StarTalk Radio - Searching for Habitable Worlds with David Kipping

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

How do we uncover distant planets’ secrets? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice explore the recent discoveries in exoplanet study, exo-moons, and finding the stars from our sun’s stellar nursery with astronomer and head of Cool Worlds Lab, David Kipping.NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here:https://startalkmedia.com/show/searching-for-habitable-worlds-with-david-kipping/Thanks to our Patrons Micheal Morey, Kristoff Vidalis, Adir Buskila, Yanir Stein, Randombot38, James Komiensky, Richard Clark, Daniel Helwig, Kayleigh Sell, and KENNY SMART for supporting us this week. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

So Chuck, we went everywhere on exoplanets. We got from planets to the ingredients of the entire universe. So that's how much was covered in this show. And exoplanets with moons. Yes. We're thinking just it's a planet, but why can't they have a moon? We got a moon. Give them a moon too.

Exactly. And so we have people interested in the moons of exoplanets. Yeah. And we can actually— Will they never be satisfied? That's what I'm saying. Like, when does this end? All right.

A lot of exoplanets coming up on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is Star Talk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal. This is Chuck with me. How you doing, man? Hey, what's happening?

Doing all right? Doing great. Thank you. Doing good. Nice. A little while ago, you recorded a comedy special. I did. You did, but it hasn't aired yet. We have to sell it. It's going good. Nice. A little while ago, you recorded a comedy special. Yeah. But it hasn't aired yet.

We have to sell it. So if anybody knows anybody at Netflix, I need my money back. I'm telling you the truth, people. I was going to do like one of those, like, what are they called? Fund me. Go fund me. Yeah. But I was like, okay, no.

Listen, if you believe in yourself, go ahead. Put out the money. You'll get it back. You got the talent. Don't worry about it. I should have did the GoFundMe. Oh, you're saying that about yourself. Yeah, exactly. No, okay, no. Listen, if you believe in yourself, go ahead, put out the money. You'll get it back. You got the talent. Don't worry about it. I should have did the GoFundMe. Oh, you're saying that about yourself. Yeah, exactly.

No, but hopefully it'll be out very soon. All right, we'll look for that. So it's another Cosmic Queries today, and it's bespoke. And very bespoke. It's not a grab bag. That's right. And the topic is

Fool World. What? What? I know like a little bit about Cool World, but I don't know enough to do a whole Cosmic Queries on it. So we combed the hood. Yes. And up the street, there's an entire university called Columbia.

It is. That's where I got my PhD. Right. Columbia. Yes. It's the Rutgers of Harvard here in New York City. What? So, we have a professor of astronomy from Columbia.

Yes. David Kipping, welcome. The leader of all cool worlds. I'm the man right here. Yeah. Thank you for having me, guys. Yes, so you're head of the Cool Worlds Lab. So, since you're a scientist, not a hipster, I have to believe that the word cool

references temperature and not attitude. It's a bit playful, but yeah. We're not Dope World's Lab. That's what you should have named it. That would be amazing. You should have named it Dope World's Lab. Oh, man. You'd lost that opportunity.

Brand proposals might be a bit tricky if we have that on the tagline. Check my temperature, man. You lost that opportunity. Brand proposals might be a bit tricky if we have that on the tagline. Check my temperature, yo. Because my planets are dope. Or sick. We go sick maybe next time. Sick is another one. Yo, you ready for this?

Sick world. I'm down with the kids. I'm sorry you caught me on that one. It's been my experience that anyone who says I'm down with the kids is not down with the kids. All right. So, full worlds, we're referring in your particular case to worlds outside of our solar system, exoplanets or exoplanet moons. Anything exo. Exo rings,

exo trojans, we can throw it all in there. Exo comets, you go. Okay. Well, tell them what you mean when you say exo trojans. You saw me,

I went, you saw what I did. So I was just like, I've heard, I've heard of the birth of a star. I've heard of that. Where they don't use trojans. Yes.

But the trojans, they're like, why are we going back to ancient Greeks? Yeah, this is, around Jupiter, I've heard of that. Where they don't use Trojans. Yes. But the Trojans are like... Why are we going back to ancient Greeks? Yeah, this is around Jupiter. There are these additional small bodies called Trojans, and they're in the little grunge point. So Jupiter, as it goes around its orbit, if you look 60 degrees off axis on either side,

there's the Trojans and the Greeks, and it's these small collection of asteroids and small bodies. And so we think we could detect those around other stars. And so then there would be exo-girgin. Yeah. Put exo in front of anything. Good to go.

That's the branding. Put exo in front. Put some exo on it. So that Lagrange point is the Sun and Jupiter. So that would be, I guess, L1, 2, 3, 4.

L3 and 4. Right. We did a whole thing on the launch point. Yes, we did. We did. Yes. This is why people say when I say things like, right or okay, they think I'm just playing along.

Okay. They look like I'm like, oh, I'm in on this. But what they don't understand is that we've talked about this stuff. Yeah. And what's happening is it's coming to my memory. And I'm like, right. Okay. You should have an honorary PhD. Not at all.

I'll find some certificate off you. I'm afraid to receive that just because they're like, oh, you should know a lot more. You should actually know a lot more than you do. This can't be right. So our solar system is a template for you to think about and imagine what could exist in other star systems. This can't be right. Exactly. So our solar system is a template for you

to think about and imagine what could exist in other star systems. Indeed. That's fair to say. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Are there any

super anomalous solar systems that you come across that are just so unlike ours that it really perks things up? Or do most of them just kind of fall in line? I'm going to answer for him. Oh.

All of them. Really? Okay, now go. You give your answer. I would say, you're not too far off here. I would say that the majority of solar systems look radically different than that of our own. That's amazing.

Yeah, you have binary star systems, which are very, very common. And that's a half of all the stars you see in the night sky have multiple stars. Two or more. Just off the bat, that makes it unusual. Even having a Jupiter is unusual. Only 10% of single stars have a Jupiter-like planet.

So just having not just one, but two Jupiters in our solar system is already kind of unusual. Two Jupiters would be Jupiter and Saturn. Yes. I'm going to throw Saturn in because it's the same size. It's a very different mass, but it's roughly the same size. It would be nice to it because Saturn is one of my… See my desk lamp here?

Oh, you guys can't see. No shade on Saturn. It's beautiful. Yeah. My desk lamp, I hand made in wood shop in seventh grade. And it's a ring.

It's made of wood and it's a ball in a ring and you press down the ring and the ring tips and it turns the light on. It turns the light on. So me and Saturn go way back. Don't just lump it in with Jupiter.

And he only lost one finger. That's what you started. But I also, in my notes here, it says there's a YouTube channel on this? Yeah, I've got a, yes, my team is called the Cool Words Lab at Columbia University. We're a research group.

I have currently four graduate students on my team and we're studying all different projects, looking for exomoons, looking for these weird phenomena around these cool planets. But at the same time, when I first arrived at Columbia, which was eight years ago now, I decided one of the things I wanted to do was also talk about science. You're well aware of the importance of doing that in popular culture. So I started a small YouTube channel. Didn't think

Halyan would watch it, but during COVID, many people decided for whatever reason they were interested in astronomy. And you post there with what frequency? Usually once every three weeks or so. I have a full-time job doing my research, so I can't post there as much as I'd like. People moan about that all the time, but it keeps things fresh by having

one for research and one for the psych-com world. Otherwise, you get stale in both. Perhaps, yeah. Now, you said you have four graduate students. When someone boasts of how many graduate students they have, it means there's actually a lot of work that needs to be done. And they will do work because they need to get their degree, and you alone stand between them and their degree.

Well, that's too much power for one man to have. Oh, that's terrible. Great power. We have evidence that there's life after this arrangement. One of your former students we've had as a guest on StarTalk. Who was that? Moira McTeer. Yes.

Dr. Moira McTeer. She was one of my first PhD students. You get to say doctor. It came through. By the way, that doctor is courtesy of me. Mr. Kipping. Yeah, it does feel like an honor to bestow, you know, help these students get to that point.

I mean, when we actually come to the defending the PhD, it's not just my decision, of course. I'm actually supposed to keep my mouth shut and let, you know, the other people decide. There's actually a committee that puts you through the ringer. They're not there to be nice to you. They're there to stump you. And the less stumpable you are,

the better a scientist you become. I gave all my PhD students, I think, a lightsaber, so I think Moira probably has one buried in her cupboard probably at some point. Just in case. Yeah. Bestow upon her with a lightsaber, her PhD. No, no, but the thing is, an actual saber will stop at your shoulder, whereas a lightsaber

won't. This is just a toy lightsaber. Oh, a toy lightsaber. Okay, fine, fine. I'm quite there, yeah. Don't let people know that we actually have real lightsabers out there. Right lighters. Okay, fine, fine. I'm quite there, yeah. Don't let people know that we actually have real lightsabers out there. Right. You can tell all of Dr. Kibbing's students

because they have a very significant burn that goes from their shoulder to their navel. The only way to know. So, tell me,

before we get to our Patreon questions, tell me, what are some of your challenges? How much of what you do is theory or modeling or observations? What telescopes do you use?

Do you have a favorite spot in the universe using Kepler data? What feeds your operation? It's a big bag of all sorts of stuff to be honest. I mean, I'm kind of glad that you didn't ask, are you a theorist or an observer? Because I really don't like labels like that. I kind of feel like if you call yourself an observer,

if somebody goes to the telescope, looks for different objects in the sky, it kind of limits your mind space, right? So now you think, well, I can't do the hard theory stuff because I'm an observer and vice versa. I try to keep my feet sort of in every pocket as I can to try and stay nimble. But the data set we're excited about at the moment

is JWST, of course, like many people. JWST is touching everybody. Not in that way, but in the good way. You weren't thinking that. You're just... Okay. I like it, though. So it's infrared data of what objects?

The observations we're planning in October will be of a Kepler planet actually called Kepler-167e. Just rolls off the tongue. Why Kepler? Why is it Kepler? Kepler was great for finding cool worlds because it was very patient.

So it stared at the same... Kepler's been dead for 400 years. Not Johannes Kepler. That's a good... Oh, thank you. Okay. We should not be thinking about Johannes Kepler, but the telescope named in his honor.

There you go. Okay. There's a telescope. Listen, so we got a medium. And it appears that Kepler says... His spirit energy. There's this planet. Yeah.

Okay, but go ahead. So this planet was discovered by the Kepler mission. I should say the NASA Kepler mission. And it was... Well, actually, I discovered, curious go ahead. So this planet was discovered by the Kepler mission. I should say the NASA Kepler mission. And it was a planet I discovered, curiously enough. And it turns out this is pretty much the best planet for looking for exomoons out there. Exomoons. Exomoons.

It is a Jupiter twin. It has the same mass as Jupiter within 1%, the same radius within 5%, has the same equilibrium temperature, it's the same kind of coldness, if you like, as Jupiter. It's in a similar kind of system, a multi-planet system. Everything's just like boom, boom, boom. Everything looks like Jupiter. And Jupiter has a bajillion moons of its own,

and so presumably that's the case here. Yeah. Can I ask maybe a dumb question? I just want to emphasize here that you're about to make progress using a telescope that is building on the progress of a previous telescope. That's right, right. right. So it's not

just people pulling stuff out of nowhere. We are all standing on the shoulders of hardware that came before us. Amazing. I'm at the end of a, you know, this is a 12-year personal journey trying to find these exomoons for me at this point. So we're still waiting. We're hoping this is going to be the one.

So this is my question about exomoons. So now when you're looking at the planet, it's pretty easy because you're looking for it to transit the star. Yeah. Now, if that's how you're finding the planet. That's how Kepler found all of its planets. If Kepler found all of it. The transit, the eclipse was in front.

Are you looking for the reflection of light off the planet for the moon to transit in front of the planet? Or are you looking for the moon itself to also transit the star? Where is the blockage of light that lets you know that this is indeed a moon? Translation, how the hell are you detecting? Short answer is option two. You kind of said it. We look for the shadow of the moon in front of the star. So if the planet, it's a shadow really that blocks out starlight, and that's what gives us this dip in starlight. If there's a moon there, it will either be trailing or behind,

and so we'll see this little extra dip in light. And it's that. So we see two dips, one huge one due to the planet, and then we zoom right in on that data, and hopefully we see a tiny little one due to the moon, or even multiple, maybe multiple depths, of course. Yeah, but wait a minute. How? Okay, so you're in a cool

world's lab, but all you're getting here is a cool shadow. Yeah, right. And I feel like Plato's cave right now. You don't know jack about the object that's making that shadow. No. It's a limited technique. I mean, what we get from this is essentially the size of the object.

We can't figure out how far away from its planet it is. It's some major axis. And maybe we can figure out some other things such as its orbital period, its inclination. So just the bare bones.

The bare bones. That's not a world yet to me. No. A world is what's going on on the surface. Yeah. But we will get there. I mean, we're hoping

to build telescopes like the Habitable Worlds Observatory, HWO, which might get rebranded one day to something else, perhaps like Carl Sagan Observatory or something. That sounds good. That could be fun. Let me tell you something that's going to get you a lot more play than Habitable Worlds.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't like the name. Habitable Worlds. I can barely say habitable, so I don't want that. Yeah, habitable. But this telescope will take actual photos of plants one day. And so then we really would get a sense

of its color, its atmosphere, and maybe even some surface properties. So we'll get there, but it's all baby steps. You know, you can't just

jump straight to the end. And you won't be able to see dinosaurs walking on it. No, no. You'd need a telescope even larger than the sun to have any chance of that.

Yeah. chance of that yeah i'm nicholas costella and i'm a proud supporter of star talk on patreon this is star talk with ne deGrasse Tyson. Well, I'm impressed that we were able to solicit questions on this very bespoke topic. And we got a lot of them. Cool world. I mean, a lot of them. So let's pivot. People like you.

People love the cool world. They really do. And maybe they could be fans of your YouTube channel, even. There might be one or two, but no. Don't sell yourself short, David. Don't sell yourself short. Okay. Here we go.

Hello, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Kip, and Lord Nice. I am Sai from Kakanada, India. Chuck, I thought we can test your pronunciation on names of towns this time. Really? Don't do that. These people, what's going on? They're trying to bring you along, Chuck. I know.

Trying to help you. My question to Dr. Kipping is, in your studies, you've worked with the concept of occultations to detect exomoons and planets. Could you paint us a picture of how this works? And are these the most important cosmic breadcrumbs, according to you?

There was a famous astronomer, Henry Norris Russell, in the 20th century. He once said that eclipses are the royal road to success. And I love that quote. It just goes to show you how eclipses are like a shortcut. They allow us to see things that's kind of ahead of our technology yet. Like we shouldn't have the ability really to know anything about 5,000 exoplanets because we can barely take images of nearby planets. It's still something we're struggling to do. But using this trick of seeing a planet pass in front of a star, it gives us an extra window. And it only works in some cases. You have to have just the right alignments. You have to be lucky. But when you get that lucky fortuitous alignment, it gives you this unique ability to probe all these extra things,

like the period, the semi-major axis, the size of the planet. So it's our first look at these things. Just to be clear, you're only seeing systems that happen to be edge-on to your field of view. Or nearly edge-on. Let me say that in the negative.

None of the other systems are going to give you these eclipses, these transit phenomenon. And so they go undiscussed, unrecognized, uncatalogued. For now. We'll get them one day. Look at that. Of course, we can get some of those using other methods.

Other methods. For instance, the radial velocity method has also been very successful. Not as successful as transits, but that has discovered hundreds of planets in its run rate. Now you have to tell us what the radial velocity method is. Okay. So this is wobbling stars. So as you see, if you look at a star's light, and you see it being blue-shifted a little bit, then periodically red-shifted, that's telling you it is moving back and forth. When it's blue-shifted, it's coming towards you, red-shifted away from you. So it's just like the siren of the ambulance going down the street.

Oh, what a nice, I like the picture. Yeah, you see the pitch change. When we hear that pitch change, or really see a pitch change in the color of the light of the star, that is telling us that something gravitationally is tugging on that object, and that's how we can infer planets indirectly. So there you don't need the precise alignment, although if it was completely 90 degrees off, we would see nothing because then the star would be doing this,

it kind of wobbling in the plane, and so we wouldn't have any blue shift or red shift to look at. It's not coming towards you or away from you. Yeah, exactly. But most of the time, we can still get there. I think what we have in our favor, because I did this calculation now 30 years ago. I haven't done it lately,

but I don't see why the math would change. Over time. Over time. But if you do this, you are statistically more likely to discover edge-on systems than face face on systems, if you do the math on that. David's looking at you like, as your peer,

I'm going to have to review that. Let's go to the video. Let's go. Let's go. What else you got? Here we go. This is Lisa Cotton. She says, Dear Dr. Tyson, David, Lord, nice greetings. This is Lisa from North Hero Lisa Cotton. She says, Dear Dr. Tyson, David, Lord, nice greetings.

This is Lisa from North Hero, Vermont. I'm a fan of both StarTalk and Cool Worlds, and I love watching both shows on YouTube. One thing that I have been pondering lately is the birth of our star, the sun. It seems like a lot of talk happens about when the sun dies. What I would like to know is, was our sun born in a star nursery?

And if so, would we know which one or be able to predict where it might have been or come from in the Milky Way galaxy? Thank you so much. And keep up the excellent work. Ooh, we love this. We got good fans out there for this. Yeah, that's a really intriguing question.

And it's a question that I know many of my colleagues are thinking very hard about, even at Columbia. So, you know, of course, the sun must have been born, we think, in a stellar nursery. So there would have been siblings born alongside with us from that giant molecular cloud that collapsed and fragmented and formed all these small stars. We don't know exactly how many, but there's probably many such stars. And the question is, what happened to them? Over billions of years, the stars will disperse. They'll move into slightly separate directions. And especially because of tidal forces from the galaxy,

they'll get kind of pulled apart and could be essentially long lost siblings at this point, spread across half the galaxy or more. And the sun, given its age and its speed, it's been around the center 20 times. And so if it had a whole family 20 times around, given everything you just said, it can happen en route.

You know, your siblings are long gone. But they should be out there. And so an interesting question is... Guys, what are we getting together? Yeah, we want to have a reunion.

What's the Facebook group? You guys never stay in touch. Give me Zoom. We'll do it next time. So a family reunion might be possible, at least in a sense of discovering them, by actually looking at the chemistry of those stars.

There is an active effort to measure the detailed chemistry, the abundances of every single element you can think of inside these stars and compare them to that of our sun. And these sibling stars should have not only the same age, of course, but also the same chemistry. So a gas cloud not that far away would still have all these elements, but not in the exact amounts relative to each other. Yes.

That's like a fingerprint. Yes, exactly. All right. Yeah. So there should be a unique chemical fingerprint. We've got people looking to get the family back together. That's so cool. get the family back together. That's so cool. Get the band back together.

I don't know the latest on that, but I know that there are many astronomers who are hunting hard for those. And I think we'll probably hear big news when they're discovered. Let me restate that question, but in another kind of way. Because we can't see the birth of the sun,

it having happened in our past, but we see the birth of other stars. Nobody made a videotape, unlike people who really disturb you by trying to show you theirs. So how much insight are we getting now that we can see stars being born with their planets? How much insight from these other systems

do we then bring back to ours? There are some startling things we've discovered. I mean, one thing from direct imaging, which is actually taking photos of these young planetary systems in the process of forming planets. Catching in the act. Right. I mean, they're very young. Hundreds of millions of years old or less.

That's young. That's young in cosmic terms. One thing that's very startling about these is we see, and I mentioned earlier that Jupiters are rare, but that's in mature systems. In these young systems you actually do find lots of Jupiters. And what's strange is that they're really, really far from that star. They're on order of Jupiters. And what's strange is that they're really, really far from that star.

They're on order of hundreds of AU. So, an AU is the Earth's orbit around the Sun. Astronomical unit. Yes. Jupiter is 5 AU. Saturn, I think, is about 10 AU. So, these things are 10 times more than that. That's sort of the distance where we talk about looking for Planet 9. Wow!

Planet 9 is being hypothetical planet planet in the solar system, really, really far out. And we're discovering Jupiter's very often that far out. And they're very massive. They're actually bordering on brown dwarfs, which are like sort of 10 to 20 times the mass of Jupiter. And that is a mystery. It's, you know, maybe the solar system then also formed such planets,

but they were somehow lost. Because these things are so far out that they may be tenuously held gravitationally and will be stripped away. And there's an active... They would be, what do we call them? Vagabond planets? Rogue worlds.

Rogue worlds. Yes, free-floating planets. Recently, there's a discovery of what's called JUMBOs, which is pretty interesting. These are Jupiter... That's an acronym. Oh, please. Jupiter Binary Mass Objects, I think. Jupiter... That's an acronym. Oh, please. Jupiter binary...

Jupiter binary mass objects, I think. So these are two Jupiters. And these are free-floating. So not just one Jupiter hanging out in space by itself, but two of them orbiting around each other. And we can understand how maybe one Jupiter could get kicked out of its solar system. But how the hell do you end up with two bound to each other?

And they're right. And they're together. and they're together. That's so weird. We don't understand those. Those are called jumbos. Recently discovered by JWST in the Orionis Nebula. If they do something stupid, we call it a bimbo. Like that.

What a great question. Good for you. Look at all these questions you're scrolling through. I'm telling you, this is like unbelievable. These people, we have great listeners. That's all I can say. Yeah. This is Gabriel, and Gabriel says,

Hello, fellow stellar satellite riders. Gabriel here from Okinawa. Nice. What's the fastest rotating star we have found pre-NOVA? And what would hypothetically be the fastest possible? How does this rotation affect the star's atmosphere, fusion, and life cycle? Thank you, and love you guys.

These questions are getting in it. Laser-focused questions here. So, stars all spin. The sun is spinning. I think its rotation period is about once every 27 days, something like that. And that's not untypical.

Many stars have similar rotation periods, but they change their spin over time. So they actually tend to spin down. So again, if we go back in time to when the Sun was young, it would have been probably spinning much, much faster and probably arguably close to its breakup speed. So there's a certain speed called breakup speed where it's rotating so fast that the centrifugal forces outwards are comparable to the gravitational forces inwards.

And so it's- That'll break up any relationship, you know? Yeah, you don't want to spin too fast in one relationship. So stars are probably, when they're very young, have these extreme rotation speeds. One thing I actually learned from one of my, one of your colleagues right here at the Museum of Natural History

in recent on my podcast and the Cool Worlds podcast. The Cool Worlds has a podcast? We do. You don't only have a lab, you've got a YouTube channel and a podcast? Yeah, I just slipped that plug in. Okay, very nice. You see where I did that? Very nice.

So we had Jackie Farty on my podcast. Jackie Farty, yeah. She was telling me that some of the brown dwarfs are rotating close to that kind of breakup speed as well. And they seem to have rotation periods of order of hours, which is incredibly fast. And they're essentially almost stars. They're just below the masses of stars.

Failed stars. So she doesn't like the word failed stars. I'm not going to repeat that. That's exactly why I said it. That's exactly why I said it. Those are her objects of interest. Failed stars. Is that correct?

I was joking. So it's interesting. Why do those brown dwarfs, which are objects of interest. Fail, fail. Is that correct? I was joking. So, you know, it's interesting. Why do those brown dwarfs, which are presumably quite old in many cases, still got their rotation, and the sun has lost most of its rotation? And we think it's probably from an effect called magnetic breaking. So the sun has this strong magnetic field, and from that magnetic field, it accelerates ions and particles along those field lines,

and they basically get kind of ejected out of the solar system. And once they kind of leave the heliopause and get really far away from the solar system, they essentially decouple from those field lines, and then they just carry away what's called anglomentum, spin energy, essentially, from the sun. So the sun basically, by throwing stuff

out, I mean, imagine you're on a merry-go-round and you're spinning really fast, and if you start throwing stuff in the opposite direction to your direction of spin, you could slow yourself down. You could slow yourself down. And it's kind of doing the same thing. And so over time, these stars break and slow down, and we can actually even use that effect.

You call it magnetic breaking. Magnetic breaking. Again, another... As opposed to electric boogaloo breaking. Yes. Which is in the Olympics this year. Yes, it is. We have a whole episode on breaking.

Yes, we do. On breakdancing. So this is a cool effect. And yeah, I was going to say Ruth Angus, who's here at the museum as well. There's another museum right here at the Museum of Natural History. Yeah, you guys have the superstars. The Department of Astrophysics.

We got some good people. Good people. And she's been showing that you can use this to age stars. So you can actually use the speed to figure out how old the star is. To age date them. Yeah. Yeah. It's called gyrochronology. Wonderful. Gyrochronology. Yeah. stars so you can actually use the speed to figure out how old the star is age date them yeah yeah yeah it's called gyrochronology wonderful gyrochronology what else you got all right

here we go uh this is zach metti or meet no metti who says uh good morning or afternoon dr tyson uh dr kipping and uh lord nice my name is zach metti from a boring town of Hermitage, PA. Don't diss your own town, man. Because you're from Philly. I'm from Philly. You're from Pennsylvania. Yes. All right.

He says, my question is, since we've upgraded from the Hubble Space Telescope to the James Webb Space Telescope in our orbit, will we eventually upgrade again? If we do, what would be the goal of the new telescope and what would be expected of it for discovery? I like people like that that never rest

on whatever you have. Good for you. I'm on to the next. What have you done for me lately? I'm done with... What's next? I'm done with this. What have you done for me lately? I'm done with... What's next? I'm done with this. What have you done for me lately? What's next, man? And what are we going to expect from the next? I get that.

We always want to see the trailer for the next sequel, right? So this is it. So people are thinking about that really hard right now. And it seems like a lot of people are converging around the idea of some kind of direct imaging mission. So we want to actually take photos of these distant exoplanets. And the leading candidate that people are currently converging on is called the Habitable Worlds

Observatory, HWO. And it may be rebranded. We'll see. I don't really like that name too much at the moment. But it might be rebranded. And the plan is to build something that's about six meters is what the Decadal Survey recommended. This is every 10 years astronomers come together and they all pitch in their ideas and try to converge upon what they think the best ideas are. That's why you rarely see us fighting

with each other about what should get funded. We go through this very elaborate process where our most trusted among us are put in a room and they don't come out until they agree on... The octagon of six astronomers enter. One astronomer leaves. It's the funding thunderdome reality show. Speaking of the decadal surveys,

has the Habitable Worlds Observatory showed up in one of them yet? Yeah, it was the top recommendation in the last decadal survey. In the most recent one. And JWST would have been in previous ones. So they're coming in. And Hubble before that. And Hubble, wow.

A decade or two before the real thing happened. So anyone wants to eavesdrop on what we're thinking, that's how you do it. I kind of like that, though, because you're zooming in with each one. So each iteration is a closer look of what's out there. So it kind of makes sense in terms of the progression. Yeah. And this is, by the way, just what we call the flagship mission. So NASA always has like this one pinnacle.

Flagship means expensive. Yeah. The one with the biggest price tag. Exactly. Just slip that in there. That's so funny. JWST, because it's the infrared and because it was conceived to be able to observe the birth of galaxies, which in the early universe emitted ultraviolet,

but then red shifted to the infrared in today's epic. But the infrared also lets you see inside gas clouds. So JWST is serving early universe astrophysicists as well as looking into gas clouds that are sitting in front of our nose. I ask you, JWST serves many branches of astrophysics, of people who would not otherwise ever be talking to one another in their research projects. Does this next generation flagship mission

also serve people who are studying large-scale universe? Or is it just your people who are studying habitable worlds? I think we'll see, but obviously the primary focus is imaging exoplanets, but that also means it has amazing abilities, for example, to image stuff in the solar system. And it depends whether you call that a separate field,

but planetary scientists and exoplanetary scientists actually tend not to talk to each other too much. On top of that, it will hopefully have ultraviolet capability. So when you go to the ultraviolet, rather than the infrared, that gives you access

to the high-energy universe. Yes, it does. Like ultraviolet rather than infrared, that gives you access to the high energy universe. Yes, it does. Like black holes and stuff. Yeah, good. So I think in that sense it will be... I'm glad to hear that because one of the great things about JWST is because of how many different branches, how many different subfields within astrophysics

it serves. Correct. Yeah. As did Hubble. Yeah. We want this, we want you're going to put a mission of this kind of price tag up there. You want Yeah. As did Hubble. Yeah. We want this, we want, you're going to put a mission of this kind of price tag up there, you want the whole community behind it. So you can't just go

singly on a single billion price tag. But the smaller missions are how much? Oh, maybe a hundred million dollars. Oh my God.

That's something Bezos could actually do himself. Write a lunch check for that. Why are we waiting for a commission? Jeff,

we need some money. That would be nice. And he likes space, by the way. Yeah, exactly. Okay. See, and Scott says, hello, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Nice, Dr. Kipping. Cinnamon from Roseville, California is here. My question is about-

Cinnamon? Cinnamon. Cinnamon? My question is about the luminescence- We had a hamster named Cinnamon. This is a human being named Cinnamon? Okay, fine. Okay, that's fine. Who knows? Maybe this is a human being named cinnamon? Okay, fine. Okay, that's fine.

Who knows? Maybe this is a hamster. This is very smart. I can't get that out of my head. Very smart hamster. Just sitting here and actually the translation is You know, that's the translation. Click the hamster on the computer.

Okay, go. Anyway, my question is about luminous bass blue optical transients, or LFBOTs. Have astronomers, astrophysicists come to the determination as to what they are? Is it a supernova, kilonova, intermediate black hole shredding a star? Also, why do you think that the LFBOTs are so different than others or one particular one, which is AT2002. First of all, it needs a different name. Okay. Yeah, because that sounds like a 90s boy band.

Yeah, that's a- LFBOT, yo, what's up? It's me, Jimmy from LFBOT, girls. I haven't heard of these. Do you know anything about them? I don't know a lot about this particular phenomenon, to be honest. But I think it's another example

similar to this is a fast radio burst where there's these very strange observations which we still don't really have a good explanation for. I think it's just a nice example, I would say, of the fact that there is still a huge amount about the universe that astronomers do not agree about what's really going on.

And that's interesting. That's what's great. Yeah. And every new frontier of observations will bring more of these mysterious things into our awareness.

That's very telling. I like that. Right, right. Yeah. Because you'll see things as you never... You didn't even know. You didn't even know. You didn't even know to know. You didn that. Yeah. You didn't even know. You didn't even know to know. You didn't even know. Undoubtedly new questions too.

That's very cool. Richard Hart says, hello fellow astro explorers. Richard here from Elk Grove, California. My son Kevin Hart. What? I'm sorry. I don't know why that made me laugh. His name is Richard Hart. His son Kevin Hart. What? I'm sorry. I don't know why that made me laugh. His name is Richard Hart.

His son is Kevin. Yeah, why not? My son Kevin Hart wants to know why we're made of star stuff. Okay. What are the elements that are made in stars? My daughter also wants to know, her name is Kyrene, if all moons have a frozen core. And does that mean that they have a frozen heart? Oh, Kyrene, if all moons have a frozen core, and does that mean that they have a frozen heart? Oh, Kyrene.

Kyrene. And the answer is yes, they hate you. No, I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm sorry. I should have done that. Okay, so why are we made of star stuff? Let me preface that.

These cool worlds you're looking for, can I presume that some of the motivation is there might be places where you'd find life? Oh, yeah, for sure. That's one of the main reasons we're interested. Otherwise, it's just an object out there. Okay, so you then care deeply about the ingredients of life. Correct.

And the search for it, yeah. So I would just put it like this. There isn't really that many ways to make heavy metals, heavy what we call metals, heavy atoms inside your body, inside planets. And stars are the main manufacturing method which the universe creates these things. So why we star stuff is because there's basically no other way

to make the stuff in your room and in your body without having the stars. It's all manufactured inside the core of those stars. Ooh. That's so wonderful. But that's a little cop-out-y. Why? Because he's saying,

of course you're made of stars. There's nothing else we could be made out of. I mean, that's an answer, but... It depends what you mean by the why. I mean, that's how I would interpret that question of the why. But if you want to know the how, that's a different question. Maybe that's what you're thinking.

I think that's the disconnect here. I'm howing it, you're whining it. Exactly. Because I was going to say, if all the stuff in the universe is in the star, then that's all we could be made of. But how did that stuff get from stars into us? It's another question. Gotcha.

Because if it all stayed in the star, this would be a boring universe. There's nothing going on. Got it. Very good. And so you care that a boring universe. Right, there's nothing going on. Got it. Very good. And so you care that all those same ingredients are on your cool world. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, what we're hoping is to detect those molecules in exoplanet atmospheres, which will be our first hint of complex chemistry and life potential in those planets.

There you go. We don't know that all moons have a frozen core because we only know about the moons in our own solar system. What about the moons out there in the rest of the universe? And then you've got moons like Io, which are being actively squished and squashed due to the gravity in the tidal field from around Jupiter, exactly.

So it's not obvious that Io would have a frozen core either because of all the tidal deformation that's going on. And we know it certainly has volcanism, so it must have some layer of magma underneath its surface. But would any moon have a frozen core? If it collapsed from something bigger,

doesn't it get hotter in the middle? Yes. So wouldn't everything be... But over time, it'll cool down. It could cool to just being a rock floating and frozen, and that's it. But you're saying most things then would have a warm core, maybe. Ooh.

Maybe. So everything's like a medium rare steak. Right, I'd say so. It's got a warm, warm, maybe. Ooh. Maybe. So everything's like a medium rare steak. Right. I'd say so. It's got a warm pink center. But go far enough into the future and everything will be frozen. Well, they... Oh, oh, right.

Far enough. Thank you for that very bleak album. That's what I'm here for. The world will not end in fire, but in ice. Oh, boy. Chuck, just one more question. Oh. Yeah.

All right. Here we go. He says, just one more question. Oh. Yeah. All right. Here we go. He says, this is Andrew O. Hello, Dr. T, Dr. K, and Chuck. Okay. We just know you're Lord Chuck. Yeah, exactly. Lord Nice.

But I like it. He says, how common is it for planets to have atypical rotations? Do they always occur- Atypical, like not typical? As in not as, right, atypical rotations. Do they always occur- Atypical, like not typical? As in atypical, as in not, right, atypical. Do they always occur due to external forces? And it happened to other astronomical bodies? Have we observed a planet that rotates

in the same odd manner as Uranus, but in the opposite direction. Ooh, maybe they're also referencing the orbit. Right. But there's rotation and revolution. Revolution and rotation. Yeah, revolution and rotation. Right, counter-rotating and counter-revolving.

