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Speaker 1: Hey, Jorge, do you think that our culture might be

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Speaker 1: devaluing the word super?

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Speaker 2: I think our culture is sadly devaluing a lot of things.

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Speaker 2: I hadn't really thought about the word super though.

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Speaker 1: You know, you hear it super often. It's kind of

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Speaker 1: like super everywhere, and after a while you super start

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Speaker 1: to not even notice it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess you're right. Are superheroes, super villains, super califragilistic, xpialidoses?

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Speaker 2: It's used a lot.

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Speaker 1: Maybe we should like limit how much we use it

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Speaker 1: before it loses all of its power.

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Speaker 2: Do you think we're gonna run out of words?

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Speaker 1: We're gonna have to go to super duper, super extra duper.

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Speaker 1: It's gonna get exhausting, or we're.

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Speaker 2: Going to go to super conducting super colliders.

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Speaker 1: All right, I admit scientists are guilty of this as well,

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Speaker 1: but that's super duper not my fault.

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Speaker 2: That's not a super excuse.

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Speaker 1: There.

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Speaker 2: I am hooreham May, cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics.

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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor

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Speaker 1: at UC Irvine, and I super duper love science.

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Speaker 2: But what does that mean? I mean you love it

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Speaker 2: in a super way, or you love it a lot.

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Speaker 1: I guess it also means I kind of love super science.

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Speaker 1: I love those projects that are big and grandiose that

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Speaker 1: just put you at awe at what humans can do,

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Speaker 1: what their minds can imagine, and what their hands can build.

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Speaker 2: Well, the problem is you never know who those projects

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Speaker 2: really are. You know, by day they're just mild mannered

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Speaker 2: physics projects, but by night they take off their glasses,

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Speaker 2: they put under cows and become superphysics.

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Speaker 1: So the super conducting super Collider by day was just

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Speaker 1: the normal, everyday conducting collider.

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Speaker 2: And then it had a physics accident. I guess which

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Speaker 2: gave it superpowers. That makes no sense. You superphysics become

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Speaker 2: super heroid.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you just put glasses on your normal, everyday conducting

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Speaker 1: collider and it becomes a super collider.

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Speaker 2: Oh no, no, the glass that makes you every day

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Speaker 2: an every day person.

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Speaker 1: Oh right, right, that's right. Take the glasses off the collider.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the issue, that's right, the fake glasses. We

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Speaker 2: know lenses in them.

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Speaker 1: Well, if we take all the lenses out of the

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Speaker 1: large Hadron collider, I'm not convinced it's going to become

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Speaker 1: a super large Hadron Collider.

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Speaker 2: It's going to be super fun, though. What's going to happen?

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Speaker 2: It's going to leap over tall buildings and or destroy

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Speaker 2: tall buildings.

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Speaker 1: Discover new particles in a single bound.

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Speaker 2: But anyways, welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain

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Speaker 2: the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: In which we delve into the super fascinating mysteries of

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Speaker 1: the universe. How does it all work? Is it possible

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Speaker 1: to make sense of this incredible dizzy and cosmos, all

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Speaker 1: of its wonderful tiny particles and enormous swirling black holes,

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Speaker 1: This incredible project that humans have been on for thousands

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Speaker 1: of years to try to digest this incredible universe and

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Speaker 1: translate it into a story that we can tell ourselves

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Speaker 1: and explain to our children and make sense of.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because it is a pretty super universe, full of

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Speaker 2: amazing demonstrations of power and abilities, and incredible particles and

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Speaker 2: incredible stars and objects out there in space.

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Speaker 1: And we want to understand all of it. Sometimes the

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Speaker 1: answers to deep questions about the universe are right under

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Speaker 1: our feet in the everyday physics that's going on around us.

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Speaker 1: But other times we can find clues to how the

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Speaker 1: universe works from the most dramatic, the most amazing, the

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Speaker 1: most explosive situations out there.

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Speaker 2: I fail. You're trying to find out what the real

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Speaker 2: identity of the universe is. So do you think the

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Speaker 2: universe wants its privacy, it's trying to protect its secrets.

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Speaker 1: I do not believe in the privacy of the universe. Basically,

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Speaker 1: physics is trying to unveil or undress the universe.

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Speaker 2: Boy, you make it's some kind of RACYO super racy.

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Speaker 1: Depends what's underneath that veil. I suppose if it's just equations,

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Speaker 1: then it's very safe for work.

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Speaker 2: It sounds like work. Actually that crazy at all.

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Speaker 1: Actually, that's literally my job is to try to reveal

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Speaker 1: the safer work equations that underpin the whole workings of

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Speaker 1: the universe. Everything that's happening out there, we imagine can

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Speaker 1: be described with mathematical formula and scientific thinking, or at

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Speaker 1: least so far that's always worked.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because there is a lot to discover and a

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Speaker 2: lot that we have seen about the universe out there.

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Speaker 2: There are a lot of bright things out there for

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Speaker 2: us to see and to study and to kind of

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Speaker 2: parse the light to figure out what's going on out there.

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Speaker 1: And we'd like to understand the whole universe, not just

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Speaker 1: the part that's here under our feet, also the things

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Speaker 1: that are very far out there in space. But those

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Speaker 1: things present a special challenge, of course, because they're not

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Speaker 1: right here for us to study. Instead, all we can

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Speaker 1: do is examine the messages that they send us, the

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Speaker 1: particles that be in clues to us from those distant objects.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and thank goodness that they are sending a signals

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Speaker 2: through light, because otherwise we'd be living in a dark

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Speaker 2: universe and have no idea what's going on out there

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Speaker 2: beyond our Solar system.

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Speaker 1: And in fact, we are probably living in a dark universe.

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Speaker 1: Most of the stuff that's out there in the universe

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Speaker 1: isn't sending us photons or any other kind of particles

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Speaker 1: to give us clues about what it is and what

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Speaker 1: it's doing. The dark matter that's out there holding galaxies

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Speaker 1: together is stubbornly invisible to all of our senses and

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Speaker 1: all of our telescopes is sending us messages, and those

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Speaker 1: are not very subtle. It is screaming messages at us.

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Speaker 1: It is blinding us with the incredible power of the

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Speaker 1: photons that it creates.

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Speaker 2: You make it sound like the universe is not a superhero,

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Speaker 2: but maybe it's a super villain.

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Speaker 1: Mm exactly. Maybe that's why it's evading our ability to

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Speaker 1: understand it so far.

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Speaker 2: It's a dark universe. It's a dark superuniverse.

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Speaker 1: Well, you know, the story of science would be a

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Speaker 1: lot more boring if the universe was more helpful. If

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Speaker 1: it was just like, all right, look, humans, sit down

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Speaker 1: for an hour. I'm gonna explain all this to you,

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Speaker 1: then we would have been done thousands of years ago.

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Speaker 2: Right, that sounds like a great story. I would be like,

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Speaker 2: what why say universe being helpful? That's going on?

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Speaker 1: It's a much more interesting story when there are twists

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Speaker 1: and turns in dramatic revelations like a thousand years in Right,

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Speaker 1: We're like on season five thousand of Science and we

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Speaker 1: are still discovering incredible plot twists. Right, So, like no

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Speaker 1: writer's room could have invented that.

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Speaker 2: It's like a new genre of Netflix shows. P dramas,

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Speaker 2: not K dramas or T dramas. It's physics dramas.

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Speaker 1: The universe is the greatest story ever told, But.

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Speaker 2: There are a lot of interesting signals coming to us

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Speaker 2: from the universe out there. As you said, some of

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Speaker 2: them are really bright. Some of them are super bright.

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Speaker 1: And you know about stars and galaxies and black holes

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Speaker 1: and even very bright events like supernova. But there are

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Speaker 1: some things in the universe that are even brighter than

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Speaker 1: your typical supernova. So today on the podcast, we'll be

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Speaker 1: tackling the question what is a super luminous supernova. I'm

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Speaker 1: guessing it's super but is it super duper only when

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Speaker 1: it takes off its glasses? But this is what I

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Speaker 1: was wondering about, Like, this thing has two supers in

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Speaker 1: its name. It's not just a luminous nova. It's not

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Speaker 1: just a luminous supernova. It's not a super luminous nova.

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Speaker 1: It's a super luminous supernova. Oh my gosh.

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Speaker 2: It's almost like you're making things up as you go along,

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Speaker 2: like a three year old.

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Speaker 1: Almost like we need somebody to tell us how to

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Speaker 1: organize the naming of things in the universe.

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Speaker 2: It's almost like physicis nitith thesaurus perhaps to look up

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Speaker 2: synonyms for super I mean, I think there are a

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Speaker 2: couple out there that you could have used that basically

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Speaker 2: say the same thing.

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Speaker 1: Mmmm, the super luminous extra nova, the hyper luminous supernova,

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Speaker 1: those kind of things.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the uber luminous supernova, the extremely luminous sounds like

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Speaker 2: you need a superhero called mister Thesaurus to rescue the

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Speaker 2: day at the university there.

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Speaker 1: The super thesaurus supernova.

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Speaker 2: You're right. It is sort of like like there was

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Speaker 2: a nova, and then there was a supernova, and then

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Speaker 2: there was a luminous supernova, and then they found something

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Speaker 2: even brighter. I'm guessing that they had to call a

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Speaker 2: superluminous supernovas.

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Speaker 1: Where are they going to go next? Right? The double

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Speaker 1: superluminous supernova.

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Speaker 2: Well, I guess you would have to find some other

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Speaker 2: property of it, like maybe size, like supersize superluminous supernova.

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Speaker 1: That sounds like you're ordering a second helping of fries,

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Speaker 1: you know, Can I supersize my supernova? Please?

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Speaker 3: No?

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Speaker 2: Can I supersize my superluminous supernova? They're like, what do

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Speaker 2: you think this is? Burger king? Get out of here.

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Speaker 1: Only two supers per order, please, sir.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm guessing it is like an upgraded supernova.

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Speaker 2: That's what I'm guessing what it is.

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Speaker 1: It is something like that, and yet it contains deep

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Speaker 1: mysteries that we do not yet understand well.

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Speaker 2: As usual, we were wondering how many people out there

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Speaker 2: had thought about what a superluminous supernova is or have

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Speaker 2: any idea what it is.

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Speaker 1: So thanks very much to everybody who answers these questions

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Speaker 1: for our fun segment of the podcast, which used to

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Speaker 1: be Person on the Street and is now a random

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Speaker 1: person on the Internet. If you are a person on

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Speaker 1: the Internet and you would like to participate in the future,

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Speaker 1: please write to me too, question at Danielandjorge dot com.

