1
00:00:01,840 --> 00:00:08,559
Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff.

2
00:00:08,600 --> 00:00:12,039
Speaker 1: Lauren Voldebam here and I am recording this episode live

3
00:00:12,200 --> 00:00:15,239
Speaker 1: from the iHeart Podcast Studio powered by Bows at the

4
00:00:15,280 --> 00:00:19,160
Speaker 1: House of Music at the iHeartRadio Music Festival, which is

5
00:00:19,200 --> 00:00:22,400
Speaker 1: a wild experience and really wonderful. So Hi, thank you

6
00:00:22,440 --> 00:00:26,079
Speaker 1: for joining me. Okay, if there is one thing that

7
00:00:26,120 --> 00:00:28,520
Speaker 1: we know for sure about our universe, it's that we

8
00:00:28,760 --> 00:00:33,200
Speaker 1: actually know very little about it. Every year astronomers discover

9
00:00:33,360 --> 00:00:37,040
Speaker 1: new objects and phenomena. Sometimes they're pretty close to Earth,

10
00:00:37,760 --> 00:00:40,800
Speaker 1: like surprising new asteroids that go whizzing by, and other

11
00:00:40,880 --> 00:00:44,680
Speaker 1: times they're more distant than anything we've ever observed before.

12
00:00:46,159 --> 00:00:49,479
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about an example of the latter. Back

13
00:00:49,520 --> 00:00:52,400
Speaker 1: in April of twenty twenty two, astronomers made headlines for

14
00:00:52,440 --> 00:00:56,200
Speaker 1: detecting a phenomenon that occurred roughly five billion years ago.

15
00:00:56,800 --> 00:01:00,000
Speaker 1: A light from it traveled some thirty six thousand bills

16
00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:03,320
Speaker 1: billion billion miles to reach the telescopes that measured it,

17
00:01:04,040 --> 00:01:07,320
Speaker 1: which is about fifty eight thousand billion billion kilometers, which

18
00:01:07,360 --> 00:01:11,640
Speaker 1: either way is a lot. This record breaking observance was

19
00:01:11,640 --> 00:01:14,880
Speaker 1: conducted by the mere caat telescope in South Africa and

20
00:01:14,959 --> 00:01:20,640
Speaker 1: nicknamed Nkala kata, an Isuzulu word meaning big boss. The

21
00:01:20,680 --> 00:01:23,479
Speaker 1: scientific name for this type of phenomenon is pretty cool too.

22
00:01:24,080 --> 00:01:28,639
Speaker 1: It's a mega maser, which is not a supervillain's weapon

23
00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:32,160
Speaker 1: that I'm aware of personally. No, Mega masers are a

24
00:01:32,160 --> 00:01:36,679
Speaker 1: fascinating fact of life out there in the universe. But okay,

25
00:01:36,800 --> 00:01:39,600
Speaker 1: before we talk about what a megamser is, let's talk

26
00:01:39,600 --> 00:01:44,560
Speaker 1: about how a regular maser works. Strictly speaking, a maser

27
00:01:44,720 --> 00:01:48,880
Speaker 1: is a human built device that produces and amplifies electromagnetic waves,

28
00:01:49,280 --> 00:01:53,720
Speaker 1: much like the better known laser. Masers actually came first.

29
00:01:54,080 --> 00:01:57,240
Speaker 1: The word is an acronym that stands for microwave amplification

30
00:01:57,520 --> 00:02:01,920
Speaker 1: by stimulated emission of radiation. That's because the first masers

31
00:02:01,960 --> 00:02:06,760
Speaker 1: produced electromagnetic waves in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum.

32
00:02:07,400 --> 00:02:11,079
Speaker 1: The original was built in nineteen fifty three. Lasers were

33
00:02:11,120 --> 00:02:14,000
Speaker 1: actually called optical masers when they were first developed a

34
00:02:14,040 --> 00:02:17,280
Speaker 1: few years later before they got their current name, and

35
00:02:17,400 --> 00:02:20,680
Speaker 1: several scientists were awarded the nineteen sixty four Nobel Prize

36
00:02:20,680 --> 00:02:23,760
Speaker 1: in Physics for the groundwork that made the first maser possible.

37
00:02:25,120 --> 00:02:27,760
Speaker 1: Since then, researchers have been able to build masers in

38
00:02:27,800 --> 00:02:30,480
Speaker 1: other regions of the spectrum, including in the radio and

39
00:02:30,560 --> 00:02:34,919
Speaker 1: infrared parts. Researchers have proposed changing the M to stand

40
00:02:34,960 --> 00:02:39,120
Speaker 1: for molecular instead of microwave. All of this has made

41
00:02:39,200 --> 00:02:43,079
Speaker 1: masers useful as microwave amplifiers in radio telescopes and deep

42
00:02:43,120 --> 00:02:48,280
Speaker 1: space spacecraft communication round stations. However, when we speak about

43
00:02:48,320 --> 00:02:51,959
Speaker 1: masers and space, there is another way to define the term.

44
00:02:52,160 --> 00:02:56,240
Speaker 1: An astrophysical maser is a naturally occurring emission. It's a

45
00:02:56,280 --> 00:02:59,640
Speaker 1: burst of electromagnetic waves, usually in the microwave part of

46
00:02:59,639 --> 00:03:03,480
Speaker 1: the elect her magnetic spectrum. While you may have never

47
00:03:03,560 --> 00:03:06,280
Speaker 1: heard of a mega maser, astronomers have been measuring them

48
00:03:06,280 --> 00:03:10,360
Speaker 1: since the late nineteen seventies. The first extragalactic maser, that

49
00:03:10,520 --> 00:03:13,080
Speaker 1: is a maser from outside the Milky Way, was observed

50
00:03:13,080 --> 00:03:16,440
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven. By the mid nineteen nineties, several

51
00:03:16,520 --> 00:03:20,079
Speaker 1: megamsers have been discovered, so named because of how luminous

52
00:03:20,120 --> 00:03:23,400
Speaker 1: they were to observers using the right tools to spot them.

53
00:03:24,480 --> 00:03:28,120
Speaker 1: Speaking of mega maser is an objectively cool name, but

54
00:03:28,320 --> 00:03:31,400
Speaker 1: the mega isn't just a fun adjective. It's an actual

55
00:03:31,440 --> 00:03:35,240
Speaker 1: distinction of brightness. The term kilo maser is used to

56
00:03:35,320 --> 00:03:38,960
Speaker 1: describe extragalactic masers that are thousands of times brighter or

57
00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:41,720
Speaker 1: stronger than the masers that we've observed within the Milky Way.

58
00:03:42,320 --> 00:03:45,400
Speaker 1: Mega masers are typically one hundred million times brighter, and

59
00:03:45,560 --> 00:03:51,400
Speaker 1: a gigamaser is billions of times stronger than Milky Way masers.

60
00:03:51,400 --> 00:03:55,000
Speaker 1: Scientists continue to research mega masers as it's believed that

61
00:03:55,040 --> 00:03:58,520
Speaker 1: they occur when galaxies collide, events that have become less

62
00:03:58,520 --> 00:04:01,440
Speaker 1: common in the history of our universe over the billions

63
00:04:01,480 --> 00:04:04,960
Speaker 1: of years of its existence before the article. This episode

64
00:04:05,000 --> 00:04:07,400
Speaker 1: is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with Jeremy Darling,

65
00:04:07,600 --> 00:04:10,880
Speaker 1: a mega mazer expert and professor of astrophysical and planetary

66
00:04:10,920 --> 00:04:15,040
Speaker 1: sciences at the University of Colorado. He explained when to

67
00:04:15,200 --> 00:04:18,279
Speaker 1: galaxies like the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy collide,

68
00:04:18,760 --> 00:04:21,320
Speaker 1: beams of light shoot out from the collision and can

69
00:04:21,360 --> 00:04:25,799
Speaker 1: be seen a cosmological distances. Mega mazers act like bright

70
00:04:25,920 --> 00:04:29,479
Speaker 1: lights that say, here's a collision of galaxies that's making

71
00:04:29,560 --> 00:04:35,839
Speaker 1: new stars and feeding massive black holes. These astrophysical phenomena

72
00:04:35,880 --> 00:04:39,240
Speaker 1: are so interesting because their brightness could help us sort

73
00:04:39,240 --> 00:04:41,960
Speaker 1: of double check our measurements of distance too far off

74
00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:45,679
Speaker 1: galaxies and studying some of them could help us learn

75
00:04:45,760 --> 00:04:50,880
Speaker 1: more about how new stars and galaxies four, So astronomers

76
00:04:50,880 --> 00:04:54,560
Speaker 1: continue to peer further into our universal history to find them.

77
00:04:55,240 --> 00:04:58,200
Speaker 1: The oldest mega mazer measured so far, estimated to have

78
00:04:58,240 --> 00:05:00,520
Speaker 1: been emitted some five to six billion US years ago,

79
00:05:00,760 --> 00:05:03,279
Speaker 1: is the one observed in twenty twenty two from the

80
00:05:03,360 --> 00:05:07,080
Speaker 1: radio telescope in South Africa. We look forward to hearing

81
00:05:07,120 --> 00:05:10,719
Speaker 1: more about what researchers learn from observing these phenomena, especially

82
00:05:10,800 --> 00:05:14,960
Speaker 1: as our astronomical tools get better appearing farther into the universe.

83
00:05:19,760 --> 00:05:23,359
Speaker 1: Today's episode was recorded live at the iHeart Podcasts Studio

84
00:05:23,440 --> 00:05:26,000
Speaker 1: powered by Bose at the House of Music at iHeartRadio

85
00:05:26,080 --> 00:05:29,279
Speaker 1: Music Festival. It's based on the article like from thirty

86
00:05:29,279 --> 00:05:33,360
Speaker 1: six thousand, billion billion miles away, Yep, I'm mega maser

87
00:05:33,560 --> 00:05:36,960
Speaker 1: on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Valerie Steinach. Brain Stuff

88
00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:39,760
Speaker 1: is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com

89
00:05:39,800 --> 00:05:42,640
Speaker 1: and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my

90
00:05:42,680 --> 00:05:45,920
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

91
00:05:45,920 --> 00:05:48,440
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows