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Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, So I'm wondering how much competition there is

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Speaker 1: in physics. Oh, my gosh, so much. We have like

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Speaker 1: our own version of the hundred meter dash, which is

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Speaker 1: run by scientists wearing labop. Okay, I'm paid to see that.

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Speaker 1: But I'm wondering why it seems like physicists are always

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Speaker 1: competing to have the biggest facilities. Well, we do like

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Speaker 1: to say that the Large Hadron Collider is the biggest

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Speaker 1: science experiment ever, and people keep building bigger and bigger telescopes. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but so like, why is that just for bragging rights

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Speaker 1: or is there real science reasons why stuff needs to

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Speaker 1: keep getting bigger and bigger. Oh? No, in physics, size

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Speaker 1: really does matter. It's not just the motion of the photons. Hi.

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Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I love really

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Speaker 1: really really really really big science projects. And I'm Kelly

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Speaker 1: Wiener Smith. I'm a parasitologist with Rice University, and I

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Speaker 1: love really really really big parasites. But for today, I'll

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Speaker 1: talk about telescopes instead. Hold on a second, now, I

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Speaker 1: have to know have you ever had a really big parasite?

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Speaker 1: Or is that two personal question? I love really really

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Speaker 1: big parasites under my microscope, not in any humans, so

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Speaker 1: no I have I have never personally had a really

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Speaker 1: big parasite, but you know, they're easier to see when

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Speaker 1: they're bigger. That's good to know. And welcome to the

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Speaker 1: podcast Daniel or Hey Explore the Universe and Kelly's Parasites,

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Speaker 1: in which we talk about all the amazing and crazy

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Speaker 1: things that we can learn about the universe using giant,

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Speaker 1: enormous scientific facilities, the biggest, the brightest, the most incredible,

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Speaker 1: the most jaw dropping instructions that mankind has ever made,

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Speaker 1: and used them to ask the deepest questions about the

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Speaker 1: nature of the universe, where it all came from, where

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Speaker 1: it's all gonna go, how it all works, and what

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Speaker 1: it all means to you. Our friend and my co host,

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Speaker 1: Jorge can't be here today, so of course I'm joined

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Speaker 1: by our wonderful and hilarious guest host, Kelly Weener Smith.

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Speaker 1: I'm excited to be bad and Kelly is here to

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Speaker 1: join us. When we talk about how we explore the universe,

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Speaker 1: we often on this podcast talk about how so much

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Speaker 1: information is out there in the universe, so much of

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Speaker 1: it being beam towards Earth. Carried to us on waves

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Speaker 1: of light, but most of it just hits the ground.

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Speaker 1: Think about all the times you didn't look at the

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Speaker 1: night sky. Think about all the times astronomers pointed their

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Speaker 1: telescope in one direction and not another. Secrets of the universe,

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Speaker 1: stories of what has happened in the ancient and distant past,

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Speaker 1: have just gone sort of ignored as they hit a

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Speaker 1: rock or bounce off a tree and are just lost

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Speaker 1: forever or to humanity. That kind of thing drives me crazy,

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Speaker 1: and so I'm always enthusiastic when we are building more

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Speaker 1: eyeballs to look out onto the universe, to capture those

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Speaker 1: pieces of information that might reveal deep secrets about the

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Speaker 1: nature of the universe. It is always a shame when

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Speaker 1: data goes uncollected. Do you think about that? In biology,

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Speaker 1: how many species are out there doing weird things and

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Speaker 1: nobody's watching. Every time a bird flies by, I think

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Speaker 1: about the parasites it has that I won't be looking at.

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Speaker 1: You should build a huge parasite telescope to look at

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Speaker 1: all those birds, all right, or just a big net

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Speaker 1: to catch them all. Oh, but it does strike me

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Speaker 1: how much of science is just getting the data, Like

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Speaker 1: all of these things are happening out there in the universe,

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Speaker 1: and so many scientific stories are mostly just about getting

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Speaker 1: to see it. Like if you could see these things

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Speaker 1: happening boom, you would understand so much about what's going

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Speaker 1: on in the universe, Like if you could watch the

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Speaker 1: Big Bang happen, or if you could be there when

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Speaker 1: a black hole is formed, or if you would see

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Speaker 1: these two species doing they're crazy meeting dance. So much

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Speaker 1: of science is just like being in the right place

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Speaker 1: at the right time, with the right instrument, yes, and

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Speaker 1: finding the way to get the money to get those

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Speaker 1: instruments exactly, convincing somebody to spend their cash so you

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Speaker 1: could build that instrument so you could answer that science question.

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Speaker 1: It makes me wonder sometimes what we could learn about

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Speaker 1: the universe if we were just like magically omniscient, you know,

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Speaker 1: if we just like could zoom anywhere in the universe

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Speaker 1: and gather any data we wanted about any experiment. What

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Speaker 1: would you do first? How about you, Kelly, what would

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Speaker 1: you do first if you could know anything about the

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Speaker 1: universe at any moment? Oh my gosh, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: You've blindsided me. That's huge. I mean, I feel like

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Speaker 1: there's so much biodiversity that we don't understand. But I

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Speaker 1: think I, you know, probably would have to prioritize something

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Speaker 1: about understanding cancer or something like that, even though selfishly

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Speaker 1: I'd rather know a lot more about the parasite biodiversity

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Speaker 1: that's out there. What about you, what would your big

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Speaker 1: question be if you could answer anything? I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I'm struck by how much we don't understand our own bodies,

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Speaker 1: Like when you talk to somebody who's got a we disease.

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Speaker 1: There are so many basic questions we don't know the

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Speaker 1: answers to, like how much are your hormone levels fluctuating,

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Speaker 1: or how many little microbes are growing in your gut

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Speaker 1: or dying in your gut or eating each other in

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Speaker 1: your gut. There's just so many questions we don't know

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Speaker 1: the answer to because we don't have very basic data

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Speaker 1: about what's going on. And of course that's fascinating to

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Speaker 1: me because my wife studies the micro biome and the gut,

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Speaker 1: the things that are happening inside the human body. But

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Speaker 1: also I'm deeply fascinated by the deepest questions of the universe,

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Speaker 1: the ones that our podcast listeners are probably also interested

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Speaker 1: in so I would love to be there when a

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Speaker 1: black hole is formed to understand how that happens, to

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Speaker 1: see it in action. I feel like we could learn

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Speaker 1: so much about the nature of the universe. We could

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Speaker 1: solve some problems in quantum physics and general relativity, maybe

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Speaker 1: even get clues that we allow us to form a

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Speaker 1: theory of quantum gravity. Would be totally awesome if we

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Speaker 1: could be there. I would love to show up like

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Speaker 1: a thousand years from now and hopefully we have both

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Speaker 1: of those questions totally answered and figure out which one

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Speaker 1: ended up being actually more complicated, because I find like

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Speaker 1: trying to understand how the brain works so like with

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Speaker 1: all of the connections that the brain has, and it

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Speaker 1: seems like so many of these diseases, you know, like cancer,

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Speaker 1: we thought was going to be straightforward once we had

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Speaker 1: a human genome, and we still haven't figured it out

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Speaker 1: because there's just so many interacting pieces and figuring it

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Speaker 1: all out seems so tough. Anyway, I'd love to know

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Speaker 1: in a thousand years which one of your two big

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Speaker 1: questions ended up being more complicated and harder to solve.

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Speaker 1: Is there a race to complexity between biology and physics? Absolutely?

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Speaker 1: There's so many these questions where we don't even really

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Speaker 1: understand how to ask the right question because we are

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Speaker 1: so clueless. And I think in a thousand years we'll

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Speaker 1: look back and we'll be like, what, why were they

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Speaker 1: even asking that question? It's ridiculous. Like if you try

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Speaker 1: to read, you know, the writings of natural philosophers from

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Speaker 1: a thousand years ago, you're like, man, were you guys

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Speaker 1: on the wrong track? You're not even thinking about what

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Speaker 1: the interesting stuff is. It takes like three hundred years

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Speaker 1: to get around like asking the right question and figuring

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Speaker 1: out how to do basic experiments to answer it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think we all want to believe that science works

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Speaker 1: in like a nice step wise progression and whatever question

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Speaker 1: you're working on is sort of the next step in

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Speaker 1: the ladder. But you know, history shows us that every

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Speaker 1: once in a while, people are off the letter entirely,

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Speaker 1: you know, swimming in a pool somewhere totally wrong, and

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Speaker 1: all you can do is hope that you're not at

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Speaker 1: the wrong place at the wrong time. But anyway, that's

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Speaker 1: I feel like that keeps me up every once in

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Speaker 1: a while. But I think I'm asking basic enough questions

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Speaker 1: that it'll be fine. Yeah, and sometimes the direction of

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Speaker 1: science is changed by something that we see in the

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Speaker 1: universe that we are surprised by. And this happens almost

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Speaker 1: every single time we develop a new kind of eyeball,

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Speaker 1: a new way to look at the universe shows us

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Speaker 1: something happening out there we didn't even think to look for.

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Speaker 1: Listeners the podcast will be familiar with things like the

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Speaker 1: Fermi bubbles, these crazy, huge blobs of stuff above and

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Speaker 1: below the galaxy recently discovered nobody was even looking for them. Essentially,

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Speaker 1: every time we turn on a new kind of telescope,

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Speaker 1: a new facility, and we look out into space, we

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Speaker 1: discover the not surprising fact that space is full of

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Speaker 1: crazy the stuff, and that can really change the way

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Speaker 1: we think about the whole universe, right, because there are

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Speaker 1: lots of different ways to make progress. One is like,

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Speaker 1: have a clever idea about maybe how the universe works,

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Speaker 1: and go look for confirmation like the Higgs boson. Others

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Speaker 1: is just go out there and look and find weird

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Speaker 1: stuff that requires you that forcuses you to change your

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Speaker 1: idea about the nature of the universe. And that's what's

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Speaker 1: so exciting about building huge observatories, enormous eyeballs that can

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Speaker 1: see crazy things deep deep, deep into space. So that's interesting,

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Speaker 1: Like in grant proposals for stuff like this, is it

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Speaker 1: common to right, like, but really, we don't know what

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Speaker 1: we're gonna find, so you should give me money because

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Speaker 1: it could be super cool, because I feel like in

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Speaker 1: biology you need to be a little bit more specific.

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Speaker 1: But it feels like the unknowns that we haven't even

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Speaker 1: thought about yet are a really big important part of

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Speaker 1: making these telescopes. Man, you put your finger on one

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Speaker 1: of my pet peeves. I wish that funding agencies would

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Speaker 1: do that. They would fund just like exploratory stuff, like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: build something that can see new kinds of things, and

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Speaker 1: let's find out what's out there, because in the end,

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Speaker 1: that's really what's underlying all of this. But when you

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Speaker 1: read the science cases for these huge facilities, they've been

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Speaker 1: forced to enumerate the kinds of things they might discover

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Speaker 1: and what they might learn in those scenarios. But of

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Speaker 1: course I think underneath that you can sense this feeling

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Speaker 1: of life. Look, just give us the money so we

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Speaker 1: can build the thing, and we will see crazy stuff

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Speaker 1: we can't possibly describe in the pages of this proposal,

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Speaker 1: and there's this excitement underneath it, and I wish sometimes

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Speaker 1: that people could just be more direct about it. That's interesting.