If they exist, they should be showing up in your data. Yeah, so in terms of the orbit, yes, we can measure that. We can tell if it's going backwards around its star. And there are some cases. We use this effect called the Rostamaglokon effect that essentially looks at the redshift and blueshift of patches of the surface of the star as the planet passes in front of it.

Using this effect, you can actually tell which way the planet is going over the face of the star by looking at those little shifts. So that's pretty cool. And we have seen some planets going backwards. Aren't astral people clever? I got to tell you, man. We got the cleverest people

using just light. And I keep getting blown away by like how much, it's like either, and he can't go out there and manipulate it. No. He can't put it in a Petri dish.

No. He can't just tilt it in another direction. Nope. He's got to sit there and wait for the light. Whatever the data from the light is,

that's it. And you know what kills me is I look at this and I'm like, you people are the most resourceful people ever or you are just making this crap up.

It feels a bit like being Sherlock Holmes is the analogy I like. That's good. We have these clues and we have to think really hard about un-piecing what's going on.

So, you know, with the rotation in terms of orbit, we can get that. The rotation in terms of the actual planet spin, we can't measure that. There's only been measured, I think, for one planet, and that's Beta Pictoris B, and that's a directly imaged planet. And in that case, it looks kind of normal, but that's the only example we have. So, it's actually something we're working really hard

in the future of these new telescopes to try and measure. Beta Pictoris B. So beta is the Greek sequence of the lettered stars. And for many constellations, it's lettered in sequence of brightest to dimmest. So there'd be Alpha

Pictoris and then Beta Pictoris would ostensibly be the second brightest star. So Pictoris is the genitive form of Pictor, which is a painter's easel. That's a constellation, a painter's easel. And then your regular letter, your Roman letter was what? B.

B, lowercase b. Yes. And that's the first planet discovered. The first planet discovered around it. And A you give to the star itself. Okay. And so who's got the most planets out there? That would be the Bob Ross constellation,

which is in front of the Pictoris constellation. I think the record is eight. Trappist-1 is a very famous star system that has seven, sometimes called the seven dwarfs, because they're all such small, rocky planets. Okay. I think there is another star that has eight planets that's been discovered, but that're all such small rocky planets. Okay. They think there is another star that has eight planets

that's been discovered, but that's just what we know of. Okay. So there surely are even more. You know what would make headlines?

If he discovers one that has nine planets, the Pluto people will rise up again. Yeah. We want to keep them tamped down. That's wild.

Let me reflect on this briefly and then we call it quits. All right? So every generation of telescopes, we're trying to answer questions that we've posed. But you know what happens? Those questions and our attempts to answer them take us up to the limits of what that telescope can deliver. And those are the seeds for a next layer of creative thinking about what science can be discovered

and what new tools and technology may be necessary to discover it. At any given moment, we have smart people and great technology trying to figure out how this world works. But there comes a time where the technology can only take you so far. Maybe there are questions you had but remained unanswered because you're awaiting a next generation of technologies to get you there. And maybe you're awaiting more than that. Maybe you're awaiting a next generation of thinkers, students you have trained that will come after you

and carry on questions that you've begun. Or better yet, maybe with new technologies, new science, new ways of thinking, there are questions you will ask that you didn't even know to pose. So, when I think of David Kipping's efforts with the James Webb Space Telescope, there's some questions he couldn't answer with previous technology. He tried, couldn't answer. Now, they're flowing. But what happens next?

He sees things that are at the edge of what this technology can deliver. And now he's looking to the horizon. Is there another kind of telescope that can hone in on these unanswered questions? And maybe that'll take me there. And you step back and you see this exercise and you say, that's how science works. One idea builds on another. One bit of technology surpasses what came before it, one bit of technology surpasses what came before it, enabling you to answer questions you have posed and to pose questions you never thought to ask. I wouldn't have it any other way. That is a cosmic perspective.

Thank you for being on StarTalk, dude. My pleasure. And you're just right up the street. Yeah. You know, if you discover life, you're going to give us a call? Oh, you'll be on the phone. Call me.

You'll be the 27th person we're not letting know. No, it wouldn't be Little Green Men necessarily, but you might discover something in the atmosphere using the JWST data. We want to hear about it

because that'll make headlines and we want to be there right with you. Okay. He wants to put on his own podcast first. Of course. Then he's on his YouTube channel. Right. And then maybe World News. Then he wants to call his mother. He wants to put on his own podcast first. Of course. Then he's on his YouTube channel.

Right. And then maybe World News. Then he wants to call his mother. He's going to call his mother. Tell him about this. Okay. Then call us. Okay.

We'll be fifth to know. All right. This has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries with my friend and colleague, David Kipping, right up there at Columbia University. Ivy League school right here in Manhattan. Yes.

In the middle of the city. Chuck, always good to have you, man. Always a pleasure. All right. This has been Star Talk. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Keep looking.