar system like? What do we know about other planets that are not the ones that are right immediately next to us? And this is sort of the first question I thought about when I heard about the discovery of planets around other solar systems. Because what's the point of finding these planets if you could, can't imagine going there. If you can't, like, ever go see them and swim in those alien oceans. And so I wondered, like, what are these planets like? Are they like Earth? Are they like Saturn or they like Jupiter? Are they like something totally weird and different? Right. Because we know what the planets are like in our solar system, right? There's some that are just

big balls of gas. There are some that are just big rocks. And so the question is, is that kind of the model for the rest of the universe or are planets maybe totally different outside of our solar system. And that's such an exciting moment in science when we first get to sort of crack open that box and learn whether the things we've known for hundreds of years are typical, like representative, like the rest of the universe is like this, or whether we've been misled into thinking that most solar systems are like ours when in fact ours is an anomaly. We never know until we go and explore those other solar systems until we actually get the data. So those moments in science when we get to ask nature these questions

and learn for the first time in human history what the sort of larger cosmic context is, that's the kind of stuff that gets me really excited. Because, you know, if you watch science fiction movies or Star Trek or Star Wars, you would think that every other planet in the universe looks a lot like the Earth. Maybe because most of them are actually filmed on Earth.

Wait, what? I know. A surprising number of planets look like Southern California. It's a nondescript desert outside of Los Angeles. That's right, exactly. But you know, you've got to give people credit. Like all we can do is imagine sort of what we know and extrapolate a little, a little bit from there. It's really hard to imagine something totally new, something totally alien, something outside of our experience that takes unfathomable creativity, really.

And so what we need is more data. We need to go out there and see what are these planets like. And so I'm as an avid fan of science fiction, I'm desperate for this data. I'm really curious to know what do other planets and around other stars actually look. like. Yeah, because all those movies and TV shows could be right, right? You know, there could be a lot of planets out there that look just like the Earth, you know, blue and green and with deserts and humanoid blue people. That's right. It certainly could be. It could be that planets are of a few varieties, you know, rocky with some water on them, gas giants, etc.

Or it could be that there's a whole other class of planet that we've never even imagined before, right, that we've never seen just because there isn't one example in these eight planets around our solar system. But you know, there's billions of planets in the universe. So the odds that we have an example of every kind of planet in these eight seem pretty improbable, right? There's got to be some crazy surprises out there. Yeah, it's like we only have eight data points, you know, eight examples.

Yeah, imagine you have what a planet can be like. Yeah, imagine you have a bag of 50 billion marbles and you get to draw eight marbles out. And from that, extrapolate what the other 50 billion look like, right? I mean, that's a pretty small lever arm to make some guesses. Or maybe not just what they're like, but how often Earth-like planets happen out there, you know? Is it super rare to be blue and green and beautiful with jungles and deserts, or is it pretty common? That's right. And you can take this question from the sort of like fantastical creative side, like what do they look like?

And you can take it from the practical side, like you were saying, like, could we live on anything? of those are, is it worth sending colony ships to any of these other planets to sort of expand the human diaspora? That's a great question. And the mind-blowing thing is that up until maybe, what, like 20 years ago, 25 years ago, we didn't really have confirmation or know for sure that there were other planets. Like 30 years ago, for all we know, we could have been the only planets in the universe. That's right. We had no evidence. We had no evidence for other planets. And it's because it's really hard to see planets around other stars. And so we thought it pretty unlikely that there were no planets around any other stars, but we didn't actually know until 30 years ago. And since then,

the field has taken off. And we've learned a lot about these planets. And now we're even at the point where we're starting to get some glimpses as to what they might look like. It's a fascinating moment in astronomy. Yeah. All right. Well, let's get into it. And so there's a technical term, Daniel, right, for planets that are outside of our solar system, right? there's a science term for them that's right were you on the committee that made this name by the way i was not i would have um i should have been uh well they're they're officially called exoplanets which always makes me think of like you know exoskeleton or you know like uh like an armor or like you know bugs well that's exactly right like exo skeleton is a skeleton on the outside so to me

exo means like outside like away so exoplanets are like planets outside our solar system to me it makes a lot of sense. Also, it launched a whole set of names of new fields, you know, like exoplanetology, exo-mediology, extro-exobiology, right? These are some exo-palientology. You can just add exo to your scientific field, and all of a sudden it's much cooler. Exo-psychology. Yeah, ex-cartoonists.

Exo-economist. Exo-podcasts. Technically, our podcast is exosolar system in, what, in a couple of years? This signal will probably leave the solar system. Yeah, yeah, exactly. These podcast waves, they are broadcast over the radio, will leave the solar system. You're right. Oh, my gosh.

I'm having a moment here realizing that our words are transmitting through the cosmos. You're freaking out? All of a sudden, I have stage fright because the stage is just grown dramatically. All right, well, the question is that. And what do we know about these planets that are outside of our solar system? So we have a pretty good idea of the ones in our solar system, right? There's eight. There used to be nine.

Now they're eight because some people did not like Pluto. And we know that some of them are gasey, some of them are big, some of them are hot and small and rocky. But we really don't have any idea what they would look like outside of our solar system, right? You want to hear my favorite Pluto planet controversy story? Yeah, for sure. Well, there's a fantastic planetarium in Chicago. Your favorite, so you have several, but you have a favorite. There's this fantastic planetarium outside Chicago, in Chicago, in downtown Chicago, the Adler

Planetarium, and it was built before Pluto was discovered. So it's an old, old building, and so they have eight planets on there. And then Pluto was discovered, and for decades, it was sort of out of date. They're like, hmm, should we add Pluto? Should we get around to it? You know, Chicago bureaucracy moves sort of slowly. And then Pluto was demoted. And so they didn't need to add it anymore.

And all of a sudden, it was back up to date without doing anything. So I guess the lesson is, you know, just wait and maybe, you know, what you have is going to be correct again. Science sort of oscillates. Lesson is, if you procrastinate, it might save you a lot of work later. Exactly. But I was wondering, what do people think about? What do they imagine when you talk about planets around other stars? And so I went around campus at UC Irvine and asked people

if they thought that planets around other stars sort of looked like our planets or look totally different or something else. Yeah, so close your eyes. Maybe not if you're driving, but if you're not driving and you're on a cruise or something, close your eyes. Try to imagine another planet outside of a different star out there in the universe and try to imagine what that planet might be like. Here's what people had to say.

When you think about planets in other solar systems, how do you imagine they look like? Do they look like the Earth or like Jupiter or something totally new and weird? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, every planet is all like different, I guess, so probably like that too. For the most part, I imagine sort of gas giants, dead rocks. Like most planets are not life-sustaining, so I tend to imagine them. They're very rough. and very different, but there's no life,

the condition would be totally different. I guess they'd all be different, but it's gonna be different between, depending on whether or not they're in the Goldilocks zone or not, how much light gravity that acts upon the planet. So I'm honestly not completely certain what's going to end up around exoplanets because it just depends significantly

on the different factors. The ones that we've most discovered are like massive like Jupiter, gaseous and also close to the sun. Most of them are not like Earth. I know we've also found some that are comparable. So I imagine most of them would be gaseous and pretty uninhabitable. I know that people have speculation that there are, you know,

habitable planets out there. But there are a lot of them that are different, you know, some that might, I don't know, rain diamonds or have, I don't know, methane raining in there. Raining diamond sounds pretty dangerous. Yeah, yeah. I feel like they might be similar, but maybe it depends on, like, the placement of the planets, like, in the solar system or, like, in our galaxy in general. I don't know.

All right. Some pretty eclectic answers there. You know, I think a lot of people were, I saw people on their faces sort of scratching their heads and wondering, you know, and wondering, like, what they could be like and trying to be creative. But, you know, in the end, we don't have, like, a really great. well of inspiration outside of our own solar system. So I think, you know, before we get really creative answers, like I was saying before, we're going to need some data to sort of spark the creativity. I like the person who said, is it's either gas or solid.

What about an all-liquid planet, right? A planet that's just like a blob, like a drop in space. That would be pretty cool. Is that possible? Can you have a totally liquid planet? I don't think so. I think at the core, it would be so dense that it would have to solidify. But, you know, prove me wrong, universe.

Let's discover an all-liquid planet. That would be awesome. With fish swimming, like, all the way through it. That would be really cool. Wow. Isn't there a moon in Jupiter? We talked about this, right? Europa, isn't it mostly like a giant ocean?

Well, there is. It is kind of like a big droplet. There is a really huge ocean with more water than is on Earth. But we also think that there's a solid core. So it's not just a liquid drop in space. That would be pretty awesome. Somebody out there, find me the science fiction story. Somebody must have written about an all-liquid planet.

You could call it Waterworld. Oh, wait, that's been done. That's got to be successful. That name just screams commercial success. I can see it already. All right. But some people seem skeptical that there would be life in it. Yeah, exactly.

But, you know, we don't know. I like the person that said that maybe other planets, on other planets, they have really weird weather, like raining diamonds. That sounds pretty cool to me. Is that possible? That's possible, right? I suppose it's possible. I mean, I don't know how you form diamonds in the atmosphere,

but, you know, hey, there's a lot of worlds out there, so there's room for everything. That sounds like a rap video. You need a diamond umbrella, probably. It does sound like a rap video. That's awesome. So give us the rap lyrics that involves raining diamonds. Go ahead.

Can you freestyle? I probably could, but right now I just have Old Town Road in my head because my kids keep listening to it over and over. So today you thought it'd be cool. You're going to take us on a tour on a cruise of all of the different planets that we know about that are outside of our solar system, right? I mean, not all of them, but some of the most interesting ones. Yeah, because by now we have done a lot of work,

and we have amazing satellites and teams of astronomers figuring out where those worlds are, counting them, trying to measure quantities and qualities about them, and we're getting more and more sort of images about these planets, not direct images yet, but information about what these planets might look like. And there are some weird ones already, you know, who are just scraping the surface.

And so I thought it would be really cool to sort of get a tour of the weirdest, most interesting planets that we found so far. And just to give people a context, we know that there are probably billions of planets out there, but the ones that we sort of detected and know are definitely there, that's more than like the thousands, right? That's right, yeah.

We speculate that every star has several planets because so far, you know, every star we've looked at, we've seen planets. But you're right, in terms of direct discoveries, we found just over 4,000 planets in just over 3,000 solar systems. And that number just keeps going up because we have these amazing telescopes that are very efficient at it now. So that number is as of July 1st, 2019, we have found more than 4,000 planets in other solar system. It's a huge number.

And that's just the beginning, right? Because we know there are billions of them in our galaxies and other galaxies, right? Absolutely. And the next few decades, that number will explode and will be up in thousands and thousands and millions. But you're right, there are billions of planets just in our galaxy. And maybe what's really cool is that we don't just know these days that the planets are there. I mean, we can't sort of, we don't have photographs of them, of them, but we know, we seem to be finding out more and more about these planets through really, like, cool and clever physics and clever observations, right? That's right.

The first things we figure out about a planet are sort of how fast it's orbiting around the star, because either we see it's like gravitational effect on the star, we see it tugging the star back and forth, and based on that we can tell like how often it goes around, or maybe sometimes they pass in front of the star, so they block the life. from the star. Those are the two main methods. And those methods tell us something about the orbit, right? How fast is it going around? And also how much mass is there in the planet, right? And so that's already a lot of information. Like how far is it from the sun? We can know that. How much solar radiation is there? Because we know how bright the star is. What is the orbit of it? So already we have a lot of information just from the indirect measurements, just from discovering that it's there. It tells you how big it is, you know, right? Like if you were on that planet, how short the days would be, right?

Yeah, exactly. Or the years. Exactly. And now we're starting to do even more clever stuff. Like we can see how the light from the star passes through the atmosphere of that planet. Right. So it's sort of like looking at a sunset on another planet, right? You know how when the sun sets over the earth, the light passes through a lot of atmosphere

and it looks red because it's passed through so much air. We talked about on another podcast, you know, why the sunset It looks red because of the qualities of the atmosphere tend to bounce away the blue light. And that's also why the sky is blue. We can do that on other planets. We can see suns on other solar systems setting over planets in their solar system. And we can see how the light changes. And that tells us something about the atmosphere on those planets.

Like if the color changes or something like that, right? Yeah, I can tell you what kind of gas is in there. Is there water vapor in there? right? Is there methane in there? What's the atmosphere composition of those planets? Is there an atmosphere at all, first of all? And if so, what's in it? And I heard you can even sort of tell the weather a little bit, like from the delay between the when the light gets blocked or the temperature changes, you can sort of tell if there's something swirling in that atmosphere, not just if there's an atmosphere, but just like how much it swirls around inside of that planet. I know. It's crazy, right? We're

measuring the velocity of gases around other planets, around other stars that are light years away. I mean, it's like science fiction. If you suggested this 30 years ago, people would say, that's impossible, right? But now we're doing it. People are writing papers about it. We're like actually learning facts about these things. So extrapolate like 30 years from now. You know, we're going to have like Google Earth around all these planets, basically.