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Speaker 1: So I guess all of the different fields we're all

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Speaker 1: playing that same game, pretending that we know exactly what

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Speaker 1: we're gonna find when we're really hoping to be expecting

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Speaker 1: that will be surprised. Does that influence how time on

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Speaker 1: these scopes is spent where you have to like address

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Speaker 1: the questions that you said instead of just being like

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Speaker 1: it might be neat over here. Yes, unfortunately, and in

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Speaker 1: my view, science is moving a little bit too much

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Speaker 1: towards like quarterly report corporate cycles where you like have

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Speaker 1: to show that you're going to produce a certain number

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Speaker 1: of units of science every quarter if you want your

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Speaker 1: time in the machine or you want your dollars. Were

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Speaker 1: really benefit of science? The real joy of it are

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Speaker 1: the unexpected explorations, you know, playing the long game, just

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Speaker 1: like hey give people money to go think about that

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Speaker 1: and see what comes out instead of this like short

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Speaker 1: term how many planets will you discover per dollar we

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Speaker 1: spend That people are focused on more, but you know

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Speaker 1: it's more like conservative it's a people don't want to

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Speaker 1: spend money and then not know that some science is

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Speaker 1: going to come out of it, but I'm more in

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Speaker 1: favor of the sort of undetermined long game funding. But

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Speaker 1: then again, I don't work on a funding agency, so

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Speaker 1: it's easy for me to say how they should spend

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Speaker 1: their money. Yeah, fair enough, And I feel the same

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Speaker 1: way about my field. And I actually feel like since

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Speaker 1: we moved out to a farm and I just sit

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Speaker 1: outside and watch nature sometimes I have a much better

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Speaker 1: sense of ecology and I'm much more often surprised by

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Speaker 1: things and like see interactions I wouldn't have seen if

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Speaker 1: I had just brought them into a lab to quickly

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Speaker 1: get the answer that I need. And I feel like

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Speaker 1: we just we scientists no longer give ourselves the time

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Speaker 1: to like let our minds wander and just sort of

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Speaker 1: watch stuff and see what happens to get new ideas.

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Speaker 1: And anyway, I agree the quarterly reports model is not

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Speaker 1: particularly inspirational, and so whatever their motivation, there are still

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Speaker 1: fields of science that are building giant observatories that will

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Speaker 1: let us just sort of like sit out and watch

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Speaker 1: nature happen deep in the universe. And so on today's episode,

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Speaker 1: we'll be talking about the construction the scientific potential of

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Speaker 1: one of those very exciting of a new class of

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Speaker 1: facilities coming online late in the twenty twenties. This one

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Speaker 1: is called the Giant Magellan Telescope, and so on today's podcast,

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Speaker 1: we'll be asking the question what will the Giant Magellan

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Speaker 1: Telescope teach us? So, Kelly, had you heard of the

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Speaker 1: Giant Magellan telescope before this episode? I had not, and

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Speaker 1: that was one of the reasons I was excited about

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Speaker 1: this question, A chance to learn about a new telescope.

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Speaker 1: I thought maybe I had heard about it in passing,

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Speaker 1: but I definitely had no idea what it was. It

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Speaker 1: seems to not have bubbled up as much as it's

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Speaker 1: sort of competitors in the same class of observatories, and

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Speaker 1: I think maybe that's because it's not as politically fraught.

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Speaker 1: You know, one of the competitors in this community is

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Speaker 1: the thirty meters Telescope, which of course is embroiled in

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Speaker 1: all sorts of complicated tangles about using land on the

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Speaker 1: top of volcanoes that's very important for Native folks in Hawaii,

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Speaker 1: whereas the Giant Magellan Telescope hasn't really raised the same

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Speaker 1: kind of ruckus. So maybe that's why it's not as

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Speaker 1: much in people's minds. So it's getting put in a

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Speaker 1: place where there's no people there already. I don't know,

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Speaker 1: it's complicated, like where in the world are there no

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Speaker 1: people already? I think Antarctica is the only place you

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Speaker 1: can say they are like no native communities. But basically

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Speaker 1: every other mountain in the world is important to somebody,

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Speaker 1: So you know, I wouldn't say there's no native people

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Speaker 1: there or it's not important anybody. It's just sort of

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Speaker 1: like hasn't raised a political ruckus yet, so it hasn't

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Speaker 1: really bubbled up to the top of people's mind. So

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Speaker 1: I guess it's you know, it's good and bad to

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Speaker 1: have publicity, you know what they say, all publicity is

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Speaker 1: good publicity. I'm not sure that's the case for giant

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Speaker 1: scientific observatories. Yeah, yeah, I think that phrases maybe become

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Speaker 1: less and less true as time goes on. All right,

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Speaker 1: So I was curious if other people had heard about

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Speaker 1: the giant Magell and telescope. So I went out there

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Speaker 1: into the Internet and I emailed lots of listeners who

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Speaker 1: volunteered to answer random questions without any preparation. If that

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Speaker 1: sounds like fun to you, and trust me, it's more

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Speaker 1: fun than it sounds. Please write to us to participate.

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Speaker 1: Everybody is welcome, all levels of education and enthusiasm. Send

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Speaker 1: your request to Questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.

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Speaker 1: So think about it for a moment. What do you

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Speaker 1: know about the giant Magell and telescope. Here's what people

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Speaker 1: had to say. The giant Magell and telescope will teach

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Speaker 1: us about radio waves and distend galaxies. I know that

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Speaker 1: it's a ground these telescope very big mirrors, but most

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Speaker 1: likely what we are looking for from every telescope, I

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Speaker 1: guess learning about the beginning of the universe to where

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Speaker 1: where are we going? What's what will happen to the

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Speaker 1: universe in the future. I don't know, but I'm guessing

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Speaker 1: it's a deep space space telescope maybe um and it's

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Speaker 1: well presumably with what we've got the capital one going

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Speaker 1: up there, right, and that's looking at planets and other

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Speaker 1: solar systems, so it's probably not that. And it being giant,

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Speaker 1: it's probably on Earth, so I'm guessing it's something to

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Speaker 1: do with the cosmic background radiation. I've heard that the

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Speaker 1: giant Magellan telescope will have a resolving power ten times

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Speaker 1: that of the Hubble Space telescope, so hopefully it will

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Speaker 1: allow us to see deeper into the visible universe. I

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Speaker 1: haven't heard of the giant Magellan telescope. Magellan sailed all

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Speaker 1: the way around the world. Um, so maybe the Magellan

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Speaker 1: telescope is trying to calculate where observe fast distances and

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Speaker 1: it's giant. If it's optical, that means a really big

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Speaker 1: mirror or lens um trying to see objects further than

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Speaker 1: we've ever seen. I guess it could be giant radio

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Speaker 1: dish too. No idea the giant magellent telescope. So because

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Speaker 1: it is a telescope and it is also a giant,

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Speaker 1: I would say that it would show us something from

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Speaker 1: the outer space, maybe something that we have not been

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Speaker 1: able to reach with other telescopes. I am apparently not

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Speaker 1: up to date on my science news because I've never

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Speaker 1: heard of the giant Magentleman telescope before. I'm so sorry.

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Speaker 1: I know of the James Webb telescope because you guys

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Speaker 1: have talked about it, and I know that this isn't

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Speaker 1: that so not what that's going to tell us, So

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Speaker 1: one of the things I loved about the responses here

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Speaker 1: was that it seemed like everybody was just about as

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Speaker 1: clueless as I was. So it made me feel like,

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Speaker 1: you know, I've probably been watching enough news or whatever,

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Speaker 1: and I'm not missing anything that's popularly known already. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and that's why I thought we should talk about this

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Speaker 1: particular telescope problem, and the more famous ones sort of

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Speaker 1: bring people up to speed to what's going on. Also,

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Speaker 1: this one has a particular design choice, which I think

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Speaker 1: is sort of amazing and crazy that I wanted to

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Speaker 1: get to talk about. But the thing I liked about

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Speaker 1: the listener responses is that there's an enthusiasm. They're They're like, well,

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure what it is, but I bet it's

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Speaker 1: going to teach us some cool stuff about deep space.

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Speaker 1: And you know, that's the kind of enthusiasm I think

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Speaker 1: that funding agencies should hear. They're like, people wanted to

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Speaker 1: build these devices so we can learn secrets of the universe,

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Speaker 1: and they look so cool. Like I when I looked

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Speaker 1: up the pictures of this, I was just sort of

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Speaker 1: blown away. And so I think, like, yeah, people are

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Speaker 1: both excited about the information that it gives us and

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Speaker 1: also it's just amazing to see one of these incredible

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Speaker 1: engineering feats completed, and it sort of gives you a

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Speaker 1: bit of feeling of pride as a human being that

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Speaker 1: we can do stuff like this. I know, right, I

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Speaker 1: feel that way when I see something like the Golden

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Speaker 1: gate Bridge. I'm like, wow, go humans like you guys

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Speaker 1: have done something. And I feel the same way about

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Speaker 1: the observatories, like that didn't look easy. I couldn't have

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Speaker 1: done that in an afternoon, So it's cool to see

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Speaker 1: them accomplish this. So let's dig into it. So the

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Speaker 1: Giant Magellan Telescope, what is this thing? Well, actually it's

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Speaker 1: a member of this sort of like new class of

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Speaker 1: super telescopes. There's a few of these things. There's the

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Speaker 1: thirty meter telescope, the extremely Large telescope, and the Giant

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Speaker 1: Magellan Telescope. They're all roughly the same size, and they're

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Speaker 1: all coming online sometime in the next five or ten years.

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Speaker 1: And each one is like the huge project that's the

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Speaker 1: successor of a previous project. With these like three communities

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Speaker 1: of astronomers in the world developing these things, and each

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Speaker 1: one is like going on to the next stage. And

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Speaker 1: the names kind of cracked me up, Like I can't

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Speaker 1: tell if people are trying to be funny by naming

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Speaker 1: them things like the extremely Large Telescope, or if they

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Speaker 1: are just really not clever. Like part of me thinks

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Speaker 1: that maybe some of the funds could have gone to

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Speaker 1: hire someone with more creativity, you know, or like a

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Speaker 1: historian who could pay a cool historic name. But but

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, the name the extremely large Telescope

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Speaker 1: is very informative and it makes me laugh. Do you

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Speaker 1: know about the history of the naming stuff here? Well,

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Speaker 1: I think they sort of painted themselves in a corner

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Speaker 1: because this group worked recently on the telescope called the

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Speaker 1: very large telescope, And so what are you gonna do

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Speaker 1: after the very large telescope? Right, the very very large telescope,

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Speaker 1: I feel like they had to go extremely large telescope.

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Speaker 1: But where do you go up from there? The super

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Speaker 1: extremely large. Well, they actually had even bigger plans, and

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Speaker 1: so the extremely large telescope is about thirty ms across,

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Speaker 1: about the same size as the giant Magellan and the

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Speaker 1: thirty meter telescope. But originally they wanted to do a

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Speaker 1: hundred meter telescope, and this thing was going to be

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Speaker 1: called the overwhelmingly large telescope. Okay, and like man, I

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Speaker 1: am sad about that not being built for so many

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Speaker 1: reasons like what we would have learned and what we

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Speaker 1: could have seen with it, but also just to have

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Speaker 1: the existence of a facility they called the overwhelming in

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Speaker 1: large telescope would have been pretty awesome. You can't get

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Speaker 1: too much larger than that afterwards, because that the source

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Speaker 1: is going to run out of words for them to use.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, it would be awesome to have an overwhelmingly

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Speaker 1: large telescope exactly. And unfortunately that seems like it was

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Speaker 1: too expensive. They overshot their mark. There's too large. It

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Speaker 1: was canceled, so they had to downgrade down just to

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Speaker 1: the extremely large telescope. Did they start this project and

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Speaker 1: then it got canceled or did it never get funded? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it didn't get funded, but you know, these things take

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Speaker 1: years and years to get approval, and so they sort

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Speaker 1: of like began really large and the cost was gonna

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Speaker 1: be like twenty billion, and then pretty soon it was

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Speaker 1: clear that that was just never going to happen. So

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Speaker 1: THEYD scoped until they got down to the extremely large telescope.

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Speaker 1: But you know, I assumed that they're going to build

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Speaker 1: something after the e l T something in twenty or

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Speaker 1: thirty years, and probably they were already thinking about what

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Speaker 1: they're gonna call it. You know, I don't actually feel

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Speaker 1: like they should need a decade or more to come

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Speaker 1: up with a name this straightforward. But anyway, they've got

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Speaker 1: plenty of time to figure it out, so that's good, right.

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Speaker 1: So all of these telescopes are part of this class

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Speaker 1: of super telescopes are coming online later this decade. And

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Speaker 1: you might be wondering, like, as we were joking about

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Speaker 1: the Cold Open, why are people building bigger telescopes? Like

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Speaker 1: we have the Hubble, we have you know, the kick.

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Speaker 1: We have a lot of great facilities around the world,

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Speaker 1: the very large telescope, the large binocular telescope. Why do

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Speaker 1: we need bigger telescopes? Are these telescopes like breaking down?

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Speaker 1: Are they getting old? One of them broke down recently?

401
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Speaker 1: Didn't it like there was the mirror started falling in?

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Speaker 1: Was that a I think this was in This was

403
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Speaker 1: all over Twitter somewhat recently. Maybe you're thinking about Aricibo.

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Speaker 1: Aricibo definitely collapsed a little bit more than a year ago.

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Speaker 1: That's the radio telescope. Did one of these optical ones

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Speaker 1: also collapse? I hadn't heard that. No, no, I do

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Speaker 1: not know the difference between any of these telescopes. And so, yes,

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Speaker 1: that the air CBO. That sounds right, So it seems

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Speaker 1: like some of these are wearing down. But if that's

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Speaker 1: a totally different class, is that right? Yeah? We had

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Speaker 1: a whole fun podcast episode about air CBO. That's unfortunately

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Speaker 1: quite an old facility, really storied history, made a lot

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Speaker 1: of fantastic discoveries. You're interested in radio astronomy, go check

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Speaker 1: out the episode about the Aristeba facility. Great stuff there,

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Speaker 1: But here we're talking about telescopes in the optical so

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Speaker 1: these mostly see visible light and like the near infrared,

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Speaker 1: the kinds of stuff there I see if your eyes

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Speaker 1: were bigger, And that really tells you why you need telescopes.

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Speaker 1: You need telescopes at all, because your eyes are not

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Speaker 1: always big enough to gather enough photons. Like imagine you

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Speaker 1: just look up at the night sky at night and

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Speaker 1: you look in a direction where it seems dark. Why

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Speaker 1: is it dark? Right in that direction? There are definitely galaxies,

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Speaker 1: There are definitely stars. Why are you not seeing them?

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Speaker 1: And the answer is just that they are really far away,

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Speaker 1: and so their photons are very infrequent, Like they pump

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Speaker 1: out a lot of photons where they are, but the

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Speaker 1: further away you are, the fewer those photons land here

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Speaker 1: on Earth and land on your eyeball. Is this why

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Speaker 1: owls have relatively big eyes so that they can see

431
00:21:57,119 --> 00:22:00,800
Speaker 1: at night? Yes, exactly, That's why owls have very large eyes.

432
00:22:00,840 --> 00:22:02,480
Speaker 1: And I think that's what they were going for. Actually

433
00:22:02,520 --> 00:22:06,000
Speaker 1: with the overwhelmingly large telescope. It was the o W LT.

434
00:22:06,440 --> 00:22:08,680
Speaker 1: It was like the owl telescope. Wait, wait, why is

435
00:22:08,680 --> 00:22:12,200
Speaker 1: it O W isn't overwhelmingly one word? Yeah, but you

436
00:22:12,240 --> 00:22:17,360
Speaker 1: know it's acronym abuse overwhelmingly large telescope. It just hit

437
00:22:17,440 --> 00:22:21,639
Speaker 1: me that that spells owl. I'm a couple of seconds behind.

438
00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:24,200
Speaker 1: I've got a little bit of a lag anyway, Okay, excellent.

439
00:22:24,240 --> 00:22:27,480
Speaker 1: That was actually pretty clever their physicists. Yeah, and you know,

440
00:22:27,520 --> 00:22:30,280
Speaker 1: we've done this exercise where we look at the darkest

441
00:22:30,320 --> 00:22:33,320
Speaker 1: parts of the sky. I love this example where they

442
00:22:33,359 --> 00:22:35,439
Speaker 1: just pointed hubble at what they thought was like the

443
00:22:35,520 --> 00:22:37,720
Speaker 1: darkest part of the sky to see what's out there.

444
00:22:37,960 --> 00:22:39,639
Speaker 1: And they just pointed it there for a while and

445
00:22:39,720 --> 00:22:43,240
Speaker 1: collected light, and after a long time you can see

446
00:22:43,440 --> 00:22:47,240
Speaker 1: distant objects emerge, Like you can see galaxies out there

447
00:22:47,480 --> 00:22:50,560
Speaker 1: that are so distant that they're very, very faint. Remember,

448
00:22:50,560 --> 00:22:54,119
Speaker 1: the farther away something is the fewer of its photons

449
00:22:54,119 --> 00:22:58,360
Speaker 1: you were seeing. Like, imagine something ten billion light years away.

450
00:22:58,520 --> 00:23:01,280
Speaker 1: It's photons have been traveling for ten billion years, but

451
00:23:01,359 --> 00:23:03,440
Speaker 1: a lot of the photons didn't get here. They went

452
00:23:03,480 --> 00:23:05,520
Speaker 1: to the left, or to the right, or the entirely

453
00:23:05,600 --> 00:23:09,480
Speaker 1: the opposite direction. There's like a sphere surrounding that galaxy

454
00:23:09,560 --> 00:23:13,280
Speaker 1: that's ten billion light years wide, and you're only seeing

455
00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:16,200
Speaker 1: a tiny fraction of the photons that hit the inside

456
00:23:16,200 --> 00:23:19,280
Speaker 1: of that sphere with your eyeball or with your telescope.

457
00:23:19,320 --> 00:23:22,040
Speaker 1: And so the bigger the telescope, the more of those

458
00:23:22,080 --> 00:23:26,159
Speaker 1: photons you capture, and so the more distant dim objects

459
00:23:26,200 --> 00:23:30,159
Speaker 1: you can see. So that's why size really is important

460
00:23:30,200 --> 00:23:33,080
Speaker 1: for telescopes. I can't imagine being the person who runs

461
00:23:33,160 --> 00:23:36,000
Speaker 1: the data or who collects the data as they arrive

462
00:23:36,040 --> 00:23:38,840
Speaker 1: at Hubble, like being the first one to see these

463
00:23:38,880 --> 00:23:42,040
Speaker 1: things that nobody has ever seen before, that are just

464
00:23:42,119 --> 00:23:44,560
Speaker 1: like brand new, that like it must be a constant

465
00:23:44,560 --> 00:23:47,320
Speaker 1: emotional high how do you ever feel sad on on

466
00:23:47,359 --> 00:23:49,360
Speaker 1: a day when you're seeing these things that no one

467
00:23:49,840 --> 00:23:52,320
Speaker 1: has ever seen before, and that we only can see

468
00:23:52,320 --> 00:23:55,080
Speaker 1: because humanity has like figured out how to do this

469
00:23:55,119 --> 00:23:58,159
Speaker 1: awesome thing. That's right, and every single one has the

470
00:23:58,200 --> 00:24:01,280
Speaker 1: potential for crazy bonkers and us. Right, you could see

471
00:24:01,359 --> 00:24:04,080
Speaker 1: something in an image that nobody's ever seen before, and

472
00:24:04,119 --> 00:24:06,520
Speaker 1: a new kind of thing you could see, like an

473
00:24:06,560 --> 00:24:09,880
Speaker 1: alien superstructure. You can see like a message spelled out

474
00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:13,280
Speaker 1: in galaxies, Like who has any idea what's beyond the

475
00:24:13,400 --> 00:24:15,560
Speaker 1: edge of what we've seen before? Right, You're like a

476
00:24:15,880 --> 00:24:19,239
Speaker 1: explorer landing on a new shore where no human has

477
00:24:19,320 --> 00:24:21,800
Speaker 1: ever been before. What are you gonna find? What fruits

478
00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:24,440
Speaker 1: are there? It's so exciting to be the first person

479
00:24:24,480 --> 00:24:26,480
Speaker 1: to see these things, to be really on the forefront

480
00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:28,439
Speaker 1: of human knowledge. Like, I don't know how you go

481
00:24:28,520 --> 00:24:30,560
Speaker 1: to sleep at night knowing that data is coming into

482
00:24:30,600 --> 00:24:32,320
Speaker 1: hubble and like you're not going to get to see

483
00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:34,960
Speaker 1: until the morning. I think that I might burn myself

484
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:37,200
Speaker 1: out if I was the person like collecting these images.

485
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:40,000
Speaker 1: All right, so let's give everybody a chance to sort

486
00:24:40,040 --> 00:24:42,240
Speaker 1: of contemplate how amazing it would be to be the

487
00:24:42,280 --> 00:24:58,000
Speaker 1: person who runs hubble and take a little break. All right,

488
00:24:58,080 --> 00:25:01,359
Speaker 1: and we're back. Okay, So we're talking about how focusing

489
00:25:01,480 --> 00:25:03,600
Speaker 1: off into a dark spot in the sky and leaving

490
00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:06,399
Speaker 1: yourself there, are leaving your telescope pointed in that direction

491
00:25:06,440 --> 00:25:09,200
Speaker 1: for a while, let you see things that are very

492
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:12,560
Speaker 1: far off. But all right, so they're very far off.

493
00:25:12,680 --> 00:25:15,720
Speaker 1: Does that tell us anything about like how old something

494
00:25:15,840 --> 00:25:17,800
Speaker 1: is if it's far away, or is everything that we're

495
00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:20,280
Speaker 1: looking at like about the same age. I really don't

496
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:22,679
Speaker 1: know much about this stuff. It's really fascinating sort of

497
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:25,960
Speaker 1: what slice of the universe we can see. Because the

498
00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:28,639
Speaker 1: speed of light is very fast, but it's finite. It

499
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:30,840
Speaker 1: means that what we're seeing in the night sky, of course,

500
00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:34,560
Speaker 1: it's not what's happening now. And the further away something

501
00:25:34,760 --> 00:25:38,119
Speaker 1: is the older the image of it we are seeing.

