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Speaker 1: Hey, Orge, you work with a lot of scientists. Who

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Speaker 1: is the brightest one you've ever interviewed?

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Speaker 2: Well, I have made a lot of Nobel Prize winners.

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Speaker 2: They're all pretty humble, but yeah, generally they're pretty sharp

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Speaker 2: at that level, you know, beams of light or shooting

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Speaker 2: out of their eyes. They have an ore of genius.

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Speaker 1: So do you think when you're talking to a scientists

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Speaker 1: you can predict if they're going to be a future

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Speaker 1: Nobel Prize winner?

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Speaker 2: If I could, that would be awesome. I could probably

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Speaker 2: make a lot of money that way. Aren't there betting

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Speaker 2: pools for Nobel Prize winners?

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Speaker 1: If there are, you probably qualify as insider information.

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Speaker 2: Well, good thing, I'm not a betting person. Hi am

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Speaker 2: Jorhem Makartudas and the author of All of Great Big Universe.

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

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Speaker 1: U c Irvine, and I actually do have a tiny

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Speaker 1: slice of a Nobel Prize.

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Speaker 2: Ooh, what does that mean, Like they shaved off a

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Speaker 2: piece of the metal or something.

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Speaker 1: No, I'm one of a large group of collective winners

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Speaker 1: of the Nobel Prize. Oh. Several years ago they gave

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Speaker 1: the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union, and that's

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Speaker 1: back when Britain was a member, and I'm a citizen

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Speaker 1: of the UK, so I'm not sure if I lost

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Speaker 1: it during Brexit, but I was briefly one five hundred

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Speaker 1: millionth of a Nobel Prize winner.

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Speaker 2: Oh, I see you and all Europeans have won the

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Speaker 2: Nobel Prize. Well technically you're not part of Europe, so yeah,

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Speaker 2: I think you did lose it.

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Speaker 1: I used to round that up to one Nobel Prize.

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Speaker 1: Now I guess I got to round it down to

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Speaker 1: zero to zero.

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Speaker 2: I think you could have rounded it down to zero

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Speaker 2: before you know, one fortieth million probably maybe count to zero.

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Speaker 1: Well to me, one five hundred billion was pretty different

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Speaker 1: from zero, but I take your point.

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Speaker 2: But anyways, Welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jora Explain

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Speaker 2: the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: In which we think everybody deserves a prize for their

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Speaker 1: curiosity about the universe. We're here to stimulate that curiosity,

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Speaker 1: to encourage it, and to go with you on the

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Speaker 1: journey of exploration of understanding the universe. We think, we hope,

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Speaker 1: we believe that the universe out there can be understood

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Speaker 1: and deserves to be understood, and that everything that scientists

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Speaker 1: have figured out so far and that they're puzzling over

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Speaker 1: currently deserves to be explained to you.

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Speaker 2: That's right. We're here to illuminate the darkest corners of

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Speaker 2: science and take you on a trip to the bright

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Speaker 2: future of our understanding of how things work and why

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Speaker 2: things are the way they are.

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Speaker 1: We want to understand everything here on Earth, how water flows,

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Speaker 1: how mountains form the history of life, but we also

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Speaker 1: want to understand our vast cosmos, what's happening in the

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Speaker 1: dark deep reaches of space. How did the universe get

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Speaker 1: to look the way that it does. One of the

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Speaker 1: most powerful forces operating on galaxies and stars and galactic

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Speaker 1: clusters out there, shaping the entire structure of space, time

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Speaker 1: and the universe. And to do that we have to

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Speaker 1: look out into the night sky and gather messages that

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Speaker 1: are coming here from the rest of the universe.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because the cosmos is vast and mostly dark, with

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Speaker 2: lots of empty space, but there are some bright spots

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Speaker 2: out there making the universe visible to us and giving

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Speaker 2: us information about what's out there in the farthest reaches

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Speaker 2: of existence.

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Speaker 1: Though very few humans have actually left the surface of

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Speaker 1: the Earth for significant periods of time and entered even

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Speaker 1: our space neighborhood. We have a pretty good understanding of

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Speaker 1: what's going on in the rest of our galaxy, the

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Speaker 1: structure of galaxies beyond that, and all of that comes

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Speaker 1: from gathering that information that's beamed to us from the

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Speaker 1: rest of the universe. Imagine if instead the universe was

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Speaker 1: totally dark, we would have no idea what was out there.

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Speaker 1: We're grateful that at least some little fraction of it

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Speaker 1: is shown brightly and letting us know what it's up to.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there are things happening all over the universe creating light,

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Speaker 2: blasting it out into the universe, but some of them

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Speaker 2: are maybe a little bit stronger than others.

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Speaker 1: That's right. We have a whole series of episodes about

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Speaker 1: the darkest things in the universe, dark matter, and the

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Speaker 1: mysteries of the missing gravity. But today in the podcast,

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Speaker 1: we're going to go in exactly the opposite direction.

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Speaker 2: So to On the podcast, we'll be tackling the question

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Speaker 2: what was the brightest explosion ever seen?

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Speaker 1: And was it that moment when Jorge finally understood particle physics?

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Speaker 1: Boom mind a blown as it happened. I'm anticipating it. Man,

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Speaker 1: we're building up to it.

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Speaker 2: Has that even happened for you?

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Speaker 1: You know, there's that old quote, if you think you

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Speaker 1: understand quantum field theory, then you don't understand quantum field theory.

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Speaker 1: So it's a matter of degrees.

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Speaker 2: I think, yeah, yeah, it's a dimmer setting the light

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Speaker 2: bulb of quantum physics. But yeah, there are explosions happening

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Speaker 2: all over the universe, and some of them are incredibly bright,

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Speaker 2: and some of them are less bright. But maybe we

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Speaker 2: haven't seen all of them. Maybe there are some that

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Speaker 2: we have managed to see out there.

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Speaker 1: Something that's wonderful about exploring the universe is being shocked

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Speaker 1: by the scale of it. Learning how deep the history

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Speaker 1: of time is, not thousands of years, not millions of years,

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Speaker 1: but billions of years, Learning how large the universe is,

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Speaker 1: how many billions of light years across stuff has spread out.

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Speaker 1: These enormous scales that shock our understanding also serve to

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Speaker 1: give us a better context for our existence. Turns out,

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Speaker 1: the Earth and the Milky Way are a tiny little

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Speaker 1: speck of dust in the vast cosmos, But there are

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Speaker 1: other dimensions to be shocked in the sun you think

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Speaker 1: is quite bright, it turns out the universe gets much

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Speaker 1: much much brighter than that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the universe never sees us to make us all

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Speaker 2: feel tiny and insignificant and short lived compared to the

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Speaker 2: scale of the cost and its existence. But as you said,

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Speaker 2: there are things that maybe would even shock of physicists

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Speaker 2: about how bright they are.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, and today we're going to be learning about the

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Speaker 1: brightest of all time what physicists called the boat the

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Speaker 1: boat boat.

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Speaker 2: The biggest of all time, the brightest of all time.

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Speaker 1: Not the banana East of all time, the amazing.

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Speaker 2: Of all time. So, as usual, we were wondering how

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Speaker 2: many people out there had thought about this question about

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Speaker 2: what is the brightest explosion ever seen in the universe.

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Speaker 2: So Daniel went out there as usual to ask people

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Speaker 2: this question.

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Speaker 1: Thanks very much to everybody who plays for this segment

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Speaker 1: of the podcast, and if you'd like to hear your

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Speaker 1: voice for future episodes, please don't be shy. We would

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Speaker 1: love to add you to our group. Write to me

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Speaker 1: two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com to volunteer,

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Speaker 1: or send me questions or send me ideas or pictures

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Speaker 1: of your cats, whatever, we love to hear from listeners.

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Speaker 2: And today, Daniel, what are our players playing for?

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Speaker 1: They're playing for the recognition of having their voice on

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Speaker 1: the podcast. Their friends and relatives will all be jealous.

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Speaker 2: They'll be brightly jealous.

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Speaker 1: They're playing for the biggest banana of all time.

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

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Speaker 2: think is the brightest explosion ever seen? Here's what people

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Speaker 2: had to say.

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Speaker 3: I am going to say that is a supernova explosion,

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Speaker 3: either that or the source of whatever gamma ray bursts are.

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Speaker 4: The biggest explosion ever seen would have to be the

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Speaker 4: Big Bang, although there was nobody around to see it.

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Speaker 4: We can still see the cosmic microwave background radiation, so

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Speaker 4: we still can see it. But that's not.

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Speaker 1: Really bright anymore. So I don't know.

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Speaker 4: This is You got me in a quandary here, So

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Speaker 4: it's probably a supernova.

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Speaker 5: I would imagine the Big Bang was pretty bright, and

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Speaker 5: then maybe gamma ray burse but maybe something to do

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Speaker 5: with merging black holes or merging neutron stars. I guess

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Speaker 5: bright doesn't necessarily have to be in our visible spectrum.

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Speaker 2: All right. A couple of answers, kind of a trick

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Speaker 2: answers here the Big Bang was maybe the biggest explosion.

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Speaker 2: You can't argue with that.

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Speaker 1: You can't actually argue with that. I don't think of

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Speaker 1: the Big Bang as an explosion. I think of it

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Speaker 1: as an expansion.

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Speaker 2: Oh, I see, you're gonna use grammar to disqualify their answer.

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Speaker 1: I know, words meanings, words having meanings are so annoying.

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Speaker 2: I know it did just all be bath right, But

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Speaker 2: I mean, you do call it the Big Bang? I mean,

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Speaker 2: yourself are saying it's a bang.

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Speaker 1: Well, you know, there's that famous story about how the

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Speaker 1: Big Bang was not named by anybody who actually believed

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Speaker 1: in the Big Bang, but by proponents of the steady

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Speaker 1: state theory.

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Speaker 2: Physicistal call it the Big Bang?

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Speaker 1: Right, who still call it the Big Bang? Yes?