And so far, that's all without even taking a picture of them, right? Like, it's just all from like counting photons that come and hit this small. all these little sensors in our telescopes. Yeah, exactly. And that's sort of a picture. The other cool way that they learn about what's sort of on the planet is that they take the picture of the star when the planet is in front of the star, and then they subtract the star and they see what's left.

And they try to find those photons that came just from the planet, not from the star itself. And that's really hard to do because you're talking about a really little object in front of a really bright object really far away. But it gives you a sense of what light is coming from that planet. And that gives you a sense of like what color is that planet, what gases are on that planet. Because remember, every gas emits light of different frequencies. And so it tells you sort of what the composition of that is. So we have two ways to figure out not just like where this planet is and how fast it's moving around that star, but what's on that planet. What does it look like. All right. So that's sort of how you can see other planets and how many there are out

there. And so let's, let's set sail, Daniel. Let's go explore the universe and visit other planets. But first, let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush. Parents hauling luggage. Kids gripping their new Christmas. toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal, glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene.

In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order criminal justice system. is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit.

Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age.

And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him, because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hola, it's Honey German, 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 with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in, like, over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters

sharing their real stories of failure and success. You were destined to be a start. We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs, and those amazing Vibras you've come to expect. And of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community. You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me.

Yeah. But the whole pretending and coat, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasas Has Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, Daniel, I have my cruise pass. I've got my, I've loosened my pants a little bit to make room for the buffet. We are now ready to set sail on this extra solar cruise to other planets. All right. Well, I thought it would be fun to start with the closest planet, right?

Because we're going to leave the Earth. And, you know, our first stop. We're leaving our solar system, too. Yeah, we'll leave a solar system. Our first stop is Proxima Centauri, which is a star. And this planet that's orbiting Proxima Centauri is called Proxima Centauri. It's called Proxima Centauri B. And that's B because it's the second planet they found there.

Like, they really need you on this naming committee because they're finding so many planets, they're just like running out of names. They just like have a recipe for me. I think B is a good name. Why not? B is a good name. I don't know. We'll have to ask the citizens when we get there.

But it's 4.2 light years from Earth. Which is pretty close, I feel. It's pretty close in the scale of the galaxy, right? The galaxy is like 100,000 light years across. So that's the closest planet to us. But I mean, it's like in 40.2 years, this podcast will have arrived at that planet. Yeah. And so in 8.4 years, we should expect a bunch of good questions or people complaining about how we name their planet, right?

But no, I mean, it's sort of reachable maybe, right? I mean, I know we can't go at the speed of light, but, you know, we can, if we go as fast as we can, we might get there within a lifetime. No, exactly. It's totally reachable. And, you know, we could even send something there. that could arrive and send us information within a lifetime, right? You know, we build a solar sail, we attach a little thing to it. The thing could reasonably get up to maybe a half the speed of light,

take, you know, maybe 10 years to get there, five years to send data back. So you're talking about like a 15-year project lifetime to maybe get like pictures of Proxima Centauri. So, yeah, it's not that far away compared to the other planets we're going to talk about. But it's also not that nice a place to be, if you ask me. All right, what do we know about this, Planet B? Well, we know that it's very close to its star, right? And so we call this thing the AU, the astronomically unit, is the Earth from, is the distance from the Earth to the Sun. So it's a useful metric.

And this Proxima Centauri B is only 0.05 AU. So it's 20 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun. So if you were standing on it, the Sun would look 20 or more times bigger in the sky. And also it goes around that star in only 11.2 Earth days. So it's like it's zipping around. It's a hot little planet zipping around the star in a hurry. So, you know, if you're in for a beach vacation, you want a lot of rays, then, yeah, I guess it's a good place to stop first on our cruise. That's why it's called Planet B for beach and burn, and burning also.

But all the bananas are burnt also because that's probably too much sun, even for bananas. So that's planet B. What about planet A and C and does it have any other planets in its neighborhood? They think that there might be another planet, and they call this planet, wait for it, C, right? What? Yeah, exactly. Why they didn't call the first one A, that's beyond my technical knowledge. All right.

