Short Wave - The News Roundup Goes Intergalactic

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

It's our latest roundup of science news! This time, with Ailsa Chang of NPR's All Things Considered, who joins us to discuss three stories that take us on a journey through space — from the sounds of Earth's magnetosphere, to the moons of Jupiter, to a distant phenomenon NASA calls "an invisible monster on the loose, barreling through intergalactic space."Learn more about NASA's Harp Project here: https://listen.spacescience.org/We love hearing what you're reading and what science is catching your eye! Reach the show by emailing [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shortwavers. Emily Kwong here with Regina Barber. And Elsa, welcome to our humble science podcast. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. We're so excited. It's very cool to have you. So we should say Elsa is one of the hosts of a little radio show here on NPR.

You may have heard of it, all things considered. And you're here because some of the things you're considering on your show are about science. That's right. we are considering them because of you two. This is the kind of influence I want to have in the world. Let's go. Okay. No, no, let me explain.

Like, Gene and I are going to start making regular appearances on all things considered on the radio to do exactly what we do on the podcast. Offer hot takes on the latest science headlines, research papers, and just weird science-adjacent stuff, like we've been doing in the News Roundup episode. So we thought, why not share our radio segment with you here on the podcast? And I think there actually is a scientific term. this. Something about two birds and one stone, right?

Yeah, yeah. I like to think of it as like nuclear fusion, but you know, go on. Go on. Ooh, I like that, Em. Okay, so as always, M and I picked three science stories that really caught our attention recently. They actually all take place in space, which I'm super excited about.

Yeah, different realms of space at different distances from Earth. The first is what things sound like, just beyond our atmosphere. Then, we venture a bit further to some distant moons, And finally, we take a pit stop by something NASA has called an invisible monster on the loose, barreling through intergalactic space. Elsa, you ready? I am so ready.

Road trip through space. Okay. In just a minute, Elsa will ask us about all of that. You are listening to Shorewave from NPR. Okay, to recap, Elsa, we've got three stories for you, space sounds, moon mission, and Monster on the Loose. I am ready for liftoff. Let's do this. Emily, what is first? Go. Elsa, for our first story, we're blasting off from Earth in three, two, one.

Those were good sound effects. Two, the invisible bubble that protects our planet, the magnetosphere, which is just a magnetic field surrounding our Earth and deflecting most of the charged particles from the sun away from our planet. Okay, that sounds vital. Yeah, it's good summary. It's like crucial for life on Earth because, you know, that sun is a tempest, to a star. It's constantly emitting this stream of particles known as solar wind in fits and bursts and sometimes the solar wind

mixes with the gases in our upper atmosphere in a visible way, aka the Aurora Borales. Oh, the Northern Lights! I still have never been able to see them in person. You neither. I hope you do. You can get to witness their gassy little dance up there. But

you know, now that interaction also between Earth and the sun, it's not only visible, it's all too. So back in 2007, NASA launched five satellites to study Earth's magnetic field, including solar wind, striking Earth's magnetosphere, causing it to vibrate like the strings of a harp. And now a new NASA-funded community science project is turning that data into sound? Listen to this. That's an important caveat. It doesn't sound like that. Okay, what are we lawyers? All right, tell me the caveat. Go ahead. You know, sun-on-earth vibrations, they're ultra-low frequency. They're way too

low for human hearing. So the team behind this project, which is called harp, stands for heliophysics audified, colon, resonances and plasma. They really tried to get harp. Is speeding up those frequencies and converting them into sound waves. So all those wishes and squiggles, the music of sun and earth can be heard by you and me and everyone. That is amazing. So you said that this is a Community Science Project? What does that mean? Yeah. So this is like the coolest part to me. The harp team has built an interactive tool for anyone around the world to listen to the waves. And it's not just for fun. The researchers, they say like we humans are sometimes better than machines at picking out unique sonic features in these recordings. And those patterns can help the scientists understand space weather, how the solar wind interacts with Earth's magnetic field, all kinds of things.

So you can go help them. You can find these recordings. at their website, listen.spacisscience.org. Sounds like a good date activity. That's something an audio person would say. But yes, Elsa, completely. Okay, Gina, shortwave scientist in residence. For our second story, we are traveling, I understand, further into the solar system all the way to Jupiter? Yeah, so recently the European Space Agency just launched a spacecraft called Juice, short for Jupiter, icy moons,

explorer. I love all the acronyms in this conversation. Do you see? Astronomers love our acronyms. We try really hard. Believe me. Okay. So in this case, Jupiter, I see Moons Explorer, because where there is ice, there is water, which could mean life. Yeah? Yeah, that's the question, right? Like, because we know that three of the moons of Jupiter house water, Ganymede, Callisto, and my favorite moon, Europa. And if you have water and you have a heat source, say, from the moon itself, in the case of these large moons, then you almost have the ingredients for life. Okay, but don't you need, like, organic material, like carbon or nitrogen for life to actually happen? Thank you, Shortwave team, for feeding me that knowledge inside the script. Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, that is absolutely right.

