WEBVTT - Thinking Sideways: 1991 VG 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:03.600 Hey guys, Steve here, you are listening to one of 0:00:03.600 --> 0:00:06.600 our original twenty six episodes. If you listen to any 0:00:06.640 --> 0:00:09.280 of our new episodes, you're gonna notice that we're sounding 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:11.639 a little different in these ones. Yeah, there's a reason 0:00:11.680 --> 0:00:14.520 for that. There is they've been remastered. They have been 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:18.040 remastered because they had a really annoying hum. Yeah, I 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:21.480 mean a huge thanks to listener James for doing almost 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:23.880 all of the legwork on this thing. They'll also notice 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:25.880 if you had listened to what we're calling the last 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:29.639 twenty six episodes before and you're re listening now, the 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:33.160 music and sound effects are gone. Yes, we've we've gone 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:35.720 back to straight audio, so be warned. We sound a 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:38.040 little different today than we do in what you're about 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:47.880 to listen to. Yeah, bye bye, Thinking Sideways. I don't 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:58.280 understand you never know stories of things we simply don't 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:06.600 know the answer too. Well. Hi there, I'm Steve, but 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:09.240 three of us in a room and you got Thinking Sideways, 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:13.000 the podcast show where we we tend to look at 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:15.120 things they don't really have a clear answer, and then 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:17.800 we try to figure them out and once again, believe 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:22.000 it or not, we've got another one. Anybody else surprised. No, 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:24.840 not really. You wouldn't have called this meeting unless you 0:01:24.920 --> 0:01:31.440 had something right in the studio. Yes, it's very very true. Well, 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:33.960 this week I've got quite an interesting one that I 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:38.560 want to go over, which is v G in uh 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:45.000 late and object was spotted in space coming towards our planet. 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:50.920 It was initially described as a near Earth object, which 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:53.760 is what a lot of asteroids and stuff are called. 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:58.520 You know. Yeah, but we don't know if it's actually 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:00.800 going to hit us or just kind of glad it's by. 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:06.640 Did you destroy the Earth? Obviously not. It was spotted 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:11.040 by a guy named Jim Scotty, and Mr Scotty was 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:18.000 tracking this angeo, as they referred to him, with space Watch, 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:22.079 which is a telescope in kit Peak National Observatory which 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:25.160 is in Arizona, uh. And it was kind of he 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:29.040 founded by accident, to be quite honest. Evidently the range 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:32.919 that they look at he had for some reasons at 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:36.840 the telescope lower than normal and just happened to catch 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:39.720 this thing coming up. My understanding of what is is 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:43.040 that actually they used these software to pick out anomalous 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:46.000 things that are moving against the background. So he actually 0:02:46.000 --> 0:02:48.239 it wasn't a telescope, but the software he set the 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:52.680 range for the software that wut my head around it. 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:54.520 There's a lot of science e stuff and this one, 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:56.960 ladies and gentlemen, and I've been struggling through this for 0:02:57.080 --> 0:02:59.799 weeks to get my head around it. But thank you, Joe, 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:03.840 I appreciate that. So he spots this thing, and like 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:05.440 I said, he called it an n e O and 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:08.920 they named v G and they didn't know what it was, 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:10.840 but they thought it was gonna it was gonna hit 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:15.440 the planet. When it was first spotted, this thing was 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:21.040 point zero zero three one AU away from the Earth, 0:03:21.080 --> 0:03:25.079 and AU is an astronomical unit. Okay, Like I said, 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:27.760 there's a lot of science in this one. Here's how 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:31.040 they make these generalizations so that it's not a gazillion 0:03:31.080 --> 0:03:34.600 gazillion gazillion miles. They say, what's the distance from the 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:38.440 Earth to the Sun on average, and that's one unit. 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:42.080 So when you break that down, how closes it. It 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:46.720 was point zero zero three one astronomical units, which means 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:50.360 it's you know, three hundreds of the distance from the 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:52.800 Earth or from the Earth to the Sun. The way 0:03:52.800 --> 0:03:57.280 that I got yeah, yeah, it was. It was super 0:03:57.320 --> 0:04:00.600 far away. Actually, it was Uh, it was a proximately 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:05.800 two million, forty six thousand miles away, so just as 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:09.280 hard to say, and then approaching us, yes, and approaching us. 