So that's the first stop in our cruise. That's the closest one, right? That's right. Fort Lauderdale. That's right. Now, the next planet on our tour is the smallest planet that has ever been found outside our solar system. And I have no idea how to pronounce this planet. It's D-R-A-U-G-R.

It sounds like maybe a Klingon world. What do you think? How do you think that's pronounced? I think that sounds like a Lord of the Rings, Underworld Beast or something. Drauger? Drougar. Well, this planet is so small, it's only twice as big as our moon. And we detected it.

We can tell where it is. Yeah, exactly. It's amazing that such a small planet could even be detected, right? And this one is 2,300 light years away. It's in the Virgo constellation. And the other really crazy thing about it is that it's not orbiting like a normal star. It's orbiting a pulsar. And a pulsar is... A pulsar is one of these stars that emits, that periodically emits a huge amount of radiation, right? It pulses. That's an amazing feat of detection, right? That we can tell so far away, such as small things. thing. Yeah, it really is amazing. And it also wouldn't be a great place to live because you don't want to be living near a pulsar. I mean, this is basically

a neutron star with a huge magnetic field blasting radiation. So, not a cozy place. So far, I'm doing a pretty terrible job of advertising this cruise, aren't I? Yeah, this cruise so far, this cruise doesn't make me want to get out of the boat. Yeah, zero stars so far in the Elp for this

cruise. All right, so the next star we're going to look at has a terrible name. But it's the biggest planet that has ever been discovered. It's called HR 2562B, and it is 30 times the size of Jupiter. How do you pronounce that one? Heritababa. That's in the original Klingon. The mass of 30 Jupiters, or the size of 30 Jupiters.

It's the size of, no, sorry, you're right. It's the mass of 30 Jupiters, yeah, exactly. And so take Jupiter, which is already like, you know, 100 times the mass of Earth, Earth and multiply it by 30. Like, this is a ginormous planet. But it's not super far away. It's kind of close, right? 100 light years?

Yeah, it's 110 light years from Earth. And so it's, you know, also potentially reachable. But it's sort of interesting, like, how big can a planet get? This one is really on the verge of the maximum size for a planet because any bigger and the gravitational force will be so strong that it'll essentially turn into a star. So this is like as big as a planet can get before it ignites. becomes a star. What else do we know about it? Is it like a gas like Jupiter or we just know sort of the mass of it and where it is? That's all we know about that one so far. You know, a lot of these

planets, we, you know, some of these techniques work better on some planets than others. And so we don't always get to get to see like the atmosphere of these planets. And that's also all these atmospheric techniques that we talked about that are so amazing. These are pretty new. And they require some fancy technology. So we don't have that information about all of the stars so far. But that maybe gives us a kind of a range, right, of planets out there in the universe. Like, they can go as small as twice as size of the moon and they can go as big as 30 times Jupiter. Yeah, exactly. And at first, people thought, oh, maybe this is a star, you know, but they categorize it as a brown dwarf. But in the end, it's sort of like a semantic question. Like, do you call this

a small star? Do you call it a big planet? It's sort of like a Pluto question, right? Is Pluto a dwarf planet or a real planet. But there's also a lot of uncertainty in its mass. It's 30 Jupiter masses, but the uncertainty on that is 50%. So it could be as high as 45 Jupiter masses or could be as low as 15 Jupiter masses. All right. Cool. And so we're cruising on. Yes, right. And so next on our tour is a really weird planet. This one's called Kepler 16B. And this one is weird because it orbits It's not one star, but it orbits two stars simultaneously. You mean like the two stars are orbiting each other and there's things orbiting around them?

Yeah, it's a binary star system. So the stars orbit each other like every 41 days. They're like, you know, running around each other. And then around them. 41 days. Forty-one days. These are fast-moving, huge hot objects, right? They're going around each other every 41 days.

And then this planet goes around the combination of the two stars every 220. 28 days. So the stars are much closer to each other than the planet is to the stars. So in the sky of this planet, you're going to see like basically just two stars together, you know, two suns together rising and falling. Wow. That's like a science fiction movie. That's pretty cool. I know, but the universe is weirder than, of course, every science fiction movie you've ever seen. And this one is 245 light years away. It's in the Cygnus constellation. And it has about a mass of the planet Saturn. And itself, it's about 0.7A.U away from those stars. So it's a pretty big planet, but it's a reasonable distance from those stars. So does it have kind of like a wonky orbit because it's going around two things that are orbiting each other? Or to the planet, does it just look like one big sun in the middle there? Yeah, this is one of the amazing things about gravity, right?

Is that if you're on the outside of a system, the only thing that matters is the center of mass of that system. And so the stars are orbiting each other, but they're actually orbiting the center of mass of the two-star system. And the planet is orbiting that also. And so it doesn't actually matter to the planet too much. The planet's orbit is the same as if you took those two stars, added them together and put them both at the center of mass of the two stars. It wouldn't change the planet at all. And I think a lot of people, when they imagine a two-star system, they imagine, like, you know, one sun rises, and then maybe another one at different periods. You have these weird day-night cycles, like in that book, the three-body problem.

But that would require the planet to go, like, between the stars, right? But in this case, the planet just goes around the two stars. So it's sort of like, instead of having one sun in the sky, you have sort of like a, you know, two dots instead of one. But they stick together. But wouldn't that be, you know, if those suns are spinning so fast around each other, wouldn't that be kind of a violent process? You know, wouldn't it be just a huge mess in the middle? Or is it, do they think it's pretty clean that these two sons are just going around each other?

No, you're right. And I don't know how stable that is, right? Eventually, these things are going to radiate energy and then fall into each other and collide. And it wouldn't be a very nice place to be when that happens. You know, that's what causes gravitational waves that we observe, like two neutron stars orbiting each other and eventually falling into each other and collapsing

or two black holes doing that. So binary star systems, eventually they will lose some of that energy and they will fall into each other, though I don't know how long that'll take. Probably longer than our cruise. Well, good thing they have laundry on the cruise. That's right, yeah, exactly. And we packed a lot of food.

And the next planet also has named after Kepler, which is the telescope that discovered it. It's Kepler 22B. And this one initially seems really exciting because it's labeled as a possible water world. How do they know it has water? Yeah, they don't, it turns out. that's mostly just hype.

When they discovered, it was one of the first planets people discovered that was sort of in the habitable zone, meaning it was like about the size of Earth, probably a made of rock, and the right distance from its star for water to be liquid on its surface. Because if it was closer, it would evaporate, right? Yeah, exactly. And if it was further out, then it would just be ice. Yeah, exactly. And so people get really excited about this and they're like, wow, maybe it's a water world.

But, you know, just because it has the right surface temperature, we think it's about 72 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface, doesn't necessarily mean that there is water there. Now, you know, if there's a lot of water on this planet, then it would be in the form of an ocean. And there are some models that suggest maybe a surface ocean, but we have no direct evidence that there is actually any water on Kepler 22B. So, you know, labeling a water world is a bit premature. But it sounds pretty nice. You wrote down here, it's at the temperature there. It's 72 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah, it's basically Southern California.

So you want to film a movie on Kepler 22B. Just come to Southern California. Film it here. So just because it's in the Goldilocks zone doesn't mean it has water. Like, is Mars technically in the Goldilocks zone? No, I don't think so. Well, that's a good question. I think it's on the outer edges.

The thing is water on Mars would be frozen, but that's probably mostly because it doesn't have an atmosphere. So in order to have this surface temperature, you'd need to have an atmosphere as well. And so this calculation, 72 degrees, assumes that there's an atmosphere there. So if Mars had an atmosphere like we think it did a long, long time ago, then water could be liquid on its surface. So I guess the answer is yes, Mars is in the Goldilocks zone. All right. Let's keep cruising through the universe, visiting other planets outside of our solar system.

But first, let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal, glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay.

Terrorism. Law and Order Criminal Justice System is back. In Season 2, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio. app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit.

Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now hold up, isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age. It's even more likely that they're cheating.

He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, sis, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance bro? Tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown Ambition.

This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge.

It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt and it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it. And in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

All right, Daniel, I think our cruise is running a little bit out of time, we're running a little bit behind. So I think the captain is trying to put the pedal to the metal here. So what are some of the more interesting other planets that we know about out there in the universe? Yeah, well, you know, some of the planets out there are super duper old. Like there's a planet in the constellation Scorpius that we think is 12.7 billion years old.

And remember, Yeah, I know. How do we know how old it is? Well, I think we're speculating because of the age of that solar system, right? And the Milky Way itself is really old, right? The Milky Way has been around for 13 billion years. And so that star, we think, is about 12.7 billion years old.