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, they don't call it the Big Stretch or the

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Speaker 2: Big Expansion.

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Speaker 1: I think we should call it the Big Stretch. I

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Speaker 1: think that's a much better name. Absolutely.

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Speaker 2: Maybe we should amend the title of this episode to

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Speaker 2: what was the biggest explosion besides the Big Bang?

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Speaker 1: The brightest explosion? Though? Yeah, good question. I'm not sure

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Speaker 1: how you measure the brightness of the Big Bang.

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Speaker 2: Now, the way we phrased this question, what was the

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Speaker 2: brightest explosion ever seen. Are we only counting the ones

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Speaker 2: that we've seen or that we think happened, or is

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Speaker 2: that the same, Well, we're.

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Speaker 1: Only going to talk about the ones that we've seen.

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Speaker 1: But as soon as you've seen something extraordinarily bright, it

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Speaker 1: means that there's something out there capable of making very

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Speaker 1: very bright explosions, and it's very unlikely you've seen the

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Speaker 1: brightest one. So it's like discovering a unicorn. You figure, ooh,

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Speaker 1: there are probably other unicorns in the forest, maybe even

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Speaker 1: with longer horns. So we could only talk about the brightest.

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Speaker 1: That suggests that there are very likely even brighter explosions

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Speaker 1: out there we haven't seen.

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Speaker 2: But that's an assumption, right, I mean, there could just

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Speaker 2: be one unicorn out there in the universe.

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Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, it's a statistical statement. But yes, as soon

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Speaker 1: as you discover one unicorn, you figure, like, well, probably

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Speaker 1: had parents, maybe it had siblings. You know, there are

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Speaker 1: probably other unicorns out there, but it could be the

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Speaker 1: sole unicorn, you know, created by a random collection of

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Speaker 1: quantum fluctuations. That's also a possibility, even.

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Speaker 2: If it's unlikely, it could be the unicorn of unicorn spottings.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we could sell it for a billion dollars. That

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Speaker 1: should be our startup. My startup idea is give me

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Speaker 1: a billion dollars. I will make you a unicorn, and

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Speaker 1: then it'll be a unicorn startup.

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Speaker 2: You would only make one unicorn, otherwise it's not worth much.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, but if you only have one, you can set

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Speaker 1: the price, right. I mean, I'm not an economist, but.

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Speaker 2: I think that's how economy worries. Sure, well that's our problem.

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Speaker 1: We're selling shares in our unicorns, folks, unicorns singular.

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Speaker 2: But anyways, it's an interesting question. The brightest explosion ever seen?

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Speaker 2: And so Daniel steps through, what are some things that

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Speaker 2: can cause explosions in the universe?

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Speaker 1: Well, first, I think it's useful to think about brightness,

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Speaker 1: Like what do we mean by brightness? Obviously you're very bright,

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Speaker 1: All of our listeners are very bright, our children are

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Speaker 1: very bright. But when we talk about brightness in an

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Speaker 1: astronomical setting, what we mean is like how many photons

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Speaker 1: are arriving from it to Earth. And it used to

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Speaker 1: be that astronomy only really dealt with photons. We had

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Speaker 1: telescopes that could see photons. We used our eyeballs. These days, though,

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Speaker 1: we have other devices like particle detectors and gravitational wave

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Speaker 1: detectors that can see other kinds of messengers from astronomical events.

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Speaker 2: Now, would brightness and photons be the best way to

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Speaker 2: measure the energy of an explosion? Like, could there be

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Speaker 2: an explosion that maybe you know, throws up part other

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Speaker 2: kinds of particles more than photons or neutrinos or something

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Speaker 2: like that that might have more energy but be less

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Speaker 2: bright or there's like a pretty good indication of the energy.

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Speaker 1: No, different astronomical events have a different fraction. They are

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Speaker 1: energy produced in photons, in neutrinos, or in gravitational waves.

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Speaker 1: So the best way to do astronomy they call these

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Speaker 1: days multi messenger astronomy, where you're looking for photons and

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Speaker 1: you're looking for particles, and you're looking for gravitational waves.

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Speaker 1: It's the best way to get a handle on what happened.

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Speaker 1: For example, when we look at neutrons star collisions, you

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Speaker 1: can sometimes see a gravitational wave and also see light

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Speaker 1: from the collision. But sometimes like supernova, can release huge

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Speaker 1: amounts of energy just in neutrinos, because when the neutrinos

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Speaker 1: are produced in the supernova, they're not reabsorbed, they just

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Speaker 1: fly right out because the supernova itself, though it's super dense,

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Speaker 1: is also transparent to those neutrinos, whereas photons get reabsorbed.

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Speaker 1: So definitely there are things that are brighter in neutrinos

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Speaker 1: than in photons. So that makes it very, very complicated.

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Speaker 1: I think today, let's just focus on the photons.

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Speaker 2: Okay, let's just focus on the photons, because my eyeballs

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Speaker 2: can neutrinos.

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Speaker 1: Yet, you'd have to have eyeballs the size of swimming pools.

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Speaker 2: Oh, Daniel, that's very flattering. Thank you you saying my

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Speaker 2: eyes are endless pools of.

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Speaker 1: Of chlorinated water.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, of physics detection technology.

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Speaker 1: Yes, you're like an anime character with big eyes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there you go.

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Speaker 1: And the other issue with brightness is that it depends

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Speaker 1: a little bit on where you are, Like you could

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Speaker 1: have a really bright source, but it's really really far

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Speaker 1: away and so its appears quite dim. Like when quasars

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Speaker 1: were first discovered, they were quite bright in the sky,

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Speaker 1: and then we discovered, oh my gosh, they're also super

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Speaker 1: dup far away, which means at their source they're extraordinarily bright.

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Speaker 1: So what astronomers typically do is define brightness by how

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Speaker 1: bright something would seem if you were one AU away

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Speaker 1: from it. If you were, like the distance the Earth

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Speaker 1: is from the Sun away from that object, how bright

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Speaker 1: would it be.

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Speaker 2: That's what an AU is, right, It's like an earth

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Speaker 2: distance from the Sun.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, all right.

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Speaker 2: So step us through, like how bright are things in

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Speaker 2: the night sky?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? So if you define the Sun as brightness of one,

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Speaker 1: then you can look at things like some of the

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Speaker 1: biggest stars that are out there, Like the biggest brightest

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Speaker 1: star ever discovered. It's three hundred and fifteen solar masses.

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Speaker 1: It's got the amazing name of R one three six

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Speaker 1: a one, and it's eight point three million times brighter

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Speaker 1: than the Sun. Like, if you took that star. What, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you took that star and put it in our solar

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Speaker 1: system and looked up at the sky, it would be

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Speaker 1: eight point three million times as intense as the Sun.

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Speaker 2: Wow, you would need eight point three layers of sunblock

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Speaker 2: just to walk out into the Sun.

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Speaker 1: Eight point three million, Yes, it's million, yes, exactly. So

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Speaker 1: that's the brightest star in the universe. And already that

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Speaker 1: gives you a sense of like, wow, this stuff in

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Speaker 1: our neighborhood not really that bright when we're talking about

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Speaker 1: like Hall of Fame brightness.

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Speaker 2: Wouldn't this star be huge or is it still a

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Speaker 2: small star?

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Speaker 1: So it's very large. It's right up on the edge

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Speaker 1: of the biggest star you can have around three hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifteen solar masses. Because bigger stars have a higher

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Speaker 1: temperature at their core, so they burn hotter and faster.

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Speaker 1: They don't last very long typically, and they also produce

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Speaker 1: an enormous amount of radiation which pulls the star apart.

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Speaker 1: Stars are actually a delicate balance between the radiation pressure

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Speaker 1: from fusion and the gravitational pressure inwards from all of

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Speaker 1: that mass. So it's sort of incredible that so many

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Speaker 1: stars are stable for millions and billions of years. These

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Speaker 1: guys essentially tear themselves apart. Anything bigger than that can't

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Speaker 1: really last very long. So this is the brightest star

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Speaker 1: I ever seen.

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Speaker 2: Could you even stand at one AU away from the star,

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Speaker 2: would you be inside the star?

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Speaker 1: You wouldn't be inside the actual edge of the star.

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Speaker 1: Its radius is like forty three times the radius of

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Speaker 1: the Sun, so it's much much denser than our Sun.

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Speaker 1: But it's nowhere near an AU for example.

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Speaker 2: And why is it brighter. Is it just the more

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Speaker 2: dense so there's more fusion going on.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, fusion is very nonlinear, and so because you have

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Speaker 1: so much more mass and it's more dense, then it's

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Speaker 1: much hotter. The pressure and temperature at the core is

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Speaker 1: much greater. And remember that while there's fusion happening at

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Speaker 1: the core of our star, it's still pretty inefficient, Like

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Speaker 1: most of the hydrogen in the star is not fusing,

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Speaker 1: because fusion is a hard thing to make happen. You

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Speaker 1: got these two protons, you're trying to squeeze them together.

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Speaker 1: There are electromagnetic forces are trying to push them apart.

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Speaker 1: Most of the time in the Sun, protons don't fuse.

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Speaker 1: But the higher the temperature and the higher the pressure,

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Speaker 1: the more often you do get fusion happening. And so

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Speaker 1: the fusion is just much more efficient at the heart

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Speaker 1: of this star, which keats the whole thing up and

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Speaker 1: makes it brighter.

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Speaker 2: WHOA, but you said they don't last pretty long.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, these stars last for like millions of years, whereas

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Speaker 1: smaller stars like hours less billions and red dwarfs can

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Speaker 1: last even longer, maybe even up to trillions of years.

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Speaker 1: We're not sure because the universe is kind of young

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Speaker 1: compared to the expected lifetime of some of these stars.

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Speaker 2: Now, is that as bridess it gets out there in space.

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Speaker 1: That's not even close to how bright things get. That's

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Speaker 1: the brightest star we've seen. But stars are not bright

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Speaker 1: compared to like the radiation emission at the hearts of galaxies.

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Speaker 1: Big galaxies have big black holes at their centers, and

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Speaker 1: their enormous gravity creates a lot of high temperature and

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Speaker 1: high pressure in the accretion disk around the black hole.

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Speaker 1: So the black hole, of course is black. Maybe this

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Speaker 1: hawking radiation, but that would be very, very dim. But

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Speaker 1: because it has so much gravitational energy, there's a big

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Speaker 1: swirling mass of stuff around the black hole, and that

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Speaker 1: is so hot it's emitting a lot of radiation. That

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Speaker 1: radiation then gets guided by the magnetic field of the

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Speaker 1: black hole up and down the poles, sort of the

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Speaker 1: same way that like the Aurora Borealis guides charged particles

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Speaker 1: to the north pole and the south pole. Here, the

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Speaker 1: magnetic field of the quasar creates two beams of particles

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Speaker 1: when shooting up the north pole and when shooting down

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Speaker 1: the south pole, and that's what a quasar is that's

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Speaker 1: also called an active galactic nucleus WHOA.

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Speaker 2: So it creates a jet of particles or light for both.

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Speaker 1: If you look at pictures of galaxies with jets, these

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Speaker 1: jets can be enormous. They can be even much longer

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Speaker 1: than the galaxy itself. The power of the hearts of

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Speaker 1: these galaxies is really incredible. And there's an enormous amount

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Speaker 1: of photons also emitted here because this is just like

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Speaker 1: hot particles, and hot particles emit photons.

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Speaker 2: Because I guess it can't guide the photons to the

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Speaker 2: North pole and South poles, but it guides other particles

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Speaker 2: and in those particles are what emit the brightness the light.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And anytime you have charge particles changing direction,

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Speaker 1: like an electron flies to a magnetic field and bends,

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Speaker 1: how does it bend. It has to bend by emitting

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Speaker 1: a photon. So you have accelerating charged particles, you're going

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Speaker 1: to get lots and lots of photons, like in the

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Speaker 1: particle colliders like the Large Hadron Collider or the Large

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Speaker 1: Electron positron Collider. One of the biggest challenges is that

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Speaker 1: these particles are bending with magnets and constantly losing energy

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Speaker 1: to radiation, and so that's why you get so many photons.

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Speaker 2: H all right, I have more questions about this quasar

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Speaker 2: and about maybe what could be even brighter than a quasar.

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Speaker 2: So let's set the dimmer too high on those questions.

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Speaker 2: But first let's take a quick break. All Right, we're

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Speaker 2: talking about the brightest explosion ever seen, and Daniel, you

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Speaker 2: were saying, a quasar has many times more brightness than

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Speaker 2: the brightest star that we know about.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, quasars in the sky are like bafflingly bright. It

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Speaker 1: was a huge mystery for a long time before we

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Speaker 1: even knew that there were black holes in the hearts

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Speaker 1: of galaxies. People saw these sources in the sky and

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Speaker 1: they calculated the distance and then they were like, oh

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Speaker 1: my gosh, it's already brightened the sky and it's super

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Speaker 1: duper far away. Because quasars tend to be formed in

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Speaker 1: the early universe and not recently, so all the quasars

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Speaker 1: we see are like really far across the universe. And

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Speaker 1: so you do that calculation, you discover that like, wow,

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Speaker 1: quasars are trillions of times brighter than the sun. Trillions trillions. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's one called three C two seven three is the

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Speaker 1: brightest quasar we know officially, and it's four trillion times

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Speaker 1: brighter than the sun. Like, if you were one AU

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Speaker 1: away from it, it would be equivalent to having four trillion suns.

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Speaker 2: But only if you're one AU at the north or

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Speaker 2: south poles.

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Speaker 1: Right, Yes, exactly, if you're at the horizontal or you're

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Speaker 1: a little bit tilted away from it, then it's less bright.

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Speaker 2: Now does that technically count as an explosion?

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Speaker 3: Though?

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Speaker 1: I don't think it counts as an explosion because it's constant,

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Speaker 1: but it is super duper bright, and.

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Speaker 2: It's super directed too, right, Like you said, it's not

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Speaker 2: like it's not an explosion going in all directions. It's

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Speaker 2: more like a laser.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's more like a laser like a pencil beam,

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Speaker 1: which is actually really useful, and we can use these

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Speaker 1: quasars not just to understand the early universe, but also

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Speaker 1: to understand what's between us and the quasars. There's lots

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Speaker 1: of studies where people examine the light from quasars and

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Speaker 1: they use it as a probe of all the the

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Speaker 1: material between us and the quasar, for example, the dark

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Speaker 1: matter density and the gravitational lensing that happens along the way.

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Speaker 1: They're really useful. Sometimes a quasar can get even brighter

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Speaker 1: due to relativistic effects. These quasars are called blazars. If

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Speaker 1: the quasar is moving towards us, then its light is

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Speaker 1: enhanced by relativistic effects and it can seem even brighter

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Speaker 1: than a quasar.

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Speaker 2: Wait, a blazar is a quasar that's moving towards us.

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Speaker 2: It's not just a quasar with a nice jacket on.

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Speaker 2: Is that what you mean, Like, it's a quasar moving

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Speaker 2: towards us.

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Speaker 1: Well, a blazar is a quasar. It's not. It doesn't

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Speaker 1: have to be just moving towards us, but it's pointed

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Speaker 1: like directly at the Earth. We can see these quasars

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Speaker 1: even if they're not directly at us, because we can

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Speaker 1: see their jets and the light emitted. But if they

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Speaker 1: are actually pointed directly at us, then we call them

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Speaker 1: a blazar.

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Speaker 2: Wait, that's the only difference is that it's pointing at us.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, blazars are quasars that are basically pointing right at

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Speaker 1: the Earth.

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Speaker 2: And you need a whole new name for that.

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Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's historical. People see the things in

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Speaker 1: the sky. They don't always understand the connections between them.

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Speaker 1: It's like, why do we even have constellations? You could say, hey,

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Speaker 1: now we know that like stars and constellations, some of

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Speaker 1: them are super close and some of them are across

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Speaker 1: the galaxy. Why do we group them together? It's historical?

438
00:22:13,000 --> 00:22:15,520
Speaker 1: You know, people have called that ursa minor for a

439
00:22:15,560 --> 00:22:17,119
Speaker 1: long time, so we're gonna keep doing it.

440
00:22:17,240 --> 00:22:21,200
Speaker 2: M So, blazar, then, is a quasar that's pointing at us? Now,

441
00:22:21,280 --> 00:22:24,600
Speaker 2: is it brighter than four trillion times brighter than the sun.

442
00:22:25,000 --> 00:22:29,679
Speaker 1: Yeah, the brightest blazar is three hundred trillion times brighter

443
00:22:29,720 --> 00:22:32,320
Speaker 1: than the sun. So we're talking about a factor of

444
00:22:32,320 --> 00:22:35,400
Speaker 1: one hundred boost when a quasar is pointed right at us.

445
00:22:35,520 --> 00:22:38,240
Speaker 2: So this is if we're one au at the north

446
00:22:38,280 --> 00:22:41,080
Speaker 2: and south pole of a quasar, Yeah, three hundred trillion

447
00:22:41,080 --> 00:22:43,400
Speaker 2: times more than brighter than the sun. But if we're

448
00:22:43,400 --> 00:22:45,200
Speaker 2: not in the north and south pole, you're saying it's

449
00:22:45,200 --> 00:22:46,679
Speaker 2: more like four trillion times.

450
00:22:46,560 --> 00:22:50,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And so not recommended to do any sunbathing

451
00:22:50,800 --> 00:22:52,440
Speaker 1: on the north or south pole of a blazar.

452
00:22:53,640 --> 00:22:56,159
Speaker 2: Well, as you have three hundred trillion layers of some.

453
00:22:56,240 --> 00:22:59,960
Speaker 1: Block also known as like three light years of lead

454
00:23:00,200 --> 00:23:01,280
Speaker 1: still might not be enough.

455
00:23:01,400 --> 00:23:04,320
Speaker 2: Now, that sounds pretty intense. But if we're counting beams,

456
00:23:04,440 --> 00:23:07,439
Speaker 2: I wonder like, is it brighter than the brightest laser

457
00:23:07,480 --> 00:23:08,440
Speaker 2: we've made here on Earth.

458
00:23:08,680 --> 00:23:10,879
Speaker 1: It's much brighter than the brightest laser. Yes, I mean,

459
00:23:10,880 --> 00:23:13,280
Speaker 1: if you were one AU from the brightest laser, you

460
00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:16,040
Speaker 1: would not think it's very bright. Even a laser is

461
00:23:16,080 --> 00:23:18,640
Speaker 1: pretty colimated. It's going to spread out, and an AU

462
00:23:18,800 --> 00:23:19,960
Speaker 1: is a large distance.

463
00:23:20,160 --> 00:23:24,000
Speaker 2: But in terms of intensity per you know, area, is

464
00:23:24,040 --> 00:23:25,480
Speaker 2: it as intense or more intense?

465
00:23:26,040 --> 00:23:28,560
Speaker 1: These blazers are much more intense than any source on

466
00:23:28,640 --> 00:23:33,760
Speaker 1: Earth at one au. Yes, but these are constant things, right.

467
00:23:33,800 --> 00:23:36,000
Speaker 1: Blazer is key pumping out, so I don't know if

468
00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:39,240
Speaker 1: it really counts as explosions. And the brightest thing in

469
00:23:39,240 --> 00:23:41,760
Speaker 1: the universe is actually not something that's constant.

470
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:44,800
Speaker 2: So then we are disqualifying quasars and blazers from being

471
00:23:44,800 --> 00:23:45,280
Speaker 2: the boats.

472
00:23:46,680 --> 00:23:49,600
Speaker 1: We don't even need to disqualify them. They don't even qualify.

473
00:23:49,840 --> 00:23:52,240
Speaker 2: We're seeking their chances of being the boat.

474
00:23:52,760 --> 00:23:55,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to torpedo them, but even if we didn't,

475
00:23:55,680 --> 00:23:58,679
Speaker 1: they still wouldn't qualify because the brightest thing in the

476
00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:02,639
Speaker 1: universe isn't explo and it's also much brighter than the

477
00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:05,320
Speaker 1: most constant thing in the universe, which are blazers.

478
00:24:05,680 --> 00:24:08,080
Speaker 2: WHOA all right, what are these things that are brighter

479
00:24:08,119 --> 00:24:09,960
Speaker 2: than a blazer? Is it a dinner jacket?

480
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:14,480
Speaker 1: Are I don't know if it's white tie or black time?

481
00:24:14,560 --> 00:24:14,639
Speaker 3: Right?

482
00:24:14,720 --> 00:24:18,760
Speaker 2: Which is brighter? It's a glittery on the disco jacket.

483
00:24:18,840 --> 00:24:23,040
Speaker 1: Oh, sparkle tie. Yeah. The brightest explosion in the universe,

484
00:24:23,080 --> 00:24:26,080
Speaker 1: and also the brightest thing we've ever seen, is a

485
00:24:26,200 --> 00:24:30,440
Speaker 1: gamma ray burst. These are sort of mysterious and enormous

486
00:24:30,640 --> 00:24:33,680
Speaker 1: bursts of gamma rays. Gamma rays are just very high

487
00:24:33,800 --> 00:24:37,399
Speaker 1: energy photons that we see sometimes in the night sky.

488
00:24:37,440 --> 00:24:40,399
Speaker 2: Well, meaning like we have gamma ray antenna and gamma

489
00:24:40,440 --> 00:24:42,439
Speaker 2: rays are just a kind of light, right, like it's

490
00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:43,480
Speaker 2: a high frequency light.

491
00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:46,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, Gamma rays are very very high energy.

492
00:24:46,520 --> 00:24:46,679
Speaker 3: You know.

493
00:24:46,760 --> 00:24:50,479
Speaker 1: Photons exist all across the electromagnetic spectrum. Some of them

494
00:24:50,480 --> 00:24:52,840
Speaker 1: we call in the visible range. Some are very long

495
00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:55,800
Speaker 1: wavelength and infrared or radio waves. But these are just

496
00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:59,440
Speaker 1: artificial divisions above the visible We have ultraviolet and then

497
00:24:59,560 --> 00:25:01,800
Speaker 1: X rays and the gamma rays. But again these are

498
00:25:01,840 --> 00:25:06,280
Speaker 1: just like historic dotted lines we've put on the electromagnetic spectrum.

499
00:25:06,280 --> 00:25:09,359
Speaker 1: There's nothing above gamma rays. So gamma rays include everything

500
00:25:09,359 --> 00:25:12,240
Speaker 1: above X rays and then out to infinite energy.

501
00:25:12,560 --> 00:25:15,320
Speaker 2: Whoa, So we have these antennas out there on Earth

502
00:25:15,320 --> 00:25:17,280
Speaker 2: like in the tech gamma rays, and sometimes we get

503
00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:20,760
Speaker 2: these burds coming from space, like these huge kind of

504
00:25:20,800 --> 00:25:22,080
Speaker 2: waves of gamma rays.

505
00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:25,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And it's fascinating history because this is something

506
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:29,040
Speaker 1: that really benefits from the Cold War. Like in the

507
00:25:29,080 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 1: second half of last century, the United States military was

508
00:25:31,640 --> 00:25:35,280
Speaker 1: really curious whether the Soviet Union was doing atmospheric nuclear

509
00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:38,760
Speaker 1: testings before it was ruled out. So they built satellites

510
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:42,320
Speaker 1: and all sorts of technologies to try to detect nuclear testing.

511
00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:45,400
Speaker 1: And sure they found some, I guess, but they also

512
00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:49,479
Speaker 1: spotted these weird bursts in the sky of gamma rays

513
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:52,399
Speaker 1: that they didn't understand that were not coming from below,

514
00:25:52,440 --> 00:25:55,600
Speaker 1: they were coming from above. That's how gamma ray bursts

515
00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:58,119
Speaker 1: were first discovered. I love when we spend money on

516
00:25:58,160 --> 00:26:00,560
Speaker 1: the military, we accidentally end up doing science.

517
00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:03,000
Speaker 2: Are you making a case for more military spending.

518
00:26:05,680 --> 00:26:07,880
Speaker 1: I don't think military spending is a very efficient way

519
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:11,000
Speaker 1: to do science. I'm just grateful when sometimes that money

520
00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:13,280
Speaker 1: turns out to be useful for science as well.

521
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:16,240
Speaker 2: Hey, I see, it's a win. It's a win for everyone.

522
00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:19,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll take it. I mean, the military budget totally

523
00:26:19,280 --> 00:26:22,480
Speaker 1: dwarfs the science budget. But anyway, that's a topic for

524
00:26:22,520 --> 00:26:23,120
Speaker 1: another time.

525
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:25,520
Speaker 2: How bright are these gammay bursts?

526
00:26:25,760 --> 00:26:29,040
Speaker 1: Some of them are crazy, crazy bright. Like we've seen

527
00:26:29,080 --> 00:26:32,960
Speaker 1: gamma ray bursts that are a million trillion times brighter

528
00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:37,200
Speaker 1: than the sun, like a quadrillion times brighter than the sun.

529
00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:41,480
Speaker 2: So yeah, in terms of how bright we think they

530
00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:44,119
Speaker 2: are at the source, you're on Earth. We don't get

531
00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:46,640
Speaker 2: a million trillion times more gamma rays than the sun.

532
00:26:46,920 --> 00:26:49,200
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right. We were all killed several years ago

533
00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:52,440
Speaker 1: due to the gamma ray burst. We're just now catching up. No,

534
00:26:52,600 --> 00:26:55,480
Speaker 1: this is at the source absolutely. Fortunately for us, they're

535
00:26:55,560 --> 00:26:58,040
Speaker 1: quite distant, so when they get here on Earth, there's

536
00:26:58,040 --> 00:27:00,679
Speaker 1: a few very high energy gamma rays, but we're not

537
00:27:00,760 --> 00:27:01,440
Speaker 1: all fried.

538
00:27:02,359 --> 00:27:04,280
Speaker 2: But so, how do we know how far they are?

539
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:06,679
Speaker 2: Like we're just getting a blip on our antennas, Like,

540
00:27:06,680 --> 00:27:08,920
Speaker 2: how do we know like how far away they came from?

541
00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:11,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question. We're not exactly sure because

542
00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:13,720
Speaker 1: for many of them, you look in the night sky

543
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 1: where they came from and there's like nothing there. It's

544
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:18,240
Speaker 1: not like you can point to and say, oh, it

545
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:20,359
Speaker 1: came from this star that went supernova, or it came

546
00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:22,879
Speaker 1: from that galaxy. Like you look at the sky, you're like, oh,

547
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:25,399
Speaker 1: here's a huge source of gamma rays. There's nothing in

548
00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:28,359
Speaker 1: the night sky there that we can see. It must

549
00:27:28,359 --> 00:27:31,239
Speaker 1: mean that there's something extraordinarily distant. So there's a lot

550
00:27:31,280 --> 00:27:34,400
Speaker 1: of uncertainty on the inherent brightness of these things.

551
00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:36,399
Speaker 2: A huge amount of uncertainty, right, Like, it could be

552
00:27:36,440 --> 00:27:39,119
Speaker 2: something closed that's dim, or it could be something really

553
00:27:39,119 --> 00:27:41,520
Speaker 2: far that's super duper bright. How do you tell the difference, Well.

554
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 1: It's definitely not something close and dim. Right. If it

555
00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:45,880
Speaker 1: was something close, we would see it, because these things

556
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:49,120
Speaker 1: are very very bright. It could be something close that's

557
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:52,160
Speaker 1: dim most of the time and occasionally bright. But yet

558
00:27:52,200 --> 00:27:54,359
Speaker 1: there is uncertainty on the distance to these.

559
00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:57,639
Speaker 2: Things, meaning like the range goes from sixty what to

560
00:27:58,320 --> 00:27:59,919
Speaker 2: a million trillion times brighter than the sun.

561
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:02,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't know exactly how far they are. All

562
00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:05,080
Speaker 1: of the gamma ray bursts we've seen have originated from

563
00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:08,440
Speaker 1: outside the Milky Way galaxy, which means that they're very

564
00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:11,199
Speaker 1: far away, but there's a huge range there, right, they

565
00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:13,760
Speaker 1: could be a neighboring galaxy, that could be a very

566
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:16,440
Speaker 1: very distant galaxy at the edge of the universe.

567
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:19,040
Speaker 2: And we think they came from outside the Milky Way

568
00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:21,440
Speaker 2: because when we pinpoint where they came from, we don't

569
00:28:21,480 --> 00:28:23,720
Speaker 2: see anything that we think is in the Milky Way.

570
00:28:23,920 --> 00:28:26,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And we think these things are extraordinarily bright.

571
00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:28,800
Speaker 1: And any gamma ray burst in the Milky Way that's

572
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:32,320
Speaker 1: actually pointed towards Earth would probably fry the Earth. And

573
00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:35,000
Speaker 1: there are some theories about how, like some mass extinctions

574
00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:37,800
Speaker 1: might have occurred due to gamma ray bursts in the

575
00:28:37,800 --> 00:28:40,560
Speaker 1: Milky Way, for example. But yeah, these things we think

576
00:28:40,560 --> 00:28:42,800
Speaker 1: are extraordinarily bright. I mean, it's hard to get your

577
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:45,880
Speaker 1: mind around these numbers. It's easier if you express it,

578
00:28:46,000 --> 00:28:49,160
Speaker 1: like in terms of how much energy the Sun puts out.