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:12.880 But he figured it was an asteroid. But as he 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:18.400 started watching this thing, he noticed that it was winking, 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:22.480 as they say, meaning that every seven and a half 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:26.760 minutes it would flash and then go dark, and then 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:30.120 flash and go dark. So time goes by, and this 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:34.440 thing is doing what an asteroid wouldn't normally do because 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:38.279 if you think about something that's spherical in space, it 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:41.719 should have light on it on a relatively consistent basis, 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:46.320 not turning on, turning off. But this thing was doing that, 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:48.800 which is weird. When they did the analysis of it, 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:52.839 they figured out this thing was approximately ten ms across, 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:56.320 so about thirty ft across, which isn't really big, especially 0:04:56.320 --> 0:05:00.200 for space. Yeah, it's it's some something in space. It's 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:03.039 not that big. Okay, we can we can deal with that. 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:07.760 And they would classify it as a S class meteor 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:11.760 based on its size. If it was larger than that, 0:05:11.800 --> 0:05:14.279 I guess it was a C class, but S class 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:19.120 meteors don't have this reflective quality to them. Plus I 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:21.360 think it's the way their shape is. Are there any 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:26.080 other examples of S class meteors like famous ones. I'm 0:05:26.120 --> 0:05:29.400 sure there are, but I didn't pull any for my research. 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:35.520 One thing about the way they guestimated its size is 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:38.040 by the amount of light it was setting in our direction. 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:41.799 And that's based on the average reflectivity for your average 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:46.760 meteor your average meteoroid, and things aren't very reflective, yes, 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:48.800 in other words, not so. In other words, it's it's 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:51.640 based on that, on that particular assumption that they made. 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:53.560 So it could have been five times as large but 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:57.400 less reflective, that's true, or smaller and more reflection, half 0:05:57.440 --> 0:06:00.920 the size but superf right. But the thing is, the 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:05.400 reflectivity of it was what caused all the hubbub, because 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:10.440 it's nature was to reflect light in the same manner 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:14.440 that a rotating satellite would, in other words, a metallic 0:06:14.560 --> 0:06:18.520 object would. So it's got a dark side, it's got 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:20.840 facets on it, and so they pick up and they 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:23.080 all shine the light back at once, and then they 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:25.320 go dark because it's spun around. So in other words, 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.720 it couldn't be a sphere. It's got to be something 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:32.520 with some kind of sharp angles. And and actually some 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:36.440 some meteoroids and asteroids are not actually spherical. A lot 0:06:36.480 --> 0:06:37.920 of them. A lot of them are like just brick 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:40.600 shaped and they rotate. Yeah. Yeah, this was actually that 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:42.120 one of the things that I think I was reading 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:44.640 about in the maybe it was in the research maybe 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:46.760 when when I was doing some research. But they're talking 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:49.760 about how a lot of things we call asteroids or 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:53.080 meteors are actually just big glumps of stuff. It's not 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:56.240 like one rock, right, it's like a big massive debris 0:06:56.360 --> 0:07:01.839 or whatever. Yeah. The way that gravity affects that then 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:04.799 is it pulls it into this kind of monolithic structure 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:08.360 more than a sphere, because you know, when it's rotating, 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:11.520 it's got like a side that's being pulled more. And 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:13.360 then it rotates more and there's a side that's being 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:17.200 pulled more. Like Plato in space, essentially it stretches and 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:20.080 pulled ye, it moves around. Yeah, so that's I mean, 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:21.640 you know, that was the thing they were talking about 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:24.680 that happens sometimes in space. But I don't know that 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:29.240 that really explains the reflective quality, the more reflective of 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:32.040 some sides than others, although I guess if you know, 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:35.240 one side had more whatever kind of rocks that are 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:40.760 super reflective maybe, but crystalline rock side yeah, or if 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:43.240 it's got its a is an irregularly shape thing and 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:45.600 it's got a flat side. That's that when I'm one 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:50.000 it rotates around suddenly that flat side is illuminated. Word yeah, yeah, 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:52.880 So yeah, there's there's a lot of very simple answers 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:55.600 for this thing. The one thing that caught everybody off 0:07:55.600 --> 0:07:59.440 guard was the reflectivity and the way that it rotated 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:05.040 and was akin to a metallic object that wasn't. That 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:08.440 looked more like it was a pre made shape rather 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:12.880 than just some ho you know, happened upon shape random 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:16.640 rocks when it went by. So they found it it, 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:20.720 like I said, in November of ninety one, and it 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:23.840 got its closest to or October excuse me, and it 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:28.200 got closest to the planet in November. They try they 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:31.320 hit it with radar to try to get some some 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:34.040 readings off of it or figure a little more out, 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:37.719 but I'm guessing that there was some kind of interference. 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:40.959 They didn't get good data from it, and then it 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:45.160 went on about It's mary Way and is now somewhere. 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:47.760 It's gone in space on its orbit and we're not 0:08:47.800 --> 0:08:51.240 going to see it again. Until now can you describe 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:53.240 the orbit of it, because right now I'm picturing that 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:56.360 it's like a like a Hailey's comment situation where it's 0:08:56.400 --> 0:08:59.880 on some weird kind of you know, mumrangs around the Sun, 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:03.559 goes out to like Pluto and comes back and situation, 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:09.720 and you know, we intersect with it once every it is. 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:13.160 It's on a heliocentric orbit, which means that it is 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:18.880 rotating around the Sun. And it's also on a orbital 0:09:18.920 --> 0:09:21.640 access that is the same as our planet. So if 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:24.640 you think about the orbit of the planet around the 0:09:24.679 --> 0:09:27.120 Sun as a plate, we always go the around the 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:29.960 outside in the center of the plates the Sun. It's 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:34.960 also on that same orbit. It's just a smidge farther 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:39.719 out than we are. It's also going slower than we are, 0:09:39.880 --> 0:09:44.120 which is why we won't see it until the Earth 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:49.160 was going faster, caught up to it and then raced ahead, 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:52.160 and now we've got to go all the way around 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:54.439 until we catch up with it again. If you think 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:56.600 about the way I thought about it is if you've 0:09:56.600 --> 0:10:00.400 ever seen two people on a track running and they're 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:03.600 running at almost the same speed, but the person in 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:06.600 the lead is a little faster and it takes them, 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:11.120 in this case, sixteen and a half loops or revolutions 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:14.640 of the track to get back to that other person's lap. 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:18.840 That's that's exactly it. We haven't lapped it again. But 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:22.880 you know, I believe it's also something that somewhat out 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:25.360 of the plane of the ecliptics my understanding of it, 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:27.920 and the ecliptic is a plate that you were talking right, 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:32.640 If you imagine that as a as a the orbits, 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:36.080 that's called the ecliptic, and so otherwise we would be 0:10:36.080 --> 0:10:38.720 seeing it probably more often than once a year. We're 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:42.959 seeing it like once a year, almost the same revolution 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:45.280 around the Sun as we are just slightly slower, so 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:49.480 our distance is always growing and until we eventually catch 0:10:49.559 --> 0:10:53.120 up tunes. Yes, now it might be on a slightly 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:57.320 different plane, but it's essentially the same. So that's my 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:00.560 first kind of flag I guess is that I and 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:05.040 you know, I don't know hardly anything about astro physics 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:08.120 or what you know, whatever we call this space science. 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:12.800 I don't know anything about, right, you know, intuitively, you 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:15.680 think if you're going to go on the same access 0:11:15.679 --> 0:11:19.200 as something the size of the planets or the whatever 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:22.280 bodies are going to be about the same, right that 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:24.840 they would orbit at the same kind of rate and 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:27.480 the same distance from the Sun has to not be 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:30.160 pulled in closer. And you know, I don't know that 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:32.560 that's true or not. It's just you know, in my 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:36.719 like little pretty basic understanding of of space, planets get 0:11:36.720 --> 0:11:40.240 bigger as they go away from the Sun, right, not necessarily, yeah, 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:45.079 but now they have to they generally, given mass, the 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:47.400 closer it is to the Sun, the faster it will 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:50.840 have to move. So that's you know, that's my kind 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:52.720 of thing, is that if this thing is that, if 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:58.640 it's it's pretty small, it's like across yeah, So so 0:11:58.840 --> 0:12:01.240 for me for it to be in the same orbit 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:03.680 and to be going about the same speed as us, 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:05.680 I don't know. It just speaks of like a weird 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:09.000 mass issue. But you know, I could be wrong. As 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:10.920 I said, I don't really know anything about this stuff. 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:14.200 I think that it's it's mostly dependent upon getting caught 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:17.520 in the orbit of the Sun and our solar system 0:12:17.559 --> 0:12:19.480 and just kind of brushed along if you think about 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:22.880 there's inertia just keep going. Sure, But I guess the 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:24.600 thing is right, you have to have a certain amount 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:26.959 of mass to stay that far out in an orbit 0:12:27.040 --> 0:12:30.240 to not get pulled in not necessarily think about asteroid fields. 0:12:30.400 --> 0:12:32.679 It's more and more like that. It's more like the 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:35.480 speed of it than anything else. But but if it 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:37.640 was an object that just sort of like sort of 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:40.760 wanted it from interstellar space, it took up residents in 0:12:40.800 --> 0:12:44.120 the Solar System, it would be extremely unlikely that it 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:46.360 would it would adopt I mean it would it would 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:49.840 probably get start orbiting the Sun, but perfect I'm nearly 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:55.360 perfectly circular orbit that mimics ours. That's extremely unlikely. And 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:59.720 that's exactly is we never saw it before. Suddenly this 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:04.240 thing appears and it looks as if it's not it 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:08.199 looks as if it was made. It's not a natural formation, 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:10.960 and we just don't know anything. And that's the weird 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:13.960 thing about it is nobody really knows what the heck 0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:18.320 this thing is. Uh. And there's there's a good number 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:21.280 of theories running around about it, and some of them 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:24.280 I think are plausible and some I don't. And unfortunately 0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:26.559 I've been able to shoot holes in just about every 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:30.760 one of them. But let's let's run through them. So 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:33.280 the first one is what Joe was talking about, is 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:36.520 that it's a random asteroid that just wanders into our 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:41.600 Solar system and gets caught there is according to some research, 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:45.480 there's a field of asteroids that are inner Solar System, 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:48.320 and occasionally some of those do come out of there 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:52.400 and they come into revolution around the Sun. The problem 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:56.360 is they're not on the same the same ecliptics. So 0:13:56.679 --> 0:13:58.560 if you think about if you've got you hold the 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:02.120 plate and that's our orbit around the Sun, and then 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:07.040 you take another plate, but you rotated several degrees, they're 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:10.040 at a different angle to each other, so they're not 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:14.280 in perfect unison going outwards like the planets mostly are 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:17.240 from us. So that's part of the problem, is that 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:21.920 those meteors or asteroids wouldn't be able to catch in 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:25.440 our orbits. It's also you know, it's even conceivable that 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:29.280 there's that there have been some rocks just left over 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:31.560 from the formation of the Earth and the Moon, and 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:34.440 there's that kind of stuff tagging along with us and 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:37.280 virtually the same orbit as us, but we didn't have 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:40.400 the technology to detect them until pretty recently. Very true, 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:43.720 and how how close did it come to us, like 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:49.000 compared to the Moon, the miles was our million miles 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:53.280 utter ninety thousand miles, which is about fifty thousand miles 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:57.320 beyond the orbit of the Moon, so it's close. We 0:14:57.360 --> 0:14:59.520 could have flown out and met it. How we known 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:00.960 it was the well, so that was gonna be My 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:02.800 other question is like, why did it get stuck in 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:05.440 the Sun's orbit but not ours? Right, because it's smaller 0:15:05.520 --> 0:15:08.320 than the Moon and our gravity is pretty dang strong, 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:11.360 so it's gonna orbit something, and it's like getting that 0:15:11.520 --> 0:15:14.880 close to us. Well, here's the here's the other problem 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:19.040 with the It's a random bit of space rock. Its 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:23.080 orbit is a little eccentric. In other words, it's unstable. 0:15:23.800 --> 0:15:28.080 So if you when you look at celestial bodies, you 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:30.800 look at them in terms of millennia, how long can 0:15:30.840 --> 0:15:33.680 it go? And it's been there for eons and eons, 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:37.720 this thing is unstable. Based on when we passed it 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:43.600 nine one, Evidently they detected fluctuations in its orbit, which 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:45.840 means that the gravitation of the Earth and the Moon 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:50.640 themselves through it's pitch off a little bit. So in 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:54.160 the long run, if it's been there forever and ever, 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:57.120 it should have already hit the Earth or the Moon. 0:15:57.440 --> 0:16:02.040 Because we were gone someplace, messed up it's orbit enough 0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:04.960 by passing it ninety one that we could tell that 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:07.880 we threw it out a loop a little bit. So 0:16:08.440 --> 0:16:10.480 you know, in that grand scale that we look at 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:14.960 things in space, we basically should have re ended it all. 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:17.600 And really, to be fair, I mean, it's close enough 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:21.800 that even you know, sixteen years before our stuff was 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:24.360 sophisticated enough that we should have been able to see 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:27.640 it then too, right, we could have, But you've got 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:31.640 to remember that sixteen years prior this, nineteen seventy five, 0:16:32.400 --> 0:16:34.760 our science is not that good. Most of what we 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:37.200 were observing in space was done by the human eye. 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:41.160 And the sky is a huge area. What is it 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:44.880 set looks at the sky constantly and they're able to 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:48.400 watch three. Yeah, but if something passes that close, you 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:50.720 kind of think, yeah, I think the I think the 0:16:50.760 --> 0:16:53.800 real the real key to that, it's actually finding a 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:56.120 little bit of objects buzzing around of spaces. It really 0:16:56.200 --> 0:16:59.800 is computers and the signals process. Because there's so much 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:02.800 up out there, and you know, so you gotta have 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:05.640 you got It's really hard to detect something that's blinking 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:08.360 every seven and a half minutes. That's true when you're 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:12.240 just panning across. Oh there's a bright spot, keep going, 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:15.160 and then you come back and you don't really realize 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:17.600 that it's gone or you don't notice it turned back on. 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:21.560 That's fair, all right, that's fair. So my whole poking 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:26.720 isn't as effective as yours apparently. Yeah. So anyways, so 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:30.720 that's the asteroid theories asteroid theory. So the next theory 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:34.880 is that it is man made space junk. Oh yeah, 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:38.760 like refuse from our everything we've ever put into space. 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:41.680 Dang near that didn't come crashing back down is still 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:44.640 up there. Ye yeah, yeah, there's only there's not that 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:46.639 many things that we that we put into space that 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:50.520 have actually achieved escape velocity. And so there's not that 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:55.080 many of those put we know where they're at. It's 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:57.680 mostly either still in orbit around the planet or it's 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:02.000 crash back down Earth exactly. So there is a one 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:06.280 piece of research that I really really liked um and 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:10.879 it talks about the fact that, yes, if the v 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:15.199 G is manmade, that would explain the reflective quality of it, 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:18.800 because it's a chunk of a rocket, it's a flat 0:18:18.880 --> 0:18:21.359 piece and everything we had we put up obviously as 0:18:21.440 --> 0:18:26.879 metallics and it's gonna reflect light and spin. Simple solution. 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:29.560 So like I said, like we said, there's there's a 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:32.800 ton of that junk that we just spewed into space 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:35.800 and it's floating up there. Uh well, if it is 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:40.320 manmade again, obviously it makes sense that it's gonna wink 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:43.600 on and off as it spins, because typically they're relatively 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:47.359 flat shapes or they're around and cylindrical. And so that 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:50.639 this all makes sense, it simplifies it. I found some 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:55.080 fantastic research by a guy named Dr Duncan Steel. He's 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:59.439 an astronomer. He at the time was really a researcher 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:04.520 at the Anglo Australian Observatory. And yeah, he's a he's 0:19:04.560 --> 0:19:08.479 a research fellow at the University of Adelaide. So this 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:12.040 guy is he's made his marks. So he's and he's 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:14.560 known as being very critical of a lot of things. 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:18.399 He's pragmatic, he doesn't just jump to conclusions. But he 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:20.639 did a time, he did a bunch of research in 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:25.520 a bunch of math on and here's what he came 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:31.280 up with. He calculated the gravitational orbit of and this 0:19:31.320 --> 0:19:33.679 is again with his best guest information from when it 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:37.560 was first absorbed observed to when we lost it, and 0:19:37.640 --> 0:19:39.560 he tracked that back and he's one of the ones 0:19:39.600 --> 0:19:41.080 that figured out that we're going to see it in 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:44.800 sixteen and a half years approximately, So he took that 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:47.879 time scale and he rolled it back, which means that 0:19:48.520 --> 0:19:52.000 it would have gone by us in and it would 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:55.800 have gone by us in late nineteen fifty eight. So 0:19:56.000 --> 0:19:58.600 if it is space junk that we put up there 0:19:59.280 --> 0:20:03.280 should from one of those two time frames. Okay, Well, 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:07.120 nothing in the fifties was big enough, and almost every 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:09.240 piece of junk that we put up there was small, 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:11.640 and almost every piece of it came right back down 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:14.399 to the planet. And I get in the late fifties, 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:18.240 I don't think we ever achieved any escape pity, so again, 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:21.920 it all came home. So we're pretty sure it can't 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:26.440 be any of that made John, Yeah, which means seventy 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:30.399 five we did put up some things, which you know, 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:34.080 he said, it's possible that it was a part of 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:38.480 Helios one, which went into orbit in nineteen seventy four, 0:20:38.960 --> 0:20:42.480 and it could be the rocket fragments from that, or 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:47.359 it could be part of Vera nine, which was the 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:51.959 rocket from Vera nine which was sent to the probe itself, 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:54.520 I guess was sent to Venus or out towards Venus 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:58.359 in nineteen seventy five, so we speculated it could have 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:03.000 been part of that. But the time frame he's saying 0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:05.080 it should have come by us in nineteen seventy four, 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:10.119 So this doesn't really work out all of these launches. 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:13.680 Nothing that was big enough went up in nineteen seventy 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:18.280 four to then get knocked into orbit. Problem. When was 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:22.879 the last last Apollo launch? The last Apollo launch was 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:25.960 in the late seventies, and the Apollo launches will come 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:28.440 into into play here in a couple of minutes. We're 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:32.879 definitely gonna talk about those. But other than the Apollo launches, 0:21:32.920 --> 0:21:37.200 there was nothing big enough in that time frame that 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:42.280 could have been knocked into orbit and therefore be I 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:45.840 guess though. I so for me, I kind of think 0:21:46.119 --> 0:21:48.760 how stable is its orbit? Right, because we were kind 0:21:48.760 --> 0:21:50.920 of talking about you know, it goes a little wonky, 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:53.280 when a little wonky when it came past us, and 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:57.200 if it was our space junk, maybe it was moving faster, right, 0:21:57.240 --> 0:21:59.800 So it was like from more recent right, so the 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:02.800 first time we quote passed it when it was basically 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:06.000 launched from us, or we passed it, was it more 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:09.679 recent and it went around that one time, but slowed 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:12.360 down while it was going around because it hit our gravity. 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:14.720 Well yeah, and then so it would continue to slow down, 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:17.080 so we wouldn't see it for another, you know, a 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:19.359 couple of years. But I would make sense to me 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:22.399 that perhaps it would be slowing down in its orbit. 0:22:22.560 --> 0:22:29.959 Potentially maybe, but potentially it's not stay in motion. Yeah. 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:33.520 Plus they run into a lot of objects that bumped 0:22:33.520 --> 0:22:36.320 them around, and actually bumping them around is part of 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:39.440 what Dr Steele was saying. Potentially it could be as 0:22:39.440 --> 0:22:41.680 if it was a chunk of a rocket that we 0:22:41.760 --> 0:22:44.800 sent up. It could be that it was something that 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:48.320 went into orbit that we launched into orbit around the 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:51.600 Earth or the Moon or ourselves, and then it got 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:54.720 thrown off by the gravity well or actually ran into 0:22:54.920 --> 0:22:59.080 the Moon and was kicked off into space and then 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:03.160 just went bouncing around and got locked into orbit because 0:23:03.200 --> 0:23:06.080 of that. So it should have been around us, but 0:23:06.200 --> 0:23:08.840 we accident, you know, the Moon accidentally bumped into it, 0:23:10.200 --> 0:23:13.520 or I mean, you know, or even this was you know, 0:23:13.560 --> 0:23:16.159 like a conglomerate of rocks and like whatever, and it 0:23:16.320 --> 0:23:19.000 encountered because it came close enough that maybe, like if 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:22.879 something knocked something out, a piece of metal or whatever, 0:23:22.920 --> 0:23:25.280 and it got incorporated into this thing right as it 0:23:25.400 --> 0:23:28.280 was like everything was in perfect harmony, got knocked into 0:23:28.320 --> 0:23:30.800