And so we think that the planets around it probably are the same age. And so this is the planet around the oldest star we've discovered to have planets, yeah. It'd be cool to be the first planet. That would be pretty cool bragging rights, exactly. So that's the oldest planet, and it's PSRB-162026B, right? And you think the oldest planets should just be called planet number one. One, yeah.

A-1. One-A, exactly. And there's some other weird planets out there. There's a planet out there which has the title of the darkest. planet, right? And we can see sort of how much light that these planets reflect by seeing how much they dim as they pass in front of the star, right? Do they absorb any of that light? Do they reflect any of it? And this planet is called T-R-E-S-2-B. It's the size of Jupiter and it's less reflective than black paint. Like what is going on on that world? How can be less

reflective than paint? Is it maybe filled with solar panels or something like that? Exactly. Well, you You know, black paint is not entirely black. I mean, you're an artist. You know there's, like, lots of different blacks, right? And so this is a very black, black planet. All right, that's the darkest planet. What else is on our must-see list? Well, there's the pinkest planet, right?

This one's only 57 light years away. The pinkest. The pinkest, yeah. And based on the light that we see coming from it, it seems like it might be sort of a dark magenta, maybe a cherry-colored planet. And that leads to a lot of speculation, like what's going on on that planet?

How can we tell the color? We can tell the color based on, as we said earlier, like how the light passes through the planet and also by doing subtraction, right? As it passes in front of the star, we can try to subtract the light from the star and just get the light from the planet itself. But there's a lot of uncertainty there.

I mean, we could think it's pink and then we get there. We're like, what? This planet's purple. This cruise is a scam. Signs failed. Exactly. Exactly.

But maybe I think the most exciting one and the place we should end our tour is on the most earth-like planet found so far. The most earth-like, the one that we are maybe most likely to be able to visit and live there. Exactly. If we actually do destroy this planet or make it unhabitable for humanity, then Kepler 452B is so far our best option. While it's 500 light years away, it seems to be about the size of the Earth, and it's in the habitable zone.

So it gets just the right amount of solar radiation. It orbits its star every 130 days. It's sort of a short year. The kicker, the downside of this planet is that it has about two times the gravity of Earth. Even though its Earth's size has more mass. But we'd have 500 years on the trip over there to all sort of bulk up and get buff for living on this planet.

On a cruise, that's pretty easy. Exactly. To gain some weight. Well, it'd be a very Darwinian cruise. If all you did on the cruise was eat at the buffet, then your children would not be very suitable for living on this planet. But if you hit the gym on the whole cruise over there, then you have a chance of your children surviving.

Wait, how can it be the same size as Earth but have twice the gravity? Is it like more compact or what is it? Or just more mass, more massive? Yeah, we think it's Earth-sized, and so it must be denser somehow. But it's 500 light years away. So we're not going to get there. any time suit. No, it's going to take at least 500 years to get there, probably more like 1,000.

It's the kind of thing where either generations would need to live on a colony ship or you'd need to develop some sort of cryogenic freezing or something like that. But that technology is far, far in the future. But at least we're beginning to find these places. We're looking out there in the universe. We're exploring other solar systems and we're figuring out where are there possible places for humanity to land. Yeah.

And the cool thing is that we're finding places. right? We are being successful at hunting planets. That's right. That's right. And amazingly, it seems like about one in five stars has some sort of Earth-like planet. And so it doesn't take too long to find Earth-like planets. There's a lot of them out there. Of course, that doesn't mean we shouldn't take care of this one, right? Because even the ones that are out there take a long time to get to. But I think it gives us some reason to hope.

Right, because we all know not all cruises and well. That's right. We've all seen those reports. Sometimes there's an E. coli outbreak and you wish you're never gone on a cruise. I hope there's a bathroom on some of these planets. All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed that quick flash tour of the universe looking at other planets out there that we might possibly visit or live on someday. Thanks for tuning in and thanks for coming on board.

And if you have questions about here, their, planets, and anything else in the universe, send them to us at questions at Daniel and Jorge.com. See you next time. 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 Danielandhorpe.com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe

is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Ah, come on, why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade to the ThinkPad X-1 Carbon, ultra-light, ultra-powerful, and built for serious productivity, with Intel Core Ultra processors,

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so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. December 29th. 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged.

Terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone.

Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe. Find out how it ends by listening. to the OK Storytime podcast and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.