579
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:52,800
Speaker 1: So for example, our Sun in its entire lifetime will

580
00:28:52,800 --> 00:28:55,200
Speaker 1: put out as much energy as is in one of

581
00:28:55,200 --> 00:28:57,800
Speaker 1: these gamma ray bursts for one second, So like a

582
00:28:57,880 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 1: second of gamma ray bursts is ten billion years of

583
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:04,520
Speaker 1: the Sun. WHOA, we think, Yeah, we think there is

584
00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:06,120
Speaker 1: definitely a lot of uncertainty here.

585
00:29:06,280 --> 00:29:08,280
Speaker 2: I mean, it sounds like a huge amount of absurdity, right,

586
00:29:08,280 --> 00:29:09,520
Speaker 2: How do we know how far away it is?

587
00:29:09,640 --> 00:29:10,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't know. We can say sort of like

588
00:29:11,040 --> 00:29:14,280
Speaker 1: lower limits because we know the nearest neighborhood and we

589
00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:17,400
Speaker 1: can tell that there's nothing there that's generating these things.

590
00:29:17,880 --> 00:29:19,680
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of fuzziness in some general

591
00:29:19,800 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 1: arguments there. But yet take these numbers definitely with a

592
00:29:22,800 --> 00:29:23,680
Speaker 1: big grain of salt.

593
00:29:24,320 --> 00:29:26,200
Speaker 2: And you said it was a mystery for a long time,

594
00:29:26,280 --> 00:29:29,880
Speaker 2: meaning that we still don't know what makes these bursts.

595
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:33,120
Speaker 1: We still don't really understand it. Yeah, we have some theories.

596
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 1: It turns out the gamma ray bursts come in two categories,

597
00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 1: is like shorter ones and longer ones. The shorter ones

598
00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:42,280
Speaker 1: last for like seconds or tens of seconds, and the

599
00:29:42,320 --> 00:29:45,160
Speaker 1: longer ones last for like minutes. So that seems like

600
00:29:45,280 --> 00:29:48,320
Speaker 1: probably there are two different things going on there, and

601
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:51,000
Speaker 1: there are theories. The leading theory is that short gamma

602
00:29:51,080 --> 00:29:54,120
Speaker 1: ray bursts might come from merging neutron stars like we

603
00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:57,280
Speaker 1: talked about. You know, neutron stars are these very dense

604
00:29:57,320 --> 00:30:00,560
Speaker 1: objects that the end of life of large stars not

605
00:30:00,600 --> 00:30:02,280
Speaker 1: so big that they become a black hole and not

606
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:05,240
Speaker 1: so small they become a white dwarf, but having enough

607
00:30:05,280 --> 00:30:08,720
Speaker 1: mass to become very dense neutron stars, and often these

608
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:11,040
Speaker 1: stars are in binary systems and then at the end

609
00:30:11,080 --> 00:30:14,040
Speaker 1: of their life they're orbiting and eventually they collapse and

610
00:30:14,040 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 1: fall into each other. And these are incredibly powerful events.

611
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:21,000
Speaker 1: They generate gravitational waves, they generate the conditions needed to

612
00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:23,560
Speaker 1: make like gold and platinum and all the heavy nuclei

613
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 1: in the universe, just like supernova, and also generate very

614
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:29,720
Speaker 1: high energy gamma rays.

615
00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:34,160
Speaker 2: Would they also generate regular light like visible light or

616
00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:36,800
Speaker 2: would they maybe only generate gamma rays, and that's why

617
00:30:36,800 --> 00:30:38,920
Speaker 2: we don't see them with the naked eye.

618
00:30:39,080 --> 00:30:41,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, we definitely see neutron star collisions, and we've seen some.

619
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:45,520
Speaker 1: We've also correlated some with gravitational waves. But you know,

620
00:30:45,560 --> 00:30:48,520
Speaker 1: there's lots of different varieties of these things, different masses

621
00:30:48,560 --> 00:30:51,520
Speaker 1: of neutron stars, and the collision themselves can happen in

622
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:54,760
Speaker 1: lots of different ways. So we've seen neutron star collisions

623
00:30:54,800 --> 00:30:58,240
Speaker 1: that haven't caused huge gamma ray bursts, but there's a

624
00:30:58,280 --> 00:31:02,080
Speaker 1: speculation that sometimes neutrons our collisions might cause these incredibly

625
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:05,320
Speaker 1: bright gamma ray bursts. But it's not something we understand

626
00:31:05,360 --> 00:31:07,920
Speaker 1: very well. Even the heart of a single neutron star

627
00:31:08,040 --> 00:31:10,440
Speaker 1: is not something we understand. Like, what is the state

628
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:13,960
Speaker 1: of matter under these incredible densities? Is it a quark,

629
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:16,200
Speaker 1: gluon plasma? Is it some other state of matter? Is

630
00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:19,160
Speaker 1: it nuclear pasta? We have a whole episode about this question.

631
00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:21,680
Speaker 1: We're really just the very beginning of the ability to

632
00:31:21,760 --> 00:31:25,200
Speaker 1: think about these things coherently. And then take two neutron

633
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:27,760
Speaker 1: stars that are swirling around each other, and the dynamics

634
00:31:27,800 --> 00:31:30,040
Speaker 1: of that and the relativity. It's really just sort of

635
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:34,000
Speaker 1: beyond our ability to calculate in a robust manner. And

636
00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:36,360
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of sort of theoretical questions about

637
00:31:36,360 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 1: whether those even could cause gamma.

638
00:31:38,200 --> 00:31:42,040
Speaker 2: Ray bursts, meaning they might not even be bright enough,

639
00:31:42,640 --> 00:31:44,800
Speaker 2: or they might not be enough to generate the kinds

640
00:31:44,800 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 2: of bursts we think we're seeing.

641
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:49,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the leading theory, but it's definitely far from proven.

642
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:52,240
Speaker 2: All right, let's begin more into what could be causing

643
00:31:52,320 --> 00:31:54,720
Speaker 2: these gamma ray bursts, and then we'll get to the

644
00:31:54,800 --> 00:31:58,480
Speaker 2: boat the brightest of all time. But first let's take

645
00:31:58,480 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 2: another quick break. All right, we're hopping on a boat here,

646
00:32:13,760 --> 00:32:17,640
Speaker 2: Daniel trying to find the brightest of all time, the

647
00:32:17,680 --> 00:32:18,920
Speaker 2: brightest explosion of.

648
00:32:18,880 --> 00:32:20,719
Speaker 1: All time, right, yes, exactly.

649
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:23,200
Speaker 2: It's the biggest exploding boat.

650
00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:27,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's really wonderful. I love the experience of

651
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:31,040
Speaker 1: just being overwhelmed by stuff that happens in the universe.

652
00:32:31,360 --> 00:32:33,959
Speaker 1: Really stretches your mind to even try to conceive of

653
00:32:34,000 --> 00:32:37,400
Speaker 1: these incredible events. You know, it makes everything that happens

654
00:32:37,400 --> 00:32:39,800
Speaker 1: here on Earth just seem inconsequential. Yeah.

655
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:42,680
Speaker 2: I mean for it to have been so bright that

656
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:45,280
Speaker 2: even though it's super duper duper far away, we're still

657
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 2: seeing it here on Earth. It's pretty amazing, right, I mean,

658
00:32:48,160 --> 00:32:50,240
Speaker 2: I'm sure the rest of the universe is also seen it.

659
00:32:50,440 --> 00:32:54,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And unless this is the unicorn of unicorns,

660
00:32:54,240 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 1: it means that's probably even brighter stuff out there that

661
00:32:56,680 --> 00:32:57,280
Speaker 1: we're missing.

662
00:32:57,400 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 2: Oh, maybe it is the unicorn making this.

663
00:33:00,760 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 1: Yeah. Maybe it's the collision of two unicorns when they

664
00:33:04,040 --> 00:33:05,880
Speaker 1: cross their horns. Maybe that's what happens.

665
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:07,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Or it's a unicorn farting.

666
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:12,080
Speaker 1: Let's keep it clean for the families out there.

667
00:33:13,800 --> 00:33:17,080
Speaker 2: It's something wrong with farts. Everybody farts, even unicorns.

668
00:33:17,800 --> 00:33:20,720
Speaker 1: This is not a fart podcast. Folks, we're talking about

669
00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 1: bright explosions, not stinky ones.

670
00:33:23,160 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 2: But you did say these things are really fart away.

671
00:33:26,680 --> 00:33:32,120
Speaker 1: They are. They are mind blowingly far away exactly. So

672
00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:34,360
Speaker 1: we have the short gamma ray bursts that are probably

673
00:33:34,360 --> 00:33:37,200
Speaker 1: emerging neutron stars, and then we have these longer gamma

674
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 1: ray bursts, which just means that we see photons for longer,

675
00:33:40,720 --> 00:33:44,000
Speaker 1: like a last four minutes instead of seconds. And the

676
00:33:44,080 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 1: leading theory here is supernova collapse. That when supernova's collapse

677
00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:52,280
Speaker 1: sometimes they create these very bright bursts of photons. Not

678
00:33:52,320 --> 00:33:55,480
Speaker 1: always like we see supernovas that don't cause gamma ray bursts,

679
00:33:55,920 --> 00:33:58,600
Speaker 1: but sometimes we think like there's a jet of matter

680
00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:02,960
Speaker 1: ejected from the supernova, Like the collapse isn't completely symmetric,

681
00:34:03,680 --> 00:34:05,960
Speaker 1: and this jet of matter sort of like a blazar

682
00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:10,320
Speaker 1: or a quasar, can accelerate particles and generate enormous bursts

683
00:34:10,320 --> 00:34:11,640
Speaker 1: of very very intense light.

684
00:34:11,960 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 3: Hm.

685
00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:15,359
Speaker 2: Does that mean we have to disqualify supernova from our

686
00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 2: category here because a burst is not sort of going

687
00:34:18,719 --> 00:34:19,480
Speaker 2: in all directions.

