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Speaker 1: Or Hey, do you know the song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?

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Speaker 1: I do? Yeah? Are we taking song requests now on

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Speaker 1: the podcast? Now? I'm just trying to see something. How

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Speaker 1: about the alphabet song? Is that something you heard as

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Speaker 1: a kid. I've heard of the alphabet? Yeah? Do you

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Speaker 1: want me to get my guitar? Um? Do you also

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Speaker 1: know Bob Bob black Sheep? That one I'm not super

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Speaker 1: familiar with, but it's another kid song? Right? Well? Did

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Speaker 1: you ever realize these all have exactly the same music?

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Speaker 1: What you just blew my mind? Are they all called

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Speaker 1: the same like Twinkle Twinkle, Little Alphabet Black Sheep? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: They all end with three bags full of twinkling a

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Speaker 1: BCS and a bunch of lawsuits, maybe apparently for copyright infringement.

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Speaker 1: Hi am r Handy cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi.

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

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Speaker 1: UC Irvine, And like every other professor, I also play

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Speaker 1: the guitar. Is that a requirement for professors? I don't know,

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Speaker 1: but I live in a neighborhood of professors, and I

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Speaker 1: feel like every single house I go into has a

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Speaker 1: guitar on the wall. I don't know if they play

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Speaker 1: it or if it's just like a demonstration object, but

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Speaker 1: there's lots of guitars in this neighborhood. It's like when

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Speaker 1: they were visiting some foreign country. They picked up a

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Speaker 1: guitar or something on a field trip or a conference,

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Speaker 1: or maybe it's just a conversation piece. Nobody actually plays.

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Speaker 1: Are you supposed to play guitar? You just have one

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Speaker 1: on your wall right to look cool? You could ask

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Speaker 1: something to look cool. I guess if you're a professor.

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Speaker 1: But you're quite an accomplished guitar player, aren't you. I

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Speaker 1: don't know if I would say accomplished. But I am

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Speaker 1: in a band now. Is there anyone else in your band?

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Speaker 1: Not a one man band. I'm in a rock band

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Speaker 1: with some friends. Oh wow, awesome. Yeah, a bunch of

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Speaker 1: middle aged men having a middle age crisis. I've never

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Speaker 1: heard of that happening before. That's amazing. We're called the

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Speaker 1: Grateful Dad's, so shout out to my band members. But

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Speaker 1: I don't think they listen to this podcast. But anyways,

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Speaker 1: welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explained the university

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Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio, in which these two dads

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Speaker 1: are grateful for our ability to understand anything out there

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Speaker 1: in the universe and dive deep into all of the mysteries,

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Speaker 1: the crazy, bonkers weirdness of our universe, the amazing quantum

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Speaker 1: frothing foam, the incredible cosmic conundrums, all of the stuff

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Speaker 1: that you want to know, the answers to the things

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Speaker 1: that frame our existence, that tell us how we got

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Speaker 1: here and where the universe is going. We explore all

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Speaker 1: of these questions and more. Yeah, because it is a

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Speaker 1: pretty amazing and incredible universe, full of exciting and crazy

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Speaker 1: things happening, all at the same time as a lot

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Speaker 1: of sleepy things happening, a lot of interesting tunes to

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Speaker 1: putudiou sleep. I was wondering what you were talking about there,

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Speaker 1: sleepy things happening. It was like a rhel We're losing him.

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Speaker 1: Is he falling asleep over there? I don't think Twinkle Twinkle,

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Speaker 1: Little Star is supposed to put anybody to sleep? Is it?

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Speaker 1: It's in it a bedtime song? Oh maybe not. Maybe

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Speaker 1: I didn't grow up here, so these were not songs

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Speaker 1: that I was sunk to. I think it's more of

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Speaker 1: a campfire song. You're sitting there out in nature, looking

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Speaker 1: up at the stars and wondering, you know, what they are.

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Speaker 1: It's one of the oldest questions humans have been asking

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Speaker 1: about the nature of the cosmos. What is out there?

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Speaker 1: What is sending us those beams of light? Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: pretty incredible to think that, you know, the earliest humans

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Speaker 1: were looking up at the same sky we were, and

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Speaker 1: they were probably asking themselves the same questions, like what

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Speaker 1: is that Chinese little dought there? And how far away

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Speaker 1: is it exactly? And how many quarks are inside the

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Speaker 1: heart of a neutron star. I think that's the question

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Speaker 1: people have been asking for thousands of years, right if

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Speaker 1: they were pretty smart. Cavement, I guess Warren Cavement the

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Speaker 1: original particle colliders getting rocks together exactly me makes smaller rocks.

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Speaker 1: But it's true, it's an age old question, and there's

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Speaker 1: a grand cosmic scale to these questions, because those photons

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Speaker 1: departed those stars millions of years or billions of years

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Speaker 1: before even cavemen evolved. Yeah, definitely, starts have been around

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Speaker 1: for billions, maybe trillions of years, way before people were

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Speaker 1: looking at them, and they've been sending their light to

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Speaker 1: us for all that time. And some of that light

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Speaker 1: is just now getting to us right now, And it's

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Speaker 1: incredible to think about how that light actually arrives here.

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Speaker 1: A tiny little photon emitted by a star billions and

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Speaker 1: billions of miles away, has to fly through an incredible

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Speaker 1: amount of universe, dodging all sorts of kinds of stuff

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Speaker 1: just to land in your eyeball. It's an incredible journey,

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Speaker 1: and frankly, it's amazing to me that any of the

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Speaker 1: photons survive it. Yeah, I mean, who knows what that

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Speaker 1: photon has been through, right Like it could have maybe

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Speaker 1: gone around a black hole or barely dodged an asteroid

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Speaker 1: or a comment, you know, made it through an atmosphere,

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Speaker 1: dodge all those bolly kills of air in our atmosphere,

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Speaker 1: and just to go into your eyeball, or just to

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Speaker 1: hit a rock, and nobody even observes it. That's the

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Speaker 1: thing that frustrates me. How many photons carrying tiny little

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Speaker 1: clues about the universe just go totally unobserved. They fade

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Speaker 1: away like an old rock star. They're like little presents

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Speaker 1: that nobody unwraps. You know, each one has a clue

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Speaker 1: about the kind of star that it came from, the

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Speaker 1: history of that star what was going on in that

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Speaker 1: star at that moment, and then just boom, nobody gathers

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Speaker 1: and it just goes like splat on the sidewalk. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's pretty cool to think that every star you see,

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Speaker 1: I mean it was generated by a whole sun, right,

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Speaker 1: basically a giant ball of of fusion powered fire that

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Speaker 1: was shooting photons in every direction, and some of them

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Speaker 1: make it out to here. It gives you a sense

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Speaker 1: for the incredible size and brightness of these stars that

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Speaker 1: you can see them from so far away. Imagine if

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Speaker 1: your friend in Los Angeles had a flashlight that you

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Speaker 1: could see in New York, you would think, oh my gosh,

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Speaker 1: that must be a crazy, crazy bright flashlight. Right. Well,

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Speaker 1: these stars are so much further away, and yet you

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Speaker 1: can see them with your naked eyes. It's incredible that

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Speaker 1: these photons make it over this distance. I feel like

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Speaker 1: something I realized only recently was the fact that the

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Speaker 1: reason why stars looked like little pin points in the sky.

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Speaker 1: It's not that they are pinpoints, or it's not that

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Speaker 1: the sun is so far away that the sun keeps

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Speaker 1: getting smaller as it goes away. It's it's it's literally

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Speaker 1: just like one photo receptor in my eyeball getting activated

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Speaker 1: by one photon. You're saying that stars are like single

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Speaker 1: eye pixels in your mind basically, right, Yeah, they're just well,

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Speaker 1: what I think of as a star, or what I

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Speaker 1: see as a star is really just one eye pixel,

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Speaker 1: right like, Like it doesn't really tell me anything about

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Speaker 1: its shape or size. Yeah, it's fascinating to think about

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Speaker 1: how photons spread out from that star and then sort

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Speaker 1: of get more and more distant from their neighbors. And

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Speaker 1: to see a star that's really far away, you only

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Speaker 1: really just need one photon, And even if that photon

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Speaker 1: was created with billions of other photons really near it,

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Speaker 1: they all shoot out at slightly different angles, and so

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Speaker 1: by the time they arrives on Earth, it's basically alone.

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Speaker 1: It's the only photon that came from that star. Of course,

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Speaker 1: there are more coming behind it, but that's why the

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Speaker 1: stars seem much dimmer, of course, the further way they are,

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Speaker 1: because the photons are now spread out over a much

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Speaker 1: larger area, and so only a single cone in your

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Speaker 1: eye might register a photon from that star. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: kind of makes you wonder like if we had bigger

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Speaker 1: photo receptors in our eyeballs, you know, like if our

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Speaker 1: pixels were bigger, the stars would look bigger, right, And

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Speaker 1: if they were smaller they would look like smaller pinpoints.

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Speaker 1: I suppose if they were smaller, eventually we could even

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Speaker 1: resolve the size and the shape of the stars. You think,

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Speaker 1: so eventually eventually, right, because there is that information there.

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Speaker 1: I mean, if you have a large enough telescope for

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Speaker 1: close enough stars, you can definitely resolve the size of

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Speaker 1: the star. You think, maybe like a hawk can see

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Speaker 1: the somehow, the contours of Alpha Centauri or something, or

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Speaker 1: the Sagittarius. We shouldn't be inviting eagles to astronomy conferences

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Speaker 1: for sure, Yeah, or at least on the podcast. I

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Speaker 1: have questions for them. I want to interview the first

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Speaker 1: hawks astronomer. Now I hear they're just a bunch of

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Speaker 1: ye astronomy is for the birds. But I hear that

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Speaker 1: have a lot of feathers in their publishing caps. But anyways,

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Speaker 1: it's just it is interesting to look at a star

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Speaker 1: in the night sky and see it twinkle, right. It

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Speaker 1: kind of makes you wonder, like, why is it twink

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Speaker 1: wiz it actually twinkling? Or is it does it just

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Speaker 1: look like it's twinkling. Yeah, And this is a question

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Speaker 1: that people have been asking for a long long time,

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Speaker 1: not just what are the stars, but what is the

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Speaker 1: fact that they're twinkling? Tell us about them? Why do

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Speaker 1: different stars seem to twinkle different amounts? And it's a

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Speaker 1: question with lots of different layers of answers, because it

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Speaker 1: turns out there's lots of different reasons that stars can twinkle. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And it's a question that apparently inspired a song a

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Speaker 1: long time ago. Three different songs. M have you dug

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Speaker 1: into it? Which one came first, Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star

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Speaker 1: or the ABC song. Yeah. Actually, turns out the song

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Speaker 1: for Twinkle Twinkle is derived from something composed by Mozart,

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Speaker 1: which is inspired by something even earlier, And then later

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Speaker 1: an American music publisher adapted the tune to fit the

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Speaker 1: alphabet song. So Twinkle Twinkle came first, and then the

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Speaker 1: alphabet Interesting, but even Twinkle Twinkle was based on something else.

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Speaker 1: All music, of course, is inspired by previous music. Right,

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Speaker 1: It's all derivative, right, right, We're all made out of

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Speaker 1: start us, even the songs about stars. Does your band

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Speaker 1: play original music or only cover? So far we're only covers.

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Speaker 1: Yet I say, you got twinkle twinkle, you've got Bob Bob,

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Speaker 1: black Sheep, you've got the alphabet song. A huge variety,

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Speaker 1: that's right. We cover everything from back to Pink Floyd.

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Speaker 1: But anyways, this is an interesting question, and so today

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Speaker 1: on the podcast, we'll be asking what makes a star twinkle? Twinkle? Right,

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Speaker 1: not tinkle. It's not that kind of podcast. We don't

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Speaker 1: ask stars about their personal habits, about their bodily functions.

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Speaker 1: We do sort of ask a lot about how the

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Speaker 1: insights of stars all right, and and the gases that

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Speaker 1: erupt from it. And that's true when you talk about

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Speaker 1: the waste products of stars and how they can be

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Speaker 1: the compost that nourishes the formation of a future solar system.

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Speaker 1: They're all part of the life cycle. Yeah, yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: all physics. And so maybe next time we should ask

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Speaker 1: what makes its start tinkle? Welcome to our spinoff podcast,

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Speaker 1: Inappropriate Physics. But it's a fascinating question. I think a

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Speaker 1: lot of people i'd have some sense of the common

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Speaker 1: answer to this question, but if you dig deeper, it

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Speaker 1: turns out there's lots of different fascinating physics that might

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Speaker 1: make stars twinkle. Yeah, it turns out. There's not just

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Speaker 1: one reason stars twinkle. There are several reasons. But the

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Speaker 1: basic effect is that when you look at the star

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Speaker 1: in the night sky, it's sort of doesn't look like

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Speaker 1: a constant dot, right, or a constant dots shining. It

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Speaker 1: looks sort of like it's blinking on and off a

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Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah, exactly, stars look a little bit like

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Speaker 1: they blink like they're not just like a laser focused

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Speaker 1: at your eyeball. Yeah, it's it's it's almost like something

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Speaker 1: is turning it on and off a little bit, or

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Speaker 1: something is interfering with it, something is getting between you

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Speaker 1: and the star. All right, So we'll dig into this

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Speaker 1: question what makes its start twinkle? But first we were

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Speaker 1: wondering how many people either there have thought about this

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Speaker 1: question when they were singing the song or otherwise, And

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Speaker 1: so Daniel went out there into the did you go

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Speaker 1: into the internet or to the u c I campus

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Speaker 1: this time? These are answers from the internet. So thank

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Speaker 1: you to everybody who participated. And if you like to

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Speaker 1: put your mind to the test for future episodes and

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Speaker 1: let people hear what you think about hard physics problems,

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Speaker 1: please don't be shy right to us, do questions, add

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Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com. That's right, and you can

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Speaker 1: also go visit Daniel. Do you see Irvine right and

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Speaker 1: hope to run into him in the middle of campus.

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Speaker 1: That's right. I'm on canvas at Easy Irvine. I have

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Speaker 1: office hours, so come on stop by to think about

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Speaker 1: it for a second. Why do you think stars twinkle?

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Speaker 1: Here's what people had say. I don't think stars twinkle.

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Speaker 1: I think their photons are disrupted by temperature and pressure

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Speaker 1: differentials in our atmosphere, giving us the appearance of twinkling.

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Speaker 1: I imagine it's the same phenomenon that one witnesses looking

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Speaker 1: over hot asphalt and seeing the horizon winkle. And I

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Speaker 1: venture to guess that they don't twinkle when observed from

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Speaker 1: the International Space Station. Well, I guess it depends what

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Speaker 1: we mean by blink. The first thing that comes to

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Speaker 1: mind is if we're observing a star and something moves

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Speaker 1: between us and the star, like a planet, it's gonna

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Speaker 1: appear to have blink, I guess. But the star itself

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Speaker 1: isn't actually doing anything. It's just something's moved in front

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Speaker 1: of it, so it looks like something's happened to it.

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Speaker 1: I think that might be what the blink is. In general,

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Speaker 1: I don't think stars actually blink, but I can envision

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Speaker 1: dust clouds were particularly large planets moving between us and

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Speaker 1: that star, making them appear to blink or dim significantly.

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Speaker 1: It makes us star blink when the stars about to explode,

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Speaker 1: that is one. That is one reason the atmosphere makes

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Speaker 1: the start blank to right h And then a lot

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Speaker 1: of stars are binary pairs actually, and some of them

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Speaker 1: I think can be uh rotating around really quick, and

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Speaker 1: that would make the star appear like it's blinking. Well,

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Speaker 1: I know, the blinking that we see from here on Earth,

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Speaker 1: like the twinkling star, that's more to do with our

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Speaker 1: atmosphere than the star itself. But I do know that

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Speaker 1: stars also blink over the course of weeks and months.

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Speaker 1: I know Bill just did recently. I'm not sure what

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Speaker 1: the cause was, though, so if I had to guess,

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Speaker 1: I would think it would be maybe gas clouds, um

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Speaker 1: or even transitting planets. I don't know. I think that

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Speaker 1: what makes us start blink maybe some kind of intern

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Speaker 1: interference with any object objects that may cross in the

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Speaker 1: path between the star and the person who observes the blinking.

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Speaker 1: I would say that What makes us star blink is

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Speaker 1: the disturbances in the atmosphere, similar to what we see

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Speaker 1: when looking at distant street lights. There are um, you know,

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Speaker 1: small air currents, pockets of warm and cold air that

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Speaker 1: are constantly moving that through refraction, cause distant, tiny light

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Speaker 1: sources such as stars to blink when viewed. Although that

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Speaker 1: just might be my view as an amateur astronomer. All right,

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Speaker 1: people seem to have pretty strong opinions here. I mean

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Speaker 1: a few people didn't know, but a lot of people

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Speaker 1: seem to think what was going on. Yeah, there's a

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Speaker 1: strong vein here of people thinking that stars are interfered

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Speaker 1: with by our atmosphere. Yeah. A lot of people said

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Speaker 1: that it's not that the stars actually blinked, like at

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Speaker 1: the source, like the star itself. It's just that it

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Speaker 1: just looks like it's blinking. And that's a fascinating answer

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Speaker 1: because it suggests that the photons are like uninterrupted for

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Speaker 1: billions and billions of years and then just like micro

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Speaker 1: seconds before they hit your eyeball, that's when they get twinkled. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's what we tell people who come listen to our band.

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Speaker 1: That's thought that we sound bad. It's just said you

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Speaker 1: know our perfect sounds. Somebody guests distorted it on the

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Speaker 1: way to your ear. That's right. That's why you have

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Speaker 1: forced them to plug indirectly to your instruments, right, so

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Speaker 1: they can hear the adulterated intended version of your music.

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Speaker 1: That's right. Yes, the direct neural download. That's the next step. Actually,

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Speaker 1: I know somebody with hearing loss and have a new

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Speaker 1: kind of hearing aid that allows for a Bluetooth connection

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Speaker 1: so that the sound doesn't have to go through the air.

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Speaker 1: They can just hear the original unadulterated sound. Wow, that's

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Speaker 1: really interesting. I wonder if it sounds better or different. Oh,

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Speaker 1: it's much clearer. They can go to presentations, they can

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Speaker 1: hear in church. Now, it's much better than just amplifying

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Speaker 1: the sound through the air. Sounds great, And that means

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Speaker 1: you can also hit the mute button, I imagine at

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Speaker 1: church or at a professor lecture, that's right. It probably

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Speaker 1: also means that you can hack them and you can

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Speaker 1: like pipe in the Grateful Dads or something else. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: much better than a professor lecture for sure, especially if

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Speaker 1: you're getting it at the source. But anyways, it's there's

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Speaker 1: some interesting ideas here. A lot of people say, it's

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Speaker 1: not the stars that are actually blinking, it's somehow like

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere that's making them blink or somehow making them

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Speaker 1: look like they're blinking. So Daniel, maybe step us through.

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Speaker 1: What are some of the actual reasons why stars sprinkle? Well,

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Speaker 1: our atmosphere is the number one reason. And this is

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Speaker 1: basically why we have space telescopes, because it's not a

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Speaker 1: very nice to look at distant stars through the atmosphere

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Speaker 1: because while the air seems clear to you, it actually

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Speaker 1: can make light zig and zag a little bit because

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Speaker 1: it's a slightly different temperatures and slightly different densities. And

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Speaker 1: that's sort of like looking through glass with impurities in it.

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Speaker 1: That's interesting. But I guess like if I look at

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Speaker 1: something through a glass or like a hazy glass, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't make the light source twinkle, It just makes it

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Speaker 1: look dimmer. Well, what a glass does It bends the light, right,

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Speaker 1: That's how a lens works. And so if you have

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Speaker 1: glass that has like varying densities and varying temperatures in it,

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Speaker 1: for example, then it will change the path of that light.

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Speaker 1: And so what happens to the photons is they hit

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere. Is not that they're like destroyed, is that

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Speaker 1: they're just change direction. And so for you to see

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Speaker 1: a star, you need like a direct line of sight

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Speaker 1: between you and the star. But if some photons are deflected,

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Speaker 1: then you don't see them. Those photons might land to

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Speaker 1: your left or to your right or somewhere else. They

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Speaker 1: still hit the earth, but they're not hitting your eye anymore.

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Speaker 1: So to your eye it looks like the star is

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Speaker 1: twinkling because the stream of photons is interrupted. Right. But

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Speaker 1: but I guess what I mean is that the difference

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Speaker 1: between like a glass and the atmosphere is that the

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Speaker 1: atmosphere is sort of like always changing. Right, there's wind,

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Speaker 1: and there's you know, variations and clouds, and so it's

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Speaker 1: it makes the starts twinkle because the air is sort

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Speaker 1: of like moving and waving around in front of you,

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Speaker 1: whereas it like a glass doesn't. Right, Like a glass

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Speaker 1: doesn't make a start twinkle. That's right, a glass wouldn't

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Speaker 1: make a start twinkle. It might deflect the path, but

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Speaker 1: if you find the right location, you could see a

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Speaker 1: constant stream of light flowing through the glass. But as

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Speaker 1: you say, air is constantly changing, right, The wind. The

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Speaker 1: atmospheric conditions are constantly changing, and so the path of

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Speaker 1: a photon through the air is not constant. So if

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Speaker 1: you're just standing there with your eyeball in one location,

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Speaker 1: you're not going to get all the photons that come

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Speaker 1: from that star. Well, it's kind of interesting because the

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Speaker 1: atmosphere makes the stars twinkle like it makes the photons

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Speaker 1: sometimes reach your eyeball and sometimes not. But you're saying

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Speaker 1: that it can also bend the photons, But it doesn't

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Speaker 1: make the stars kind of wavy? Does it? Right? In principle,

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Speaker 1: it does if you could capture all of those photons,

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Speaker 1: like if you had a huge collection device, then you

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Speaker 1: would still see the star because as the deflected photons

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Speaker 1: would land in your collection device, and then you would

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Speaker 1: think the star came from a different place. And so

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Speaker 1: because you have a small collection device, just your eyeball,

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Speaker 1: you're missing some of those photons, so it looks like

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Speaker 1: the star twinkles rather than dances. There's actually another really

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Speaker 1: interesting effect called stellar aberration, which means that the stars

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Speaker 1: are not actually where they look like they are because

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Speaker 1: they have relative velocity to the Earth. So by the

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Speaker 1: time the light gets here, the stars have sort of

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Speaker 1: moved away from where they appear to be. But that's

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Speaker 1: a different thing. It doesn't cause the stars to twinkle,

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Speaker 1: just causes them to be somewhere other than where they

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Speaker 1: appear to be. I see, that's a different song altogether.

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Speaker 1: That's more like a Baba Black stellar aberration. Yeah. Historically

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Speaker 1: it is actually really important because it's one clue that

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Speaker 1: we use against the either hypothesis. People are trying to

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Speaker 1: understand how light propagated through the universe, and they thought

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Speaker 1: maybe there's ether, but then Michaelson and Morley showed that

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Speaker 1: there couldn't be either. Some people thought, oh, well, maybe

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Speaker 1: we are stuck in a blob of ether that travels

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Speaker 1: with the Earth, but then we wouldn't have stellar aberration.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, back to twinkling stars. Yeah, I think you're

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Speaker 1: saying is that the Start is shooting this train of

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Speaker 1: photons add us and they're all coming sort of in

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Speaker 1: a street line to our eyeballs. But some of them,

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Speaker 1: like hit a pocket of hot air and get deflected,

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Speaker 1: or they happen to hit a molecule of nitrogen in

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere and it doesn't make it out to us.

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Speaker 1: And so this train of photons is interrupted, and that

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Speaker 1: is making it look like it's turning on and off

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Speaker 1: to our eyeballs. That's exactly right. And then if you

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Speaker 1: look at something slightly bigger, like a planet, which is closer,

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Speaker 1: you're getting multiple streams of photons from that planet. It's

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Speaker 1: not so far away that it just looks like a

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Speaker 1: point source. It's like a little disc in the sky.

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Speaker 1: And so while some of those photons may get scattered

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Speaker 1: from one stream, you're pretty much always getting them from

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Speaker 1: another stream. And so a planet looks like a little

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Speaker 1: hazy because the atmosphere or its edges might wiggle a

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Speaker 1: little bit. But a planet doesn't twinkle because it doesn't

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Speaker 1: get like all of its streams interrupted at once, unless

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Speaker 1: it's maybe like a super cloudy day, right or you know,

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Speaker 1: particularly kind of hazy night. Yeah, it could be, you know,

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Speaker 1: if something passes between you and the planet, like an

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Speaker 1: eagle or something, it can block the view, or if

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Speaker 1: it's like a huge blob of gas hot gas somewhere

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Speaker 1: in the atmosphere, it could distort it. But twinkling is

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Speaker 1: not something you're going to see regularly from a planet

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Speaker 1: because it appears larger in the sky, and so it's

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Speaker 1: not as often actually interrupted. All right, Well, that's one

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Speaker 1: source of twinkling of the stars, and there are others,

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Speaker 1: and there's are things we can do to correct that twinkling,

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Speaker 1: so we can actually study stars. But let's get into

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Speaker 1: that after we take a quick break. All right, we're

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Speaker 1: talking about twinkle twinkle, little stars or big stars. I

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Speaker 1: guess yeah, technically stars are not little. Some stars are little,

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Speaker 1: you know, Neutron stars are only like ten kilometers across.

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Speaker 1: That's pretty little by star standards, and some of them

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Speaker 1: are enormous. We have an episode about the biggest stars

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Speaker 1: in the universe, and some of them are bigger than

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Speaker 1: our solar systems. So maybe should be more like twinkle

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Speaker 1: twinkle gigantic star. You say it that way, it sounds flattering, like, wow,

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Speaker 1: you're swoll star. You've been working out Twinkle twinkle rip star.

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Speaker 1: Stars always skip leg day. So we were talking about

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Speaker 1: how the twinkling, most of the twinkling, or a lot

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Speaker 1: of the twinkling we see of the stars is due

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Speaker 1: to our atmosphere, Like we have this kind of hazy

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Speaker 1: layer of air and gas around the Earth which is

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Speaker 1: constantly moving, maybe has pockets of hot air cold air,

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Speaker 1: different you know, clouds and things like that, and so

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Speaker 1: that is what a lot of what makes stars twinkle

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Speaker 1: because they kind of obscure or interrupt the train of

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Speaker 1: photons coming to our eyes from the stars. Yeah, and

426
00:21:39,040 --> 00:21:42,199
Speaker 1: that's a big challenge for ground based astronomy because we

427
00:21:42,240 --> 00:21:43,680
Speaker 1: want to study the star and we want to get

428
00:21:43,720 --> 00:21:46,320
Speaker 1: great resolution. You know, this fuzzes out one star that

429
00:21:46,400 --> 00:21:48,960
Speaker 1: might be next to another one. It makes it harder

430
00:21:48,960 --> 00:21:53,400
Speaker 1: to observe things in space and get really really crisp images. Yeah,

431
00:21:53,480 --> 00:21:55,800
Speaker 1: I guess you know, the way astronomy started is that

432
00:21:55,840 --> 00:21:58,000
Speaker 1: it was pretty good for like basic stuff of of

433
00:21:58,119 --> 00:22:00,640
Speaker 1: star observing. But then as we want to get more

434
00:22:00,680 --> 00:22:03,480
Speaker 1: detailed or you know, look further out than the atmosphere,

435
00:22:03,520 --> 00:22:06,000
Speaker 1: and the twinkling became a problem. Yeah. Well, until recently,

436
00:22:06,040 --> 00:22:09,000
Speaker 1: we couldn't do anything about it. We couldn't avoid the atmosphere. Now,

437
00:22:09,040 --> 00:22:12,120
Speaker 1: of course we have things like space based telescopes, which

438
00:22:12,119 --> 00:22:15,280
Speaker 1: are awesome and it can avoid atmospheric effects. But there

439
00:22:15,320 --> 00:22:18,800
Speaker 1: are limitations on space telescopes, right, They're expensive, they're hard

440
00:22:18,840 --> 00:22:21,800
Speaker 1: to fix, they have to fit within a rocket. Sometimes

441
00:22:21,840 --> 00:22:23,920
Speaker 1: they blow up, and so there's sort of two very

442
00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:27,879
Speaker 1: complementary paths for astronomy, one space based where you get crisp,

443
00:22:27,920 --> 00:22:31,200
Speaker 1: clear pictures, and the other ground based astronomy, where they've

444
00:22:31,240 --> 00:22:34,040
Speaker 1: come up with some really really clever techniques to try

445
00:22:34,040 --> 00:22:37,280
Speaker 1: to overcome some of the atmospheric limitations. Yeah, this is

446
00:22:37,400 --> 00:22:41,320
Speaker 1: called adaptive optics. Like they actually constantly move the mirrors

447
00:22:41,320 --> 00:22:43,879
Speaker 1: to correct for the twinkling. It's totally bonkers and it

448
00:22:43,960 --> 00:22:46,080
Speaker 1: sounds like it would never work, but you're right. They

449
00:22:46,119 --> 00:22:49,560
Speaker 1: have these mirrors that are deformable, meaning you can change

450
00:22:49,640 --> 00:22:51,960
Speaker 1: the shape of the mirror so when the light hits it,

451
00:22:51,960 --> 00:22:54,000
Speaker 1: it bounces off at a different angle. And if you

452
00:22:54,080 --> 00:22:57,760
Speaker 1: know the effect of the atmosphere on your light source,

453
00:22:58,160 --> 00:23:01,320
Speaker 1: then you can calculate in real time how to deform

454
00:23:01,400 --> 00:23:05,560
Speaker 1: your mirror, to undo it, to like enhance, to defog it,

455
00:23:05,640 --> 00:23:07,720
Speaker 1: to de fuzz it. And so they do these on

456
00:23:07,800 --> 00:23:11,480
Speaker 1: really fancy telescopes on like the millisecond time scale. It's

457
00:23:11,560 --> 00:23:15,680
Speaker 1: like constantly varying in small amounts the shape of the mirrors.

458
00:23:16,119 --> 00:23:18,320
Speaker 1: But I guess I'm a little confused now because earlier

459
00:23:18,359 --> 00:23:20,720
Speaker 1: we said that, you know, the twinkling is sort of

460
00:23:20,760 --> 00:23:24,680
Speaker 1: not it's not making the star wavy or fuzzy. It's

461
00:23:24,720 --> 00:23:28,000
Speaker 1: actually just kind of interrupting the stream of photons. So

462
00:23:28,040 --> 00:23:31,639
Speaker 1: how can moving the mirrors correct for photons that didn't

463
00:23:31,680 --> 00:23:33,159
Speaker 1: get to me? Well, it doesn't get to you if

464
00:23:33,160 --> 00:23:35,440
Speaker 1: you have a tiny little collection device like an eyeball.

465
00:23:35,520 --> 00:23:38,480
Speaker 1: But if you have, you know, like a thirty meter telescope,

466
00:23:38,520 --> 00:23:40,400
Speaker 1: then it's more likely that you are going to get

467
00:23:40,400 --> 00:23:42,480
Speaker 1: that photon. And the photon has just been deflected a

468
00:23:42,520 --> 00:23:44,560
Speaker 1: little bit in one direction. And now if you have

469
00:23:44,680 --> 00:23:48,240
Speaker 1: a few objects near each other, then when the atmosphere changes,

470
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:50,639
Speaker 1: it's changing the path of all those photons, and those

471
00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:53,959
Speaker 1: objects get fussed together instead of getting a clear crisp image.

472
00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:56,119
Speaker 1: So if you change in the shape of your mirror,

473
00:23:56,160 --> 00:23:58,560
Speaker 1: you can sort of undo that and send the photons

474
00:23:58,600 --> 00:24:01,359
Speaker 1: back as if the atmosphere had happened. Oh, I see

475
00:24:01,400 --> 00:24:03,679
Speaker 1: this is for a different song. I guess right, this

476
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:08,560
Speaker 1: would be for like fuzzy fuzzy Little Star. Yeah, exactly.

477
00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:10,600
Speaker 1: But it's a hard problem to solve, Like, to do this,

478
00:24:10,680 --> 00:24:13,000
Speaker 1: you have to know what the atmosphere has done to

479
00:24:13,080 --> 00:24:15,280
Speaker 1: your photons, and you might wonder like, well, how could

480
00:24:15,280 --> 00:24:17,960
Speaker 1: you possibly know? You're trying to get a crisp image?

481
00:24:18,000 --> 00:24:20,160
Speaker 1: You don't know what the true image should look like,

482
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:23,240
Speaker 1: so how can you like invert the atmosphere. It's a

483
00:24:23,280 --> 00:24:26,400
Speaker 1: really hard problem. Yeah, and I hear they use lasers

484
00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:29,000
Speaker 1: for that, right, Sometimes they use lasers. What you need,

485
00:24:29,040 --> 00:24:32,560
Speaker 1: ideally is some point source near the thing you're looking

486
00:24:32,560 --> 00:24:34,879
Speaker 1: at where you know what it should look like, like

487
00:24:34,960 --> 00:24:38,080
Speaker 1: something else nearby in the sky, where you know exactly

488
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:40,240
Speaker 1: how it should look, and that lets you calculate what

489
00:24:40,280 --> 00:24:42,719
Speaker 1: the atmosphere has done to it. You don't always have that,

490
00:24:42,800 --> 00:24:45,000
Speaker 1: because you don't have like something we have a hubble

491
00:24:45,080 --> 00:24:48,439
Speaker 1: image of it nearby your star. So sometimes they use

492
00:24:48,520 --> 00:24:52,119
Speaker 1: lasers and they create these artificial guide stars, Like we

493
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:53,879
Speaker 1: know what it should look like when you shoot a

494
00:24:53,960 --> 00:24:56,760
Speaker 1: laser into the upper atmosphere to like excite the gases

495
00:24:57,080 --> 00:24:59,840
Speaker 1: and create some emission. We know what that should look like,

496
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:02,040
Speaker 1: so we can sort of calculate what the atmosphere has

497
00:25:02,080 --> 00:25:04,720
Speaker 1: done to that light and then undo that to the

498
00:25:04,800 --> 00:25:08,000
Speaker 1: light from the stars. I see used the laser or

499
00:25:08,040 --> 00:25:10,399
Speaker 1: the reference like a control and it actually sort of

500
00:25:10,440 --> 00:25:13,600
Speaker 1: tells you what the atmosphere is doing. Out's distorting your image, Yeah,

501
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:16,159
Speaker 1: it's probing the atmosphere. That's why sometimes you see these

502
00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:18,879
Speaker 1: telescopes with these lasers shooting out at it. It's not

503
00:25:18,920 --> 00:25:22,080
Speaker 1: like we're defending the Earth from aliens or sending messages

504
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:25,240
Speaker 1: or zapping eagles or anything like that. We're just creating

505
00:25:25,280 --> 00:25:27,760
Speaker 1: a reference image. So we know what the atmosphere has

506
00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:29,920
Speaker 1: done to our star light. All right, Well, that's kind

507
00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:32,000
Speaker 1: of the what the atmosphere is doing. It's doing a

508
00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:34,359
Speaker 1: lot of the twinkling So does that mean that like

509
00:25:34,400 --> 00:25:37,080
Speaker 1: a space telescope like the Hubble or the New James

510
00:25:37,160 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 1: Web that's out there in space doesn't get twinkling stars.

511
00:25:40,320 --> 00:25:42,800
Speaker 1: It doesn't get twinkling stars for that reason, right, there's

512
00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:45,720
Speaker 1: no atmosphere up there in space to interfere with the Hubble,

513
00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:47,960
Speaker 1: and that's one reason why it's pictures can be so

514
00:25:48,040 --> 00:25:51,159
Speaker 1: awesome and crisp and clear. So it's definitely an advantage

515
00:25:51,160 --> 00:25:53,679
Speaker 1: of space based telescopes. But when the Hubble looks out

516
00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:58,080
Speaker 1: of stars, it's still sometimes sees their life getting interrupted interesting.

517
00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:02,200
Speaker 1: It still sees twinkling stars, still sees twinkling stars. And

518
00:26:02,240 --> 00:26:05,479
Speaker 1: because we can remove the atmosphere from the explanation, that

519
00:26:05,520 --> 00:26:08,479
Speaker 1: means there must be something else interfering with these stars

520
00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:12,479
Speaker 1: or something else going on at the actual star itself. WHOA,

521
00:26:13,359 --> 00:26:16,320
Speaker 1: So there are other sources of twinkling for a star,

522
00:26:16,520 --> 00:26:18,399
Speaker 1: like even if you get out of the atmosphere, you

523
00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:21,240
Speaker 1: might still see some twinkling. Yeah, and it's totally fascinating.

524
00:26:21,280 --> 00:26:22,960
Speaker 1: There were a lot of articles a few years ago

525
00:26:23,000 --> 00:26:26,240
Speaker 1: about this star called Tabby Star wearing two thousand fifteen.

526
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:29,600
Speaker 1: Some citizen scientists saw this dimming of this star that

527
00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 1: nobody could explain. And you might remember there were a

528
00:26:31,800 --> 00:26:33,719
Speaker 1: lot of articles written about how like it might be

529
00:26:33,760 --> 00:26:37,680
Speaker 1: an alien dicen sphere, some huge megastructure built to gather

530
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:39,800
Speaker 1: all of the energy from the star that might be

531
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:42,920
Speaker 1: explaining why it seemed to be eclipsed. Who did you say?

532
00:26:42,960 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 1: A Tabby star like a cat. It's called Tabby's Star.

533
00:26:48,240 --> 00:26:50,000
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it's named after a person named

534
00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:53,640
Speaker 1: Tabby or a person's cat named Tabby. It's called Tabby Star.

535
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:55,520
Speaker 1: I feel like if you had the whole zoo here

536
00:26:56,080 --> 00:27:00,200
Speaker 1: talked about black sheep and hawks and now cats. It's

537
00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:03,680
Speaker 1: also sometimes called w t F star, though I won't

538
00:27:03,720 --> 00:27:09,440
Speaker 1: speculate on what that stands for White toroid formation. Yes,

539
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:14,720
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's what they meant or what the physics

540
00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:17,159
Speaker 1: in Spanish. But it turns out, of course, that it's

541
00:27:17,200 --> 00:27:20,720
Speaker 1: likely not a Dicens swarm. A dicenswarm would block light

542
00:27:20,760 --> 00:27:23,679
Speaker 1: at all wavelengths because it would basically be opaque. But

543
00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:26,120
Speaker 1: the light that's coming from Tabby Star has been interfered

544
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:30,200
Speaker 1: with in some way that's not consistent across the spectrum,

545
00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:33,560
Speaker 1: like some frequencies of light can penetrate still from Tabby

546
00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:36,199
Speaker 1: Star and other frequencies can't. But we don't have a

547
00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:39,280
Speaker 1: great idea for what it is that's interfering with the light.

548
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:41,720
Speaker 1: People thought maybe it's a planet that blew up and

549
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:44,520
Speaker 1: created a big ring of dust, but that's also not

550
00:27:44,560 --> 00:27:47,160
Speaker 1: creating the amount of infrared glowing people would see. It's

551
00:27:47,160 --> 00:27:50,120
Speaker 1: so it's really fascinating when a star twinkles when it dims,

552
00:27:50,440 --> 00:27:52,840
Speaker 1: because it lets us understand what might be going on

553
00:27:53,080 --> 00:27:55,680
Speaker 1: in that star's system. Right. It tells us a little

554
00:27:55,720 --> 00:28:00,639
Speaker 1: bit about its internal body bound movements. Breath. I like

555
00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:03,400
Speaker 1: to think about it. It's like telling us about its neighborhood. Hey,

556
00:28:03,440 --> 00:28:06,040
Speaker 1: what's going on over there, Tabby Star? Who are your friends?

557
00:28:06,040 --> 00:28:07,800
Speaker 1: Who are you hanging out with? Did you blow up

558
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:11,240
Speaker 1: a planet? All? Right? So you're saying, that's kind of

559
00:28:11,280 --> 00:28:14,399
Speaker 1: one example of of us seeing a star out in

560
00:28:14,520 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 1: space sort of changing its brightness, but not due to

561
00:28:17,760 --> 00:28:20,560
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. And people who are interested in exo planets,

562
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:22,880
Speaker 1: of course, know that seeing the stars light dim by

563
00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:25,880
Speaker 1: a tiny little bit is an excellent way to observe

564
00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:28,199
Speaker 1: exo planets in that star. Right When we get like

565
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:31,200
Speaker 1: eclipsed by planet that passes in front of the star,

566
00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:34,040
Speaker 1: it can cause a very slight dimming, and if you

567
00:28:34,080 --> 00:28:37,359
Speaker 1: observe that carefully, you can deduce the presence of that

568
00:28:37,520 --> 00:28:40,520
Speaker 1: exo planet. I wouldn't call that exactly twinkling, but it's

569
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:43,440
Speaker 1: an example of a star getting a small eclipse from

570
00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:46,840
Speaker 1: an exo planet, right, Because these planets, they don't come

571
00:28:46,880 --> 00:28:49,120
Speaker 1: in front of the sun that often, right, like maybe

572
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:51,560
Speaker 1: every couple of most like a couple of hours, right,

573
00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:55,440
Speaker 1: it could be a slow twinkle, slow twinkle like a twinkle,

574
00:28:56,080 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 1: And of course it depends on the exo planet and

575
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:00,880
Speaker 1: what its orbit is. Sometimes it's once in a hundred

576
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:03,800
Speaker 1: years it passes around, or maybe it's every few hours.

577
00:29:03,840 --> 00:29:06,160
Speaker 1: If it's zooming around really close to the star, really

578
00:29:06,200 --> 00:29:08,640
Speaker 1: limits our ability to discover this kind of thing. But

579
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:12,720
Speaker 1: sometimes we see stars with much more dramatic dimming than

580
00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:16,680
Speaker 1: we could ever explain with exoplanets or even dust swarms. Interesting.

581
00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: I guess my question is like, how common are these

582
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:21,680
Speaker 1: other phenomenon? Like if I was out in space in

583
00:29:21,680 --> 00:29:23,680
Speaker 1: my space suit and I looked at the stars, would

584
00:29:23,720 --> 00:29:25,920
Speaker 1: I see the stars twinkling? Or they would they look

585
00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:29,720
Speaker 1: pretty overall, pretty constant to my eyeball, this is pretty unusual.

586
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:32,800
Speaker 1: Most of the stars are pretty constant. Sometimes there are

587
00:29:32,840 --> 00:29:35,160
Speaker 1: things that interfere with the star light, and that's fascinating

588
00:29:35,160 --> 00:29:37,960
Speaker 1: for astronomers, and there's like a short list of these objects.

589
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:40,280
Speaker 1: But most of the stars would look pretty bright and

590
00:29:40,320 --> 00:29:42,400
Speaker 1: pretty even if I was out in space. If you're

591
00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:44,280
Speaker 1: out in space, yeah, so if you're observing from the

592
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 1: I S S or you're living on the Moon, if

593
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:49,520
Speaker 1: you're flying in Elon Musk's roadster, for example, then the

594
00:29:49,560 --> 00:29:52,280
Speaker 1: stars are going to look pretty clear. Interesting. So the

595
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:56,480
Speaker 1: song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star kind of doesn't apply in space. Yeah,

596
00:29:56,520 --> 00:29:58,880
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna be selling the galactic rights to that song.

597
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:02,320
Speaker 1: It's really just the Earth territories or any planet with

598
00:30:02,480 --> 00:30:06,120
Speaker 1: an atmosphere, right, or maybe like if you're in the

599
00:30:06,160 --> 00:30:09,520
Speaker 1: middle of a nebula maybe like a space cloud maybe.

600
00:30:09,720 --> 00:30:12,240
Speaker 1: But there is one star that's really interesting that astronomer

601
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 1: has been struggling to understand for like ten years. Now.

602
00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:18,880
Speaker 1: What is it. It's a star called vvv w I

603
00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:23,120
Speaker 1: T zero eight and it's in the Sagittarius constellation about

604
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:26,720
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand light years away. This is a giant star.

605
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:29,880
Speaker 1: It's like a hundred times the size of the Sun.

606
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:33,840
Speaker 1: And about ten years ago it seemed to be eclipsed

607
00:30:34,040 --> 00:30:36,600
Speaker 1: and not just slightly dimmed. Its light was reduced by

608
00:30:36,760 --> 00:30:41,120
Speaker 1: nine seven percent. Whoa it like it almost turned off completely.

609
00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:44,240
Speaker 1: It almost turned off exactly. And they've been observing this

610
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:46,800
Speaker 1: star for like seventeen years since it is the only

611
00:30:46,840 --> 00:30:50,040
Speaker 1: time it ever happened. And it dimmed by nine percent

612
00:30:50,200 --> 00:30:52,560
Speaker 1: for a few hundred days and then came back up

613
00:30:52,600 --> 00:30:55,480
Speaker 1: to full brightness. Wait what in like the space of

614
00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:58,320
Speaker 1: like a few months. Yeah, they watched this star for

615
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 1: years and nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, boom,

616
00:31:01,640 --> 00:31:04,200
Speaker 1: it's knocked down by a factor of thirty and then

617
00:31:04,240 --> 00:31:06,960
Speaker 1: it stays pretty dark for a few months, and then

618
00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:10,640
Speaker 1: it goes back up to full brightness like all of

619
00:31:10,720 --> 00:31:13,440
Speaker 1: a sudden or was this a gradual thing? It happened

620
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:16,000
Speaker 1: very quickly once it began, and then it stayed dark

621
00:31:16,080 --> 00:31:19,080
Speaker 1: for months. Right, And so this is fascinating because this

622
00:31:19,160 --> 00:31:21,520
Speaker 1: is a huge star, right, this is not an eclipse

623
00:31:21,520 --> 00:31:24,760
Speaker 1: from a small object. No planet passing in front of

624
00:31:24,800 --> 00:31:29,680
Speaker 1: this giant star could reduce its light by Yeah, that's

625
00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:33,400
Speaker 1: a big twinkle. I guess it's one big twink. Really,

626
00:31:33,440 --> 00:31:38,160
Speaker 1: you know, it made all this torontomer twinkle observing it.

627
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:41,320
Speaker 1: They were so excited, exactly. And so people are wondering

628
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:43,840
Speaker 1: what could this thing be and they've done some calculations.

629
00:31:44,160 --> 00:31:46,200
Speaker 1: You know, if this thing is going to eclipse such

630
00:31:46,240 --> 00:31:48,360
Speaker 1: a big star, it has to be huge. It has

631
00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:51,240
Speaker 1: to be. The minimum size of this thing would be

632
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:54,720
Speaker 1: point to five a U, like a quarter of the

633
00:31:54,800 --> 00:31:57,760
Speaker 1: distance between the Earth and the Sun. We're talking about

634
00:31:57,800 --> 00:32:01,400
Speaker 1: a single object that size with the thing that blocked

635
00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:04,120
Speaker 1: the star. Because you're saying the star is so big,

636
00:32:04,160 --> 00:32:06,240
Speaker 1: it would have to be that something really big to

637
00:32:06,280 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 1: block it. But that's only if we assume that the

638
00:32:08,160 --> 00:32:10,000
Speaker 1: thing that blocked it is close to the star, Like

639
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 1: it could have maybe been something closer that blocked it. Yeah,

640
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:15,800
Speaker 1: it could have been something in between us and the star, right,

641
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:17,840
Speaker 1: because you can block an entire star with the tip

642
00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:19,960
Speaker 1: of your finger, which is not a quarter a U

643
00:32:20,080 --> 00:32:22,520
Speaker 1: wide if your finger is really close. But that would

644
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:25,200
Speaker 1: require like a bunch of just dark objects floating through

645
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:27,960
Speaker 1: the universe passing between us and these stars. And they

646
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:30,160
Speaker 1: did a calculation to see, like how many of those

647
00:32:30,240 --> 00:32:32,640
Speaker 1: dark objects would have to be randomly floating around the

648
00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:34,800
Speaker 1: galaxy in order to block stars like this, and it

649
00:32:34,800 --> 00:32:38,000
Speaker 1: would be a huge number. So that's an explanation, but

650
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:41,320
Speaker 1: it's less likely than some huge object closer to the star,

651
00:32:41,440 --> 00:32:45,640
Speaker 1: some remnant of the stellar formation. But this doesn't happen

652
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:48,200
Speaker 1: that often, right, does it? This does not happen that often,

653
00:32:48,280 --> 00:32:51,200
Speaker 1: But for it to ever happen, space would basically have

654
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:54,560
Speaker 1: to be filled with these big dark objects because it's

655
00:32:54,720 --> 00:32:57,000
Speaker 1: very hard to cross the line of side between a

656
00:32:57,080 --> 00:32:59,760
Speaker 1: star and us unless you have a lot of stuff

657
00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 1: out there in space, because space is really, really really big. Interesting,

658
00:33:04,760 --> 00:33:06,840
Speaker 1: So they think it's maybe something in the orbit of

659
00:33:06,840 --> 00:33:09,160
Speaker 1: the star and it's something huge, yeah, but they don't

660
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:11,760
Speaker 1: really understand it because we don't have models for solar

661
00:33:11,760 --> 00:33:14,920
Speaker 1: system formation that include stuff like this, Like what could

662
00:33:14,920 --> 00:33:17,680
Speaker 1: it be? We have ideas of planets and maybe even

663
00:33:17,800 --> 00:33:20,680
Speaker 1: rings around stars. People have this theory that maybe it's

664
00:33:20,720 --> 00:33:23,200
Speaker 1: like a huge ring with a big blob in it

665
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:26,440
Speaker 1: that got exploded or torn apart by tidal forces, something

666
00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:29,720
Speaker 1: like a circumstellar disc with a huge object in it,

667
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:32,680
Speaker 1: but it's much bigger than any model can predict. Interesting,

668
00:33:32,760 --> 00:33:35,040
Speaker 1: Could it be like a giant cloud of something like

669
00:33:35,040 --> 00:33:37,680
Speaker 1: an asteroid cloud? Maybe you certainly could be. And perhaps

670
00:33:37,760 --> 00:33:41,240
Speaker 1: for example, another solar system passed by and lost some

671
00:33:41,360 --> 00:33:43,440
Speaker 1: of its stuff to this solar system, So it could

672
00:33:43,440 --> 00:33:46,760
Speaker 1: be something that happened fairly recently, because these things wouldn't

673
00:33:46,840 --> 00:33:49,160
Speaker 1: last for very long. If you have like a huge

674
00:33:49,200 --> 00:33:52,200
Speaker 1: cloud of stuff in your solar system, eventually gravity is

675
00:33:52,200 --> 00:33:54,440
Speaker 1: going to pull it together after a few million years

676
00:33:54,520 --> 00:33:57,600
Speaker 1: and form it into like a planet or into something else.

677
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:00,560
Speaker 1: And so like huge clouds of gas and dust around

678
00:34:00,600 --> 00:34:03,680
Speaker 1: the star and to be short lived objects on astronomical

679
00:34:03,680 --> 00:34:08,160
Speaker 1: time scales. WHOA, alright, so that's one, I guess twinkling

680
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:12,399
Speaker 1: That puzzled scientist. It's it's like a big twinkle that

681
00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:15,080
Speaker 1: caused this one start to twinkle. What are some other

682
00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:17,920
Speaker 1: famous examples of twinkling stars? Yeah, so we have a

683
00:34:17,920 --> 00:34:20,960
Speaker 1: short list of them. There's another one called Epsilon R

684
00:34:21,040 --> 00:34:25,360
Speaker 1: e J, and this one is eclipped every twenty seven

685
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:29,040
Speaker 1: years by some giant dust cloud which orbits it, and

686
00:34:29,040 --> 00:34:32,919
Speaker 1: it's eclipsed by fifty percent whoa meaning like we see

687
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:35,760
Speaker 1: the star called Epsilon R J, and it it dims

688
00:34:35,800 --> 00:34:37,920
Speaker 1: every twenty seven years. We've been looking at it that

689
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:40,120
Speaker 1: long to note to notice this pattern. Yeah, it was

690
00:34:40,160 --> 00:34:43,879
Speaker 1: first observed in eighteen twenty one, so we've been looking

691
00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:46,000
Speaker 1: at this thing for like hundreds of years, which is

692
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:48,120
Speaker 1: why we have a handle on like a twenty seven

693
00:34:48,160 --> 00:34:51,760
Speaker 1: year cycle. So it's like a twinkle, but in atar

694
00:34:51,800 --> 00:34:55,240
Speaker 1: scale kind of exactly if you fast forward at the universe,

695
00:34:55,280 --> 00:34:57,960
Speaker 1: this one would seem to twinkle. It's like a very

696
00:34:58,160 --> 00:35:02,319
Speaker 1: slow motion tween. You have to play the song one

697
00:35:02,360 --> 00:35:05,680
Speaker 1: note per year exactly, and the dimming here lasts for

698
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:09,479
Speaker 1: like two years and then it happens every twenty seven years.

699
00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:12,160
Speaker 1: So it's like a giant, slow moving dust cloud. And

700
00:35:12,239 --> 00:35:14,160
Speaker 1: this one we do know what causes. How do we

701
00:35:14,200 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 1: know what causes this eclipse? Mostly we can study these

702
00:35:16,719 --> 00:35:19,160
Speaker 1: things by looking at the spectrum, Like we can study

703
00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:22,120
Speaker 1: the kind of light that can penetrate, and that tells

704
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:24,799
Speaker 1: us why this thing is transparent and why this thing

705
00:35:24,840 --> 00:35:28,279
Speaker 1: is opaque, because remember every object is either transparent or

706
00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:31,520
Speaker 1: opaque to light at different frequencies depending on what it is,

707
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:34,880
Speaker 1: because the atoms that make things up can only absorb

708
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:38,360
Speaker 1: photons as specific frequencies. And so by looking at the

709
00:35:38,440 --> 00:35:41,040
Speaker 1: light that passes through, for example, a cloud of gas,

710
00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:43,920
Speaker 1: you can tell, oh, there hydrogen, or there's helium, or

711
00:35:43,920 --> 00:35:46,680
Speaker 1: there's sodium, or it's gas or its dust or whatever.

712
00:35:46,840 --> 00:35:49,799
Speaker 1: You can tell by seeing which frequencies of light are

713
00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:53,319
Speaker 1: filtered out by that object. And so by studying it

714
00:35:53,320 --> 00:35:55,320
Speaker 1: we can tell, oh, this is probably a big cloud

715
00:35:55,360 --> 00:35:57,840
Speaker 1: of dust, and I see like the shade of the

716
00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:00,279
Speaker 1: light that comes through tells you kind of what it

717
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:02,800
Speaker 1: went through exactly, just like you know, you can throw

718
00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:05,479
Speaker 1: things into flames and they make different colors. That's because

719
00:36:05,520 --> 00:36:09,520
Speaker 1: different elements emit at different frequencies. They also absorb at

720
00:36:09,560 --> 00:36:12,719
Speaker 1: those same frequencies. And so if you shine white light

721
00:36:12,760 --> 00:36:15,440
Speaker 1: through a cloud of random gas, and astronomer can tell

722
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:18,720
Speaker 1: you what was in that gas based on whether green

723
00:36:18,880 --> 00:36:21,640
Speaker 1: was removed or red was removed, or the infrared was

724
00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:24,279
Speaker 1: removed or something. It's like a fingerprint. All right, that's

725
00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:28,360
Speaker 1: another twinkling star in space. What are some other examples,

726
00:36:28,560 --> 00:36:30,879
Speaker 1: So this is a short list of them. V four

727
00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:34,759
Speaker 1: hundred Centauri, which is also called Mama Jets object is

728
00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:38,120
Speaker 1: also eclipsed by something we don't really understand, but astronomers

729
00:36:38,160 --> 00:36:41,400
Speaker 1: suspect that it's something that's point for a U wide,

730
00:36:41,520 --> 00:36:44,680
Speaker 1: it's an object that's like forty million miles wide. Well,

731
00:36:44,680 --> 00:36:47,200
Speaker 1: it's it's not maybe one objecting it's at that scale.

732
00:36:47,200 --> 00:36:49,760
Speaker 1: It's probably like a cloud of something or a cluster

733
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:52,080
Speaker 1: of something. Right, Yeah, it's probably like a big cloud

734
00:36:52,120 --> 00:36:54,880
Speaker 1: of gas or dust or a huge rain of rocks. Right,

735
00:36:54,920 --> 00:36:57,239
Speaker 1: it's probably not a single solid object that would big

736
00:36:57,280 --> 00:36:59,959
Speaker 1: because it's like a huge block of iron that big

737
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:03,480
Speaker 1: and gravitationally will probably collapse into a black hole. All right. Well,

738
00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:05,920
Speaker 1: those are different things that can make a star twinkle

739
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:08,920
Speaker 1: out in space that is not our atmosphere. But it

740
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:11,520
Speaker 1: turns out there are other reasons why a star might twinkle,

741
00:37:11,560 --> 00:37:14,200
Speaker 1: and it might have to do with their inner bowel movement.

742
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:16,440
Speaker 1: So let's get into that. But first let's take another

743
00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:32,880
Speaker 1: quick break. All right, we're talking about twinkling and twinkling stars.

744
00:37:32,880 --> 00:37:36,800
Speaker 1: Both big and little and also bad bla black cheeps

745
00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:40,120
Speaker 1: that might be eclipsing stars out there in space. So

746
00:37:40,160 --> 00:37:42,040
Speaker 1: then we talked about how, like most of the stars

747
00:37:42,040 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 1: we see twinkle here on Earth, it's it's because of

748
00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:47,000
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. It's the air around us is making the

749
00:37:47,120 --> 00:37:49,440
Speaker 1: light kind of dim on and off. But you can

750
00:37:49,440 --> 00:37:51,960
Speaker 1: also see a about twinkling in space because there are

751
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:54,319
Speaker 1: other things in space that might be blocking our view.

752
00:37:54,440 --> 00:37:55,960
Speaker 1: But it turns out that even if you are sort

753
00:37:55,960 --> 00:37:59,080
Speaker 1: of standing next to the star, you might even then

754
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:01,560
Speaker 1: see a twinkle. This is one of my favorite explanations

755
00:38:01,560 --> 00:38:04,200
Speaker 1: for twinkling stars because it really goes to the heart

756
00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:07,120
Speaker 1: of like your original idea. When you're looking up at

757
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:09,120
Speaker 1: the night sky and you're looking at the star and

758
00:38:09,160 --> 00:38:12,360
Speaker 1: it's twinkling, you're wondering, like, is it getting brighter and

759
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:14,920
Speaker 1: dimmer or is the light getting blocked. Well, it turns

760
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 1: out that stars can actually get brighter and dimmer. That's

761
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:20,840
Speaker 1: something that a bunch of stars can do. And I

762
00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:23,600
Speaker 1: was surprised to learn that the Sun does this as well.

763
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:26,560
Speaker 1: The Sun varies its brightness. It's not just like a

764
00:38:26,600 --> 00:38:30,640
Speaker 1: constant stream of photons every year. Wait, what like our sun,

765
00:38:30,719 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 1: that the one that provides are daylight is not constant.

766
00:38:33,520 --> 00:38:37,000
Speaker 1: It's twinkling. Also, Yeah, it turns out all stars are variable.

767
00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:39,160
Speaker 1: Some of them are much more variable than others, and

768
00:38:39,200 --> 00:38:41,719
Speaker 1: we'll talk about those, but every single star has some

769
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:44,160
Speaker 1: variability to it. You know, our sun has like an

770
00:38:44,160 --> 00:38:47,680
Speaker 1: eleven year cycle where something mysterious is going on at

771
00:38:47,719 --> 00:38:52,080
Speaker 1: the heart of this swirling, crazy plasmas with these enormous

772
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:55,319
Speaker 1: tubes and magnetic fields that flip every eleven years, and

773
00:38:55,400 --> 00:38:57,880
Speaker 1: so the brightness of our sun varies, but only a

774
00:38:57,880 --> 00:39:01,360
Speaker 1: small amount. It's like zero point one percent over the

775
00:39:01,400 --> 00:39:04,239
Speaker 1: eleven year cycle. Well, I meaning like if you took

776
00:39:04,239 --> 00:39:06,560
Speaker 1: a film of the Sun and you fast forward at it,

777
00:39:07,080 --> 00:39:09,200
Speaker 1: you would see it kind of like twinkle, right, you'd

778
00:39:09,239 --> 00:39:11,640
Speaker 1: see it kind of blinking on and off about point

779
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:14,080
Speaker 1: one percent, but still you might notice it. Yeah, you

780
00:39:14,120 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 1: have a good camera, you could definitely detect that, and

781
00:39:16,040 --> 00:39:18,200
Speaker 1: people have and people who study the sun see this

782
00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:21,040
Speaker 1: kind of cycle. You know, there's another longer term trend,

783
00:39:21,080 --> 00:39:23,760
Speaker 1: which is the sun is overall getting brighter and brighter

784
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:26,600
Speaker 1: as it gets older, and over like a billion years,

785
00:39:26,640 --> 00:39:29,080
Speaker 1: it's going to get maybe ten percent brighter. That's not

786
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:31,839
Speaker 1: something we can observe with our telescope today. But this

787
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:35,200
Speaker 1: kind of gentle twinkling is something that the Sun does.

788
00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:38,640
Speaker 1: And then I guess that's because the Sun. I mean,

789
00:39:38,680 --> 00:39:41,120
Speaker 1: it's not like a machine, right, It's like a process.

790
00:39:41,640 --> 00:39:44,719
Speaker 1: It's like a giant nuclear chemical reaction, right, Like there's

791
00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:47,400
Speaker 1: stuff going on inside of it that maybe causes it

792
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:51,000
Speaker 1: to kind of grow brighter or dimmer. Sometimes you're suggesting

793
00:39:51,040 --> 00:39:52,759
Speaker 1: that if it was a machine, like designed by a

794
00:39:52,800 --> 00:39:56,440
Speaker 1: stellar engineer or something, it would be more reliable. Well,

795
00:39:56,480 --> 00:40:00,520
Speaker 1: all engineers are stars, Daniel. All engineers are stellar. We're

796
00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:02,960
Speaker 1: all stellar engineers. I mean, the Sun has been burning

797
00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:06,200
Speaker 1: for five billion years without a breakdown, so you know,

798
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:08,719
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty effective. Well, I guess what I

799
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:10,359
Speaker 1: mean is it's it's a it's kind of like it's

800
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:14,240
Speaker 1: an organic process, right, Like, it's not perfectly imbalanced. Maybe

801
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:16,759
Speaker 1: sometimes it gets a little over excited and sometimes a

802
00:40:16,800 --> 00:40:19,920
Speaker 1: little under excited. Yeah, it's a different process than combustion.

803
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:21,520
Speaker 1: But it's sort of like a fire. You know, it

804
00:40:21,560 --> 00:40:25,360
Speaker 1: has fuel, it keeps burning and that flame fluctuates and

805
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:27,960
Speaker 1: so it's not like designed or orchestrated in order to

806
00:40:27,960 --> 00:40:29,799
Speaker 1: provide a certain amount of light. It's just a thing

807
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:32,319
Speaker 1: that is there and does what it's doing, and that

808
00:40:32,400 --> 00:40:35,480
Speaker 1: means that it has cycles because of the internal workings

809
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:38,480
Speaker 1: of the sun very and it's incredible that it's so

810
00:40:38,600 --> 00:40:41,600
Speaker 1: regular too. It's not something that we understand the source

811
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:44,440
Speaker 1: of this eleven year cycle for the sun. Well, so

812
00:40:44,480 --> 00:40:46,960
Speaker 1: I wonder, like, if we're a different species of animal

813
00:40:47,040 --> 00:40:49,040
Speaker 1: and we had like a thought process that was a

814
00:40:49,080 --> 00:40:51,839
Speaker 1: lot slower like to us, maybe the sun would look

815
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:54,600
Speaker 1: like a stroke light almost if we thought about things

816
00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:56,719
Speaker 1: in the scale of like centuries, it would look like

817
00:40:56,920 --> 00:40:58,799
Speaker 1: it was blinking on and off kind of. Yeah, that's

818
00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:01,759
Speaker 1: fun to think about. Or another idea is what if

819
00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:04,760
Speaker 1: we were species that was extraordinarily sensitive is the abount

820
00:41:04,760 --> 00:41:07,560
Speaker 1: of sunlight, so that we could like observe and notice

821
00:41:07,880 --> 00:41:10,880
Speaker 1: this eleven year cycle and it affected our evolution the

822
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:13,040
Speaker 1: way like the day night cycle and the winters have

823
00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 1: affected the evolution of light on Earth. I'd be interesting

824
00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:17,720
Speaker 1: if you had species that were sensitive to these eleven

825
00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:21,799
Speaker 1: year cycles. Whoa, like, maybe you're sleepier for eleven years

826
00:41:21,880 --> 00:41:25,040
Speaker 1: and then you're less sleepy. Maybe that's why I've been

827
00:41:25,080 --> 00:41:28,160
Speaker 1: late this past eleven years. Yeah, all right, well, then

828
00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:31,520
Speaker 1: how do you explained the previous eleven years? I was

829
00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:33,560
Speaker 1: a lot more on time eleven years ago. Man, I

830
00:41:33,600 --> 00:41:35,799
Speaker 1: believe that I've known you for more than eleven years,

831
00:41:35,840 --> 00:41:38,759
Speaker 1: so I can contest that data. Well, you just don't

832
00:41:38,800 --> 00:41:41,279
Speaker 1: have enough data points. Then you need at least what's

833
00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:44,000
Speaker 1: the mic was frequency that you need at least twice

834
00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:48,520
Speaker 1: the periosity. All right, I'll get back to you intend Yeah, wait,

835
00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:51,120
Speaker 1: wait or other thirty years and then we'll talk about

836
00:41:51,120 --> 00:41:52,920
Speaker 1: my peakers. All right, I'm putting it on my calendar

837
00:41:53,160 --> 00:41:58,480
Speaker 1: series schedule appointment for thirty years from today. But anyways,

838
00:41:58,520 --> 00:42:00,200
Speaker 1: I think what you're saying is that, like, maybe I

839
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:02,560
Speaker 1: wonder if there are things on Earth that are sensitive

840
00:42:02,600 --> 00:42:05,120
Speaker 1: to that cycle, right, Like, maybe it might affect our

841
00:42:05,160 --> 00:42:07,680
Speaker 1: atmosphere too, Right, every eleven years, maybe things get a

842
00:42:07,719 --> 00:42:10,200
Speaker 1: little bit warmer or colder. Yeah, well, the brightness of

843
00:42:10,239 --> 00:42:12,839
Speaker 1: the sun definitely affects the atmosphere and the climate here

844
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:15,479
Speaker 1: on Earth, but there are larger effects. The Earth goes

845
00:42:15,480 --> 00:42:17,880
Speaker 1: through these cycles that affect like the ice ages and

846
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:21,120
Speaker 1: glaciation because the Earth's orbit changes a little bit, and

847
00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:23,319
Speaker 1: the tilt changes a little bit. Is it's tweaked by

848
00:42:23,360 --> 00:42:26,080
Speaker 1: like Jupiter. So I think those effects are larger than

849
00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:28,520
Speaker 1: the variability of the Sun itself. So the Sun is

850
00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:31,600
Speaker 1: a twinkling star. It's pretty interesting. But then and then

851
00:42:31,600 --> 00:42:34,719
Speaker 1: there are other ways in which a star can change to. Yeah,

852
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:37,760
Speaker 1: so all stars vary, and some of them vary a lot.

853
00:42:38,040 --> 00:42:41,000
Speaker 1: They are these stars that are called pulsating stars, and

854
00:42:41,040 --> 00:42:44,040
Speaker 1: they get brighter and dimmer and brighter and dimmer, sometimes

855
00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:47,520
Speaker 1: by huge amount. A classic example of these are the sefids.

856
00:42:47,680 --> 00:42:49,560
Speaker 1: These are the ones that Hubble used to discover that

857
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:52,640
Speaker 1: the universe is expanding. These aren't like pulsars, which shoot

858
00:42:52,640 --> 00:42:54,920
Speaker 1: out a beam of light which spins around and sweeps

859
00:42:54,920 --> 00:42:58,520
Speaker 1: over the Earth. These are like radially shrinking and growing.

860
00:42:58,560 --> 00:43:02,560
Speaker 1: They get bigger and bright, eater, and then smaller and dimmer. Whoa,

861
00:43:02,640 --> 00:43:05,080
Speaker 1: they're They're like a beating heart, almost like the star

862
00:43:05,200 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 1: is growing and shrinking. Yeah, they pulse with a regular frequency.

863
00:43:08,600 --> 00:43:10,600
Speaker 1: Well what kind of frequency we're talking about. There's a

864
00:43:10,640 --> 00:43:13,040
Speaker 1: big range in the periods, but it's on the order

865
00:43:13,080 --> 00:43:15,440
Speaker 1: of days. Some of these things have a period of

866
00:43:15,480 --> 00:43:19,160
Speaker 1: like ten days or eighty days or ninety days. So

867
00:43:19,200 --> 00:43:21,960
Speaker 1: this is not like a pulsar that can be spinning

868
00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:24,880
Speaker 1: at like millisecond frequencies or something that's more like on

869
00:43:24,920 --> 00:43:28,560
Speaker 1: the order of days. But sometimes they have like multiple frequencies.

870
00:43:28,680 --> 00:43:30,640
Speaker 1: They can have like a major frequency, and then they

871
00:43:30,640 --> 00:43:33,360
Speaker 1: have like another cycle that's going on inside of that

872
00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:37,840
Speaker 1: that I can constructively or destructively interfere. But even a

873
00:43:37,880 --> 00:43:40,600
Speaker 1: period of days seems a lot, right, Like can you

874
00:43:40,640 --> 00:43:43,839
Speaker 1: imagine the start changing that quickly, like a start size

875
00:43:43,880 --> 00:43:46,160
Speaker 1: of our sun changing that quickly every couple of days,

876
00:43:46,160 --> 00:43:48,400
Speaker 1: that that would be pretty dramatic. It would be crazy

877
00:43:48,520 --> 00:43:50,399
Speaker 1: to be in a system like that where things got

878
00:43:50,400 --> 00:43:52,600
Speaker 1: a lot brighter and then a lot dimmer, and also

879
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:55,200
Speaker 1: the star itself is getting bigger, right, This is like

880
00:43:55,239 --> 00:43:58,160
Speaker 1: an astrophysical thing you can observe, like the star is

881
00:43:58,200 --> 00:44:00,920
Speaker 1: expanding and now it's shrinking. It has to do with

882
00:44:00,960 --> 00:44:03,840
Speaker 1: what's going on inside the star, you know, like is

883
00:44:03,880 --> 00:44:07,120
Speaker 1: the star opaque to its own energy, so that there's

884
00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:10,239
Speaker 1: all this pressure from the radiation being generated the core

885
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:12,799
Speaker 1: that's pushing out the outer layers or it is a

886
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:15,600
Speaker 1: cool down and then become like transparent to that energy

887
00:44:15,640 --> 00:44:17,600
Speaker 1: and it can collapse a little bit. So this this

888
00:44:17,680 --> 00:44:20,120
Speaker 1: cycle that's going on inside every star, but in some

889
00:44:20,200 --> 00:44:23,080
Speaker 1: stars it's very dramatic, right, because stars, as we talked

890
00:44:23,120 --> 00:44:26,760
Speaker 1: about it, are kind of a balance between gravity squishing

891
00:44:26,800 --> 00:44:30,200
Speaker 1: everything in and effusion exploding everything out. And like our

892
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:32,319
Speaker 1: star is pretty steady, Like it's pretty well balanced, but

893
00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:34,480
Speaker 1: maybe there are stars out there that are not as

894
00:44:34,480 --> 00:44:36,440
Speaker 1: well balanced, and so they kind of swing back and

895
00:44:36,480 --> 00:44:39,960
Speaker 1: forth more wildly between squishing and exploding, you know. And

896
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:42,680
Speaker 1: it's something we're still trying to understand in detail. People

897
00:44:42,719 --> 00:44:45,120
Speaker 1: are building models to try to explain this kind of thing,

898
00:44:45,480 --> 00:44:47,839
Speaker 1: and it's a great way to probe what's going on

899
00:44:47,960 --> 00:44:51,319
Speaker 1: inside the star. Also because the sefids, at least, there's

900
00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:55,000
Speaker 1: this close connection between the period, how long it takes

901
00:44:55,000 --> 00:44:57,160
Speaker 1: to go from bright to dim and bright to dim,

902
00:44:57,320 --> 00:45:00,560
Speaker 1: and how bright it is at its brightest point, which

903
00:45:00,560 --> 00:45:02,720
Speaker 1: of course is super helpful if you want to understand

904
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:05,120
Speaker 1: how far away the star is, but also helpful if

905
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:07,600
Speaker 1: you want to understand what's going on inside the star,

906
00:45:08,040 --> 00:45:12,359
Speaker 1: what crazy processes are driving these things. Uh, it's got

907
00:45:12,440 --> 00:45:15,280
Speaker 1: like a lot of turmoil inside of it, but predictable

908
00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:19,040
Speaker 1: turmoil on this yeah, precisely, okay, cool. And then there

909
00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:22,359
Speaker 1: are also erupting stars or farting stars. There are some

910
00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:25,640
Speaker 1: stars that are even more dramatic than these pulsating stars.

911
00:45:25,840 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 1: They are called erupting stars. These stars like blowout material.

912
00:45:31,040 --> 00:45:33,880
Speaker 1: They're like puff away material and then they lose it.

913
00:45:34,040 --> 00:45:36,879
Speaker 1: You know, it's like gone out into space. These are

914
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:39,320
Speaker 1: not like explosive events. It's not like, you know, the

915
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:42,239
Speaker 1: star has exploded. It's not like a supernova. It's more

916
00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:45,040
Speaker 1: just like the star has very rapidly grown and then

917
00:45:45,160 --> 00:45:48,200
Speaker 1: loses some of its material. It's not like a gas pocket.

918
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:50,439
Speaker 1: It's more like it has one of these flow ups

919
00:45:50,560 --> 00:45:53,520
Speaker 1: and in the process that shoots out a big bunch

920
00:45:53,560 --> 00:45:55,240
Speaker 1: of stuff. It shoots out a big bunch of stuff,

921
00:45:55,360 --> 00:45:57,280
Speaker 1: and it can also a creed a big bunch of stuff.

922
00:45:57,520 --> 00:46:00,520
Speaker 1: Like sometimes they're near a source and so they're gathering

923
00:46:00,719 --> 00:46:03,440
Speaker 1: more fuel and that can make the star brighter. In

924
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:06,560
Speaker 1: extreme cases, it can be really dramatic. One example is

925
00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:09,640
Speaker 1: called a flare star. These kind of stars can grow

926
00:46:09,680 --> 00:46:12,480
Speaker 1: in brightness by a factor of six and then fade

927
00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:15,000
Speaker 1: back down. And this whole thing happens in like half

928
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:18,000
Speaker 1: an hour. That's huge, but it's not is it constant

929
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:19,919
Speaker 1: or is it just happens every once in a while.

930
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:23,400
Speaker 1: These things are not regular the way like pulsating stars are,

931
00:46:23,680 --> 00:46:26,480
Speaker 1: and it's not something that we understand, you know, we

932
00:46:26,520 --> 00:46:28,960
Speaker 1: don't even understand it as well as we understand like

933
00:46:29,000 --> 00:46:31,680
Speaker 1: solar flares on the surface of our sun, which have

934
00:46:31,800 --> 00:46:34,600
Speaker 1: to do with like magnetic field lines snapping and reconnecting.

935
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:36,759
Speaker 1: So it's something we observe by, something we still don't

936
00:46:36,840 --> 00:46:39,520
Speaker 1: understand the process of. Oh, I see, it's more like

937
00:46:39,560 --> 00:46:42,960
Speaker 1: one twinkle like it twinkles ones sometimes you know, it's

938
00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:46,120
Speaker 1: regular and it's unpredictable. Um, but it does seem to

939
00:46:46,120 --> 00:46:49,640
Speaker 1: happen much more often to red dwarfs, like these dim

940
00:46:49,719 --> 00:46:52,239
Speaker 1: red dwarfs that are all over the galaxy one of

941
00:46:52,239 --> 00:46:54,520
Speaker 1: the most common types of star. These are the ones

942
00:46:54,560 --> 00:46:59,000
Speaker 1: that turn into flare stars. Interesting, regular and unpredictable. I

943
00:46:59,040 --> 00:47:02,839
Speaker 1: feel like it's a good description of myself as well.

944
00:47:03,760 --> 00:47:07,319
Speaker 1: Maybe I should have said not uncommon and unpredictable. It's

945
00:47:07,360 --> 00:47:10,239
Speaker 1: sort of cool because the galaxy is filled with these unassuming,

946
00:47:10,280 --> 00:47:13,080
Speaker 1: sort of generic dim red dwarfs. But occasionally one of

947
00:47:13,120 --> 00:47:16,040
Speaker 1: them becomes like ridiculously bright for just like a half

948
00:47:16,080 --> 00:47:18,560
Speaker 1: an hour and then goes back to being a boring star.

949
00:47:18,760 --> 00:47:22,880
Speaker 1: So these are examples of stars kind of twinkling by themselves.

950
00:47:23,000 --> 00:47:25,359
Speaker 1: Like you said, like, it's not something that's blocking it.

951
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:27,319
Speaker 1: It's not the atmosphere that's the story. It's like the

952
00:47:27,360 --> 00:47:29,680
Speaker 1: star it self kind of twinkles, even if it's on

953
00:47:29,760 --> 00:47:32,279
Speaker 1: a pretty big time scale exactly, and it's sort of

954
00:47:32,320 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 1: across the whole spectrum, you know, the whole star lights

955
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:38,560
Speaker 1: up in many different frequencies, and so it's pretty cool

956
00:47:38,560 --> 00:47:40,480
Speaker 1: because that means that the twinkling you're seeing is not

957
00:47:40,560 --> 00:47:43,520
Speaker 1: just something local, not just your atmosphere, but it's actually

958
00:47:43,640 --> 00:47:47,040
Speaker 1: information about what's going on inside the star. So it's

959
00:47:47,080 --> 00:47:50,800
Speaker 1: like there's science there. It's like it's sending you a message. Interesting,

960
00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:54,000
Speaker 1: it's like there's yeah, there's a there's hidden mechanics going

961
00:47:54,040 --> 00:47:55,759
Speaker 1: on that you can maybe figure out if you could

962
00:47:55,800 --> 00:47:58,120
Speaker 1: study this, this twinkling. Yeah, and I think about this

963
00:47:58,200 --> 00:48:00,760
Speaker 1: kind of thing every time I'm out in nature enjoying

964
00:48:00,800 --> 00:48:02,840
Speaker 1: a dark sky night, which you know is harder and

965
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:05,640
Speaker 1: harder to get these days. Right, But you go camping

966
00:48:05,640 --> 00:48:08,200
Speaker 1: a lot, right, is that when you look at stars mostly, Yeah,

967
00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:10,200
Speaker 1: when you go camping is when you're far away from

968
00:48:10,239 --> 00:48:12,759
Speaker 1: the city and all the light pollution, and hopefully you

969
00:48:12,760 --> 00:48:14,799
Speaker 1: don't see too many clouds. That's when you break out

970
00:48:14,840 --> 00:48:18,840
Speaker 1: the guitar and you start lecturing. Do your kids about

971
00:48:18,880 --> 00:48:22,600
Speaker 1: the stars in music? I try not to force them

972
00:48:22,640 --> 00:48:24,080
Speaker 1: to listen to it, but you know, by the way,

973
00:48:24,080 --> 00:48:26,680
Speaker 1: we got a comment from a listener about something you

974
00:48:26,719 --> 00:48:30,360
Speaker 1: said about the weather in Spokane, Washington and how likely

975
00:48:30,440 --> 00:48:32,800
Speaker 1: they are to have clear skies. Wait, what what happened?

976
00:48:32,800 --> 00:48:34,480
Speaker 1: What did I say? And what did they say? Apparently

977
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:38,240
Speaker 1: you said that it rains eleven months per year in Spokane, Washington,

978
00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:40,920
Speaker 1: and this listener, Jeremy wrote in and said, I just

979
00:48:40,960 --> 00:48:43,440
Speaker 1: want you to know that Spokane is basically a desert

980
00:48:43,520 --> 00:48:47,640
Speaker 1: and it's pronounced Spokane. So thanks Jeremy for the fact checking.

981
00:48:47,800 --> 00:48:50,040
Speaker 1: So I was wrong and many many counts. Yeah, and

982
00:48:50,120 --> 00:48:52,960
Speaker 1: actually I looked it up and it rains seventeen inches

983
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:55,600
Speaker 1: a year in Spokane and twenty inches a year in

984
00:48:55,640 --> 00:48:59,080
Speaker 1: your hometown of Pasadena. So it's even drier and Spokane

985
00:48:59,080 --> 00:49:01,920
Speaker 1: than it is where you live. Interesting. Wow, Well I

986
00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:04,200
Speaker 1: was wrong, but it means that observing the night sky

987
00:49:04,239 --> 00:49:07,160
Speaker 1: in Pasadena and in Spokane, you won't get blocked by

988
00:49:07,160 --> 00:49:10,520
Speaker 1: a lot of clouds. I am wrong. Every eleven years

989
00:49:10,520 --> 00:49:13,600
Speaker 1: it does happen due to the sun variations. You know,

990
00:49:13,640 --> 00:49:15,680
Speaker 1: it's not something I can help. That's right. Every star

991
00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:19,560
Speaker 1: has their variability, and this is yours. That's right. Every

992
00:49:19,560 --> 00:49:23,879
Speaker 1: stellar engineer has a cycle. All right. Well, it's interesting that,

993
00:49:23,960 --> 00:49:25,799
Speaker 1: you know, something as simple as a kids song like

994
00:49:25,880 --> 00:49:28,799
Speaker 1: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star has so much science behind it.

995
00:49:28,880 --> 00:49:32,040
Speaker 1: You know, it tells us it's inspired by, you know,

996
00:49:32,200 --> 00:49:34,560
Speaker 1: the effects of our atmosphere that we have, how it

997
00:49:34,560 --> 00:49:37,040
Speaker 1: blocks our view of the universe. And it also maybe

998
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:40,160
Speaker 1: has something to do with the mechanics of stellar you know,

999
00:49:40,280 --> 00:49:45,439
Speaker 1: fusion and processes inside of these incredible exploding machines. Yeah,

1000
00:49:45,480 --> 00:49:47,960
Speaker 1: it's really an outstanding way to think about the universe

1001
00:49:48,040 --> 00:49:50,960
Speaker 1: and the journey that these lotons make across it, from

1002
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:53,760
Speaker 1: when they're born in this hot ball of plasma billions

1003
00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:57,160
Speaker 1: and billions of miles away to finally landing on your eyeball.

1004
00:49:57,360 --> 00:49:59,640
Speaker 1: The fact that they get there tells you something about

1005
00:49:59,640 --> 00:50:02,120
Speaker 1: the union verse between here and there, and the fact

1006
00:50:02,120 --> 00:50:04,600
Speaker 1: that some of their brothers and sisters didn't get there

1007
00:50:04,640 --> 00:50:08,919
Speaker 1: also tells you something about what's between us and that star. Yeah.

1008
00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:13,720
Speaker 1: Only the lucky ones make it too spoken. The unlucky

1009
00:50:13,760 --> 00:50:17,239
Speaker 1: ones make it to Pasadena or Irvine is the lucky

1010
00:50:17,280 --> 00:50:18,880
Speaker 1: ones get here and they have to listen to my

1011
00:50:18,920 --> 00:50:24,600
Speaker 1: band plan. I'm gonna file a noise complain the universe

1012
00:50:24,640 --> 00:50:27,400
Speaker 1: already did it all right? Well, the next time you

1013
00:50:27,600 --> 00:50:29,920
Speaker 1: listen to this song, think about the stars and think

1014
00:50:29,960 --> 00:50:33,919
Speaker 1: about how our view of the universe still not completely clear.

1015
00:50:34,200 --> 00:50:36,480
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, See

1016
00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:46,760
Speaker 1: you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel

1017
00:50:46,800 --> 00:50:49,319
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I

1018
00:50:49,560 --> 00:50:53,000
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcast for my heart Radio, visit

1019
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:56,520
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

1020
00:50:56,600 --> 00:51:03,680
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. No