And this mission, that's one of the things that they're going to be looking for, juice will be orbiting the moons, investigating how big these oceans are, what they're made out of, and imaging the surfaces, all in search for where there could be life on these moons. That's so exciting. So when is juice going to get up there? Yeah, it's not going to get there until 2031. Oh. Which is, it's still pretty close. It's still not that far away. Because it needs to fly by Earth three times, Venus ones, to get going fast enough to get to Jupiter.

This is called a gravity assist. Oh, cool. Yeah, where the gravity of the planet pulls in the spacecraft and speeds it up and just shoots it right off into outer space. It's a six-ton spacecraft, so it needs this help to actually get to Jupiter. And interestingly enough, this juice mission is the first time scientists are doing this gravity assist with our planet and the moon. So what sort of things are scientists looking for once he gets there? Yeah, well, I asked Olivier Vitas about that. He's the project scientist, and he said he's most excited about learning more about Jupiter's moon Ganymede.

It's a unique object, the biggest moon in the solar system, and it's the only moon to generate its own magnetic. field? Right. What is the role played by the magnetic field? Does it help to protect the planet from the radiation? Yeah. We need to understand really this moon. It's a fascinating moon. Okay, Olivia, I know that's what you're excited about. But Gina, what are you most excited about when it comes to juice? Yeah, I mean, one, I didn't know that Ganymed was the biggest moon in our solar system, but honestly, this mission and another one from NASA called the Europa Clipper are basically my dreams come true. Like, they're both doing the same kind of science. at the same time, seen if these moons are habitable for life.

And if this is confirmed, then I will know to not let go of my dream. Which is space sea shrimp. Because what if they're like, what? What if there are like volcanic vets on Europa like there are in our deep oceans here on Earth? There could be sea shrimps. There could. Could be. Could be.

Never stop dreaming. Believe. I won't. Okay. So we have visited the magnetosphere, a moon. What is our third and final stop on this whole space voyage? It is a runaway, super massive black hole. Oh my God.

That sounds metal. It is so metal. It's so metal. It was discovered also kind of by accident by a team led by Yale University scientists who published their findings in the astrophysical journal letters earlier this month. Okay, Elsa, this story is amazing. It first looked like a smudge in an image from the Hubble Space Telescope. They were like, what is that? But looking more closely, they realized the object in question was likely a supermassive black hole gone rogue.

Whoa. Yeah. Listeners can't see me, but I'm just nodding my head. I'm so excited because let's talk about a black hole. Basically, a black hole is just like a pothole in the 4D fabric of space time. And there's a massive one at the center of our galaxy, actually. But what's weird about this one is it's sprinting through our universe all on its own, not really part of any galaxy. And it's possibly very, very big.

Just how big? Yeah, roughly 20 million times more massive than our sun. And it's leaving a trail of these newborn stars in its wake, a trail approximately 200,000 light years long. And why newborn stars? Yeah, so basically black holes just gobble everything in their path. And it's possible this one is triggering the interstellar dust and gas in its path to collapse, which is just creating a cradle for stars to form.

Astronomals will need to gather more data, though, to just confirm that this is what they think it's doing. And wait, Emily, you had said the word rogue? Like, what did you mean by that? Where did this maybe black hole even come from? Okay, yeah, I'm going to let Gina explain this. Gina. Well, galaxies merge all the time.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, will actually merge with our neighbor galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, and that's going to happen in about 5 billion years. But remember, I said our galaxy has this supermassive black hole at its center, and so do many other galaxies. So researchers believe that this rogue black hole came from a merger of more than two galaxies. Maybe a third one came in, and that interaction shot out a central black hole of one of those galaxies. Cool. And did we know black holes even behave this way? Should we be concerned? No, we don't need to worry. First, this supermassive black hole that's like all by itself shooting around, it's billions of light years away.

And second, there isn't a candidate near us that would affect us like that. But as far as this behavior, we've seen stars form from, mergers before like galaxies merging into each other. But this is the first time we've seen a black hole create stars in its wake. Dang. Hearing you say that makes me think that that's what this segment is. It's a bunch of galaxies colliding and forming new stars, you know? That's beautiful, Emily. Three galaxies. What's going to shoot off? We'll find out.

Thanks again to Elsa Chang, Christopher Enteliata, Kai McNamee, and Brent Bachman for letting us share some sciencey headlines. Always fun to meet up with our radio cousins from all things considered. In fact, we're going to be doing it much more often. Which means we need more science stories to talk about. If you see any science stories that you love, send us an email about it. We might include it in our next news roundup. We're at shortwave at npr.org.

This episode was produced by Brent Bachman and was edited by Brent, Christopher, and our managing producer Rebecca Ramirez. Gilly Moon was our audio engineer. Our senior director of programming is Beth Donovan. And our senior vice president of programming is Anya Grundman. I'm Emily Kwong. And I'm Regina Barber. Thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR.