Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Will A Gamma Ray Burst Kill You?

Episode Date: May 7, 2019

What are gamma ray bursts, and are they dangerous? 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 or gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate.

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Hey, Jorge, do you worry much? about things from space coming to kill you? Not until right now. Why should I? Well, it depends. Depends on what? Well, if there was nothing you could do to prepare for it or prevent it, would you still want to know? Yeah, I think so. It'd be nice to know

so I can get my things in order and, you know, get a couple, finish that TV series I've been watching. In that case, I highly recommend you pay attention to this episode of our podcast, because it's going to prepare you. Wait, should I listen to the episode or finish my TV series? I'm confused.

What should I do, Daniel? How much time do I have? How much time do I have? While we're recording this episode, you do sound distracted sometimes. Well, I say I should multitask. Exactly. There's a, you know, death from space is coming, so you've got to get stuff done. I feel like the universe is huge, and there's a million things out there that can kill us instantly at any time.

Are you saying there's something in particular I should be worried about? Stay tuned. Find out. Hi, I'm Borhe. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of the comic strip piled higher and deeper, or PhD comics. He's also a shill for big banana corporations, but you'll hear more about that later. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a part-time podcast host, and, Amateur Baker. Yes, and also a show for Marvel Comics and the Hulk. D.C. Whatever, man. I'm totally a D.C. guy.

That's why he sold out to Marvel because it's the most successful, more successful franchise. Oh, I am still waiting for that check, by the way, for selling out to Marvel. I think they're waiting for Tony Stark to sign it. Yeah, well, I was fact-checking their Pimp Particle episodes, and I sent them a long list of corrections and never heard back. So maybe I'm just, Maybe they don't want to hear from me anymore. I know the scientific advisor of the Antman movies. He's a buddy.

So we could just have a whole podcast with him. Really? Because I got a few things to say about the PIM particle and the quantum realm. Now, he's a quantum physicist. Are you sure you're off for the challenge? Well, he's either right or he's wrong. There's no in between, right? No, he is.

He's both. No, he's right and wrong at the same time. That's right, yeah. Anyway, this is our podcast, Daniel and Jorge, explain the universe. A production of IHeart Radio, where we talk about all the amazing and mysterious things that are out there in the universe that may or may not kill you instantly. That's right. Sometimes we talk about the real universe. Sometimes we talk about the Marvel universe or the DC universe or the banana universe, whatever is interesting today.

Yeah, and so today on the podcast, we are going to talk about a very interesting topic. That's right. Today's topic is... Gamma ray bursts. A bunch of listeners wrote in and asked us to explain gamma ray bursts. What are they? Can they kill us? Can they really turn Bruce Banner into the Hulk?

What's going on? Please break it down. Wait, gamma ray birth? I thought we were talking about Billy Ray Cyrus. I thought, isn't that the weird thing from space that we're, no? No, Billy Ray Cyrus's career is based on getting irradiated by gamma ray bursts. That's the connection. He used to be a mild-mannered singer, and then he got Gamma Rays,

and now he's like, Crazy, Billy Ray Cyrus. Oh, all right. And so Gamma Rays are involved? I totally made that up. That is completely fabricated. I apologize to Billy Ray Cyrus and all of his fans for implying that Amir Mortal could not have written that music. The Hokie-Pokey. What was his name of the song?

He didn't write the hokey-pokey. Anyway, but Gamma Rays do play a big role in the Marvel. universe, right? Because back when gamma rays were the crazy thing people were worried about, it showed up in comic books all the time. And that's how Bruce Banner got turned into the Hulk. That's right. And I'm surprised, you know, this fact about the Marvel universe. I thought you were a DC guy. Well, you know, Marvel is not paying me, so I figured I'd do some research. So, yeah, so he gets irradiated by gamma rays in some kind of accident, and that's what turns him into the Hulk. And so these are like magic, mysterious rays, right? That's right. And, you

You know, I got to wonder about this origin story. The Hulk, like, do you think they're trying to make it seem like it's his fault? Like, crazy scientist just wants to learn about the universe, doesn't care about the risks to humanity, gets irradiated? Like, is that, like, a moral punishment? Like, tisk, tisk, you shouldn't be playing with these forces you don't understand? Yeah, for sure. Wait, are you saying that comic books can have, like, literary, you know, secret messages and themes and layers? They're definitely literary.

I don't know if it's so secret, though. I just wonder about, like, how it was interpreted at the time, you know, like, are scientists, like, the leading edge? They're bringing us into the atomic age. Look at all the wonderful things we're getting out of science. Or is it like, I'm kind of scared of science. Scientists don't seem trustworthy. Look at all the crazy stuff they're doing. I think it was a, it's supposed to be kind of a take on, you know, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, you know, this scientist who's trying to understand things and playing maybe with things he doesn't quite fully understand.

and then he gets turned into a superhero and into a multi-billion dollar franchise. So it kind of worked out for the scientists. Yeah, so the lesson is everybody should do crazy radiation experiments in their basement, right? No, what, gamma rays do feature a lot in comics from a long time ago and they are a real thing. Gamma ray is really are a real thing,

and Gamma ray bursts are a real thing. And so we thought it'd be fun to do an episode where we explain it. It turns out that they are quite a scientific puzzle for a long time physicists have not understood where they came from and what's generating them

and should we be worried about them? Yeah, should we worry about them? Exactly. Are we all going to turn into the Hulk? And how do you feel about that anyway? And should you watch your TV show? Yeah, what if I don't like Green? Well, you mean, what happens if you turn into the Hulk

and you have all those TV shows recorded? Do you think the Hulk likes to watch the same TV show as you do? Do you need like separate DVRs for when you're in Hulk mode when you're not in Hulk mode, you know? I don't think the Hulk would get past, you know, the pilot episode of most TV shows. You know, he'd probably smash the TV right away. Hulk says no.

No stars from Hulk. Folks has no unnecessary dialogue. That sounds like how my son reviews most television shows. Really? Too much talking. Too much talking. Where's the action? Exactly. But they sound pretty cool. Gamma rays, right? Gamma, raise. I mean, it sounds like some sort of new kind of.

ray energy. Yeah, exactly. Does it have a positive connotation to you? Like, oh my God, look at this amazing source of energy, all the good we can do for the world? Or does it have a negative connotation? Like, is this a weapon that's going to kill me? I think it just sounds like something out of science fiction, you know? Like, if you called it like, um, puppy dog rays, I'd be like, oh, that's cute and safe. Or do you call it like, you know, uh, what kind of superhero? Cancer inducing rays. I can't let that go. I can't let that go. What, if a scientist is experimenting with puppy dog rays and gets irradiated,

what kind of superhero does he turn into? The Hulk puppy? Yeah, the hush puppy. Goes around licking everybody, snuggling with them. The husky. The husky, there you go.

The husky. It's a green husky, which sounds pretty adorable. But, yeah, they sound mysterious. They sound very sci-fi, right? Like, gamma. All you have to do just pick a Greek letter and marry it to, like, a scientific physics term,

and you have something sci-fi. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, you're right. It does sound very science-y, but the cool thing about it is that it's actually also science-y. Like, there's a lot of really interesting science behind gamma-ray bursts.

Yeah, and a big mystery, right? There was a big mystery about them. Yeah, so I was wondering what people knew about gamma-ray bursts. Were they worried about them? Do they know what they mean? Do they know what a gamma-ray is at all? So as usual, Daniel went out there

and asked people on the street, random strangers, what they thought a gamery was. And these interviews happen partially on the campus of UC Irvine, and also partially at the Irvine Spectrum. So you're going to get a selection of students and random people. What's the Irvine Spectrum? What's the Irvine Spectrum?

Oh, my God, how do you not know about that? People like fly from Japan to shop at this mall. The range of beige colors in Orange County, is it like the range from dark beige to? Dark beige. I never realized the dramatic irony of Irvine calling anything a spectrum. because there is no spectrum you're right no it's a big mall here in Irvine people actually like fly here from Japan stay in a hotel and just shop at the mall and then like fly back it's crazy really is it like a fancy or is it like a mega Minnesota

Mall of the Americas I'm not the right person to evaluate malls I spend as a little time in them as possible I was there because my kids were in spring break and I took them to a movie and while they were in the movie I interviewed people about Gamera You didn't go into the movie with them. No, no. I stood outside looking like a weirdo asking people weird science questions. All right. Well, those of you at home, think about it for a second.

If a random physicist approached you outside of a movie theater in a fancy mall and ask you, what is a gammary? What would you say? Go ahead, sir. You'd say, I didn't fly here from Japan just to answer your questions. Security, security. One fascinating thing is that on campus at UCI, 99% of people will answer my questions,

whereas at the spectrum, only like 1 in 10 are willing to answer questions. Really? Huh. Yeah. I wonder why that is. I don't know. So here's what people had to say. First question is, have you ever heard of a gamma ray burst?

Do you know what that is? No. No? I don't know, but I've heard of it because it definitely has to do something with UV light. It's like a sun ray. I'm assuming. Yeah.

It's just, I know that it, uh, modifies like your DNA or something. I could just blast your DNA and it could cause some damage to you, like severely. Yeah. Yeah, so that's about it. But not too into it. Gamma rebirth, a kind of gang? Or, I don't know. Okay.

Yes, but a star explodes and it'll emit a lot of frequency of photons and if it'd be a large explosion, then the Because it will be high. I will be camera explosion, something. Okay. And is it something to worry about? I don't think it will be that powerful that makes us worry. Depends on how close the stars. Honestly, I couldn't tell you.

Not sure. All right. Is that something to do with stars? It's when the sun explodes or something, right? Is it something to worry about? I would assume so, yeah. All right? It's a pretty binary response, right?

Most people said no, or they knew all about it. Yeah, exactly. A lot of people never heard about them. Or like it tickled something in their brain maybe, but they were not able to say anything concrete about it. But some folks clearly had done some reading, yeah. But nobody mentioned the Hulk? No, nobody mentioned the Hulk.

Though, you know, I've been bulking up recently, so I was sort of digging for compliments there, but no, I didn't get any. You paint yourself green as well? No, you're not allowed to be green in Irvine. It's only beige allowed. Oh, the beige Hulk. Exactly. That would be the Irvine version.

So they sound pretty mysterious gamma rays. So what are they, Daniel? Let's break it down for people. What are gamma rays? So in the end of gamma rays, not as exotic as it sounds. It's just a kind of photon. So remember, photons are the particle that carry electromagnetic radiation. So all light, you know, radio waves to visible light, to x-rays, and all the way up to gamma-rays, They're all just photons of different frequency.

They're just light wiggling at different wavelengths. And we call different parts of the spectrum different things because they were discovered different times or we treat them differently or they're qualitatively different. But in the end, they're all just parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. So wait, did they think before that they were different, like a different kind of ray or particle? Or was this before we even knew about particles?

Yeah, before we even knew about particles and we knew about rays. Like we had cathode rays and stuff like that an x-rays and we didn't understand for a long time that rays were particles and then later they unified a lot of these different things and understood them to all just be parts of the same thing so they just thought it was like a just like a different kind of ray yeah like a different kind of beam of something yeah because particles at different energy photons at different energy act really different you know photons that are the visible wavelength you can see them they look green for example photons that are high enough energy to penetrate through

you and give you a picture of your bones, you know, we call those x-rays. They're just photons of a higher energy, but qualitatively they seem different, right? And so before we understood a lot more about how things worked, maybe treated them like different things. But that's the whole goal of physics, right, is to take a bunch of disparate phenomena, things that don't seem related and discover that they're actually connected. They're all just different parts of the same thing, different sides of the same dye. Oh, I guess they thought there were different things because they're made differently, right? Like you make catheter rays one way

and you make visible light another way and you make gamma rays a different way and so they thought, hey, these are just different things that come out when you do these other things. Yeah, you make them differently and they behave differently. Like one of them can penetrate through the wall

and the other one can't, right? And so if you don't have a microscopic understanding of it, it makes sense to categorize them differently. So it's pretty cool later when you stitch it all together and realize that these are all just different flavors of the same thing or different colors, quite literally, of the same thing.

And gamma rays, specifically, are the very, very high edge of that spectrum. So anything that's, you know, like a million times more energetic than a visible photon, you call it a gamma ray. And it's not like a hard cutoff, not like a little below and like, sorry, you don't get to be a gamma ray. You know, it's sort of a rough thing. But there's no upper limit. It's like a soft definition. Yeah, exactly. What point does a photon become turned from a regular photon to a gamma ray?

Well, you know, I think photons would be insulted to be called regular photons. You know, they're all special, okay? They all can do something that no other photon can do. That's right. Sorry, they're all bright, shining points of light. Yeah, I mean, is there some colors that you like more than others, Jorge? Are you, you know, are you a colorist? Yeah, but I work with a lot of colorists.

Yeah, that's true. You are a cartoonist. You should be pro-color, man. Yeah, so you got radio waves, the very, very low edge. And then you got infrared, right, with just below what we can see. Then you've got the visible spectrum. But radio waves are at the bottom. Radio waves are the very longest wavelength.

They have the lowest energy, exactly. The way you said at the bottom makes it sound judgmental, you know? Radio waves are awesome. They're super powerful and fantastic. And the reasons we can see black holes and stuff like that. But, yeah, radio waves are at the bottom in terms of energy. energy, then you get infrared, then you get the visible spectrum, then you get x-rays, right? And then you get, just above the ultraviolet, you get x-rays, and then you get gamma rays.

So gamma-rays are the hardest, fastest, most energetic kind of photon you can have. But they're all photons, like they're all the same particle, they're just kind of vibrating differently, or the different wavelength or sizes? What's the difference? Yeah, they're all photons, they all travel at the speed of light, but the difference is the frequency, right? How often they are wiggling, right? Remember, photons are vibrations of the electromagnetic

field, right? And they oscillate. And the speed at which they oscillate, that gives you the frequency, right? How many times per second do they go up and down? Does the electromagnetic field go up and down? But they're all moving at the speed of light. One radio photon

is moving at the same speed as a gamma-ray photon. That's right. If you had a race and you had a source of radio waves and a source of of gamma rays and you shot them at each other, they would have different energies but move at the same speed. They all travel at the speed of light, even if they have different energies.

That feels kind of weird, right? Because you're used to thinking of energy and speed is closely connected. But this is something different. They have no mass, and they travel at the speed of light. They all have the same speed, but they have different energies,

which means they have different frequencies and different wavelengths, right? The wavelength and the frequency are closely connected. The higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength. And, yeah, let's talk about that a little bit more. But first, 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 be. 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. 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. Have you ever wished for a change but weren't sure how to make it? Maybe you felt stuck in a job, a place, or even a relationship. I'm Emily Tish Sussman, and on she pivots, I dive into the inspiring pivots of women who have taken big leaps in their lives and careers. I'm Gretchen Whitmer, Jody Sweeten. Monica Patton.

Elaine Welterah. I'm Jessica Voss. And that's when I was like, I got to go. I don't know how, but that kicked off the pivot of, of how. how to make the transition. Learn how to get comfortable pivoting because your life is going to be full of them. Every episode gets real about the why behind these changes

and gives you the inspiration and maybe the push to make your next pivot. Listen to these women and more on She Pivot's now on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so Gammer, rays are photons, but they have not just a little bit, but a lot more energy than the regular photons

that we see every day. That's right. A million times. That's a lot. It's a lot. If I shot gamma rays at you, they would deposit a lot more energy in you than normal light, right? And also they can penetrate into you much further. Well, they would deliver a million times more energy, right?

You need a million photons to be equal to one gamma ray photon. Exactly. And so gamma rays are dangerous. They can't turn you into the Hulk, probably, but they could give you cancer, right? They can shatter your DNA and all sorts of crazy stuff inside your body. You don't want

gamma rays. Okay, so they're just regular photons, but they're just in the upper spectrum of light. That's right. They're the high end of spectrum. They are dangerous, much more dangerous than normal light, because they can damage your DNA, right? They can cause errors in DNA which get copied, and that's

a big source of cancer. So what they are is not very mysterious, right? Like, we can make them here on Earth. That's right. Yeah, exactly. We can make gamma rays here on Earth, and gamma rays are produced by radioactive elements all the time, right? They're just high energy photons from radioactive decays. So there are gamma rays around. One of them just hit you right now. Yeah, so gamma rays themselves, not mysterious. We know all about them. We can make them. The question is, what out there might be making gamma rays? And that's the fascinating part of the story. That's the interesting mystery, right? that we know that gamma rays are produced when we do experiment with nuclear weapons, right? You blow up a nuclear bomb, you're going to produce a lot of gamma rays. So in the Cold War, when we had treaties with the Russians saying, no testing or whatever, we sent up a bunch of satellites to verify that they weren't testing and tried to detect gamma rays from nuclear explosions.

And I don't know if they found any of that, but what they did discover is a bunch of gamma rays not coming from the Soviet Union, not coming from somewhere else on Earth, not coming from the mountain volcano lair of some evil villain, but instead coming from deep in space. So the mystery is that we're getting bombarded by gamma rays, but we didn't know where they came from. Yeah, and the really fascinating thing about them

is that it's not like a continual source. It's not just like, you know, the solar wind where it's just like constantly coming. They come in bursts. And that's really interesting because it makes you think like something happened. Something created this. Like some big event occurred and must have produced this burst, right?

And that's a clue. It's like what's going on out there? It feels like a message or a clue about something fascinating that's happening somewhere else in the universe. So what do you mean by a burst? Like we suddenly were washed by a bunch of gamma rays and then it stops. Yeah. And exactly.

Like a huge pile of them come all at once. You know, it's like a big flash in the sky. like quite literally a big flash in the sky. And the other fascinating thing is that there are two kinds. There's like short gamma ray bursts, one that lasts much less than a second, like less than half a second. And then there's ones that last like 20 or 30 seconds.

And it's not like a continuous range. It's not like, you know, every gamma ray burst is, you know, somewhere less than 30 seconds and there's a smooth distribution. There's like two bumps if you made a histogram. Really? A lot of them peak at like 0.3 seconds. and a lot of them peak at like 30 seconds. So there's definitely two kinds of bursts happening.

It kind of sounds like Morse code. Exactly. Some very slow message. That's the exciting thing, right? You don't know what's creating this. You don't know what's out there making it. And it could be anything. It could be like some new kind of star you never saw before.

Or it could be some bizarre galactic race sending you messages over decades, right? Who knows? Planet Hulk. Yeah. Because they're not very common. And it's not like they're happening all the time. These days, our estimate is that about one per day hits the Earth. So we first had taken these with Cold War satellites.

Yeah, exactly. And what did people think? Like, did they think was a glitch? At first they had no idea. They're like, what? First, I'm sure they thought, are the Soviets testing in outer space? Maybe they're already at the moon or something, right? Oh, we could tell they were coming from outer space.

Yeah, we could tell they were coming from outer space. Absolutely. We could tell the direction. And, you know, they didn't release a lot of details because all this information comes from, like, classified satellites. As scientists, we sometimes wonder, like, we spent all this money trying to get satellites up in space to answer scientific questions. But the budget for defense is much bigger. And there's a huge network of defense satellites listening for stuff and telescopes and all sorts of stuff. And we wonder sometimes, like, could we use that network for science?

Like, it's so much bigger and more powerful. of course, it's not designed to do science, but sometimes it can accidentally do science. And that's what happened here. So we don't know a lot of details about the technical capabilities of these Department of Defense satellites. But after a few years, the DOD realized,

okay, this is not Russians. This is something weird and interesting from outer space. And so they declassified this data and shared it with the scientific community. And that's what they used to discover what they were? Yeah, that was the first hint. And then the scientists were like,

we have no idea. What is this? Hmm, let's study it some more. And there's a lesson there also folks, like, if the government did discover aliens, they would probably turn it over to the scientific community to help them figure it out, right? That's basically what happened here, right? Have you not watched enough Hollywood movies, Daniel? They always try to cover it up. Yeah, I should be a consultant on some of those Hollywood movies because I have better ideas.

So then the scientific community said, well, wow, we have no idea what could make this. And it was a really, it was a puzzle for a long time. Because they knew it wasn't coming from the sun, right? And these weren't just like a small burst. These are really bright bursts, right? That's right. They're really bright. And so the first thing you do in astronomy, when you see a signal, you don't know what it is, is you try to figure out where it's coming from, right?

Point it in the sky. If you can connect it with something in the sky, then you think, oh, it came from there, right? Pretty simple stuff. So they know it didn't come from the sun. They also didn't seem to be coming from anything in our galaxy. like we know where we are relative to the galaxy and so if some signals being generated by some like new kind of star

or some activity in our galaxy it's going to be mostly coming from the direction of the center of the galaxy or the plane of the galaxy right but these things were coming from every direction like random directions so suggests that's not something happening in our galaxy but something coming to us from other galaxies wow so for something to be that far away

and for us to feel it and to get so many of these photons, like at the source it must be huge, right? Like it must be like a huge, bright explosion. Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of scary to think about because these gamma ray bursts, they're like as powerful as like a star. You know, when they hit us,

the light from the gamma ray burst is about as much energy as the light from a star in our galaxy, right? But if it came from really far away, then... Yeah, exactly. I mean, that must have... and it probably sprayed that much in all directions, right? Well, we actually don't know about that.

We don't know that much about how they're made. So it could be like blazar's and pulsars that they're concentrated in some directions, like along the magnetic poles. But whatever it is, they're super bright at the source. Because remember, other galaxies are crazy far away. Like other stars are far away inside our galaxy, but other galaxies are like an order of magnitude further away.

So to even see those galaxies is hard. You have to add up all the hundreds of billions of stars in those galaxies just to see them. So to see one object from that galaxy being as bright as a star in our galaxy, I mean, you have to do the math. It's crazy. No, I think you were telling me earlier you did the math, and it's about one million trillion times brighter than the sun. Exactly. That's how far away these things are. In order for us to see them as bright as a star in our galaxy, they have to be.

a million trillion times brighter than the sun. Well, that's a fun thing to say, isn't it? A million trillion. You say a gazillion. You know, don't even bother. I don't even know how many zeros that is. No. You say, a lot.

I like saying a million. Like, how many scoops of ice cream would you like? A million trillion. Just a whole bunch. More than a million. So it's a million times a trillion. It's a million times a trillion times the sun, which is already really bright.

Right. That means there's stuff going on in the universe out there all the time that's a million trillion times brighter than the sun. Yeah, exactly. And so we think they come from other galaxies, but that's a bit of a puzzle, right? Like why only from other galaxies and not from ours? What are these things that are making these gamma ray bursts? How can they be so crazy powerful? You mean we should be, if they were common in our galaxy, we would be getting them a lot more from the sides of the galaxy, right?

Like, we would notice. Yeah, well, either they don't happen very often, in which case it's more likely to see them from other galaxies than from ours, right, because there are more other galaxies than ours, right? Or our galaxy is different from other galaxies in some way, which is why we don't see them from our galaxy. Wow. Well, you were telling me also that there's more energy in one second of these gamma-ray bursts,

then possibly all the energy that our sun will give in its entire life. That's right. It's a huge amount of energy. And this is one of the funest things about space and about astronomy, right? It's just the crazy numbers, you know? Like, can you wrap your mind around how much energy is going to be put out by the sun over billions of years? I don't think it's possible for humans to grasp this kind of stuff. I mean, even just the timescale, billions of years, you know?

It's hard for humans that live for such a flicker to understand. And then to integrate all the energy of this million earth ball of fire and then focus that all into one second, I mean, it burns a hole in my mind. Wow. It turns into the hook. Yeah, exactly. If you took the earth, right, and you collided it with the anti-earth, like an antimatter version of the earth, right? So you converted all of the mass from the earth into energy, you know, it's crazy powerful, right? For example, if you collide to two raisins out of raisin and an anti-raison,

it would have as much energy as a nuclear weapon, right? So it's a huge amount of energy is stored in a raisin. Now imagine doing that for the Earth, right? You'd have to do that for a hundred copies of the Earth to get as much energy as is stored in these gamma-ray bursts. Wow. What if you collide a Hulk in an anti-holt? They both get pissed off.

And they smash each other. and anti-smash. They would, you know, hook up as well. I don't know, but you are generating a huge list of great ideas for the next Marvel movies. I hope you're patenting these. I know, yeah.

Yeah, Mark Ruffalo, call me. But, yeah, so, okay, so let's get into what could be generating these gamma-ray burros, and are they dangerous, but 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 chaos. 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. 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. Have you ever wished for a change but weren't sure how to make it?

Maybe you felt stuck in a job, a place, or even a relationship. I'm Emily Tish Sussman, and on she pivots, I dive into the inspiring pivots of women who have taken big leaps in their lives and careers. I'm Gretchen Whitmer, Jody Sweeten, Monica Patton, Elaine Welteroff. I'm Jessica Voss. And that's when I was like, I got to go. I don't know how, but that kicked off the pivot of how to make the transition. Learn how to get comfortable pivoting because your life is going to be full of them.

Every episode gets real about the why behind these changes and gives you the inspiration and maybe the push to make your next pivot. Listen to these women and more on she pivots, now on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. space. So, Daniel, what could be causing these bursts? What could be out there making these that we're feeling them so energetic here in Earth? Well, the short answer is we don't really know very well. We have now recently some hypotheses that might work, but the truth is we don't really know. And remember, there's two kinds of gamma-ray bursts. It's the short and the long. The short lasts less than a second, and the long lasts like 30 seconds. And the best guesses these days are that the short ones are due to neutron stars that are in a binary system. So they're orbiting

each other. And when they do this, they lose energy slowly so that they rotate around each other and get closer and closer and eventually collide. And this is exciting stuff astronomically because we recently saw like gravitational waves coming from neutron star collisions. And we confirmed that like all of the gold in the universe is probably made in neutron star collisions and all sorts of crazy stuff. But we think it might also produce these gamma-ray bursts because it's a huge amount of energy. And if you read the details about it, it's crazy. That means that they're the short burst, right? They're 0.3 seconds long. And you were saying they generate, like, that's how fast these neutron stars are pressuring to each other. The whole thing lasts about 0.3 seconds.

No, the burst itself, they think, comes from the crust of the neutron stars being crushed by the gravitational pressure from the other neutron star. So remember if you're close to a really heavy object, you get these tidal forces because gravity acts differently on things further away and closer up. So you basically get massaged. So two neutron stars are like massaging each other just before they collide, which is making the crust of them basically shake and crack. So you're getting these like earthquakes on the surface of neutron stars just before they collide

that might be generating these crazy fast bursts of gamma rays. I mean, it sounds like science fiction, right? If I pitch that to Marvel, they'd be like, sorry, that's too far out there. But we think that's actually happening. It's really like you're colliding to suns, right? Exactly. You take a neutron star, you take another neutron star, and you smash them together, and in that 0.3 seconds, it explodes, right?

Yeah, but I have to remind you that in our previous episode about neutron stars, you complain that neutron stars aren't really stars. They should just be called neutron balls because they don't glow. Okay, so when you smash the balls together. That's where you get the game. I have to say a lot of our listeners on Twitter agreed with you. That they should be called balls? Yeah, exactly.

They should be demoted from stars to balls, yeah. You sound surprised that people on Twitter agree with me. I'm surprised that people on Twitter agree with anybody. So, congratulations. Unified social media. With overballs. Yeah, exactly. We have located a few of them.

Like neutron star collisions we can see in other ways, right? We can see them from their gravitational wave emissions, though that's pretty rare, but we can see them from the bright flashes of visible light that they produce. And so the trick has been watching these things for years and basically constructing dedicated satellites that are looking for these things. And the key is that they don't last very long. So what you want to do is as soon as you see one, you've got to point all your good telescopes at it.

So the science community become much better at that. Building dedicated telescopes that look for these things, and then everybody swivels over to look at it at the same time. which gives you a good review of it. But you only have 0.3 seconds to catch the burst. You've got to be fast for these really fast ones. And so some of these telescopes are all hooked up. Like the Fermi telescope that's orbiting the Earth has a gamma-ray burst detector.

And when it finds something, it immediately sends a message. And then telescopes on Earth point in that direction and try to capture the last bits of the burst before it disappears. And also to capture anything else coming from that direction. And that's where we got these clues. We started watching the sky more carefully and seeing what else was coming from the direction of the gamma ray bursts. And that gave people ideas about what could be happening

that could be causing them. So you get an idea like, oh, maybe it's neutron stars, in which case we should see this and that and the other thing also. And then they started to pick those things up. Okay, so that's the short burst. That's where we think they come from. What about the long burst? The long burst, the 30-second ones.

Yeah, the long bursts come from super-duper super-novas, right? Yeah. Wait, wait, super duper, supernovas. Is that the technical? Is that like a million trillion supernovas? That's a super duper ice cream sundae. No, the technical term is a hypernova. A hypernova?

Yeah. Oh, man. But I prefer super duper supernova, because it sounds better than supernova. So they're not just a supernova. They're like extra special. They're extra special, extra big, big implosions. And this is still something that's not very well understood. You know, why do some supernovas produce gamma ray bursts and some don't?

But they did this modeling and they said, okay, if there is a big supernova, then we expect that after the gamma ray burst, we should see a bunch of x-rays because the gas nearby the supernova is going to collide and then emit. And so they did some complicated modeling and made predictions. And in fact, they see this afterglow. After these long gamma-ray bursts, they see x-rays. So those are slightly lower energy photons. in the spectrum that they expect if it was a supernova.

So it partially answers the question because it tells us these long gamma ray bursts probably come from these crazy hypernovas. But we have hypernovas in the Milky Way and there's lots of hypernovas and not that many gamma rays bursts. So is it like a special kind of hypernova or only in some cases

or that's the kind of thing they're still trying to figure out? Wait, you say we need another term. Special super duper supernovas. All hypernovas are special, Jorge. I don't know why you have to be so judgmental today. What's next? You're going to have to go for like hyper special, extra cool.

Super califragilistic. Cherry on top. Super dupernova. Yeah. So it's still a puzzle. We don't understand it, right? We don't understand why they're made sometimes. Some people think that if a supernova collapses like in a certain way, then it creates this cloud of stuff around it, which absorbs the gamma rays.

And other times the gamma rays poke through and then shoot out everywhere else. But it would make sense that a supernova or kilonova or a hypernova or whatever could generate this much energy because that's a huge event, right? These massive stars imploding. So that definitely could explain it. I feel like next time you should start a little bit more modestly so that you have room to grow, you know? Mini-nova. If you discover something big, just call it like a modest nova or like a just a nova. A regular nova.

And then you have room to grow. No, I like going the way McDonald's went for their drink sizes. You know, you start with medium, which is already huge. and then you escalate. Yeah, exactly. And so that's probably what's causing it, but we don't really understand it in detail. And it's important that we understand it

because we want to understand, like, is one of these things going to happen in the Milky Way? How often are these things going to be hitting us? Do we have to worry? So it's important to understand this stuff. Yeah, it's weird that there would be things that we can't quite explain out there. Yeah, exactly, especially things that could kill us, right?

So I think it's worth funding. Politicians out there with the purse strings, maybe buy one less fighter jet and pay for another telescope to look at gamma rays. Wait, so could these things kill us? I think you were telling me earlier that if the right concentration hits us at the right moment, it could really fry us and turn us into toast.

Yeah, exactly. The key is how far away it happens, right? So gamma ray bursts from other galaxies, we're far enough away. that by the time it gets here, you know, those gamma rays are filling out a sphere that's the size of the distance between galaxies. So it's a huge number of gamma rays,

a lot of energy, but it's spread out over a huge sphere. If a gamma ray burst happens nearby, yikes. You know, a gamma ray burst could basically sterilize an entire solar system if it happened nearby. That would be pretty, yeah. We would literally be toast. We would, what would the Earth look like?

Well, it'd be like a flash sunburn, wouldn't it? Like half the earth would be okay, but the other half would be toast. Yeah, exactly. Half the earth would be totally fried, and the other half would be okay. Yeah, that's exactly what would happen. And it depends, again, on the intensity. If it's really, really intense, you know, then it's going to get down through the atmosphere and we're all going to either get fried or get cancer or die pretty quick.

If it's slightly less intense, right, our atmosphere does protect us. The ozone and the atmosphere and stuff like that protects us from gamma rays. It's like folks you out there wondering, if we're getting hit once per day from these gamma rays from other galaxies, why don't we all have cancer already? Well, some of us do have cancer, and some of that is because of gamma rays, but mostly the atmosphere protects us. And so if it's not too close, then our atmosphere will protect us, but the atmosphere has a limit. Like the gamma rays, they use up the ozone. So if you have a really big burst of gamma rays from pretty nearby, not close enough that it's going to fry you instantly, but it might use up a lot of the ozone and the ozone. atmosphere, and there will be sort of left unprotected for a while until the ozone

builds back up. So that could be a bad situation. Well, I think it's interesting to think that maybe you were saying that maybe these could be the limiting factors in how widespread life could be in the universe, right? Like, these are basically kind of a, like a check on life in the universe. Like if we didn't have gamma ray burst, maybe there would be more life out there in the universe. Yeah, it's actually interesting because it goes both ways. Right, like some galaxies, if they have a lot of these stars that are going supernova

and making these gamma ray bursts, then it's pretty hard to get life started because it's just so much crazy radiation. On the other hand, you also need a bit of radiation, right? Remember, like, having a particle fly through and change your DNA is a key element to evolution. It allows us to explore the evolutionary landscape by adding random mutations. So if you had zero radiation, then evolution wouldn't be as effective. really yeah you need some amount of evolution depends on gamma ray births

well you know how does evolution work right you need your children to be slightly different from you right they're not just a combination of you in your spouse doesn't that happen randomly through biological processes like it really you're saying really needs radiation from outer space well you know there's two main sources there there's transcription errors like when the DNA gets copied there are mistakes that are made but also yeah

radiation plays a role as well and so you would have a slow rate of mutation if you didn't have gamma rays and you didn't have radiation and so you could explore different evolutionary paths not as quickly if you didn't have radiation so you want just the right amount of radiation right so I think what you're saying is a physicist here is making a statement that basically we're all Hulk that kind of what you're every human being is kind of like the Hulk it's not about being the Hulk it's about the radiation you absorbed along the way yeah but

But so far, the closest gamma-ray burst we've ever seen is like 130 million light years away, which is still really, really far away. Which is in another galaxy, right? Yeah, that's in another galaxy. And if one happened in our galaxy, that would be tough. But we think, I mean, the current estimates, these are all really, really rough, but is that there's like one gamma-ray burst per galaxy per thousand years. I remember there's a lot of stars in a galaxy, right?

Hundreds of billions of stars. So for one of them to give a gamma ray burst every thousand years means it's a pretty rare event. And that makes sense. So the reason we haven't seen any from our Milky Way is probably just that hasn't happened yet. So wait, if we get an extra special super duper supernova in the Milky Way, that's it, right? We're toast. Well, it depends. Or half of us are toast.

The Milky Way is a big place. So if it happens on the other side of the Milky Way, it's a big difference than if it happens like next door. Also, we think that these gamma ray bursts are directional. that they happen, they fly out in jets from the supernova, just like from the pulsars and quasars we talked about. So it might not even be aimed at us. It could happen next door and we could be fine, or it could fry us. Like it abused these gamma rays in one direction, and we might get lucky.

Exactly. We're basically playing cosmic Russian roulette all the time. See, we brought it back to Russia. And you know, the Russians, they're crazy. We brought it back to Russia. Exactly. So we don't really know the details of how gamma-ray bursts are formed, though we have a lot better understanding than we did a few decades ago. We don't know how often they happen. We just sort of hoping that one doesn't happen. But to me, the crazy

thing is that gamma-ray bursts travel at the speed of light, and that has an important consequence. Yeah, because you wouldn't see it coming, right? Exactly. You can't possibly have any warning, right? Unless you can predict that a star is going to go supernova and give off a gamma ray burst. You're not going to watch every single star and try to predict which one. There's no advanced notice, right? The first thing you hear about a gamma ray burst

is when it's washing over you and frying your DNA. Right. So there could be one on its way right now. How does that make you feel? Makes me feel a little crazy. Toasty. Well, I think, you know,

it seems like there are many surprises out there in the universe and we should be ready for them and we should be excited for them. and we should appreciate the being here and the life we have because, you know, it could really, literally be snuffed out in a second at any time. That's true. And, you know, most of these cosmic mysteries just help us understand

what a beautiful and crazy place this universe is. Very few of them are actually going to kill us. And so don't worry about it too much, folks. And there's nothing you can do anyway. So don't worry about it. That's right. Just relax. Lower your heart rate.

The sun is coming down. and just be at peace like Bruce Banner. There you go, exactly. We're all Bruce Banner. 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. 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 and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The U.S. Open is here, and on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain.

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