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Speaker 2: So think about it for a second. What do you

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Speaker 2: think is a superluminous supernova? He would beeple had to say.

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Speaker 4: My best guess would be that it's a supernova that,

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Speaker 4: for some reason, perhaps do to excess energy input or

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Speaker 4: some initial conditions that are extraordinary, produces way more electromagnetic

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Speaker 4: radiation than a normal supernova.

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Speaker 3: A super luminous supernova is probably a supernova that is

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Speaker 3: extremely bright past the normal brightness that a supernova has.

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Speaker 3: That would mean it would be an extremely bright supernova

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Speaker 3: because the regular ones are already pretty bright.

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Speaker 5: Superluminous supernova must be a supernova that just has high

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Speaker 5: visual magnitude. Super super bright. Maybe we use it to

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Speaker 5: measure distances.

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Speaker 1: Well. The name seems to suggest that it's a supernova

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Speaker 1: that emits more radiation than a regular super nova. Why

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Speaker 1: that might be the case, I have no idea.

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Speaker 6: I guess a super illuminous super and iva is in

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Speaker 6: the name and that it's extra bright. But I thought

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Speaker 6: a supernova I would say standard candle that people judge

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Speaker 6: distances by. So maybe I'm being too simplistic.

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Speaker 2: I think it's super illuminous supernova would be a supernova

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Speaker 2: brighter than usual.

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Speaker 1: Supernova's probably connected to the mouse.

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Speaker 2: All right, I like the person who said it's in

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Speaker 2: the name.

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Speaker 1: You might almost say it's well named because it's communicated

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Speaker 1: effectively what it is.

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Speaker 2: I'm sure it's well named and that it communicates what

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Speaker 2: it is. But you know, sometimes thesaurus comes in handy.

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Speaker 2: For example, the same person said it means it extra bright.

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Speaker 2: You could have just called it an extra bright supernova

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Speaker 2: and then it wouldn't sound so sinsy.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, it makes it sound more hollywoody. Maybe

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Speaker 1: that's what they were going for, a.

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Speaker 2: Little bit of glam super luminous supernova.

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Speaker 1: Hmmm, it does have a certain ring to it.

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Speaker 2: Well, step us through this interesting thing coming on, and

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Speaker 2: let's start with the beginning. What is a supernova? Is

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Speaker 2: it like a Noah that's super.

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Speaker 1: It's like a nova that took off it's glasses.

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Speaker 2: It's like a nova that's not an older Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Actually the name comes from Kikobraje who wrote this book

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Speaker 1: De Nova Stella, from which the word nova comes from

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Speaker 1: nova there and means new as a new star because

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Speaker 1: an observation of the changes in the sky. And so

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Speaker 1: the supernova are one of these really cool astronomical objects

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Speaker 1: because they happen sort of on human time scales. I mean,

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Speaker 1: we're used to thinking about like stars forming and burning

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Speaker 1: over millions and billions of years, and galaxies swarming for

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Speaker 1: billions of years in the universe expanding over billions of years.

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Speaker 1: Everything sort of happens on these really long time scales

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Speaker 1: that we don't get to watch. We just have to

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Speaker 1: like imagine and fast forward or in reverse. But supernova

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Speaker 1: are really awesome because they're dramatic and they happen on

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Speaker 1: human timescales, Like you can see this thing appear in

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Speaker 1: the sky and then burn for a few weeks or

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Speaker 1: months and then fade out. So the sky changes at

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Speaker 1: a rate that we can actually see, which is why

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Speaker 1: supernova are some of the oldest astronomical observations that we have.

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Speaker 1: People have been seeing them and wondering what they were

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Speaker 1: for literally thousands of years. And now we know, of

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Speaker 1: course that supernova represent the endpoint of certain kinds of stars.

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Speaker 1: Most stars don't end this way, but some stars end

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Speaker 1: with this very dramatic collapse, this implosion, which then leads

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Speaker 1: to very dramatic explosion and a huge release of energy.

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Speaker 2: Wait, so you're saying it's the end point of a star,

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Speaker 2: like the death of a star, and yet it's called

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Speaker 2: the super nova, like a super new Well.

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Speaker 1: It gets a little bit into what you mean by

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Speaker 1: a star. But yeah, you have stars which are born

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Speaker 1: and then burned and have fusion going on at their core,

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Speaker 1: and there's this usual struggle between gravity that's compressing it

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Speaker 1: and trying to make it more and more dense, and

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Speaker 1: the fusion and the radiation that's puffing it out and

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Speaker 1: keeping it from collapsing. But in the case of some supernova,

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Speaker 1: eventually gravity wins, and we can walk through some of

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Speaker 1: the mechanism for this, and you get this collapse where

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Speaker 1: this shock wave propagates in very very fast crushes the

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Speaker 1: star and then burns all of its fuel very very

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Speaker 1: quickly and explodes. And so in a sense, that's the

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Speaker 1: end point of the star and the birth of something

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Speaker 1: new because you no longer have fusion happening.

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Speaker 2: It sounds like a very political answer there.

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Speaker 1: Well, you know, every death leads to a rebirth of

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Speaker 1: some kind.

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Speaker 2: All right, Well, it's like you said it, and it

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Speaker 2: all starts with the collapse of a star. I think

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Speaker 2: that's something that a lot of people don't know. Like,

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Speaker 2: you know, we usually say a supernowa is the explosion

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Speaker 2: of a star, But before the star explodes, it actually collapses, right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And there's two ways that this can happen. The

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Speaker 1: sort of classic way that we call core collapse is

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Speaker 1: basically the end point of your standard solar fusion. You know,

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Speaker 1: when a star starts out, it's mostly hydrogen. Sometimes it's

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Speaker 1: a little bit of metal leftover from previous star burning.

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Speaker 1: But you know, in the early universe it was all hydrogen.

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Speaker 1: That hydrogen gas clumps together and falls together because of gravity,

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Speaker 1: pushes it together, squeezes it together, gets it hot enough

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Speaker 1: to have fusion, and then that fusion makes heavier stuff

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Speaker 1: turns hydrogen into helium, and then helium into carbon, and

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Speaker 1: carbon into oxygen and nitrogen and silicon. You get heavier

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Speaker 1: and heavier stuff, until eventually it's made stuff that's so heavy,

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Speaker 1: so massive that the gravity from its inner ashes, the

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Speaker 1: product of its fusion, causes it to collapse. It can

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Speaker 1: no longer hold off gravity, and so gravity eventually overcomes

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Speaker 1: the outward pressure from fusion and the star collapses.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. It's almost sort of like a phase transition, right,

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Speaker 2: Like all of a sudden, the molecules inside of the

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Speaker 2: Sun can't take the pressure, so they sort of collapse

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Speaker 2: into a different arrangement, right, Like they're maybe staying apart

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Speaker 2: from each other or staying at a certain density because

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Speaker 2: of some forces. But then at some point those verses

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Speaker 2: get overcome and the whole thing just kind of rearranges

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Speaker 2: into a more compact form, right, something like that happens.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's very sudden. Right. Once it falls over

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Speaker 1: the threshold is a runaway effect because gravit squeezes it

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Speaker 1: and you get this shockwave inwards towards the core, which

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Speaker 1: then bounces back out right. Because when the shockwave happens,

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Speaker 1: now you've compressed the core. It's super duper high temperature,

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Speaker 1: and now very quickly it does kinds of fusion that

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Speaker 1: couldn't do before. It didn't used to be hot enough

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Speaker 1: to make the heaviest of metals. But now in those

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Speaker 1: brief moments during that shockwave, the conditions are right to

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Speaker 1: make some of the really heavy metals, the ones you

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Speaker 1: don't get during normal burning of the star. And then

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Speaker 1: that fusion creates an incredible amount of radiation. So now

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Speaker 1: the radiation wins. So it's sort of like a tug

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Speaker 1: of war where it was balanced and then gravity starts

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Speaker 1: to win. But then that creates the conditions for the

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Speaker 1: pressure to take over again, and gravity loses and the

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Speaker 1: star explodes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's sort of like a building collapsing. But then

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Speaker 2: once the building collapses, that pressure of all that stuff

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Speaker 2: being crushed together somehow unleashes other kinds of energy, right,

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Speaker 2: and then the whole thing explodes. What's being unleashed is

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Speaker 2: basically fusion energy, right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, what's being unleashed there is fusion energy exactly off

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Speaker 1: and in kinds of fusion that you can't get during

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Speaker 1: normal burning. And so that's one way that the universe

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Speaker 1: makes super duper heavy metals like gold or uranium. Other

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Speaker 1: methods are like collisions of neutron stars or other kinds

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Speaker 1: of shock waves. It's very very hard to make those

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Speaker 1: heavy elements because they require energy rather than producing it.

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Speaker 2: That's kind of why they say some of these heavy

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Speaker 2: elements like gold and some of the more complex elements

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Speaker 2: are made in the heart of a dying star.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and so that's method number one. Basically for

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Speaker 1: supernovas to form, it's actually called a type two supernova.

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Speaker 1: This core collapse the other way similar, but it happens

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Speaker 1: via a different path. Like you start out with a

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Speaker 1: star that doesn't naturally have core collapse. It burns, it

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Speaker 1: becomes a red giant as it puffs out and the hydrogen,

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Speaker 1: helium and its atmosphere start to burn, a really big star.

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Speaker 1: But then it doesn't turn into a supernova. Instead, it

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Speaker 1: turns into a white dwarf, which is basically just leaving

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Speaker 1: the hot core of the star, the metals that form

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Speaker 1: during the initial burning. Everything else puffs out and the

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Speaker 1: hot is left behind this white dwarf, And normally that

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Speaker 1: white dwarf would just hang out for a long time

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Speaker 1: and eventually over maybe like trillions of years would cool

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Speaker 1: into a black dwarf. But if somebody comes along, like

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Speaker 1: another star that's nearby, or it's part of a binary

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Speaker 1: star system, it can eat a little bit more of

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Speaker 1: that other star, which pushes it over the threshold for

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Speaker 1: gravity to win and to cause a supernova. So it's

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Speaker 1: sort of like a second act for this star. It

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Speaker 1: gets enough fuel to cause this collapse and this supernova

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Speaker 1: sort of later in the game.

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Speaker 2: Right, that happens in like binary star systems, right, like

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Speaker 2: a star system with two sons in them. But I

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Speaker 2: guess my question is why do you need that extra step,

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Speaker 2: Like why does it need to go in this particular way?

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Speaker 2: Like why does one need to go into a white dwarf?

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Speaker 2: And then the own has to get sucked in? What

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Speaker 2: happens If the Sun's merged before that happens, would they

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Speaker 2: still go supernova?

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Speaker 1: If they merged before that happened, then they probably have

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Speaker 1: enough mass. It's all about having enough mass. If you

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Speaker 1: were big enough to begin with, then probably you would

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Speaker 1: have ended up in a supernova. If you weren't big

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Speaker 1: enough to begin with, if you were sort of a

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Speaker 1: smaller star like our star, you just would have ended

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Speaker 1: up with a white dwarf. And really it's all about

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Speaker 1: the mass, because having more mass means having more gravity.

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Speaker 1: Having less mass means having less gravity and not having

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Speaker 1: enough force to overcome the structure of the star. I mean,

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Speaker 1: to have this sort of collapse to have gravity trigger

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Speaker 1: the supernova, you need enough gravity and resisting that is

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Speaker 1: the structure of the star. A white dwarf has chemical

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Speaker 1: bonds that are pushing out against this gravitational collapse. It's

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Speaker 1: already a very dense object, but it's able to withstand

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Speaker 1: the gravitational pressure. So you need an extra scoop, an

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Speaker 1: extra helping of gravity to come over that threshold.

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Speaker 2: I see. So it's really kind of mostly about just

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Speaker 2: how much mass is out there or in that neighborhood.

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Speaker 1: And type two supernova means you had enough mass originally

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Speaker 1: to go supernova. Type one means you didn't and then

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Speaker 1: you got an extra serving later which brought you over

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Speaker 1: that threshold.

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Speaker 2: Now, is it the case that any star that's bigger

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Speaker 2: than this threshold is going to go supernova? Or at

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Speaker 2: some point to do stars get too big to go supernova?

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Speaker 1: Stars never get too big to go supernova. Basically, anything

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Speaker 1: that's over like eight times the mass of the Sun

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Speaker 1: is going to go red super giant and then type

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Speaker 1: two supernova. Absolutely, there's really no way around that. That's

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Speaker 1: just the fate of all these stars. But those stars

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Speaker 1: are pretty rare, Like most of the stars in the

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Speaker 1: universe are not that big. Even our star, which of

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Speaker 1: course has one solar mass, is an unusually large and

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Speaker 1: bright star in the universe. Most of the stars in

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Speaker 1: the universe are smaller and cooler than our star. They

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Speaker 1: are red dwarfs. So the number of stars in the

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Speaker 1: universe that will go supernova is a small fraction. It's

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Speaker 1: like a rare thing to happen.

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Speaker 2: How rare is it? Like, is it super rare or

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Speaker 2: just mild mannered rare.

404
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Speaker 1: It's not something we know very accurately because we don't

405
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Speaker 1: understand this initial mass function in the universe, the thing

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Speaker 1: that determines like how much mass the stars get. But

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Speaker 1: some calculations estimate it's like a few in a million stars.

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Speaker 1: So you have a population of like a million stars,

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Speaker 1: four or five of them might go supernova.

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Speaker 2: Oh, only four, four or five are bigger than eight

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Speaker 2: solar masses exactly.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really very dramatically dominated by the lower mass stars.

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Speaker 2: And also I resented you said most stars are cooler

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Speaker 2: than our son. I think our son is pretty cool.

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Speaker 1: I think our son's pretty hot.

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Speaker 2: Actually exactly, yeah, right, is.

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Speaker 1: Our son hot or not? Yes, it's definitely hot.

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Speaker 2: The answer is yes.

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Speaker 1: That's a safer work answer.

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Speaker 2: All right, Well, that's a super nova, and so let's

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Speaker 2: dig into why they're hard to study, how we have

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Speaker 2: studied them in the past, and then finally, what exactly

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Speaker 2: is a super luminous supernova? So super stay with us,

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Speaker 2: we'll be right back. All right, we're talking about superluminous

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Speaker 2: supernova in a super way.

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Speaker 1: And even a normal, non super luminous supernova is super nuper.

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Speaker 1: It can be hard to appreciate, like how dramatic these

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Speaker 1: events are, but a single supernova when it goes, can

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Speaker 1: be brighter than the rest of the galaxy that it's in.

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Speaker 1: These galaxies contain, you know, often hundreds of billions of stars.

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Speaker 1: Now you have a single object brighter than hundreds of

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Speaker 1: billions of stars. It's really an incredible event. And we're

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Speaker 1: just talking about your ordinary garden variety supernova.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I know we've mentioned that before. Like when a

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Speaker 2: star goes supernova's brighter than the galaxy. And but that

436
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Speaker 2: sounds kind of crazy, like what does that mean. It

437
00:21:33,560 --> 00:21:36,840
Speaker 2: means that it's outputting more light than all of the stars,

438
00:21:37,080 --> 00:21:39,720
Speaker 2: the hundreds of billions of stars in that galaxy in

439
00:21:39,840 --> 00:21:40,320
Speaker 2: that moment.

440
00:21:40,520 --> 00:21:43,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly what it means, and that's why we

441
00:21:43,240 --> 00:21:45,520
Speaker 1: can see them. Right, Most of the supernova we have

442
00:21:45,640 --> 00:21:48,560
Speaker 1: seen are in other galaxies. The Milky Way is kind

443
00:21:48,560 --> 00:21:51,520
Speaker 1: of weirdly quiet in supernova. We haven't seen one in

444
00:21:51,600 --> 00:21:55,440
Speaker 1: our galaxy in several centuries. So most of the supernova

445
00:21:55,520 --> 00:21:57,680
Speaker 1: that we have seen are in other galaxies, and we

446
00:21:57,720 --> 00:22:00,720
Speaker 1: can see them because they are brighter then the entire

447
00:22:00,880 --> 00:22:02,240
Speaker 1: galaxy that they're in.

448
00:22:02,600 --> 00:22:04,520
Speaker 2: Wait, you said that we haven't seen one in the

449
00:22:05,040 --> 00:22:07,440
Speaker 2: Milky Way, but so we have seen super nova that

450
00:22:07,560 --> 00:22:08,800
Speaker 2: have come from the Milky Way.

451
00:22:08,920 --> 00:22:11,200
Speaker 1: We have seen supernova in the Milky Way. But the

452
00:22:11,280 --> 00:22:15,880
Speaker 1: last person to do it was Kepler, like sixteen oh four, Kepler,

453
00:22:16,119 --> 00:22:18,680
Speaker 1: he's got like the last paper on supernova's in the

454
00:22:18,720 --> 00:22:21,280
Speaker 1: Milky Way. We haven't seen one from our own galaxy

455
00:22:21,600 --> 00:22:23,080
Speaker 1: in four hundred years.

456
00:22:23,280 --> 00:22:25,480
Speaker 2: But how did Kepler knowa was within our galaxy?

457
00:22:25,680 --> 00:22:27,760
Speaker 1: Well, Kepler didn't really know because He didn't really understand

458
00:22:27,760 --> 00:22:29,600
Speaker 1: the idea of galaxies. We didn't even know like that

459
00:22:29,680 --> 00:22:32,040
Speaker 1: there were other galaxies back then. But we can now

460
00:22:32,160 --> 00:22:34,440
Speaker 1: look at the thing he was studying, and we understand

461
00:22:34,720 --> 00:22:36,440
Speaker 1: what he was looking at, and we know that it's

462
00:22:36,520 --> 00:22:37,440
Speaker 1: in our galaxy.

463
00:22:38,160 --> 00:22:40,280
Speaker 2: How do we know what he was looking at? Did

464
00:22:40,359 --> 00:22:41,239
Speaker 2: he leave like a star map?

465
00:22:41,520 --> 00:22:44,320
Speaker 1: Kepler was pretty good at taking records. That's why he

466
00:22:44,600 --> 00:22:47,240
Speaker 1: and Tiko Brahe were one of the first ones to

467
00:22:47,520 --> 00:22:51,600
Speaker 1: really understand stellar motion and planetary motion. They were pretty

468
00:22:51,680 --> 00:22:52,359
Speaker 1: nerdy about it.

469
00:22:52,720 --> 00:22:55,080
Speaker 2: M So, I guess, how do we know he looked

470
00:22:55,119 --> 00:22:57,560
Speaker 2: at one in our milk way? Because it brightness or what?

471
00:22:57,800 --> 00:22:59,720
Speaker 1: Again? We know which object he was looking at. He

472
00:22:59,760 --> 00:23:01,760
Speaker 1: told us where it was in the sky. He has

473
00:23:01,840 --> 00:23:05,240
Speaker 1: pretty detailed records of what he was looking at, so

474
00:23:05,359 --> 00:23:08,160
Speaker 1: we can now look at that object like, what was that? Oh, look,

475
00:23:08,160 --> 00:23:09,600
Speaker 1: it's a remnant from a supernova.

476
00:23:10,040 --> 00:23:11,919
Speaker 2: Oh, we can see the remnant of it now.

477
00:23:12,160 --> 00:23:14,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's actually really valuable because we'd love to

478
00:23:14,800 --> 00:23:18,080
Speaker 1: study these things over many centuries or many thousands of

479
00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:21,000
Speaker 1: years to understand like what happens after supernova? How does

480
00:23:21,040 --> 00:23:23,160
Speaker 1: the cloud disperse? It gives you a lot of clues

481
00:23:23,160 --> 00:23:25,480
Speaker 1: about what was going on inside of it, something we

482
00:23:25,560 --> 00:23:29,240
Speaker 1: still don't really understand. So studying something hundreds of years

483
00:23:29,320 --> 00:23:33,120
Speaker 1: later is really valuable. And so having like ancient astronomical

484
00:23:33,240 --> 00:23:35,600
Speaker 1: records that say, oh, there was a supernova here five

485
00:23:35,720 --> 00:23:39,320
Speaker 1: hundred years ago or two thousand years ago is actually

486
00:23:39,480 --> 00:23:42,119
Speaker 1: really relevant and powerful to astronomy today.

487
00:23:42,320 --> 00:23:44,320
Speaker 2: Now, if a supernova has as much energy as the

488
00:23:44,400 --> 00:23:47,760
Speaker 2: whole galaxy, wouldn't that just fry everything in the galaxy

489
00:23:47,920 --> 00:23:50,600
Speaker 2: or at least in like the half of the galaxy

490
00:23:50,680 --> 00:23:50,960
Speaker 2: it's in.

491
00:23:51,320 --> 00:23:55,760
Speaker 1: Yes, supernova are very dangerous and very damaging potentially to life.

492
00:23:56,280 --> 00:23:58,000
Speaker 1: So we should be glad that there haven't been like

493
00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:00,840
Speaker 1: a whole rash of supernova in our neighborhood, because we

494
00:24:00,960 --> 00:24:04,479
Speaker 1: might not be. Here's an enormous amount of radiation released

495
00:24:04,520 --> 00:24:07,560
Speaker 1: in supernova, and it's very dramatic in the visible spectrum

496
00:24:07,720 --> 00:24:10,760
Speaker 1: and the high energy photons like gamma rays, et cetera,

497
00:24:10,800 --> 00:24:13,720
Speaker 1: which would be extraordinarily damaging to life on Earth. It

498
00:24:13,840 --> 00:24:16,960
Speaker 1: turns out, though, actually most of the energy from a

499
00:24:17,040 --> 00:24:21,080
Speaker 1: supernova isn't even in the visible light, like they're already

500
00:24:21,200 --> 00:24:23,480
Speaker 1: as bright as the rest of the galaxy. But that's

501
00:24:23,680 --> 00:24:27,240
Speaker 1: one percent of the energy released by the supernova, most

502
00:24:27,320 --> 00:24:29,399
Speaker 1: of it is actually released in new trinos.

503
00:24:29,760 --> 00:24:32,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing. I think we've talked about that before.

504
00:24:32,640 --> 00:24:35,200
Speaker 2: But why neutrinos, Like, why would it put all of

505
00:24:35,320 --> 00:24:38,040
Speaker 2: its energy into something that can barely be felt.

506
00:24:39,520 --> 00:24:41,520
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think there's like a committee there deciding,

507
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:44,639
Speaker 1: like how much do we budget in neutrinos versus photons.

508
00:24:44,960 --> 00:24:47,280
Speaker 1: It's just sort of what the physics does. And for

509
00:24:47,359 --> 00:24:50,360
Speaker 1: a long time we didn't understand how important neutrinos were

510
00:24:50,520 --> 00:24:53,080
Speaker 1: because it feels like they're sort of irrelevant. Once energy

511
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:56,600
Speaker 1: turns into neutrinos, it feels like it can't really participate

512
00:24:56,640 --> 00:24:59,640
Speaker 1: in physics anymore because most of the universe ignores neutrinos.

513
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:03,160
Speaker 1: Neutrinos are these particles that only feel the weak interaction,

514
00:25:03,680 --> 00:25:06,159
Speaker 1: and they can fly through like a light year of

515
00:25:06,359 --> 00:25:09,440
Speaker 1: lead without interacting with anything. So people thought for a

516
00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:11,879
Speaker 1: long time, well, if you're dumping the energy into neutrinos,

517
00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:15,880
Speaker 1: that's basically just lost. But more recent simulations of supernovas

518
00:25:16,080 --> 00:25:19,359
Speaker 1: have discovered that those neutrinos actually do interact with the

519
00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:21,960
Speaker 1: rest of the material. Rest of the material that's collapsing

520
00:25:22,080 --> 00:25:25,000
Speaker 1: is so dense that it actually can absorb some of

521
00:25:25,080 --> 00:25:28,879
Speaker 1: that heat back from neutrinos. So there's an amazing effect

522
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:32,800
Speaker 1: in supernova's called neutrino heating, where the neutrinos from the

523
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:36,159
Speaker 1: supernova actually reheat the material. And if you don't have

524
00:25:36,320 --> 00:25:39,680
Speaker 1: this effect, then the explosion doesn't happen. So why is

525
00:25:39,720 --> 00:25:41,440
Speaker 1: it produced. It's just because in fusion you get a

526
00:25:41,440 --> 00:25:43,639
Speaker 1: lot of these nuclear processes. A lot of them just

527
00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:46,880
Speaker 1: result in photons and neutrinos, but it turns out those

528
00:25:46,920 --> 00:25:49,720
Speaker 1: neutrinos are really important for making the explosion happen.

529
00:25:49,880 --> 00:25:52,879
Speaker 2: But somehow they're like the main product of whatever's happening

530
00:25:53,080 --> 00:25:54,720
Speaker 2: in the supernova.

531
00:25:54,840 --> 00:25:57,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not just supernovas, right, Stars in their

532
00:25:57,320 --> 00:26:01,240
Speaker 1: normal course of business produce an enormal number of neutrinos.

533
00:26:01,800 --> 00:26:05,960
Speaker 1: Like here on Earth there's one hundred billion neutrinos per

534
00:26:06,080 --> 00:26:09,720
Speaker 1: square centimeter per second. Like you hold your hands out

535
00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:14,879
Speaker 1: and there's a trillion neutrinos going through your fingernails every second.

536
00:26:15,280 --> 00:26:17,320
Speaker 1: And we're really far away from the Sun, right, So

537
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:21,280
Speaker 1: imagine like how many neutrinos are produced in the Sun itself,

538
00:26:21,880 --> 00:26:25,360
Speaker 1: And now supernova's produce like ten to the fifty eight

539
00:26:25,680 --> 00:26:30,160
Speaker 1: neutrinos during their supernova explosion. So it's really an incredible

540
00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:33,800
Speaker 1: amount of energy in neutrinos. So, yeah, supernovas are super

541
00:26:33,880 --> 00:26:36,359
Speaker 1: duper bright and luminous, and that's a tiny fraction of

542
00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:39,560
Speaker 1: the sort of true brightness of these incredible events.

543
00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:42,080
Speaker 2: It's almost like it's a good thing it's making so

544
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:44,000
Speaker 2: many neutrinos. But it's a good thing it's putting all

545
00:26:44,040 --> 00:26:46,520
Speaker 2: its energy into neutrinos, because if it put it into

546
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:49,920
Speaker 2: something that we would feel like every galaxy everywhere would

547
00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:50,880
Speaker 2: be toast all the time.

548
00:26:50,960 --> 00:26:54,320
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. We're lucky that they're

549
00:26:54,359 --> 00:26:57,480
Speaker 1: exploding in this sort of safe way. And even still,

550
00:26:57,640 --> 00:27:00,480
Speaker 1: they're very dangerous. If there were a super nova in

551
00:27:00,560 --> 00:27:03,760
Speaker 1: our backyard, it would fry half of the Earth, or

552
00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:05,760
Speaker 1: if it lasted long enough for the Earth to rotate,

553
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:07,640
Speaker 1: who basically fry the whole Earth.

554
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:10,040
Speaker 2: How far would a supernova need to be to be

555
00:27:10,040 --> 00:27:11,280
Speaker 2: at a safe distance from us.

556
00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:13,320
Speaker 1: That's a good question, and it depends a little bit

557
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:17,040
Speaker 1: on the brightness of the supernova. The type one supernova's

558
00:27:17,359 --> 00:27:19,240
Speaker 1: the ones that start with binary stars there are st

559
00:27:19,400 --> 00:27:23,160
Speaker 1: like ten times brighter than the core collapse supernovas because

560
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:25,520
Speaker 1: they're more dramatic, So it depends a little bit on

561
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:28,440
Speaker 1: the type. Anything in our stellar neighborhood at all would

562
00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:30,680
Speaker 1: really fry us. So supernova's on the other side of

563
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:33,240
Speaker 1: the galaxy, no big deals. Supernova's on our side of

564
00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:35,200
Speaker 1: the galaxy, you start to get a little bit nervous.

565
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:39,080
Speaker 1: Supernova's within a few tens of light years, we're toasted.

566
00:27:39,160 --> 00:27:40,840
Speaker 2: Okay, so we're sort of safe. But I feel like

567
00:27:40,920 --> 00:27:43,560
Speaker 2: you said that supernovas happen like a few every couple

568
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:46,760
Speaker 2: of million stars, and the milk Away has several hundred

569
00:27:46,840 --> 00:27:49,880
Speaker 2: billion stars, right, so there should be, you know, thousands

570
00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:52,760
Speaker 2: and thousands of them sprinkled all over the Milky Way

571
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:54,080
Speaker 2: potentially about to go off.

572
00:27:54,400 --> 00:27:56,399
Speaker 1: There should be, and we don't understand it. And we

573
00:27:56,480 --> 00:27:59,119
Speaker 1: did a whole podcast episode about the mystery of the

574
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:03,080
Speaker 1: missing Milky Way supernova. Go check that out. It's a

575
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:06,280
Speaker 1: really fun question about whether supernova's are happening in our

576
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:09,239
Speaker 1: galaxy but we can't see them because they're obscured by

577
00:28:09,280 --> 00:28:12,040
Speaker 1: the center of the galaxy, or maybe there's something weird

578
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:15,320
Speaker 1: about our galaxy. Also, the supernova that had happened in

579
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:18,200
Speaker 1: the Milky way tend to be sort of weirdly distributed.

580
00:28:18,240 --> 00:28:20,200
Speaker 1: They're not really in the place where most of the

581
00:28:20,320 --> 00:28:23,800
Speaker 1: stars are, and so there's a lot of mysteries about

582
00:28:23,840 --> 00:28:26,320
Speaker 1: why we haven't had more supernova in our galaxy. Check

583
00:28:26,359 --> 00:28:27,120
Speaker 1: out that episode.

584
00:28:27,359 --> 00:28:30,840
Speaker 2: Maybe it was Superman who pushed all those supernova away,

585
00:28:31,880 --> 00:28:34,000
Speaker 2: or maybe another superhero or Superwoman.

586
00:28:34,119 --> 00:28:36,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really fun to read the sort of historical

587
00:28:36,359 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 1: record here of like Chinese astronomers talking about guest stars

588
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:43,360
Speaker 1: that appear in the night sky. Hilariously, they describe them

589
00:28:43,400 --> 00:28:47,760
Speaker 1: as some having pleasurable colors and others not having pleasurable colors.

590
00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:50,960
Speaker 2: Way, there were so many happening somebody supernova happening that

591
00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:52,360
Speaker 2: they could compare the colors.

592
00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:56,440
Speaker 1: They just commented on them, because these things evolve over time,

593
00:28:56,520 --> 00:28:58,480
Speaker 1: you know, they change in color. I thought it was

594
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 1: just hilarious that they note not only did this incredible

595
00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:03,080
Speaker 1: thing happen in the sky, but some of us didn't

596
00:29:03,080 --> 00:29:04,120
Speaker 1: think it was very pretty.

597
00:29:04,240 --> 00:29:06,040
Speaker 2: Some of us didn't think it was pretty, very super

598
00:29:06,080 --> 00:29:07,600
Speaker 2: there were more kind of a met.

599
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:11,520
Speaker 1: Nova, or maybe they were just recording, you know, their

600
00:29:11,600 --> 00:29:14,000
Speaker 1: anxiety about it, like, wow, this is a crazy thing

601
00:29:14,080 --> 00:29:16,800
Speaker 1: to be happening in our sky. You don't usually see

602
00:29:16,800 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 1: a lot of things changing. Eclipses and comets and supernova

603
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 1: are like pretty dramatic events in the sky. It's fascinating

604
00:29:22,920 --> 00:29:25,080
Speaker 1: to think about what it must have been like to

605
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:28,840
Speaker 1: be somebody seeing that happen and not understand it at all.

606
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:30,400
Speaker 1: It must have seemed very mystical.

607
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 2: Well, you said, it's very rare to see a supernova, like,

608
00:29:34,240 --> 00:29:36,600
Speaker 2: how many have we seen since recorded history?

609
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:39,800
Speaker 1: Well, we've only seen a handful in our galaxy. But

610
00:29:40,040 --> 00:29:43,920
Speaker 1: because we now have incredible telescopes, we've seen hundreds and

611
00:29:44,080 --> 00:29:47,680
Speaker 1: hundreds of supernova in other galaxy. But still it's limited

612
00:29:47,720 --> 00:29:49,920
Speaker 1: to you know, like numbers like hundreds. We don't have

613
00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:52,160
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of these examples.

614
00:29:52,360 --> 00:29:54,800
Speaker 2: Is it likely that I would see a supernoa go off?

615
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:56,280
Speaker 2: You know, first of all, I would have to be

616
00:29:56,440 --> 00:29:58,200
Speaker 2: a whig all night, which I guess I am. But

617
00:29:58,320 --> 00:30:01,040
Speaker 2: I'm looking at the sky. I am, Like, would I

618
00:30:01,120 --> 00:30:03,480
Speaker 2: notice but supernova went off to light up the whole sky?

619
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:05,720
Speaker 2: Would it just kind of appear like, oh, there's a

620
00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:06,880
Speaker 2: new pinpoint of light there.

621
00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:09,520
Speaker 1: Well, a new supernova in our galaxy you could see

622
00:30:09,600 --> 00:30:11,600
Speaker 1: with the naked eye. It would be like a new

623
00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:14,480
Speaker 1: event in the sky, and it could be brighter than

624
00:30:14,600 --> 00:30:17,000
Speaker 1: many other starts depending on how close it is. It

625
00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:21,080
Speaker 1: could definitely brighten up the night sky. For sure. Most

626
00:30:21,120 --> 00:30:24,040
Speaker 1: of the supernova we have observed are in other galaxies,

627
00:30:24,600 --> 00:30:27,400
Speaker 1: and so they are brighter or as bright as that galaxy,

628
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:29,920
Speaker 1: which is still pretty dim to the naked eye, so

629
00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:32,960
Speaker 1: easy to spot with telescopes. Not that easy to see

630
00:30:33,080 --> 00:30:35,800
Speaker 1: with the naked eye, but potentially somebody could point you

631
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:38,040
Speaker 1: to one and say that's a supernova. That little dot.

632
00:30:38,120 --> 00:30:40,560
Speaker 1: There is a distant galaxy with a supernova in it.

633
00:30:40,720 --> 00:30:41,840
Speaker 2: I guess what I mean is like, you would have

634
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:44,200
Speaker 2: to know what this night sky looked like before the

635
00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:46,800
Speaker 2: supernova in order to be like, oh, that's something new

636
00:30:46,840 --> 00:30:49,080
Speaker 2: there that you couldn't see before with the telescope.

637
00:30:49,200 --> 00:30:51,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And that's basically what we do is we

638
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:54,240
Speaker 1: scan the sky and we look for changes or always

639
00:30:54,240 --> 00:30:56,800
Speaker 1: on the lookout for these supernova because they're hard to predict.

640
00:30:56,880 --> 00:30:59,120
Speaker 1: We can't very easily look at a bunch of stars

641
00:30:59,160 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 1: and say that one's going to go supernova, and that

642
00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:04,320
Speaker 1: one's going to do supernova tomorrow or Tuesday. We have

643
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:08,200
Speaker 1: to just catch them happening. So we're constantly scanning the sky,

644
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:10,520
Speaker 1: comparing it to what the sky looked like yesterday and

645
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:13,880
Speaker 1: last week, looking for changes, and as soon as somebody

646
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: spots one, then a bunch of telescopes get trained on

647
00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:18,840
Speaker 1: it to track it in great detail to understand its

648
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:21,920
Speaker 1: light curve. Because remember that's like really valuable information for

649
00:31:22,040 --> 00:31:24,800
Speaker 1: understanding how far away is that galaxy, which tells us

650
00:31:24,800 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 1: things about like the expansion of the universe. Really incredible

651
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:32,080
Speaker 1: scientific discoveries are pinned on capturing these supernova inaction.

652
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:35,120
Speaker 2: Wonder if that's stressful for astrophysicists, you know, like I

653
00:31:35,200 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 2: can't go to the bathroom, go get coffee, because what

654
00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:40,160
Speaker 2: if supernova comes up just as I'm leaving my desk.

655
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:42,960
Speaker 1: It is sometimes very dramatic.

656
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:43,560
Speaker 3: You know.

657
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:45,800
Speaker 1: We have automated systems that scan for these things, but

658
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:47,760
Speaker 1: once you see one, then they get communicated to other

659
00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 1: telescopes around the world which might have been busy doing

660
00:31:50,440 --> 00:31:52,240
Speaker 1: something else, and then decide, you know what, this is

661
00:31:52,280 --> 00:31:54,959
Speaker 1: more important. We're going to change our observation plan. We're

662
00:31:55,000 --> 00:31:57,640
Speaker 1: going to turn around and look at this crazy thing

663
00:31:57,720 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 1: that's happening because it might only last for a few days.

664
00:32:00,240 --> 00:32:02,320
Speaker 2: And you said they're sort of unpredictable. I guess they're

665
00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:04,600
Speaker 2: not unpredictable in the sense that I mean, you can

666
00:32:04,680 --> 00:32:06,800
Speaker 2: tell if a star is going to go supernova at

667
00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:09,760
Speaker 2: some point, right, you said all stars above us certain size,

668
00:32:09,800 --> 00:32:11,960
Speaker 2: do you just don't know when it's going to happen.

669
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:14,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's true. We can't look at a

670
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:16,880
Speaker 1: star and say this is about to go supernova, or

671
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:20,360
Speaker 1: that's about to go supernova. And some stars don't actually explode,

672
00:32:20,440 --> 00:32:22,760
Speaker 1: like they collapse. They have the first part of it,

673
00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:25,440
Speaker 1: but then they don't bounce back and have an explosion.

674
00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:28,680
Speaker 1: And there's all sorts of different kinds of ways that

675
00:32:28,800 --> 00:32:31,760
Speaker 1: these stars can collapse, and sometimes there's a black hole

676
00:32:31,800 --> 00:32:34,240
Speaker 1: that's created at the heart and sometimes not, and so

677
00:32:34,320 --> 00:32:37,560
Speaker 1: they can look very different from collapse to collapse. So

678
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:40,080
Speaker 1: while all these stars that are big enough will eventually

679
00:32:40,120 --> 00:32:42,840
Speaker 1: burn out their fuel and collapse, they don't all trigger

680
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:45,680
Speaker 1: exactly the same kind of supernova. Some of them kind

681
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:47,560
Speaker 1: of whiff out, some of them get very bright. And

682
00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:50,000
Speaker 1: that's a lot of what we don't understand. And the

683
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:53,200
Speaker 1: reason we don't understand it is that it's very complicated physics.

684
00:32:53,240 --> 00:32:55,320
Speaker 1: You have a lot of things going on here. You

685
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:58,760
Speaker 1: have general relativity that describes the gravitational pull, and you

686
00:32:58,840 --> 00:33:01,880
Speaker 1: have very complicated fluid dynamics to describe like how the

687
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:05,640
Speaker 1: pressure is propagated through this thing. Plus you have fusion happening,

688
00:33:05,720 --> 00:33:08,720
Speaker 1: so you have radiation coming outwards. You have neutrinos, which

689
00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:11,280
Speaker 1: turn out to be important. So it's one of these scenarios.

690
00:33:11,360 --> 00:33:13,200
Speaker 1: We have to get a lot of the details right

691
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:15,600
Speaker 1: in order to make the prediction accurate. And we're just

692
00:33:15,800 --> 00:33:19,040
Speaker 1: very recently able to even like simulate these things and

693
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:21,480
Speaker 1: see supernova happen on the computers.

694
00:33:21,840 --> 00:33:25,280
Speaker 2: Sounds like you need another category for them, like super confusing,

695
00:33:25,320 --> 00:33:30,920
Speaker 2: super lubinus supernovas. Maybe we just need supercomputers, yeah, or

696
00:33:31,160 --> 00:33:33,160
Speaker 2: maybe you need Superman to come in and do some physics.

697
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:35,800
Speaker 2: I think I need a super grand to understand supernovas

698
00:33:35,960 --> 00:33:38,840
Speaker 2: with a super big pile of money. It sounds like

699
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 2: you're getting super greedy. They're super villain.

700
00:33:42,160 --> 00:33:44,640
Speaker 1: I just want to understand the universe. Is that so greedy?

701
00:33:44,920 --> 00:33:48,320
Speaker 2: Well, all supervillains think they're doing the right thing. All right.

702
00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:51,320
Speaker 2: It's a deep dive into how we study supernovas. Let's

703
00:33:51,360 --> 00:33:55,200
Speaker 2: get into what a super luminous supernova is and whether

704
00:33:55,360 --> 00:33:58,200
Speaker 2: or not it is super or not. But first, let's

705
00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:12,919
Speaker 2: take a quick break. All right, we're talking about super

706
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:17,880
Speaker 2: luminous supernovas, which I guess means just the super bright supernovas.

707
00:34:18,120 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 1: It does mean super bright supernovas, though we sort of

708
00:34:21,080 --> 00:34:25,400
Speaker 1: run out of modifiers here because already supernovas are super

709
00:34:25,520 --> 00:34:29,240
Speaker 1: bright events and super rare events. They're like very dramatic

710
00:34:29,360 --> 00:34:31,759
Speaker 1: moments in this story of the universe. But then we

711
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:35,520
Speaker 1: saw some supernova that were so ridiculously bright even by

712
00:34:35,680 --> 00:34:38,400
Speaker 1: the standards of supernova, that they had to come up

713
00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:42,319
Speaker 1: with another category for them. So super luminous supernova are

714
00:34:42,360 --> 00:34:46,440
Speaker 1: supernova that are at least ten times brighter than your normal,

715
00:34:46,680 --> 00:34:48,800
Speaker 1: run of the mill incredibly bright supernova.

716
00:34:49,120 --> 00:34:53,240
Speaker 2: Whoa first of all, ten times brighter, that's amazing. And second,

717
00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:57,080
Speaker 2: see you just used another word, incredibly bright. You don't

718
00:34:57,120 --> 00:34:58,160
Speaker 2: have to use super again.

719
00:34:58,280 --> 00:34:59,920
Speaker 1: You're right, we should call them incredibly bright.

720
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:04,760
Speaker 2: It's supernova amazingly bright, extra right.

721
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:06,719
Speaker 1: Overwhelmingly bright supernova.

722
00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:10,120
Speaker 2: Now let's go with super luminous. That sounds cooler or hotter.

723
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:12,800
Speaker 1: But there's something else going on here, which is this

724
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:17,000
Speaker 1: astronomical need to like categorize, because in one sense like

725
00:35:17,080 --> 00:35:20,000
Speaker 1: you make a distribution of all the supernova some are brighter,

726
00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:22,799
Speaker 1: some are dimmer. Whatever you expect them to not all

727
00:35:22,880 --> 00:35:25,239
Speaker 1: be the same, and so why can't you just say, well, look,

728
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:28,120
Speaker 1: here's supernova summer brighter, some are dimmer. But this need

729
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:31,440
Speaker 1: to name this extra bright category comes out of this

730
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:34,560
Speaker 1: like feeling like something different is happening. It's not just

731
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:36,840
Speaker 1: that there's a distribution and these are the ones on

732
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:39,279
Speaker 1: the tail. They feel like they see this cluster, this

733
00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:42,359
Speaker 1: collection of supernova that are different from the other ones.

734
00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:45,759
Speaker 1: It's like this grouping on the very high side where

735
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:47,840
Speaker 1: they think maybe something different is happening.

736
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:52,040
Speaker 2: Oh, that's interesting. So there's a range of brightness for supernovas,

737
00:35:52,080 --> 00:35:54,840
Speaker 2: and typically I thought all supernovas, we're all sort of

738
00:35:54,920 --> 00:35:57,680
Speaker 2: the same. That's how they use as standard markers in

739
00:35:57,719 --> 00:35:58,200
Speaker 2: the universe.

740
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:00,719
Speaker 1: So the type one A supernova, the ones that are

741
00:36:00,800 --> 00:36:04,360
Speaker 1: super bright already, they're not all the same brightness. Actually,

742
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:07,280
Speaker 1: they have all the same shape of their light curve,

743
00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:09,640
Speaker 1: which means how they get bright and then how they

744
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:12,719
Speaker 1: dim which then you can calibrate to how bright they

745
00:36:12,800 --> 00:36:16,000
Speaker 1: are actually at their source through a few steps. So

746
00:36:16,080 --> 00:36:18,759
Speaker 1: it's not quite as simple as all these supernovas are

747
00:36:18,800 --> 00:36:22,080
Speaker 1: exactly the same brightness always. It's that you can deduce

748
00:36:22,200 --> 00:36:24,640
Speaker 1: how bright they are by how quickly they ramp up

749
00:36:24,680 --> 00:36:27,360
Speaker 1: and how quickly they ramp down. It's sort of like

750
00:36:27,400 --> 00:36:30,319
Speaker 1: remember the cephids, those variable stars, the ones that get

751
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:32,239
Speaker 1: brighter and dimmer and brighter and dimmer. It's not that

752
00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:34,680
Speaker 1: they're all the same brightness, it's that from the period

753
00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:37,359
Speaker 1: of their pulsation, you can deduce how bright they are.

754
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:39,800
Speaker 1: It's sort of that way for type one A supernova.

755
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:42,320
Speaker 1: They're not all the same brightness, but you can figure

756
00:36:42,360 --> 00:36:44,400
Speaker 1: out how bright they are from their curve.

757
00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:49,480
Speaker 2: So you have these super or extra brightnd supernovas that

758
00:36:49,600 --> 00:36:52,360
Speaker 2: are ten times brighter than regular supernovas, But then you

759
00:36:52,440 --> 00:36:55,400
Speaker 2: have some that are ten times even brighter than that exactly.

760
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:57,640
Speaker 1: So you got the type twos the sort of like

761
00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:01,279
Speaker 1: normal supernovas, and then type one A are ten times

762
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:01,880
Speaker 1: brighter than that.

763
00:37:02,160 --> 00:37:03,800
Speaker 2: So they're super luminous supernova.

764
00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:09,759
Speaker 1: And then and then the extra right supernova extralous supernova.

765
00:37:10,280 --> 00:37:12,799
Speaker 1: These are ten times brighter than even those.

766
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:15,720
Speaker 2: You might as well say super super humanous.

767
00:37:16,239 --> 00:37:19,799
Speaker 1: Super squared supernova. And these things are super nuper right,

768
00:37:19,920 --> 00:37:24,560
Speaker 1: and they're also really rare, like one in ten thousand supernova,

769
00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:26,920
Speaker 1: which is already like, you know, five out of a

770
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 1: million stars, So now we're talking about like five out

771
00:37:30,600 --> 00:37:34,719
Speaker 1: of ten billion stars are going to be super luminous supernova.

772
00:37:34,960 --> 00:37:36,800
Speaker 1: These are incredibly rare. Wow.

773
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:40,360
Speaker 2: So that means that their brightness is ten times brighter

774
00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:42,600
Speaker 2: than the galaxy they're in over regular galaxy.

775
00:37:42,800 --> 00:37:46,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, they can outshine their galaxy by huge amount, and

776
00:37:46,960 --> 00:37:50,360
Speaker 1: not just because they're extra bright, but weirdly, for reasons

777
00:37:50,400 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 1: we don't understand, they tend to be found in smaller,

778
00:37:53,600 --> 00:37:57,120
Speaker 1: dimmer galaxies. So we talked recently on the podcast about

779
00:37:57,120 --> 00:38:00,239
Speaker 1: these things called dwarf galaxies, galaxies with a small or

780
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:03,120
Speaker 1: a number of stars in them, and how they're fascinating

781
00:38:03,239 --> 00:38:06,320
Speaker 1: laboratory for understanding maybe the formation of the universe and

782
00:38:06,600 --> 00:38:09,960
Speaker 1: how galaxies form and dark matter. But these superluminous supernova

783
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:13,680
Speaker 1: tend to be found only in these dwarf galaxies, which

784
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:16,440
Speaker 1: is like a weird clue maybe about why they happen

785
00:38:16,520 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 1: and what makes them super luminous, But it also means

786
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:22,040
Speaker 1: that they're extra bright compared to their galaxies, which tend

787
00:38:22,080 --> 00:38:24,080
Speaker 1: to be extra dimm That.

788
00:38:24,239 --> 00:38:26,800
Speaker 2: Is a weird clue, right. A dwarf galaxy, as we

789
00:38:26,880 --> 00:38:29,280
Speaker 2: talked about before, is just kind of a small galaxy,

790
00:38:29,320 --> 00:38:31,080
Speaker 2: but it's also sort of made up of different kinds

791
00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:31,719
Speaker 2: of stars too.

792
00:38:31,920 --> 00:38:35,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, dwarf galaxy just means a smaller blob of stars.

793
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 1: It can be like thousands to just a few billion stars.

794
00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:40,960
Speaker 1: It's a pretty big range. Remember that our galaxy is

795
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:43,960
Speaker 1: like one hundred billion or two hundred billion stars, So

796
00:38:44,120 --> 00:38:46,799
Speaker 1: dwarf galaxy is a much much smaller galaxy. But there's

797
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:48,600
Speaker 1: a really wide range of these things. Some of them

798
00:38:48,600 --> 00:38:50,960
Speaker 1: are like mostly dark matter and have just a few

799
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:54,600
Speaker 1: sprinkling of stars. Others have had their dark matter stripped

800
00:38:54,640 --> 00:38:57,880
Speaker 1: out of them. Some of them are like early progenitor galaxies.

801
00:38:57,920 --> 00:39:00,560
Speaker 1: We think that the big galaxies came from the combination

802
00:39:00,719 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 1: of a bunch of dwarf galaxies. So some of these

803
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:06,200
Speaker 1: dwarf galaxies might be sort of like primordial and as

804
00:39:06,239 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 1: you say, could have like older stars from the earlier

805
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:10,040
Speaker 1: part of the universe.

806
00:39:11,160 --> 00:39:15,880
Speaker 2: All right, So then what's making these super super superluminous supernovas.

807
00:39:16,120 --> 00:39:18,640
Speaker 1: We don't know. It's a mystery something we see in

808
00:39:18,719 --> 00:39:21,320
Speaker 1: the universe but do not yet understand. We have like

809
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:24,720
Speaker 1: no model that tells us why this can be happening.

810
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:28,320
Speaker 1: I remember, we just barely understand why supernovas go boom

811
00:39:28,360 --> 00:39:30,120
Speaker 1: and what's going on inside of them and how all

812
00:39:30,160 --> 00:39:32,719
Speaker 1: that radiation happens. You know, when we write down all

813
00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:34,800
Speaker 1: of our physics and code it in the computer, we

814
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:38,280
Speaker 1: can barely get it to happen in simulation, and maybe

815
00:39:38,400 --> 00:39:40,520
Speaker 1: in those simulations line up with what we see in

816
00:39:40,600 --> 00:39:42,640
Speaker 1: the universe. But there are a few ideas for what

817
00:39:42,800 --> 00:39:45,279
Speaker 1: might make it happen, and they come from noticing how

818
00:39:45,360 --> 00:39:48,320
Speaker 1: these are different from the other supernoas, not just in

819
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:50,600
Speaker 1: their brightness, but in other characteristics.

820
00:39:50,920 --> 00:39:53,080
Speaker 2: Well, I guess, first of all, do we know why

821
00:39:53,160 --> 00:39:56,080
Speaker 2: some supernovas are brighter than others? Is it just about

822
00:39:56,239 --> 00:39:58,640
Speaker 2: how much size they have, how much mass was there

823
00:39:58,719 --> 00:39:59,400
Speaker 2: when they collapse?

824
00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:01,200
Speaker 1: We don't really understand. It has to do with all

825
00:40:01,239 --> 00:40:03,880
Speaker 1: the internal dynamics and how much energy is devoted to

826
00:40:03,920 --> 00:40:07,640
Speaker 1: photons and whether the object itself is transparent enough to

827
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:10,520
Speaker 1: release those photons or if it's going to be opaque

828
00:40:10,520 --> 00:40:13,719
Speaker 1: and reabsorb those photons. So it's a complicated thing that

829
00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:16,279
Speaker 1: we do not understand very well right now, and.

830
00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:18,360
Speaker 2: It doesn't have to do with the size, like I

831
00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:21,680
Speaker 2: would imagine like a bigger star if it collapses, would

832
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:24,360
Speaker 2: make a bigger explosion than a small star that collapses.

833
00:40:24,640 --> 00:40:27,280
Speaker 1: It's definitely part of the equation, right, The more energy

834
00:40:27,360 --> 00:40:29,920
Speaker 1: you have, the more energy you can convert into radiation.

835
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:32,319
Speaker 1: It's definitely part of that equation. But it's not quite

836
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:35,839
Speaker 1: so simple, right. It's not just like bigger star, brighter supernova.

837
00:40:36,040 --> 00:40:37,799
Speaker 1: But you might be on the right track because one

838
00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 1: suspicion is that these superluminous supernova come from stars that

839
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:45,440
Speaker 1: are unusually large stars that have more than forty times

840
00:40:45,560 --> 00:40:48,520
Speaker 1: our Sun's mass when they start out, and that's very

841
00:40:48,680 --> 00:40:52,239
Speaker 1: unusually large for a star. So that's one suspicion is

842
00:40:52,280 --> 00:40:55,520
Speaker 1: that maybe they come from the heaviest of heavy stars.

843
00:40:55,920 --> 00:40:57,680
Speaker 2: And what makes us think that just from the idea

844
00:40:57,760 --> 00:40:58,680
Speaker 2: that bigger is brighter.

845
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:00,920
Speaker 1: It's just like one of the things. It's just like

846
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:04,239
Speaker 1: one explanation, as you say, more mass means you have

847
00:41:04,400 --> 00:41:06,920
Speaker 1: more energy that you can convert into light. So it's

848
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:08,719
Speaker 1: just like a starting point. There are a few other

849
00:41:08,840 --> 00:41:11,680
Speaker 1: interesting clues that point in that same direction, like the

850
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:14,520
Speaker 1: light from these stars is a little bit different from

851
00:41:14,719 --> 00:41:17,759
Speaker 1: light from other supernova. They don't seem to have a

852
00:41:17,840 --> 00:41:21,880
Speaker 1: lot of helium or hydrogen in their outer atmosphere. Remember,

853
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:24,359
Speaker 1: you can tell what's in a star by looking at

854
00:41:24,400 --> 00:41:28,200
Speaker 1: the light that it emits, because helium and hydrogen and

855
00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:32,120
Speaker 1: all the elements have their own characteristic ladder of energy

856
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:34,759
Speaker 1: levels that the electrons are allowed to be around them,

857
00:41:34,840 --> 00:41:37,640
Speaker 1: which means when the electrons jump down an energy level

858
00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:40,359
Speaker 1: or release a photon, you can kind of tell which

859
00:41:40,520 --> 00:41:42,960
Speaker 1: kind of atom it came from by looking at the

860
00:41:43,120 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 1: energy of that photon, which has to line up with

861
00:41:45,200 --> 00:41:48,640
Speaker 1: the spacing of the energy levels of that atom. So

862
00:41:48,760 --> 00:41:50,759
Speaker 1: you can look at the spectrum from a star and

863
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:52,759
Speaker 1: you say, oh, look, there's a peak here that means

864
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:55,080
Speaker 1: there was hydrogen, or there's a dip here that means

865
00:41:55,120 --> 00:41:57,400
Speaker 1: there was helium that was absorbing that light. So from

866
00:41:57,440 --> 00:41:59,440
Speaker 1: the peaks and the dips in the emission of the

867
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:01,400
Speaker 1: star specs you can tell what it's made out of.

868
00:42:01,640 --> 00:42:04,120
Speaker 1: What they've noticed is that these stars when they go

869
00:42:04,480 --> 00:42:07,640
Speaker 1: tend to have almost no hydrogen a no helium in them,

870
00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:10,800
Speaker 1: which is pretty unusual. Most stars when they go supernova

871
00:42:10,920 --> 00:42:14,399
Speaker 1: still have helium and hydrogen like in the outer layer

872
00:42:14,560 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 1: that hasn't been burnt yet.

873
00:42:16,800 --> 00:42:19,480
Speaker 2: But these don't put that mean that they're older stars

874
00:42:19,520 --> 00:42:20,880
Speaker 2: maybe or more mature stars.

875
00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 1: It could be, or it could be that something else

876
00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:26,560
Speaker 1: is going on nearby that's like strip them of their atmosphere.

877
00:42:26,960 --> 00:42:29,640
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a very strong solar wind, or there's a

878
00:42:29,760 --> 00:42:33,000
Speaker 1: binary star that's been gobbling up their atmosphere, or maybe

879
00:42:33,040 --> 00:42:35,400
Speaker 1: they're one of these weird kind of stars called a

880
00:42:35,680 --> 00:42:39,799
Speaker 1: wolf rayet star that do tend to have very little

881
00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:42,600
Speaker 1: hydrogen and helium in them because as you say, they've

882
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:45,560
Speaker 1: burned it already. That feels like an important clue. That's

883
00:42:45,640 --> 00:42:48,080
Speaker 1: one thing that makes these things different. But we don't

884
00:42:48,160 --> 00:42:52,680
Speaker 1: understand why not having hydrogen and not having helium would

885
00:42:52,760 --> 00:42:54,920
Speaker 1: make the explosion brighter. Like if you take a star

886
00:42:55,080 --> 00:42:57,839
Speaker 1: and you remove it's hydrogen helium, why would that give

887
00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:00,839
Speaker 1: you a brighter supernova? We don't understand, or maybe that's

888
00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:03,640
Speaker 1: not the answer. Maybe there's some other reason that generates

889
00:43:03,680 --> 00:43:06,680
Speaker 1: a bright supernova and happens to also remove the hydrogen

890
00:43:06,760 --> 00:43:09,239
Speaker 1: and helium from the star. It's just like a clue

891
00:43:09,280 --> 00:43:10,960
Speaker 1: we have found. We don't understand it yet.

892
00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:14,600
Speaker 2: Now have we seen any Are there any special superluminous

893
00:43:14,640 --> 00:43:16,960
Speaker 2: supernova that we've seen that are sort of interesting to

894
00:43:17,239 --> 00:43:17,680
Speaker 2: talk about.

895
00:43:17,800 --> 00:43:21,799
Speaker 1: The most dramatic one is really incredible. It's this supernova

896
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:26,200
Speaker 1: called ASASSN, which is the name of the telescope fifteen

897
00:43:26,440 --> 00:43:30,680
Speaker 1: LH and it's about four billion light years away. But

898
00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:34,080
Speaker 1: when we saw it in twenty fifteen using these twin

899
00:43:34,160 --> 00:43:37,880
Speaker 1: telescopes in Chile, it was the most luminous supernova ever observed.

900
00:43:38,440 --> 00:43:42,359
Speaker 1: It was almost a trillion times brighter than our sun.

901
00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:46,680
Speaker 2: A trillion times brighter than the Sun. Yeah, that's wild.

902
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:48,480
Speaker 2: It's a good thing. It wasn't in our doubts.

903
00:43:49,320 --> 00:43:53,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's this astronomer from Ohio State University, christof Stenek

904
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:56,200
Speaker 1: said if it was in our own galaxy, it would

905
00:43:56,239 --> 00:43:58,880
Speaker 1: shine brighter than the full moon. There would re no

906
00:43:59,080 --> 00:44:02,880
Speaker 1: night it would be easily seen during the day. Like,

907
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:06,480
Speaker 1: this thing was a monster. It's more than two times

908
00:44:06,640 --> 00:44:09,520
Speaker 1: brighter than any other superluminous supernova.

909
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:10,239
Speaker 5: Whoa.

910
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:12,840
Speaker 2: And it was sort of a kind of luck that

911
00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:13,520
Speaker 2: we caught it right.

912
00:44:13,680 --> 00:44:15,720
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's lucky. We just like happened to be pointing

913
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:17,920
Speaker 1: telescopes in the right direction at the right time, and

914
00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:19,600
Speaker 1: that's why we saw it. But it's also sort of

915
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:21,880
Speaker 1: hard to miss. Like, this thing is twenty times brighter

916
00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:26,160
Speaker 1: than our higher galaxy. It's really amazing. So this was

917
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:28,040
Speaker 1: definitely the brightest supernova ever.

918
00:44:28,239 --> 00:44:30,200
Speaker 2: But it's also kind of far away. That's why it's

919
00:44:30,200 --> 00:44:30,759
Speaker 2: easy to miss.

920
00:44:31,080 --> 00:44:34,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's four billion light years away, otherwise it might

921
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:35,160
Speaker 1: have fried us.

922
00:44:35,360 --> 00:44:37,000
Speaker 2: It's like a tensive the way to the end of

923
00:44:37,040 --> 00:44:37,560
Speaker 2: the universe.

924
00:44:37,719 --> 00:44:39,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, So pack some snacks if you're going to

925
00:44:39,719 --> 00:44:40,080
Speaker 1: go visit.

926
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:42,319
Speaker 2: But it's cool. We could see it from here, right,

927
00:44:42,320 --> 00:44:44,839
Speaker 2: and it's so bright even for me so far away.

928
00:44:44,960 --> 00:44:47,640
Speaker 1: It is really cool, and it offers an opportunity to

929
00:44:47,800 --> 00:44:51,680
Speaker 1: like think about what's going on and understand how supernova's form.

930
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:52,400
Speaker 3: You know.

931
00:44:52,560 --> 00:44:55,680
Speaker 1: One idea about what makes these things so bright is

932
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:58,360
Speaker 1: that they're just like super big versions of stars that

933
00:44:58,440 --> 00:45:01,160
Speaker 1: make super luminous supernova. Maybe they're just bigger and they're

934
00:45:01,160 --> 00:45:03,239
Speaker 1: more massive and that's what's happening. But there are also

935
00:45:03,360 --> 00:45:06,400
Speaker 1: other theories, like maybe these are other kinds of events,

936
00:45:06,440 --> 00:45:10,279
Speaker 1: they're not just bigger versions of supernova. Like maybe there's

937
00:45:10,280 --> 00:45:13,279
Speaker 1: an interplay between these stars and black holes that are

938
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:16,280
Speaker 1: nearby that are triggering a different kind of collapse.

939
00:45:16,520 --> 00:45:18,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like if you see something bright in the sky

940
00:45:18,080 --> 00:45:20,439
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily have to be a supernova, right, it could

941
00:45:20,440 --> 00:45:24,640
Speaker 2: be something else exploding, or maybe like a quasar or

942
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:25,120
Speaker 2: something like that.

943
00:45:25,320 --> 00:45:27,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, although these things have the sort of pretty characteristic

944
00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:31,480
Speaker 1: light curve of a supernova and they appear briefly and

945
00:45:31,520 --> 00:45:35,000
Speaker 1: then disappear, which quasars don't. But black holes might be contributing.

946
00:45:35,160 --> 00:45:37,160
Speaker 1: Like maybe you have a star that was going to

947
00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:40,760
Speaker 1: go supernova anyway, and the tidal forces from a nearby

948
00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:43,680
Speaker 1: black hole add to the collapse and like make that

949
00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:47,359
Speaker 1: collapse more powerful. Right, if you're near like a supermassive

950
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:49,959
Speaker 1: black hole in the center of your galaxy, it could

951
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:52,800
Speaker 1: be that the tidal forces from that trigger the collapse

952
00:45:52,880 --> 00:45:54,719
Speaker 1: in a way that wouldn't have happened otherwise you get

953
00:45:54,760 --> 00:45:58,120
Speaker 1: like a special version or an unusual version of the collapse.

954
00:45:58,280 --> 00:46:01,799
Speaker 2: Wait, so this would be a super massive black holes supercharged,

955
00:46:01,840 --> 00:46:07,120
Speaker 2: superluminous supernova. Is that what you're telling me? It would

956
00:46:07,160 --> 00:46:12,320
Speaker 2: be pretty incredible, extra extra bright exactly.

957
00:46:12,400 --> 00:46:15,799
Speaker 1: That's one alternative idea. Another really cool idea that's reading

958
00:46:15,840 --> 00:46:20,400
Speaker 1: about is that it could be magnetars losing their energy. Right,

959
00:46:20,480 --> 00:46:23,080
Speaker 1: maybe it's not a supernova at all. A magnetar is

960
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:27,040
Speaker 1: a neutron star, which is another potential endpoint for a

961
00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:30,240
Speaker 1: star that's spinning really really fast and has a huge

962
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:33,560
Speaker 1: magnetic field and all sorts of incredible energy, But they're

963
00:46:33,640 --> 00:46:36,120
Speaker 1: dumping a lot of that energy out into space. They're

964
00:46:36,160 --> 00:46:39,680
Speaker 1: converting their rotational energy into this beam. And so the

965
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:43,040
Speaker 1: idea is maybe one of these magnetars has a dramatic

966
00:46:43,120 --> 00:46:46,520
Speaker 1: spin down effect where it's transforming its rotational energy very

967
00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:50,760
Speaker 1: suddenly into a bunch of radiation, which creates these huge

968
00:46:50,920 --> 00:46:55,920
Speaker 1: jets and produces enough energy to look like a superluminous supernova.

969
00:46:56,200 --> 00:46:59,239
Speaker 1: But people have tried to do calculations to make that happen,

970
00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:01,040
Speaker 1: and they don't think that those things could be bright

971
00:47:01,160 --> 00:47:04,759
Speaker 1: enough to explain what we've seen. So it's still sort

972
00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:07,080
Speaker 1: of a wild West of ideas out there, people wondering like,

973
00:47:07,120 --> 00:47:08,920
Speaker 1: maybe it's this, maybe it's that. Maybe it's these two

974
00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:11,719
Speaker 1: things combined that makes this crazy event.

975
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:14,880
Speaker 2: I guess if it's something so bright and so explosive,

976
00:47:15,000 --> 00:47:18,160
Speaker 2: wouldn't we sort of see evidence of that explosion affecting

977
00:47:18,200 --> 00:47:20,000
Speaker 2: the whole galaxy it's in, or a lot of the

978
00:47:20,080 --> 00:47:22,080
Speaker 2: stars it's in. You know, maybe that way you could

979
00:47:22,080 --> 00:47:24,400
Speaker 2: tell if it's an explosion after all or not, it is.

980
00:47:24,400 --> 00:47:27,640
Speaker 1: Actually really cool to track these explosions. You feel like

981
00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:30,279
Speaker 1: it's going to affect the whole galaxy. But remember that

982
00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:33,000
Speaker 1: galaxies are really big, and so for information to get

983
00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:36,160
Speaker 1: across the galaxy takes a long time. So these explosions

984
00:47:36,200 --> 00:47:38,720
Speaker 1: look sort of like they're happening in slow motion because

985
00:47:38,760 --> 00:47:41,759
Speaker 1: the distances are just so vast, Which is one reason

986
00:47:41,760 --> 00:47:44,040
Speaker 1: why it's really cool to look at old supernova to

987
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:48,239
Speaker 1: see how has the supernova affected stuff nearby, Like when

988
00:47:48,239 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 1: the supernova radiation slams into nearby gas, what happens. Do

989
00:47:52,040 --> 00:47:53,880
Speaker 1: you generate new stars? Do you heat it up? Do

990
00:47:53,920 --> 00:47:56,239
Speaker 1: you blow it out? That's one reason why it's really

991
00:47:56,280 --> 00:47:59,000
Speaker 1: cool to look at these sort of old supernovas from

992
00:47:59,000 --> 00:47:59,440
Speaker 1: the past.

993
00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:02,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I would maybe imagine like at the side

994
00:48:02,280 --> 00:48:04,880
Speaker 2: of where there was a supernova, maybe like all the

995
00:48:04,960 --> 00:48:07,120
Speaker 2: stars around it got snuffed out or something re a

996
00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:08,920
Speaker 2: least pushed out of the way or something. At least

997
00:48:08,960 --> 00:48:13,120
Speaker 2: that's how it looks like in movies. In superhero movies,

998
00:48:13,280 --> 00:48:13,640
Speaker 2: well you do.

999
00:48:13,719 --> 00:48:16,360
Speaker 1: Get this very dramatic and I think very pleasing to

1000
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:19,839
Speaker 1: the eye clouds of gas and shock waves that come

1001
00:48:19,880 --> 00:48:22,560
Speaker 1: out of supernova. Some of the prettiest nebula that are

1002
00:48:22,600 --> 00:48:25,480
Speaker 1: out there, like the crab Nebula, actually did come from

1003
00:48:25,600 --> 00:48:28,680
Speaker 1: ancient supernova. It was in the nineteen forties we realized

1004
00:48:28,840 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 1: that the crab nebula is the remnant of a supernova

1005
00:48:32,239 --> 00:48:36,120
Speaker 1: that the Chinese saw about a thousand years ago. So

1006
00:48:36,239 --> 00:48:38,359
Speaker 1: we get to watch like a thousand years of slow

1007
00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:40,480
Speaker 1: mo explosion playing out in the sky.

1008
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:42,759
Speaker 2: So we're not even true if it is a supernova.

1009
00:48:42,840 --> 00:48:44,560
Speaker 2: These super luminous events, yeah.

1010
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:46,560
Speaker 1: That's true. There's still a bunch of different theories about

1011
00:48:46,560 --> 00:48:49,279
Speaker 1: what could be causing them, and eventually we might even

1012
00:48:49,320 --> 00:48:52,440
Speaker 1: give them a different name. We might even drop the super.

1013
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:55,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, or maybe a super luminous supernova might try it

1014
00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:57,759
Speaker 2: to be just a mild mannered black hole explosion or.

1015
00:48:57,760 --> 00:49:00,600
Speaker 1: Something like that. You never know what happens when they

1016
00:49:00,640 --> 00:49:02,040
Speaker 1: take off their glasses.

1017
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:05,480
Speaker 2: All right, Well, another amazing excuse to look at the

1018
00:49:05,600 --> 00:49:07,480
Speaker 2: night sky each night. If you're looking at the night

1019
00:49:07,520 --> 00:49:09,480
Speaker 2: sky and you look up at the start, maybe you'll

1020
00:49:09,520 --> 00:49:12,239
Speaker 2: catch a supernova one day. Right, It's totally possible, isn't it.

1021
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:15,279
Speaker 1: It's totally possible, And here's hoping that supernova is not

1022
00:49:15,440 --> 00:49:18,719
Speaker 1: so close that it super fries your super eyeballs.

1023
00:49:19,239 --> 00:49:21,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, it might be the last thing you see unfortunately

1024
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 2: in the night sky.

1025
00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:25,560
Speaker 1: And for everything that we have learned already about the universe,

1026
00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:28,520
Speaker 1: remember that we are still learning new things. It was

1027
00:49:28,640 --> 00:49:31,360
Speaker 1: only a couple of decades ago that we first identified

1028
00:49:31,440 --> 00:49:35,640
Speaker 1: super luminous supernova, these very incredibly rare things. So there

1029
00:49:35,680 --> 00:49:37,600
Speaker 1: could be things happening out there in the universe that

1030
00:49:37,640 --> 00:49:40,360
Speaker 1: are so rare. We just haven't seen one yet. And

1031
00:49:40,560 --> 00:49:42,640
Speaker 1: maybe somebody out there will be the first person to

1032
00:49:42,680 --> 00:49:44,400
Speaker 1: see this new super event.

1033
00:49:44,680 --> 00:49:46,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you can give it a good name,

1034
00:49:46,680 --> 00:49:51,000
Speaker 2: an incredible name, an amazing name, an extra special name,

1035
00:49:53,239 --> 00:49:58,520
Speaker 2: a hyper name, while avoiding hyperbole of course, exactly. All right, Well,

1036
00:49:58,560 --> 00:50:01,439
Speaker 2: we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, See

1037
00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:01,960
Speaker 2: you next time.

1038
00:50:09,760 --> 00:50:12,560
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain

1039
00:50:12,640 --> 00:50:16,600
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts

1040
00:50:16,640 --> 00:50:21,200
Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

1041
00:50:21,360 --> 00:50:23,080
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.