688
00:34:19,880 --> 00:34:22,600
Speaker 1: No, I think it's fine. I don't think there's a

689
00:34:22,680 --> 00:34:26,160
Speaker 1: reason to disqualify it just because it's focused, you know,

690
00:34:26,239 --> 00:34:28,400
Speaker 1: I think it's still it's bright and it's an explosion,

691
00:34:28,560 --> 00:34:30,120
Speaker 1: so yeah, I think it qualifies as one of the

692
00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:31,000
Speaker 1: brightest explosions.

693
00:34:31,080 --> 00:34:36,040
Speaker 2: M it's more of a float, like the focused, focusedly

694
00:34:36,200 --> 00:34:40,560
Speaker 2: bright of all time. All right, So those are leading theories,

695
00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:44,080
Speaker 2: but we're not sure. It seems you're saying maybe even

696
00:34:44,120 --> 00:34:48,479
Speaker 2: a supernova emerging neutron stars might not be powerful enough

697
00:34:48,480 --> 00:34:50,600
Speaker 2: to generate the kinds of gamma ray burst we're seeing.

698
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:54,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And you know, this is the exciting edge

699
00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:56,160
Speaker 1: of astronomy when we see stuff in the night sky

700
00:34:56,239 --> 00:34:59,680
Speaker 1: we can't quite explain. We're not sure if it's like

701
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:03,440
Speaker 1: a weird, extreme version of something we've already seen, or

702
00:35:03,480 --> 00:35:06,640
Speaker 1: if it's something totally new kind of thing out there

703
00:35:06,680 --> 00:35:09,560
Speaker 1: in the universe we've never considered. And that's definitely happened, right.

704
00:35:09,840 --> 00:35:12,799
Speaker 1: I think about the first time we discovered supernova or

705
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:15,880
Speaker 1: black holes or quasars. All these things were discoveries of

706
00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:18,279
Speaker 1: something new out there in the universe, a whole new

707
00:35:18,360 --> 00:35:22,919
Speaker 1: category of things the universe can do. So we don't

708
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:25,640
Speaker 1: really know if gamma ray bursts represent that, or if

709
00:35:25,680 --> 00:35:28,400
Speaker 1: they represent like the extreme edge of some kind of

710
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:29,319
Speaker 1: thing we're familiar with.

711
00:35:29,480 --> 00:35:32,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty exciting. So is that then the brightest

712
00:35:32,320 --> 00:35:35,000
Speaker 2: thing we've seen explode out there in the universe.

713
00:35:35,360 --> 00:35:37,600
Speaker 1: So the brightest thing we've ever seen in the universe

714
00:35:37,760 --> 00:35:40,480
Speaker 1: is a gamma ray burst, and it's one that just

715
00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:43,920
Speaker 1: happened last year. Like the record was set in October

716
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:45,160
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three.

717
00:35:45,520 --> 00:35:50,480
Speaker 2: Ooh, was there a celebration, was Thinkinness World Record official

718
00:35:50,520 --> 00:35:52,440
Speaker 2: there at the telescope.

719
00:35:53,760 --> 00:35:56,719
Speaker 1: I think that everybody was too stunned, Like this is

720
00:35:56,800 --> 00:36:00,280
Speaker 1: something just crazy bright, brighter than anything we've ever seen

721
00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:03,160
Speaker 1: by like a big factor. This is one hundred times

722
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:06,240
Speaker 1: brighter than any other gamma ray burst we've ever seen,

723
00:36:06,640 --> 00:36:10,640
Speaker 1: which remember is already like quadrillions of times brighter than

724
00:36:10,640 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 1: the sun.

725
00:36:11,440 --> 00:36:15,160
Speaker 2: Wow, that's incredible. But then do we know how far

726
00:36:15,200 --> 00:36:18,080
Speaker 2: away this one was? Like maybe it was dimmer than

727
00:36:18,080 --> 00:36:19,640
Speaker 2: the ones before, it was just closer.

728
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:22,000
Speaker 1: They think this one might just be closer. They actually

729
00:36:22,040 --> 00:36:24,359
Speaker 1: have a candidate to where it might have come from,

730
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:27,320
Speaker 1: which is a galaxy only two and a half billion

731
00:36:27,600 --> 00:36:30,239
Speaker 1: light years from Earth, and so it might be why

732
00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:33,799
Speaker 1: it seemed brighter here and it seemed like the jet

733
00:36:33,880 --> 00:36:36,160
Speaker 1: might be like pointed right at us. That's sort of

734
00:36:36,200 --> 00:36:39,279
Speaker 1: one theory for why this one was so bright. But

735
00:36:39,360 --> 00:36:41,680
Speaker 1: you know, we have this telescope orbiting Earth. It's called

736
00:36:41,680 --> 00:36:45,239
Speaker 1: the Fermi LAT and it's excellent finding gamma rays, really

737
00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:48,040
Speaker 1: high energy photons. It's kind of like a particle detector

738
00:36:48,080 --> 00:36:50,640
Speaker 1: in space. So I think it's pretty cool. Like photons

739
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:53,080
Speaker 1: enter the telescope and it's not like a telescope like

740
00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:57,160
Speaker 1: Hubble where you have lenses and optics. Instead, it converts

741
00:36:57,160 --> 00:37:00,920
Speaker 1: the photon into electron and positron then attract those particles,

742
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:03,760
Speaker 1: so it's sort of like a very high energy particle detector.

743
00:37:04,080 --> 00:37:06,799
Speaker 1: And this thing was totally overwhelmed, Like it was just

744
00:37:06,920 --> 00:37:10,480
Speaker 1: flooded with higher energy photons than it had ever seen before.

745
00:37:11,120 --> 00:37:12,800
Speaker 2: Wow, Like it maxed out the sensor.

746
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:16,040
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, it saturated that eyeball in space. It was

747
00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:20,280
Speaker 1: totally overwhelmed, and not just our sensors, like the ionosphere,

748
00:37:20,600 --> 00:37:23,239
Speaker 1: this part of the atmosphere of the Earth. The whole

749
00:37:23,239 --> 00:37:26,480
Speaker 1: thing swelled up for several hours. This is the kind

750
00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:28,560
Speaker 1: of thing that happens when like we got a big

751
00:37:28,600 --> 00:37:31,600
Speaker 1: solar flare, like when the Sun burps out an enormous

752
00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:35,320
Speaker 1: number of particles towards the Earth at the ionosphere response,

753
00:37:35,680 --> 00:37:38,120
Speaker 1: but this is something that happened like billions of light

754
00:37:38,200 --> 00:37:40,880
Speaker 1: years away and it still made the Earth like a

755
00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:42,520
Speaker 1: little swollen and inflamed.

756
00:37:43,040 --> 00:37:45,560
Speaker 2: WHOA, Now, how do we know where it came from?

757
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:48,040
Speaker 1: We don't know exactly, but there's sort of a candidate

758
00:37:48,080 --> 00:37:50,959
Speaker 1: galaxy in that direction to people think maybe it came

759
00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:53,320
Speaker 1: from there. But you know, this is all very speculative.

760
00:37:53,360 --> 00:37:54,600
Speaker 1: You can't really tell me, like.

761
00:37:54,520 --> 00:37:56,320
Speaker 2: How do we triangulate where it came from?

762
00:37:56,680 --> 00:37:59,200
Speaker 1: Oh, we can measure the direction of these photons, Like

763
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:01,719
Speaker 1: for me, lat is a detector, and so we can

764
00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:04,680
Speaker 1: see the trajectory of the particles that come from the photon.

765
00:38:04,880 --> 00:38:07,799
Speaker 1: So we can reconstruct the direction of these photons.

766
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:09,680
Speaker 2: What do you mean we can see the direction? How

767
00:38:09,680 --> 00:38:10,239
Speaker 2: do we do that?

768
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:13,359
Speaker 1: Well, the photon turns into an electron and positron pair,

769
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:16,440
Speaker 1: and those carry the momentum of the original photon. And

770
00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:19,279
Speaker 1: then we have layers of detector. So we have like

771
00:38:19,360 --> 00:38:21,840
Speaker 1: ten or one hundred layers that detect the motion of

772
00:38:21,880 --> 00:38:24,279
Speaker 1: the particles that come from the photon, and then we

773
00:38:24,320 --> 00:38:27,040
Speaker 1: can reconstruct that track and it points back to where

774
00:38:27,040 --> 00:38:27,880
Speaker 1: it came from.

775
00:38:28,160 --> 00:38:30,359
Speaker 2: Oh, I see, it's like a sort of like a cake,

776
00:38:31,760 --> 00:38:33,600
Speaker 2: you know, like if you stick your finger in a cake,

777
00:38:33,640 --> 00:38:36,120
Speaker 2: you can sort of trace which direction the finger was poking.

778
00:38:36,280 --> 00:38:39,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine like a hundred layer cake and you like

779
00:38:39,160 --> 00:38:41,719
Speaker 1: shoot a bullet through it, and then you'll take slices

780
00:38:41,800 --> 00:38:44,400
Speaker 1: of that cake and you traced where that bullet hole was.

781
00:38:44,480 --> 00:38:47,200
Speaker 1: You could figure out what direction the bullet came from.

782
00:38:47,280 --> 00:38:49,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. Just don't eat the bullet.

783
00:38:50,800 --> 00:38:52,719
Speaker 1: I was going to go with a JFK analogy, but

784
00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:55,600
Speaker 1: I decided to go with cakes.

785
00:38:57,400 --> 00:38:58,919
Speaker 2: GOTFK, We got the boat.

786
00:39:00,400 --> 00:39:02,880
Speaker 1: The mystery gamma ray burst came from the direction of

787
00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:06,440
Speaker 1: the Texas school Book Depository. It's all a big conspiracy theory.

788
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:10,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a cosmic conspiracy theory. All right. So

789
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:13,480
Speaker 2: this was detected just last year and who detected it?

790
00:39:13,560 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 1: So it was detected all over the Earth. It was

791
00:39:16,040 --> 00:39:18,600
Speaker 1: seen by Fermi Laugh which is a big collaboration of

792
00:39:18,600 --> 00:39:22,040
Speaker 1: scientists from across the world. It was also seen by

793
00:39:22,080 --> 00:39:26,440
Speaker 1: the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory in China, and

794
00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:28,680
Speaker 1: then there was a Russian facility that saw it also.

795
00:39:29,600 --> 00:39:33,080
Speaker 1: And this observatory in China is only for very very

796
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:36,000
Speaker 1: high energy photons and they only ever seen a few

797
00:39:36,040 --> 00:39:39,560
Speaker 1: photons very high energy, and this time they saw five

798
00:39:39,719 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 1: thousand photons just from this one gamma ray burst. It's

799
00:39:43,080 --> 00:39:46,120
Speaker 1: like ten times as many as they've ever seen in

800
00:39:46,160 --> 00:39:50,160
Speaker 1: the entire history of the entire detector. They saw in

801
00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:54,560
Speaker 1: this one day. This one period lasted about seven minutes long.

802
00:39:54,680 --> 00:39:56,839
Speaker 2: Wait weaning that it was visible to the naked eye,

803
00:39:56,920 --> 00:39:58,320
Speaker 2: or you could only see it in gammorrays.

804
00:39:58,480 --> 00:40:00,239
Speaker 1: You could only see it in gammorys. You cannot see

805
00:40:00,280 --> 00:40:02,960
Speaker 1: gamma rays with the naked eye. They're way too high energy.

806
00:40:03,640 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 1: And one of the most interesting and weird things about

807
00:40:06,120 --> 00:40:08,520
Speaker 1: this gamma raburse if not just the intensity, like the

808
00:40:08,640 --> 00:40:12,600
Speaker 1: number of photons, but the energy of each individual photon.

809
00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:15,560
Speaker 1: So this thing also set a record as sending the

810
00:40:15,680 --> 00:40:19,600
Speaker 1: highest energy photon ever seen. This one photon had eighteen

811
00:40:19,760 --> 00:40:23,120
Speaker 1: terra electron bolts, which is like much more energy than

812
00:40:23,200 --> 00:40:26,640
Speaker 1: protons have the Large Hadron collider. And yes, it means

813
00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:30,399
Speaker 1: it's a very very high frequency, very short wavelength. This

814
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:32,960
Speaker 1: is the highest energy photon ever seen by a factor

815
00:40:33,040 --> 00:40:36,080
Speaker 1: of four. So like, this thing is really far out

816
00:40:36,080 --> 00:40:37,040
Speaker 1: there on the tails.

817
00:40:37,239 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 2: We wouldn't it mean that it's really close, right, because

818
00:40:40,120 --> 00:40:42,920
Speaker 2: then don't photons kind of get stretched out as they

819
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:44,480
Speaker 2: go further out in space.

820
00:40:44,640 --> 00:40:47,920
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's very weird for a super high energy photon

821
00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:50,799
Speaker 1: to come from really far away for two reasons. One

822
00:40:50,880 --> 00:40:53,120
Speaker 1: is you're right, if it's coming from really far away,

823
00:40:53,200 --> 00:40:57,000
Speaker 1: then as the universe expands, those photons get stretched out,

824
00:40:57,040 --> 00:40:59,480
Speaker 1: they get red shifted right, so they get lower energy,

825
00:40:59,520 --> 00:41:03,040
Speaker 1: which means originally had even more energy. The other reason

826
00:41:03,280 --> 00:41:06,520
Speaker 1: is that the universe is actually not very transparent to

827
00:41:06,640 --> 00:41:11,000
Speaker 1: super high energy photons. As particles get really really high energy,

828
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:14,840
Speaker 1: they start to interact with the cosmic microwave background radiation

829
00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:18,920
Speaker 1: like protons and other cosmic ray particles. If they're super

830
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:22,160
Speaker 1: high energy, they'll collide with the photons from the cosmic

831
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:25,759
Speaker 1: microwave background the remnants of the Big Bang, and interact

832
00:41:25,760 --> 00:41:28,439
Speaker 1: and disappear. The same thing is true with super duper

833
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:31,960
Speaker 1: high energy photons interact with those photons from the CMB.

834
00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:34,759
Speaker 1: So we shouldn't be able to see photons from really

835
00:41:34,800 --> 00:41:37,480
Speaker 1: really far away because they should get absorbed by the universe.

836
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 1: So here we're seeing a super high energy photon from

837
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:43,400
Speaker 1: what seems like really really far away. It's very weird.

838
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:46,920
Speaker 2: So we can trace where the burths came from and

839
00:41:46,960 --> 00:41:49,960
Speaker 2: when we look in that direction, we see some galaxy

840
00:41:50,080 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 2: where maybe it came from. That's why you think it

841
00:41:52,640 --> 00:41:53,520
Speaker 2: came from that gux.

842
00:41:54,239 --> 00:41:57,120
Speaker 1: But that's very speculative. It's like, yeah, it's in the

843
00:41:57,160 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 1: same direction in the sky, right, and that's the first

844
00:42:00,200 --> 00:42:02,040
Speaker 1: thing we see there. That doesn't mean it came from that.

845
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:03,600
Speaker 1: I could have come from behind that. There could be

846
00:42:03,600 --> 00:42:06,560
Speaker 1: something else between us and there. All right, we're really

847
00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:08,080
Speaker 1: limited by our vantage point.

848
00:42:08,160 --> 00:42:10,680
Speaker 2: Like it could be an alien in between us and

849
00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:14,200
Speaker 2: this galaxy with like a laser pointer that shoots lighting

850
00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:16,839
Speaker 2: the gama right direction and they're just messing with us.

851
00:42:17,200 --> 00:42:19,839
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, it could be or you know, it could

852
00:42:19,920 --> 00:42:21,840
Speaker 1: be that it just came from something else and it

853
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:24,440
Speaker 1: happened to land here on Earth. This one special photon

854
00:42:24,800 --> 00:42:27,160
Speaker 1: happened to land here on Earth at the same time

855
00:42:27,320 --> 00:42:28,919
Speaker 1: as this gamma ray burst, right.

856
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:31,520
Speaker 2: That could have been random, or maybe it's not random.

857
00:42:31,560 --> 00:42:32,880
Speaker 2: What if it's like a phone.

858
00:42:32,640 --> 00:42:37,280
Speaker 1: Call, it's like a voicemail. It's like in your hotel

859
00:42:37,320 --> 00:42:39,880
Speaker 1: room when you ignore that blipp you're like, it's an emoji.

860
00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:43,879
Speaker 2: It's a text message that says you up.

861
00:42:44,840 --> 00:42:49,160
Speaker 1: Wow, It's a late night booty call from aliens.

862
00:42:49,640 --> 00:42:52,440
Speaker 2: Hopefully not a booty call ye, hopefully to science call

863
00:42:52,520 --> 00:42:53,120
Speaker 2: family friendly.

864
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:55,160
Speaker 1: But you know, there's a lot of really interesting science

865
00:42:55,200 --> 00:42:57,359
Speaker 1: that could be done with this, because again, people don't

866
00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:00,800
Speaker 1: understand how a photon with that much energy could travel

867
00:43:01,080 --> 00:43:04,600
Speaker 1: that far across space. One fun paper I read suggests

868
00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:07,720
Speaker 1: that maybe it wasn't a photon the whole time. Maybe

869
00:43:07,719 --> 00:43:11,400
Speaker 1: it converted to this weird theoretical particle called an axion.

870
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:15,480
Speaker 1: There's this idea that maybe axion particles are the dark matter,

871
00:43:15,840 --> 00:43:17,960
Speaker 1: and they couple a little bit to photons, and so

872
00:43:18,040 --> 00:43:21,440
Speaker 1: photons can sometimes turn into axions. There's a set of

873
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:24,799
Speaker 1: experiments called light shining through walls where people look for

874
00:43:25,040 --> 00:43:28,240
Speaker 1: photons penetrating stuff that photons shouldn't be able to penetrate

875
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:31,680
Speaker 1: by turning briefly or for a while into axions and

876
00:43:31,719 --> 00:43:34,799
Speaker 1: then converting back into photons when they come near the Earth,

877
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:38,399
Speaker 1: for example, and hit our magnetic field. So some people

878
00:43:38,520 --> 00:43:41,160
Speaker 1: argue that this might be evidence that this photon turned

879
00:43:41,160 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 1: into an axion, flew across the universe, and then came

880
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:45,879
Speaker 1: back into photon modes so we could see it.

881
00:43:46,160 --> 00:43:50,640
Speaker 2: WHOA, that's a little too convenient, though, isn't it.

882
00:43:50,640 --> 00:43:52,840
Speaker 1: It's just hard to explain that we have no actual

883
00:43:52,920 --> 00:43:55,799
Speaker 1: explanation for this photon. There is no way we should see.

884
00:43:55,800 --> 00:43:58,920
Speaker 1: It's like an impossible photon. I mean, the most boring

885
00:43:59,000 --> 00:44:02,440
Speaker 1: explanation for the crazy photon is that it's a mistake

886
00:44:02,800 --> 00:44:04,680
Speaker 1: that we don't know how to measure the energy of

887
00:44:04,719 --> 00:44:08,000
Speaker 1: particles with super duper high energy, because remember, we're always

888
00:44:08,040 --> 00:44:11,359
Speaker 1: reconstructing these things. This is an air shower observatory, which

889
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:14,480
Speaker 1: means you're not seeing the original photon. You're seeing the

890
00:44:14,520 --> 00:44:17,480
Speaker 1: particles that turned into when it's slammed into the atmosphere

891
00:44:17,680 --> 00:44:21,719
Speaker 1: and created this cascade of particles that are shining and

892
00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:22,440
Speaker 1: flashing light.

893
00:44:23,239 --> 00:44:25,440
Speaker 2: Meaning it could have been something else, not a photon.

894
00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:27,480
Speaker 1: It could have been something else not a photon, or

895
00:44:27,480 --> 00:44:30,080
Speaker 1: it could have been something with lower energy. You know,

896
00:44:30,120 --> 00:44:33,279
Speaker 1: the uncertainty on this resolution is significant. We should also

897
00:44:33,320 --> 00:44:37,280
Speaker 1: say the Russian observatory reported an even higher energy photon

898
00:44:37,560 --> 00:44:40,759
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty terra electron bolts, like more than

899
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:44,279
Speaker 1: ten times the energy of this one scene in China.

900
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:47,000
Speaker 1: But the truth is nobody believes them. They're like, yeah, no,

901
00:44:47,120 --> 00:44:48,000
Speaker 1: you guys messed up.

902
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:51,000
Speaker 2: Let me get this straight. We don't know what cost

903
00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:54,600
Speaker 2: this burst. We don't know where it is exactly. We

904
00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:56,160
Speaker 2: don't even know if it is a burst.

905
00:44:56,280 --> 00:44:57,920
Speaker 1: We know it's a gamma y burst. It was very,

906
00:44:58,000 --> 00:45:00,839
Speaker 1: very intense, but it has a special photons in it

907
00:45:01,280 --> 00:45:04,799
Speaker 1: that really raise some questions. Maybe we've mismeasured them, or

908
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:08,480
Speaker 1: maybe they're evidence of axion, dark matter, or something else happening.

909
00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:11,319
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of uncertainty in these things, and

910
00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:13,640
Speaker 1: you know, the frustrating thing in astronomy is you can't

911
00:45:13,640 --> 00:45:16,359
Speaker 1: control these experiments, Like if this was something you were

912
00:45:16,400 --> 00:45:18,160
Speaker 1: doing in your lab, in your basement, or even if

913
00:45:18,160 --> 00:45:20,120
Speaker 1: a large hadron collider, so you could say, let's do

914
00:45:20,160 --> 00:45:22,600
Speaker 1: it again and check. But these are just things we're

915
00:45:22,680 --> 00:45:26,160
Speaker 1: lucky or unlucky enough to see in the sky and

916
00:45:26,360 --> 00:45:28,480
Speaker 1: have to wait for it to happen again before we

917
00:45:28,520 --> 00:45:29,919
Speaker 1: can convince ourselves it's real.

918
00:45:30,680 --> 00:45:33,560
Speaker 2: I wonder then we should maybe retitle the episode, because

919
00:45:33,560 --> 00:45:36,920
Speaker 2: really we're just talking about the brightest flash we've ever seen.

920
00:45:37,640 --> 00:45:39,560
Speaker 2: We don't even know if it came from an explosion

921
00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:43,560
Speaker 2: or an alien laser or an alien phone call.

922
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:45,960
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, or space unicorn farts.

923
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:49,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, a very focused space unicorn part.

924
00:45:51,080 --> 00:45:53,760
Speaker 1: Maybe they are the aliens woo, I'm unifying the theories.

925
00:45:54,040 --> 00:45:57,160
Speaker 2: That's how they make phone calls to their fart network,

926
00:45:57,800 --> 00:45:59,920
Speaker 2: in which case it is sort of technically a booty call.

927
00:46:02,920 --> 00:46:04,440
Speaker 1: People are doing a lot of work to try to

928
00:46:04,520 --> 00:46:07,319
Speaker 1: understand this better. They're trying to see, like was there

929
00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:10,680
Speaker 1: a jet of material that was emitted. By looking at

930
00:46:10,760 --> 00:46:13,200
Speaker 1: the spectrum of light that comes in the gamma ray burst,

931
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:15,000
Speaker 1: they can try to get a sense for like what

932
00:46:15,160 --> 00:46:18,000
Speaker 1: was in that jet? Was it wide, was it narrow?

933
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:20,600
Speaker 1: Did they have the kind of material we expect from

934
00:46:20,680 --> 00:46:23,959
Speaker 1: a collapsing star? What can we learn about the origin star?

935
00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:26,600
Speaker 1: Maybe there was something weird about the star that collapsed

936
00:46:26,800 --> 00:46:30,120
Speaker 1: that generated this incredibly bright source of light. And so

937
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:32,839
Speaker 1: there's a lot of sort of conflicting studies still about this.

938
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:34,920
Speaker 1: Some people say the jet was really really narrow, that's

939
00:46:34,960 --> 00:46:37,320
Speaker 1: why I was bright. Another study said no, actually the

940
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:39,960
Speaker 1: jet looks like it was wider. But you know, there's

941
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:42,840
Speaker 1: a lot of questions. This is early days in understanding this.

942
00:46:42,960 --> 00:46:44,880
Speaker 1: But unless we're lucky enough to see a brighter one,

943
00:46:45,120 --> 00:46:46,800
Speaker 1: this is going to be a boat for a while.

944
00:46:47,280 --> 00:46:49,400
Speaker 2: Is it possible also that maybe it was like focus

945
00:46:49,520 --> 00:46:51,799
Speaker 2: somehow right, because isn't there a sort of lensing out

946
00:46:51,840 --> 00:46:55,040
Speaker 2: there by dark matter or maybe other things? Could something

947
00:46:55,080 --> 00:46:59,040
Speaker 2: have lensed this light to make it seem more intense.

948
00:46:59,040 --> 00:47:02,279
Speaker 1: Mm hm, that's certainly a possibility. There's some really cool

949
00:47:02,280 --> 00:47:05,359
Speaker 1: studies to try to understand how much dark matter there

950
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:07,839
Speaker 1: is between us and any point in the sky by

951
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:11,200
Speaker 1: looking for evidence of lensing. We don't see lensing evidence

952
00:47:11,280 --> 00:47:13,759
Speaker 1: in this distribution, but it's certainly possible. We don't have

953
00:47:13,800 --> 00:47:16,279
Speaker 1: a great map of where the dark matter is in

954
00:47:16,320 --> 00:47:19,319
Speaker 1: the universe, and you know, that's a fundamental limitation to

955
00:47:19,400 --> 00:47:22,520
Speaker 1: looking at the universe only from the surface of one planet.

956
00:47:22,800 --> 00:47:25,400
Speaker 1: Anytime you get a photon, you don't exactly know where

957
00:47:25,440 --> 00:47:28,080
Speaker 1: it came from, what happened to it along the way.

958
00:47:28,480 --> 00:47:32,399
Speaker 1: You have to try to untangle all of these mysteries simultaneously, right,

959
00:47:32,760 --> 00:47:34,880
Speaker 1: how much dust is there between us and there? How

960
00:47:34,960 --> 00:47:37,360
Speaker 1: much dark matter is there? How much is the universe stretching?

961
00:47:37,440 --> 00:47:39,440
Speaker 1: Is that even? Is that isotropic? Because there are other

962
00:47:39,480 --> 00:47:42,759
Speaker 1: weird stuff going on simultaneously. We have to try to

963
00:47:43,000 --> 00:47:46,879
Speaker 1: unravel these mysteries to explain this incredible mosaic we see

964
00:47:46,880 --> 00:47:47,479
Speaker 1: in the night sky.

965
00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:51,719
Speaker 2: Amazing, but I guess maybe the overall message is that

966
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:54,200
Speaker 2: we've seen something that is brighter than what we thought

967
00:47:54,280 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 2: was possible, and it's pretty incredible that we're still doing that, right,

968
00:47:57,680 --> 00:48:00,480
Speaker 2: We're seeing things we didn't think could exist before.

969
00:48:00,920 --> 00:48:04,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's stunned astronomers. I mean, astronomers are used

970
00:48:04,680 --> 00:48:08,080
Speaker 1: to big numbers about the universe, but even this one

971
00:48:08,239 --> 00:48:10,000
Speaker 1: sort of like you can tell, it rocked them back

972
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:11,080
Speaker 1: on their heels. Well.

973
00:48:11,120 --> 00:48:13,920
Speaker 2: Wait, it is shocked, even the bright ones exactly.

974
00:48:14,640 --> 00:48:18,320
Speaker 1: Eric Urns is an astronomer who studies this kind of stuff, said, quote,

975
00:48:18,400 --> 00:48:20,600
Speaker 1: the energy of this thing is so extreme that if

976
00:48:20,640 --> 00:48:23,279
Speaker 1: you took the entire Sun and you converted all of

977
00:48:23,280 --> 00:48:26,800
Speaker 1: it into pure energy, it still wouldn't match this event.

978
00:48:27,000 --> 00:48:29,000
Speaker 1: There's just nothing comparable.

979
00:48:29,880 --> 00:48:33,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, unless you consider farting unicorns in

980
00:48:33,440 --> 00:48:37,680
Speaker 2: this case, anything's possible. All right. Well, it's an interesting

981
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:42,000
Speaker 2: exploration of a new universal or at least local world

982
00:48:42,040 --> 00:48:45,480
Speaker 2: record of the brightest flash we've seen and its mysteries.

983
00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:47,360
Speaker 1: And one thing we do know is that the universe

984
00:48:47,400 --> 00:48:50,080
Speaker 1: contains enduring mysteries. And the more we look out there

985
00:48:50,080 --> 00:48:52,359
Speaker 1: in the universe, the more we understand and the more

986
00:48:52,400 --> 00:48:54,279
Speaker 1: we are shocked by what's out there?

987
00:48:54,520 --> 00:48:56,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the more that we need bright people like

988
00:48:56,920 --> 00:49:00,200
Speaker 2: maybe you out there to figure out.

989
00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:02,680
Speaker 1: Mister he's talking to you, folks, guys, not to me.

990
00:49:03,080 --> 00:49:05,560
Speaker 2: We hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, See

991
00:49:05,560 --> 00:49:06,080
Speaker 2: you next time.

992
00:49:10,840 --> 00:49:13,720
Speaker 1: For more science and curiosity, come find us on social

993
00:49:13,760 --> 00:49:18,680
Speaker 1: media where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discorg, Insta,

994
00:49:18,760 --> 00:49:22,480
Speaker 1: and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel

995
00:49:22,520 --> 00:49:25,960
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.

996
00:49:26,239 --> 00:49:31,400
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

997
00:49:31,520 --> 00:49:33,880
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.