502
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:41,440
Speaker 1: So something that's ten million light years away, it took

503
00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:43,720
Speaker 1: ten million years to light to get here, so we

504
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:46,679
Speaker 1: are seeing how it looked ten million years ago. And

505
00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 1: you might think, well, that's frustrating. I want to see

506
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:50,520
Speaker 1: what it looks like now. I want to see what's

507
00:25:50,520 --> 00:25:53,080
Speaker 1: going on in the universe ten billion light years away,

508
00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:55,800
Speaker 1: right now, that's cool? And that would be nice to know,

509
00:25:56,000 --> 00:25:59,040
Speaker 1: but it's actually really valuable to also see into the

510
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:02,359
Speaker 1: past to see how things used to look, because a

511
00:26:02,359 --> 00:26:05,199
Speaker 1: lot of our questions about the universe are about what

512
00:26:05,400 --> 00:26:07,359
Speaker 1: happened in the past, How do we get here, how

513
00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:10,440
Speaker 1: did galaxies form, what were the very first stars? All

514
00:26:10,440 --> 00:26:12,520
Speaker 1: these kind of things that happened a long time ago.

515
00:26:12,720 --> 00:26:15,359
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like archaeology were like digging through

516
00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:18,040
Speaker 1: layers of the universe to see what happened a long

517
00:26:18,080 --> 00:26:21,280
Speaker 1: time ago. And so really distant things are actually super

518
00:26:21,320 --> 00:26:24,200
Speaker 1: important because we're gonna see old pictures of them, which

519
00:26:24,240 --> 00:26:27,120
Speaker 1: means the very early universe. And as we'll talk about

520
00:26:27,200 --> 00:26:28,959
Speaker 1: later on when we talk about the science you can

521
00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:32,000
Speaker 1: do with a great Magellan telescope, you'll see that they

522
00:26:32,040 --> 00:26:34,400
Speaker 1: should open a lot of doors for us in understanding

523
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:37,160
Speaker 1: the early universe. So I bet you've already done an

524
00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:39,399
Speaker 1: episode on whether or not you can travel through time,

525
00:26:39,560 --> 00:26:42,879
Speaker 1: But to me, this feels like maybe the closest we

526
00:26:42,920 --> 00:26:45,680
Speaker 1: could be able to get to traveling through time, Like, yes,

527
00:26:45,720 --> 00:26:47,879
Speaker 1: you can't go there yourself, but being able to see

528
00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:50,959
Speaker 1: something that happened in the distant past, that's incredible. That's

529
00:26:51,040 --> 00:26:53,359
Speaker 1: kind of mind blowing. That's true. And you know a

530
00:26:53,359 --> 00:26:56,840
Speaker 1: lot of people, if they have the opportunity to use

531
00:26:56,880 --> 00:26:59,400
Speaker 1: the time travel device, would go into the past rather

532
00:26:59,440 --> 00:27:01,560
Speaker 1: than into the future. I heard a survey about this

533
00:27:01,680 --> 00:27:05,239
Speaker 1: recently on inferrr And you're right that it's possible in

534
00:27:05,280 --> 00:27:07,560
Speaker 1: the case of astronomy basically to go into the past

535
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:10,840
Speaker 1: at least to see what happened to unearth, you know,

536
00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:14,200
Speaker 1: what happened in the very beginning of the universe. And

537
00:27:14,240 --> 00:27:17,240
Speaker 1: so that's pretty exciting. Yeah, that's absolutely incredible. And so

538
00:27:17,280 --> 00:27:19,119
Speaker 1: when you say, like, if you know, if we point

539
00:27:19,119 --> 00:27:22,359
Speaker 1: out and we're looking at the past approximately, how past

540
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:24,199
Speaker 1: are we looking like, you know, I'm sure it depends

541
00:27:24,240 --> 00:27:29,520
Speaker 1: on how long you focus, But are we talking like millions, billions,

542
00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:32,920
Speaker 1: what order of magnitude? Yeah, well, it depends on how

543
00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:35,159
Speaker 1: far away you look. But you know, the universe is

544
00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:39,560
Speaker 1: almost fourteen billion years old, and we can see almost

545
00:27:39,560 --> 00:27:42,840
Speaker 1: fourteen billion years back into the past because we have

546
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:47,359
Speaker 1: seen things that started just after the beginning of the universe, right,

547
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:50,520
Speaker 1: because we've seen those photons coming to us, like photons

548
00:27:50,560 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 1: in the cosmic microwave background, those are just three hundred

549
00:27:54,040 --> 00:27:56,920
Speaker 1: thousand years after the beginning of the universe, and so yeah,

550
00:27:57,080 --> 00:27:59,720
Speaker 1: we can basically see, you know, the remnants of the

551
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:03,760
Speaker 1: Big Bang. That's incredible. It is really incredible. Yeah, it's

552
00:28:03,760 --> 00:28:08,159
Speaker 1: like the universe in utero. Yes, it is. You know,

553
00:28:08,320 --> 00:28:10,240
Speaker 1: maybe physics is a little bit cooler than I gave

554
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:13,280
Speaker 1: it credit for when I was in college. Okay, So

555
00:28:13,560 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 1: the telescope that we're talking about today is on the ground,

556
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:19,280
Speaker 1: but we also were just talking about the Hubble telescope,

557
00:28:19,280 --> 00:28:22,000
Speaker 1: which is in space, and like, as far as I know,

558
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:26,320
Speaker 1: the Hubble gets all of these absolutely amazing pictures because

559
00:28:26,320 --> 00:28:29,480
Speaker 1: it's in space outside of Earth's atmosphere and so it

560
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 1: doesn't get all that distortion or whatever. What are the

561
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:33,400
Speaker 1: pros and cons of these two different methods? Why would

562
00:28:33,440 --> 00:28:35,240
Speaker 1: you ever build on the ground when it sounds like

563
00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:37,320
Speaker 1: it's better to build in space. Yeah, there are a

564
00:28:37,320 --> 00:28:39,959
Speaker 1: lot of advantages to building a telescope in space. As

565
00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:42,600
Speaker 1: you say, there's no atmosphere between you and the device,

566
00:28:42,640 --> 00:28:45,080
Speaker 1: there's no weather to deal with, like every night is

567
00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:48,360
Speaker 1: a clear observing night, right, there's also no light pollution

568
00:28:48,440 --> 00:28:52,160
Speaker 1: from nearby and knowing humans. The difficulties though, are that

569
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:54,800
Speaker 1: it's really expensive, right, Like, as we talked about when

570
00:28:54,800 --> 00:28:58,240
Speaker 1: we did that Space Solar Power episode, Like, it's expensive

571
00:28:58,440 --> 00:29:00,720
Speaker 1: to build anything that's going to go into base. It's

572
00:29:00,800 --> 00:29:04,360
Speaker 1: really hard. The radiation up there is crazy. If things break,

573
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:07,240
Speaker 1: it's like almost impossible to fix them, especially now that

574
00:29:07,280 --> 00:29:09,400
Speaker 1: we don't have a space shuttle program. And also you've

575
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:12,760
Speaker 1: got to squeeze your whole instrument into the size of

576
00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:16,360
Speaker 1: a rocket. You can't like build an arbitrarily large telescope.

577
00:29:16,560 --> 00:29:19,840
Speaker 1: It's got to fit into your little launch device, which

578
00:29:19,880 --> 00:29:22,720
Speaker 1: could also blow up on the pad. So there's a

579
00:29:22,720 --> 00:29:25,400
Speaker 1: lot of reasons why you might want to develop sort

580
00:29:25,360 --> 00:29:28,320
Speaker 1: of a complementary program on the ground. Would you feel

581
00:29:28,360 --> 00:29:31,680
Speaker 1: the same way if Elon Musk, like get starship going

582
00:29:31,800 --> 00:29:33,720
Speaker 1: and that becomes like, you know, so that has a

583
00:29:33,760 --> 00:29:36,960
Speaker 1: bigger space inside, uh, and if he drives the cost

584
00:29:37,040 --> 00:29:40,239
Speaker 1: down as much as he's hoping to, Like, would you

585
00:29:40,320 --> 00:29:43,400
Speaker 1: still want ground telescopes if you could make the same

586
00:29:43,440 --> 00:29:46,360
Speaker 1: size thing in space for like, you know, not that

587
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:49,040
Speaker 1: much more money. That's a great question. I think that's

588
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:52,480
Speaker 1: just impractical though, because the ground based community has made

589
00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:56,240
Speaker 1: really big strides so that they can basically compensate for

590
00:29:56,440 --> 00:29:59,600
Speaker 1: all the advantages that the space telescopes have, like first

591
00:29:59,640 --> 00:30:01,040
Speaker 1: of all, in the ground you can be as big

592
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:02,600
Speaker 1: as as you like. You can fix it, you can

593
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:04,160
Speaker 1: upgrade it, you can do all sorts of things. You

594
00:30:04,160 --> 00:30:07,040
Speaker 1: can swap out instruments, lots of big advantages. All the

595
00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:09,920
Speaker 1: pros that the space telescopes have. Like there's no atmosphere

596
00:30:09,960 --> 00:30:13,200
Speaker 1: between you the ground. Telescope folks have figured that out,

597
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:17,240
Speaker 1: Like they have these crazy devices called adaptive optics that

598
00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 1: can compensate for the wiggles of the atmosphere. It measures

599
00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 1: like in real time, how the atmosphere is wiggling, how

600
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:26,960
Speaker 1: the air is distorting the light, and it bends the

601
00:30:27,080 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 1: mirrors in the telescope to compensate for that, to like

602
00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:35,240
Speaker 1: undo the fuzziness. It's really incredible. That's absolutely amazing. It

603
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:38,120
Speaker 1: really is. It's like in real time they're bending the mirrors.

604
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:40,360
Speaker 1: That what you said, or are they just like using

605
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:42,960
Speaker 1: or bend, you know, bending the data. They're actually bending

606
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:46,120
Speaker 1: the mirrors a little bit. They're actually bending the mirrors,

607
00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:48,440
Speaker 1: like in some cases the mirrors in other cases it's

608
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:50,640
Speaker 1: a lens. Depends on the kind of telescope you have,

609
00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:54,920
Speaker 1: but they make these like instantaneous adjustments sometimes though for example,

610
00:30:54,960 --> 00:30:57,640
Speaker 1: like shoot a laser beam up through the atmosphere in

611
00:30:57,800 --> 00:31:00,560
Speaker 1: order to measure the distortions. That's why sometimes you see

612
00:31:00,560 --> 00:31:03,600
Speaker 1: these like lasers being shot out of the telescopes and

613
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:06,320
Speaker 1: they use the image of the laser to tell them

614
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:08,480
Speaker 1: because they know what the lasers should look like, to

615
00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:11,600
Speaker 1: tell them how to compensate for it. And then in

616
00:31:11,680 --> 00:31:14,000
Speaker 1: real time they have these like little servos that are

617
00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:16,200
Speaker 1: like bending the mirrors so that the light when it

618
00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 1: bounces off, goes in the right direction. So these adaptive

619
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:23,680
Speaker 1: optics can make the ground based pictures essentially as crisp

620
00:31:23,880 --> 00:31:26,440
Speaker 1: as the space based pictures. This is incredible, Like I

621
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:29,480
Speaker 1: feel like we shouldn't know the name of famous sports people.

622
00:31:29,520 --> 00:31:31,080
Speaker 1: We should know the names of the people who are

623
00:31:31,120 --> 00:31:34,840
Speaker 1: figuring out adaptive optics. Like it blows, it blows my

624
00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:36,920
Speaker 1: mind that we can have that all figured out and

625
00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:39,880
Speaker 1: like in real time be responding to stuff like this.

626
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 1: So anyway, okay, that's incredible. So now you've maybe convinced

627
00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:44,600
Speaker 1: me that there's no reason to put them in space

628
00:31:44,600 --> 00:31:47,240
Speaker 1: where they're hard to reach. Do they get different kinds

629
00:31:47,240 --> 00:31:49,560
Speaker 1: of data? They do get different kinds of data, and

630
00:31:49,680 --> 00:31:52,880
Speaker 1: some kinds of telescopes, like an infrared telescope that has

631
00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:55,800
Speaker 1: to be really really cold, like the upcoming James Webb

632
00:31:55,880 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 1: space telescope. That thing needs to be like cryogenically cooled,

633
00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 1: and that's definitely easier to do in space. And so

634
00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:05,480
Speaker 1: that's a good example of something that should be in space.

635
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:08,480
Speaker 1: But I think these are really complementary programs. Is stuff

636
00:32:08,480 --> 00:32:10,040
Speaker 1: that you can do in space and stuff you can

637
00:32:10,040 --> 00:32:11,960
Speaker 1: do better on the ground, and we should build all

638
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:14,440
Speaker 1: these things. Right, Let's just pour more money into building

639
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:16,440
Speaker 1: more of these things. It's not a competition. It's like

640
00:32:16,480 --> 00:32:20,080
Speaker 1: a happy family of observatories for big projects that involved

641
00:32:20,120 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 1: going to space. I've heard that a common problem is

642
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 1: that when a project runs from one administration to another,

643
00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:28,080
Speaker 1: if each one of those administrations aren't excited about the project,

644
00:32:28,240 --> 00:32:31,000
Speaker 1: it might get dumped or changed. So some of these

645
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:34,960
Speaker 1: telescopes are running over decades. Do they usually get like

646
00:32:35,040 --> 00:32:38,000
Speaker 1: bipartisan support and make it through the whole process, or

647
00:32:38,080 --> 00:32:40,600
Speaker 1: do telescopes often get dumped along the way when like

648
00:32:41,080 --> 00:32:43,760
Speaker 1: a president from a different party comes online. Yeah, that

649
00:32:43,880 --> 00:32:45,800
Speaker 1: is a real challenge. It's the same kind of thing

650
00:32:45,840 --> 00:32:47,560
Speaker 1: that we face when we try to build like huge

651
00:32:47,600 --> 00:32:51,000
Speaker 1: particle physics facilities, and a lot of these also involved

652
00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:54,280
Speaker 1: many many countries like these are consortiums of dozens of

653
00:32:54,360 --> 00:32:57,800
Speaker 1: countries sometimes so you have like internal politics and lots

654
00:32:57,840 --> 00:33:00,680
Speaker 1: of different countries. That also buffers you a little bit,

655
00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:03,000
Speaker 1: because you know, if Hungary pulls out or the French

656
00:33:03,040 --> 00:33:05,760
Speaker 1: Parliament to science are not gonna maybe another country can

657
00:33:05,800 --> 00:33:09,040
Speaker 1: step forwards. But for example, the thirty meter telescope is

658
00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:12,120
Speaker 1: supported by Keck and you know the University of California.

659
00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:15,040
Speaker 1: But also they do rely on government funding, which does

660
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:18,680
Speaker 1: rely on the whims of whoever is in charge, So

661
00:33:18,920 --> 00:33:21,440
Speaker 1: that is a difficulty. You know. It's like that's why China,

662
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 1: for example, can pull off really ambitious projects because you

663
00:33:25,360 --> 00:33:27,360
Speaker 1: know the same guys in charge for decades that he

664
00:33:27,440 --> 00:33:30,080
Speaker 1: makes all the decisions himself, and so he can be

665
00:33:30,120 --> 00:33:32,480
Speaker 1: consistent at least about his policy. And if you don't

666
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:35,400
Speaker 1: care about human rights, then it's all positive. I'm not

667
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:40,720
Speaker 1: advocating for authoritarianism. I'm just saying there are some advantages. Yes, yes,

668
00:33:40,760 --> 00:33:43,400
Speaker 1: fair enough, fair enough. So we've been talking about the

669
00:33:43,440 --> 00:33:46,600
Speaker 1: giant Magellan telescope sort of in the abstract, but I

670
00:33:46,640 --> 00:33:48,920
Speaker 1: looked up like drawings of the plans for it, and

671
00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:51,040
Speaker 1: it blew my mind. So can you give us more

672
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:53,440
Speaker 1: like specifics about where it's going and what it's gonna

673
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:56,200
Speaker 1: look like. Yeah, So this telescope is amazing. If you

674
00:33:56,280 --> 00:33:58,520
Speaker 1: look at a picture of it, you'll see that's made

675
00:33:58,680 --> 00:34:02,440
Speaker 1: of seven different segments. So each segment is like a

676
00:34:02,600 --> 00:34:07,840
Speaker 1: huge mirror, and each one is eight point four meters across. Right,

677
00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:11,120
Speaker 1: that's mind blowingly large. Right, this thing is like thirty

678
00:34:11,120 --> 00:34:14,319
Speaker 1: feet across almost, and it's made of seven of these

679
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:19,280
Speaker 1: things arranged into effectively like a twenty twenty two twenty

680
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:23,440
Speaker 1: three meter telescope and like twenty three that's like, you know,

681
00:34:23,600 --> 00:34:26,000
Speaker 1: almost a quarter of a football field. This thing is

682
00:34:26,000 --> 00:34:28,560
Speaker 1: going to be ginormous. I'd love to hear more about

683
00:34:28,560 --> 00:34:30,799
Speaker 1: those mirrors, like how they're made and how the heck

684
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:33,839
Speaker 1: do you get them from wherever they're made to where

685
00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:36,800
Speaker 1: they need to be. These are basically the biggest mirrors

686
00:34:36,840 --> 00:34:39,680
Speaker 1: that humans can make. And this giant magel and telescope

687
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:43,480
Speaker 1: is fascinating because it's quite different from its competitors, like

688
00:34:43,560 --> 00:34:47,040
Speaker 1: the thirty meter telescope and the extremely large telescope, have

689
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:49,960
Speaker 1: made very different design choices. They're gonna be made of

690
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:53,680
Speaker 1: like hundreds or thousands of smaller segments all put together,

691
00:34:53,800 --> 00:34:56,120
Speaker 1: but the giant magel and telescope said, let's make the

692
00:34:56,160 --> 00:34:58,560
Speaker 1: biggest pieces we can and have as few of them

693
00:34:58,600 --> 00:35:01,719
Speaker 1: as possible. And so that means they have like a

694
00:35:01,840 --> 00:35:03,880
Speaker 1: really huge task in front of them, which is to

695
00:35:03,960 --> 00:35:08,239
Speaker 1: make like, you know, eight point four meter mirrors that

696
00:35:08,280 --> 00:35:13,080
Speaker 1: are perfectly smooth. And the process is totally ridiculous. Do

697
00:35:13,120 --> 00:35:15,480
Speaker 1: you know about the process? Yeah, basically, there's only one

698
00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:17,440
Speaker 1: place in the world that can make these things. It's

699
00:35:17,440 --> 00:35:19,800
Speaker 1: at the University of Arizona, of course, which is a

700
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:22,839
Speaker 1: long and storied astronomy program. And you make them in

701
00:35:22,880 --> 00:35:27,239
Speaker 1: this rotating furnace and each one takes like years to make.

702
00:35:27,800 --> 00:35:30,319
Speaker 1: You start with like these chunks of glass and they

703
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:32,600
Speaker 1: fill out this mold. You can look online to see

704
00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:34,839
Speaker 1: these pictures. It looks just like you know, you're doing

705
00:35:34,880 --> 00:35:37,880
Speaker 1: a craft project where you're like melting plastic into some

706
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:40,319
Speaker 1: mold or something. They start with this mold and they

707
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:42,400
Speaker 1: put these big chunks of glass in it, and it

708
00:35:42,480 --> 00:35:45,279
Speaker 1: heats up and it melts the glass and then it

709
00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:49,080
Speaker 1: spins at the same time. And the reason they spin

710
00:35:49,160 --> 00:35:52,640
Speaker 1: it is because you want this sort of like parabolic shape. Right,

711
00:35:52,640 --> 00:35:54,600
Speaker 1: you don't want a flat mirror. Which you want is

712
00:35:54,640 --> 00:35:57,880
Speaker 1: a parabolic mirror. So it's like focusing the light down

713
00:35:57,920 --> 00:35:59,759
Speaker 1: on a single point where you can gather it. So

714
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:01,400
Speaker 1: how do you get a parabolic mirror where you can

715
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:04,800
Speaker 1: make a flat one using gravity and then like scoop

716
00:36:04,840 --> 00:36:07,040
Speaker 1: it out, But that's a huge amount of work. So

717
00:36:07,080 --> 00:36:09,640
Speaker 1: instead what they do is they spin it at six

718
00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:13,800
Speaker 1: rpm while it's being heated up to like twelve degrees

719
00:36:13,880 --> 00:36:18,040
Speaker 1: c so that it melts into the right shape automatically.

720
00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:19,879
Speaker 1: That's heating. My first thought is that it probably needs

721
00:36:19,920 --> 00:36:21,960
Speaker 1: to be totally uniform, but maybe it even is the

722
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:24,200
Speaker 1: case that, like some areas where it's going to be thicker,

723
00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:26,080
Speaker 1: needs to heat a bit more if there's more glass

724
00:36:26,120 --> 00:36:28,239
Speaker 1: there are Like just the fact that they've managed to

725
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:31,440
Speaker 1: make all of that work with no errors, he's incredible.

726
00:36:31,560 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 1: Or are there errors? Like you know, when we sent

727
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:36,840
Speaker 1: the Hubble lens up there, there was an error that

728
00:36:36,880 --> 00:36:39,439
Speaker 1: needed to be fixed, which was a pretty big inconvenience.

729
00:36:39,680 --> 00:36:41,440
Speaker 1: Do you know with these mirrors, do they ever have

730
00:36:41,520 --> 00:36:44,080
Speaker 1: to like trash one of these huge mirrors because it

731
00:36:44,120 --> 00:36:46,279
Speaker 1: wasn't perfect or there's things they can do to fix

732
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:49,799
Speaker 1: it afterwards. That's great question. It's definitely not a one

733
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:52,799
Speaker 1: step process. They sort of make the rough shape using

734
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:57,600
Speaker 1: this spin casting, and then they spend years polishing these things.

735
00:36:57,640 --> 00:36:59,840
Speaker 1: So the first part of the process is like melt

736
00:37:00,040 --> 00:37:03,359
Speaker 1: and spin and then slowly cool it down to like

737
00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:07,359
Speaker 1: nine degrees c and then further very very slowly as

738
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:09,319
Speaker 1: you're spinning, as you keep the shape. So it takes

739
00:37:09,320 --> 00:37:12,480
Speaker 1: like twelve weeks just to cast the basic shape. This

740
00:37:12,520 --> 00:37:15,480
Speaker 1: thing is spinning the whole time. Then they very gradually

741
00:37:15,560 --> 00:37:17,799
Speaker 1: cool it for six more months, and then they have

742
00:37:18,120 --> 00:37:21,400
Speaker 1: years of polishing ahead of them because they need to

743
00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:24,600
Speaker 1: get this thing down to like incredibly smooth, you know.

744
00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:28,120
Speaker 1: They want the deviations from their desired shape to be

745
00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:30,839
Speaker 1: less than the wavelength of the light that they are

746
00:37:30,920 --> 00:37:33,400
Speaker 1: looking at, and that takes years. And so they've been

747
00:37:33,400 --> 00:37:36,319
Speaker 1: working on this since two thousand and five when they

748
00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:39,279
Speaker 1: finished the first mirror, and they've done two mirrors so far,

749
00:37:39,680 --> 00:37:42,600
Speaker 1: and they got four more, like in various stages. And

750
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:45,520
Speaker 1: so basically the longest part of this project is just

751
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:49,040
Speaker 1: making these mirrors, which is like a decades long project.

752
00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:52,239
Speaker 1: I can't imagine how stressful it must be when they

753
00:37:52,280 --> 00:37:54,879
Speaker 1: collect the first images, like you know, being the person

754
00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:56,759
Speaker 1: who had worked on the Hubble lens, and then the

755
00:37:56,760 --> 00:38:00,200
Speaker 1: first image comes back blurry and being like no. I

756
00:38:00,200 --> 00:38:02,640
Speaker 1: imagine you feel pretty confident when you're finished with these mirrors,

757
00:38:02,640 --> 00:38:04,680
Speaker 1: but you probably don't sleep well at night until the

758
00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:07,120
Speaker 1: first images come in perfect. But anyway, this is an

759
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:10,279
Speaker 1: incredible procedure. I think the most nerve wracking part must

760
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:11,799
Speaker 1: be when you ship it. You're like, all right, I

761
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:14,080
Speaker 1: spent the last five years of my life making these

762
00:38:14,120 --> 00:38:17,600
Speaker 1: things incredibly smooth now and basically mailing it down to

763
00:38:17,680 --> 00:38:19,759
Speaker 1: Chile so they can cart it up to the top

764
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:22,920
Speaker 1: of a mountain, like, please, don't drop my project. Do

765
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:25,239
Speaker 1: they fly it or do they drive it? It's got

766
00:38:25,239 --> 00:38:27,279
Speaker 1: to be really hard. Yeah. I think they put this

767
00:38:27,320 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 1: thing on a ship and they've basically floated down to Chile.

768
00:38:30,239 --> 00:38:33,399
Speaker 1: There's lots of stages in transporting these things, but this

769
00:38:33,480 --> 00:38:35,160
Speaker 1: group has been doing this for a while. So the

770
00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:38,680
Speaker 1: last thing that they've built was the large binocular telescope,

771
00:38:38,800 --> 00:38:40,520
Speaker 1: and had two of these things, so that's why they

772
00:38:40,560 --> 00:38:44,279
Speaker 1: called it the binocular telescope. So the giant Magellan Telescope

773
00:38:44,520 --> 00:38:47,440
Speaker 1: is basically just like seven of these things arranged in

774
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:51,239
Speaker 1: almost a circle to be effectively like a much bigger lens. So,

775
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:53,640
Speaker 1: you know, I talked to astronomers about this, and some

776
00:38:53,680 --> 00:38:56,360
Speaker 1: people are like, Wow, that's cool and sexy from like

777
00:38:56,400 --> 00:38:59,319
Speaker 1: an engineering point of view. Others were like, we're not

778
00:38:59,360 --> 00:39:02,040
Speaker 1: sure it's really like the best way to build a telescope.

779
00:39:02,040 --> 00:39:05,480
Speaker 1: You'll notice the other two competing groups didn't make this choice.

780
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:09,240
Speaker 1: They're using like one meter segments, which are much easier

781
00:39:09,239 --> 00:39:12,360
Speaker 1: to make and to ship and to fix if something breaks.

782
00:39:12,760 --> 00:39:15,560
Speaker 1: And so this giant Magellan telescope sort of an outlier

783
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:18,319
Speaker 1: in its approach. Is there a benefit to having this

784
00:39:18,480 --> 00:39:20,840
Speaker 1: these giants, this one, or you know, this small number

785
00:39:20,880 --> 00:39:23,759
Speaker 1: of huge mirrors relative to all the little small ones,

786
00:39:23,960 --> 00:39:26,960
Speaker 1: Like you know, you had mentioned adjusting for the adaptive optics?

787
00:39:27,360 --> 00:39:29,520
Speaker 1: Can you do nicer adjustments when you have lots of

788
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:32,720
Speaker 1: small mirrors at relative to these big ones. The adaptive

789
00:39:32,719 --> 00:39:35,520
Speaker 1: optics on these things don't happen at these first mirror.

790
00:39:35,560 --> 00:39:37,960
Speaker 1: The light comes in, bounces off this mirror, and then

791
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:40,120
Speaker 1: down to a second surface, which which is where they

792
00:39:40,160 --> 00:39:43,480
Speaker 1: do the adaptive optics. So, you know, the astronomers I

793
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:45,880
Speaker 1: talked to said, there aren't really a lot of benefits,

794
00:39:45,880 --> 00:39:48,640
Speaker 1: and they speculated that probably this group is doing it

795
00:39:48,680 --> 00:39:51,560
Speaker 1: this way because they're already so deeply invested in the

796
00:39:51,560 --> 00:39:54,960
Speaker 1: engineering costs of making these huge mirrors. And also I

797
00:39:54,960 --> 00:39:57,240
Speaker 1: think probably you know, once you know how to build something,

798
00:39:57,280 --> 00:39:59,120
Speaker 1: you want to make more of them. So they're sort

799
00:39:59,120 --> 00:40:01,560
Speaker 1: of like, you know, down this road of making huge

800
00:40:01,600 --> 00:40:03,520
Speaker 1: mirrors and decided to stick with it. I think those

801
00:40:03,560 --> 00:40:06,719
Speaker 1: folks would argue that it's easier to align because you

802
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:10,319
Speaker 1: have fewer mirrors, like seven big mirrors are easier to

803
00:40:10,440 --> 00:40:13,760
Speaker 1: organize into a large effective surface than like eight hundreds

804
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:17,000
Speaker 1: smaller ones that all need like their own orientation. In

805
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:19,000
Speaker 1: my view, it seems a little crazy. It's awesome to

806
00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:22,000
Speaker 1: look at and it's amazing feet of like cooking, but

807
00:40:22,280 --> 00:40:24,640
Speaker 1: it makes more sense to me to have more smaller

808
00:40:24,640 --> 00:40:27,360
Speaker 1: segments than fewer large ones. Interesting, and I feel like

809
00:40:27,360 --> 00:40:30,960
Speaker 1: it's also a deeply unsatisfying answer that, like the inertia

810
00:40:31,160 --> 00:40:33,759
Speaker 1: is what's keeping this group with the big mirrors. But

811
00:40:33,880 --> 00:40:36,360
Speaker 1: hopefully they get cool data anyway. You know, you build

812
00:40:36,360 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 1: a huge hammer, then you want to hit all the

813
00:40:38,239 --> 00:40:40,839
Speaker 1: nails with it and as long as you can. So

814
00:40:41,040 --> 00:40:42,680
Speaker 1: that's the way these things work. You know, we don't

815
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:45,640
Speaker 1: always use the best technology. We use the technology where

816
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:47,520
Speaker 1: we have the people who know how to make it.

817
00:40:48,040 --> 00:40:51,080
Speaker 1: The same thing happens in particle physics. We have competitions

818
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:55,399
Speaker 1: between like super conducting very cold magnets and like less

819
00:40:55,440 --> 00:40:57,960
Speaker 1: cold magnets, And you know, it's not always clear when

820
00:40:57,960 --> 00:40:59,680
Speaker 1: making the choice that's going to be the best for

821
00:40:59,719 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 1: the facility or the choice were like, we know that

822
00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:03,759
Speaker 1: there are people there who can pull this thing off.

823
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:05,640
Speaker 1: All right, fair enough, it's hard to get the knowledge

824
00:41:05,680 --> 00:41:07,680
Speaker 1: to do some of these things. Okay, so you've got

825
00:41:07,719 --> 00:41:11,480
Speaker 1: these giant mirrors. How is the like resolving power going

826
00:41:11,480 --> 00:41:14,160
Speaker 1: to compare to something like Hubble. This thing is going

827
00:41:14,239 --> 00:41:17,560
Speaker 1: to be so much better than Hubble, Like things that

828
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:20,520
Speaker 1: look fuzzy to Hubble are going to be crisp and

829
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:23,919
Speaker 1: clear to us. Like Hubble can see so far into

830
00:41:23,920 --> 00:41:26,920
Speaker 1: the universe, but this thing will have ten times the

831
00:41:26,960 --> 00:41:30,920
Speaker 1: resolving power of Hubble, you know, practically speaking, Like if

832
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:34,280
Speaker 1: this thing was in Washington, d C. You could resolve

833
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:37,879
Speaker 1: a softball in the hands of a picture in San Francisco.

834
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:41,960
Speaker 1: Like this thing can see so far away. That's incredible. Like,

835
00:41:42,760 --> 00:41:46,879
Speaker 1: so nothing will be safe so will we still be

836
00:41:46,960 --> 00:41:49,480
Speaker 1: using Hubble or I mean, I guess you you want

837
00:41:49,480 --> 00:41:51,520
Speaker 1: to get as much data as you can out of

838
00:41:51,560 --> 00:41:53,839
Speaker 1: everything that you have, But like, is it worth still

839
00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:55,880
Speaker 1: using Hubble when this other thing is gonna be so awesome?

840
00:41:56,040 --> 00:41:58,440
Speaker 1: It's definitely worth using Hubble because remember that we can

841
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:00,759
Speaker 1: only point these things in one direct at a time.

842
00:42:01,200 --> 00:42:03,920
Speaker 1: Even if you have this incredible device, it's like you're

843
00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:07,879
Speaker 1: looking through a pinhole. You know. Imagine somebody shows you

844
00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:10,480
Speaker 1: a wall with all the secrets of the universe on it,

845
00:42:10,640 --> 00:42:12,560
Speaker 1: but they say you can only look at one tiny

846
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:14,560
Speaker 1: little part of it at a time. You like, scan

847
00:42:14,680 --> 00:42:17,960
Speaker 1: across it, looking at it through a straw. That's basically

848
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:20,400
Speaker 1: what we're doing with these telescopes. And so yeah, you

849
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:22,880
Speaker 1: definitely want two straws if you can, even if one

850
00:42:22,920 --> 00:42:24,960
Speaker 1: of them isn't as good as the other one. And

851
00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:27,400
Speaker 1: so as long as Hubble is effective and still worth

852
00:42:27,440 --> 00:42:29,920
Speaker 1: the money to operate, we definitely want to keep it around.

853
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:32,279
Speaker 1: But that's why we build these better ones. You know,

854
00:42:32,360 --> 00:42:34,680
Speaker 1: all of these devices, each of them will have ten

855
00:42:34,760 --> 00:42:37,560
Speaker 1: times the power of Hubble, and so it will really

856
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:39,560
Speaker 1: teach us things about the universe. It will show us

857
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:42,879
Speaker 1: things about the early universe we've never seen before. Awesome, Yeah,

858
00:42:42,920 --> 00:42:45,920
Speaker 1: we need more straws. When does this straw come online?

859
00:42:46,080 --> 00:42:48,319
Speaker 1: So this one they are planning to get first light

860
00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:52,320
Speaker 1: in twenty nine. It's a couple of years behind the

861
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:55,600
Speaker 1: thirty meter telescope, which currently people say we'll turn online

862
00:42:55,600 --> 00:42:59,200
Speaker 1: in seven, and the extremely large telescope. But you know,

863
00:42:59,280 --> 00:43:02,080
Speaker 1: these projects are are very hard to predict this barround

864
00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:05,280
Speaker 1: the future. The thirty telescope, of course, is delayed because

865
00:43:05,320 --> 00:43:07,920
Speaker 1: of the construction issues at its site, and they might

866
00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:10,240
Speaker 1: even have to move it to the Grand Canary Islands,

867
00:43:10,600 --> 00:43:12,439
Speaker 1: and so it's not clear. But none of these things

868
00:43:12,440 --> 00:43:14,200
Speaker 1: are going to give us images for at least eight

869
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:15,920
Speaker 1: to ten years, all right, So we gotta wait for

870
00:43:15,960 --> 00:43:20,080
Speaker 1: more straws unfortunately. All right, Well, life apparently involves a

871
00:43:20,120 --> 00:43:22,719
Speaker 1: lot of waiting. So let's take a brief wait until

872
00:43:22,719 --> 00:43:38,120
Speaker 1: we get back to the science. Okay, So you've told

873
00:43:38,239 --> 00:43:41,480
Speaker 1: us about how the mirrors are made and how many

874
00:43:41,640 --> 00:43:45,719
Speaker 1: mirrors it takes to make this giant Magellan telescope through, right,

875
00:43:45,760 --> 00:43:47,480
Speaker 1: So there's got to be more to it than just

876
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:49,239
Speaker 1: the mirrors. So tell us a bit more about the

877
00:43:49,360 --> 00:43:51,040
Speaker 1: science of how it works and what kind of data

878
00:43:51,040 --> 00:43:53,040
Speaker 1: it's going to collect. Yes, So this thing is a

879
00:43:53,040 --> 00:43:57,120
Speaker 1: crazy grigoryan telescope, which is sort of a weird construction.

880
00:43:57,480 --> 00:44:00,759
Speaker 1: You have like a huge primary mirror, but it has

881
00:44:00,800 --> 00:44:02,400
Speaker 1: a hole in the middle. Like if you look at

882
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:04,319
Speaker 1: the specs for the g MT, you see that the

883
00:44:04,360 --> 00:44:06,239
Speaker 1: central mirror has a hole in it which looks kind

884
00:44:06,239 --> 00:44:08,640
Speaker 1: of weird, like right at the center. And that's because

885
00:44:08,640 --> 00:44:11,680
Speaker 1: in the Gregorian design, you have a parabolic mirror where

886
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:13,640
Speaker 1: the light comes in and then it focuses on a

887
00:44:13,719 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 1: secondary mirror which shines a light back through that hole

888
00:44:17,200 --> 00:44:20,120
Speaker 1: in the first mirror. And so you have to surfaces.

889
00:44:20,160 --> 00:44:22,719
Speaker 1: The first one is important for like how much light

890
00:44:22,719 --> 00:44:24,800
Speaker 1: you're going to get, and the second one you have

891
00:44:24,840 --> 00:44:27,719
Speaker 1: an opportunity there to refine the image. And so that

892
00:44:27,840 --> 00:44:30,520
Speaker 1: second one is where they do the adaptive optics that

893
00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:32,799
Speaker 1: we were talking about before. And this corrects for like,

894
00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:35,640
Speaker 1: you know, wiggles in the air and temperature variations in

895
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:39,920
Speaker 1: the air. And here they have seven thousand coils behind

896
00:44:40,040 --> 00:44:43,600
Speaker 1: this flexible mirror that can push and pull and adjust

897
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:46,880
Speaker 1: the shape of this surface to correct for any weird

898
00:44:46,960 --> 00:44:49,480
Speaker 1: things that happened when the light was flying in and

899
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:52,240
Speaker 1: it updates the shape of the surface a thousand times

900
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:55,799
Speaker 1: every second. Wait, wait, it's updating the shape of like

901
00:44:55,840 --> 00:44:58,320
Speaker 1: it's pushed. The mirror is changing shape or like little

902
00:44:58,360 --> 00:45:00,919
Speaker 1: things behind it, or changing shape both. You can change

903
00:45:00,960 --> 00:45:02,719
Speaker 1: a mirror shape. I think of a mirror as like

904
00:45:02,760 --> 00:45:05,880
Speaker 1: a just solid solid that you can't change the shape of.

905
00:45:06,080 --> 00:45:07,880
Speaker 1: The first one, the one we talked about where they

906
00:45:07,920 --> 00:45:09,799
Speaker 1: take like years and years to build these things. That

907
00:45:09,800 --> 00:45:12,440
Speaker 1: thing is very solid, right, it's a huge block of glass.

908
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:16,000
Speaker 1: The secondary mirrors are much much smaller, and they're made

909
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:17,920
Speaker 1: out of materials that are a little bit more flexible

910
00:45:18,040 --> 00:45:19,960
Speaker 1: so you can bend them. So they have these coils

911
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:22,480
Speaker 1: just behind them that push and pull on them at

912
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:26,120
Speaker 1: a thousand times a second to adjust their shape. That's crazy.

913
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:30,280
Speaker 1: How do you move something a thousand times a second? Anyway? Okay,

914
00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:32,719
Speaker 1: that's awesome, all right. So then you've got this like

915
00:45:32,920 --> 00:45:36,319
Speaker 1: crazy fancy mirror with amazing adaptive optics. What are like

916
00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:38,680
Speaker 1: the best things to point this mirror at? I know,

917
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:41,160
Speaker 1: we just in the intro said random stuff is great

918
00:45:41,160 --> 00:45:42,880
Speaker 1: because you learn stuff you didn't know about. But what

919
00:45:42,880 --> 00:45:44,759
Speaker 1: are what are the plans for where we're going to

920
00:45:44,840 --> 00:45:48,160
Speaker 1: point it already, Yeah, exactly. So one of the things

921
00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:51,600
Speaker 1: that's really exciting is that this might help us look

922
00:45:51,719 --> 00:45:55,440
Speaker 1: at planets around other solar systems. Like currently we can

923
00:45:55,480 --> 00:45:58,799
Speaker 1: tell that there are planets around other solar systems. We

924
00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:01,480
Speaker 1: have various techniques to see them, Like one of them

925
00:46:01,560 --> 00:46:04,840
Speaker 1: is this radial velocity technique where we can study a

926
00:46:04,960 --> 00:46:07,439
Speaker 1: star and we can see that wiggling a little bit,

927
00:46:07,800 --> 00:46:09,800
Speaker 1: and so we can tell because the star is wiggling,

928
00:46:10,080 --> 00:46:12,720
Speaker 1: maybe there's a planet moving around them. That's hard because

929
00:46:12,719 --> 00:46:15,040
Speaker 1: planets are not very big, and so we can mostly

930
00:46:15,080 --> 00:46:18,239
Speaker 1: detect only really big planets that make big wiggles in

931
00:46:18,239 --> 00:46:20,839
Speaker 1: the star. This will help us see planets that are

932
00:46:20,880 --> 00:46:24,040
Speaker 1: further away and also smaller planets because we can see

933
00:46:24,080 --> 00:46:26,400
Speaker 1: like smaller wiggles in the star because we'll have a

934
00:46:26,520 --> 00:46:30,200
Speaker 1: crisper image and we can see like smaller deviations as

935
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:32,440
Speaker 1: the star moves back and forth. So we talked in

936
00:46:32,480 --> 00:46:36,160
Speaker 1: a previous episode about moons. Is there any chance that

937
00:46:36,200 --> 00:46:39,080
Speaker 1: we could maybe detect a moon passing in front of

938
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:40,960
Speaker 1: a planet or is that still more of a timing

939
00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:44,279
Speaker 1: issue than a like clarity issue. No, we might be

940
00:46:44,360 --> 00:46:46,600
Speaker 1: able to and one of the exciting reasons is that

941
00:46:46,680 --> 00:46:51,040
Speaker 1: we could potentially not just detect these planets indirectly, we

942
00:46:51,080 --> 00:46:54,360
Speaker 1: could actually see these planets directly. We can get images,

943
00:46:54,400 --> 00:46:58,359
Speaker 1: like pictures of these planets. You know, this telescope will

944
00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:01,279
Speaker 1: be so powerful that things that where impossible will now

945
00:47:01,320 --> 00:47:05,000
Speaker 1: be feasible, So we might see some actual pictures of planets.

946
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:06,680
Speaker 1: You know, most of the time when you see these things,

947
00:47:06,719 --> 00:47:10,000
Speaker 1: and like NASA press releases, you're seeing these really incredible

948
00:47:10,000 --> 00:47:12,440
Speaker 1: pictures that are just like artist's rendition of what we

949
00:47:12,520 --> 00:47:15,239
Speaker 1: think this planet might look like. That's because nobody knows,

950
00:47:15,320 --> 00:47:17,920
Speaker 1: because nobody can see these things, and so we might

951
00:47:17,960 --> 00:47:20,120
Speaker 1: be able to actually get those pictures. I feel like

952
00:47:20,160 --> 00:47:22,080
Speaker 1: every once in a while I hear about something that

953
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:24,840
Speaker 1: makes me like want to hasten the passage of time

954
00:47:24,960 --> 00:47:28,200
Speaker 1: and makes me sort of impatient that time isn't moving faster.

955
00:47:28,640 --> 00:47:30,239
Speaker 1: This is one of those things. I feel like, I

956
00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:33,480
Speaker 1: am now going to be like really wanting, you know,

957
00:47:33,520 --> 00:47:35,880
Speaker 1: ten years to pass so the giant Magellan telescope can

958
00:47:35,880 --> 00:47:37,920
Speaker 1: go up so I can see a planet in another

959
00:47:37,920 --> 00:47:40,400
Speaker 1: solar system, because that sounds incredible, I know. And the

960
00:47:40,480 --> 00:47:43,600
Speaker 1: frustrating thing is that the light that has that secret

961
00:47:43,640 --> 00:47:46,040
Speaker 1: in it that has those images in it is landing

962
00:47:46,080 --> 00:47:48,239
Speaker 1: here on Earth right now. We just don't have a

963
00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:52,279
Speaker 1: device capable of capturing it and interpreting it, right, And

964
00:47:52,320 --> 00:47:54,320
Speaker 1: so like, think about all the things that have happened

965
00:47:54,360 --> 00:47:56,680
Speaker 1: in the universe and we are just ignoring. So we

966
00:47:56,760 --> 00:47:58,960
Speaker 1: better hurry up and build that eyeball. And if we

967
00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:00,840
Speaker 1: can see those planets, and we can do all sorts

968
00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:03,439
Speaker 1: of crazy stuff, like we could understand what's in their

969
00:48:03,560 --> 00:48:07,880
Speaker 1: atmosphere as we see the sunrise over the planet, Like

970
00:48:07,960 --> 00:48:10,680
Speaker 1: as the sun passes behind the planet and shines its

971
00:48:10,760 --> 00:48:14,680
Speaker 1: light through the atmosphere, like the sunrise the dawn on

972
00:48:14,760 --> 00:48:17,000
Speaker 1: that planet, we can tell by how the color of

973
00:48:17,000 --> 00:48:20,319
Speaker 1: that life changes. What's in the atmosphere? Is their water,

974
00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:23,800
Speaker 1: is their methode? Is their oxygen? All sorts of exciting stuff.

975
00:48:23,800 --> 00:48:26,319
Speaker 1: We learned so much about these planets. Is there any

976
00:48:26,520 --> 00:48:29,319
Speaker 1: like Q in the atmosphere that could tell us like

977
00:48:29,520 --> 00:48:31,920
Speaker 1: for sure there are plants down there, for example, or

978
00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:33,919
Speaker 1: like for sure they have something like algae. You could

979
00:48:33,960 --> 00:48:36,600
Speaker 1: the giant Magellan telescope help us find another planet that

980
00:48:36,640 --> 00:48:39,840
Speaker 1: we could feel pretty good about saying this has life.

981
00:48:39,920 --> 00:48:41,960
Speaker 1: Or is that just sort of too much to ask, No,

982
00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:44,520
Speaker 1: that's a really fun question. And there are folks can

983
00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:47,840
Speaker 1: actually here you see Irvine doing exactly that, like modeling

984
00:48:47,840 --> 00:48:50,719
Speaker 1: the atmospheres of exoplanets, so we can understand what it's

985
00:48:50,760 --> 00:48:54,480
Speaker 1: sort of the non organic ways you might get different atmospheres,

986
00:48:54,560 --> 00:48:57,240
Speaker 1: What mixtures can you see without life, and what mixtures

987
00:48:57,320 --> 00:49:00,799
Speaker 1: require life, and so that's really interesting. Remember that they

988
00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:04,160
Speaker 1: recently thought they found evidence for a really rare kind

989
00:49:04,200 --> 00:49:06,839
Speaker 1: of gas on Venus that made them think maybe there

990
00:49:06,920 --> 00:49:09,640
Speaker 1: was life in the atmosphere Venus. Then of course turns

991
00:49:09,680 --> 00:49:12,520
Speaker 1: out that result went away. But absolutely it's possible to

992
00:49:12,560 --> 00:49:16,240
Speaker 1: discover things in these atmospheres which are very difficult to produce,

993
00:49:16,520 --> 00:49:18,920
Speaker 1: except in the case when you have life for algae

994
00:49:19,000 --> 00:49:21,640
Speaker 1: or all sorts of creeping, crawling creators. So we might

995
00:49:21,760 --> 00:49:24,840
Speaker 1: very well see something very exciting. That's incredible. I'm keeping

996
00:49:24,840 --> 00:49:28,640
Speaker 1: my fingers crossed, all right, So exoplanets, is there anything

997
00:49:28,680 --> 00:49:31,320
Speaker 1: else that we are going to be looking for? In particular?

998
00:49:31,440 --> 00:49:34,360
Speaker 1: Basically everything else? And the thing that's the most exciting

999
00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:38,120
Speaker 1: to me is looking into the most distant past. You know,

1000
00:49:38,200 --> 00:49:40,040
Speaker 1: we talked earlier about how we can see things that

1001
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:42,120
Speaker 1: are really far away, and we can see the very

1002
00:49:42,160 --> 00:49:45,239
Speaker 1: early universe, but those things are very distant, Like we

1003
00:49:45,320 --> 00:49:47,960
Speaker 1: can see we have seen way back to the cosmic

1004
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:51,239
Speaker 1: microwave background radiation and things that happen after that, but

1005
00:49:51,280 --> 00:49:54,359
Speaker 1: we've never seen crisp clear pictures of them because those

1006
00:49:54,360 --> 00:49:56,759
Speaker 1: things are so far away, they're so distant, and they're

1007
00:49:56,800 --> 00:49:58,880
Speaker 1: so fuzzy. What we'd love to do, for example, is

1008
00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:01,640
Speaker 1: not just see that they are other galaxies out there.

1009
00:50:01,719 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 1: We want to like resolve the stars in those galaxies

1010
00:50:05,160 --> 00:50:09,200
Speaker 1: and understand how those galaxies form and study those individually

1011
00:50:09,200 --> 00:50:11,680
Speaker 1: and independently. So it will give us like a way

1012
00:50:11,719 --> 00:50:14,279
Speaker 1: to study how galaxies come together, because we can look

1013
00:50:14,400 --> 00:50:17,879
Speaker 1: inside other galaxies and see those stars forming, and see

1014
00:50:17,880 --> 00:50:20,680
Speaker 1: other galaxies that are like more like the Milky Way.

1015
00:50:21,120 --> 00:50:23,160
Speaker 1: Of the galaxies that are near us, it turns out

1016
00:50:23,239 --> 00:50:25,080
Speaker 1: very few of them are sort of similar to the

1017
00:50:25,120 --> 00:50:27,360
Speaker 1: Milky Way, and so we don't really have like another

1018
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:31,120
Speaker 1: example of a Milky Way like galaxy. They'll give us

1019
00:50:31,120 --> 00:50:33,560
Speaker 1: a sense for like how these things happen, and is

1020
00:50:33,560 --> 00:50:36,640
Speaker 1: our galaxy typical or weird or all sorts of stuff.

1021
00:50:36,719 --> 00:50:38,600
Speaker 1: So we're gonna spend billions of dollars to try to

1022
00:50:38,680 --> 00:50:43,200
Speaker 1: understand why we're so weird. That's basically science, right there,

1023
00:50:43,239 --> 00:50:45,560
Speaker 1: isn't it? Like we want to understand the human condition,

1024
00:50:45,680 --> 00:50:48,840
Speaker 1: Like what's going on? Are we weird? Are we unusual?

1025
00:50:48,920 --> 00:50:52,160
Speaker 1: Are there humans everywhere? That's the deepest question in science.

1026
00:50:52,200 --> 00:50:54,640
Speaker 1: Are we weird? And I think we clearly are weird,

1027
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:56,960
Speaker 1: and so we really just want to understand why we're weird.

1028
00:50:57,239 --> 00:51:00,560
Speaker 1: I would argue, not are we, but why are? And

1029
00:51:00,640 --> 00:51:02,799
Speaker 1: we mean that we're weird in the best possible way,

1030
00:51:02,840 --> 00:51:05,440
Speaker 1: of course, And so that's really exciting. And we're interested

1031
00:51:05,480 --> 00:51:08,839
Speaker 1: not just in like seeing nearby galaxies and watching the form.

1032
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:12,240
Speaker 1: We're also interested in seeing like the very first stars

1033
00:51:12,520 --> 00:51:15,640
Speaker 1: in the very very early universe, things cooled down after

1034
00:51:15,640 --> 00:51:18,520
Speaker 1: they were very very hot and formed this neutral gas.

1035
00:51:18,840 --> 00:51:20,640
Speaker 1: And so, as we talked about on an episode, there

1036
00:51:20,680 --> 00:51:23,600
Speaker 1: was this period called the Dark Ages, during which the

1037
00:51:23,680 --> 00:51:26,200
Speaker 1: universe was basically dark. It was just like you know,

1038
00:51:26,280 --> 00:51:30,000
Speaker 1: floating clouds of hydrogen and no stars were burning yet,

1039
00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 1: and so like the universe itself was pretty dim. And

1040
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:35,120
Speaker 1: so we'd love to look back and see like those

1041
00:51:35,160 --> 00:51:38,760
Speaker 1: first stars forming. It's not a process that we really understand.

1042
00:51:38,760 --> 00:51:41,880
Speaker 1: Those stars were weird, they were huge, they were short,

1043
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:44,440
Speaker 1: lived and we'd love to see them forming. And so

1044
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:47,640
Speaker 1: currently we have seen ancient galaxies, but we haven't ever

1045
00:51:47,680 --> 00:51:50,960
Speaker 1: seen one of those first stars like on its own,

1046
00:51:51,320 --> 00:51:53,719
Speaker 1: because those galaxies are so fuzzy and so distant to

1047
00:51:53,760 --> 00:51:56,120
Speaker 1: all we can see is like a little smear in

1048
00:51:56,160 --> 00:51:58,799
Speaker 1: the telescope, and we looked like a crisp picture of it.

1049
00:51:58,920 --> 00:52:01,600
Speaker 1: So this might be two picky and unfair of a

1050
00:52:01,680 --> 00:52:03,640
Speaker 1: question to ask. But so if you're you're trying to

1051
00:52:03,680 --> 00:52:06,359
Speaker 1: look out to the dark ages where it sounds like,

1052
00:52:06,480 --> 00:52:09,040
Speaker 1: you know, if everything is almost totally dark, then there's

1053
00:52:09,040 --> 00:52:12,440
Speaker 1: not going to be a lot of photons coming towards us, presumably,

1054
00:52:12,520 --> 00:52:15,000
Speaker 1: Like how long would you need to focus on an

1055
00:52:15,040 --> 00:52:18,960
Speaker 1: area to get enough light so that you can actually

1056
00:52:18,960 --> 00:52:21,160
Speaker 1: see something? Is this like you train the telescope at

1057
00:52:21,160 --> 00:52:23,360
Speaker 1: that spot in the sky for a year to collect

1058
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:26,239
Speaker 1: the data, or could it happen more quickly. If that's

1059
00:52:26,280 --> 00:52:27,839
Speaker 1: the kind of thing you're interested in, you would love

1060
00:52:27,880 --> 00:52:29,839
Speaker 1: to get a year of telescope time because you could

1061
00:52:29,920 --> 00:52:32,239
Speaker 1: learn so much. But in the end, you know, these

1062
00:52:32,239 --> 00:52:34,799
Speaker 1: folks have to balance, like there's so many good things

1063
00:52:34,880 --> 00:52:37,839
Speaker 1: you can do this telescope, so many directions you could

1064
00:52:37,880 --> 00:52:40,080
Speaker 1: point it at and learn something that in the end,

1065
00:52:40,160 --> 00:52:42,560
Speaker 1: it's not a question of like what's the most we

1066
00:52:42,560 --> 00:52:45,040
Speaker 1: could learn from pointing in this direction, it's like how

1067
00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:48,840
Speaker 1: much time can we budget for this project versus another project?

1068
00:52:49,280 --> 00:52:51,040
Speaker 1: So you have to make a case for like how

1069
00:52:51,120 --> 00:52:53,200
Speaker 1: much we could learn with one hour of telescope time

1070
00:52:53,280 --> 00:52:55,840
Speaker 1: or ten hours or fifty hours. And you know, the

1071
00:52:55,880 --> 00:52:58,040
Speaker 1: more you ask more, the less likely you already get it.

1072
00:52:58,280 --> 00:53:01,520
Speaker 1: So it's a difficult game, so frustrating, But of course

1073
00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:03,960
Speaker 1: it has to be that way. I know, everybody should

1074
00:53:03,960 --> 00:53:06,640
Speaker 1: have their own telescope, their own thirty meter telescope. We

1075
00:53:06,680 --> 00:53:09,840
Speaker 1: look at whatever they like, right right, I'm sure we

1076
00:53:09,880 --> 00:53:11,719
Speaker 1: have enough money for stuff like that. No, And so

1077
00:53:11,800 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 1: that would be super fascinating to look back at the

1078
00:53:13,760 --> 00:53:17,080
Speaker 1: very beginning of the universe to see these first stars form.

1079
00:53:17,120 --> 00:53:19,760
Speaker 1: Another thing that would be really exciting is to see

1080
00:53:20,120 --> 00:53:23,560
Speaker 1: Type one A supernova in the early universe. You know

1081
00:53:23,719 --> 00:53:27,640
Speaker 1: that the universe is expanding, and that expansion is accelerating

1082
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:30,600
Speaker 1: because of dark energy, which is not something we understand.

1083
00:53:31,120 --> 00:53:34,040
Speaker 1: And we only know that the universe is expanding and

1084
00:53:34,200 --> 00:53:38,440
Speaker 1: accelerating because we've seen these cosmic candles, these type one

1085
00:53:38,520 --> 00:53:41,440
Speaker 1: A supernova go off through history as we look further

1086
00:53:41,480 --> 00:53:43,840
Speaker 1: and further into the past, and that tells us like

1087
00:53:44,040 --> 00:53:47,319
Speaker 1: how fast distant parts of space are moving away from us.

1088
00:53:47,760 --> 00:53:50,280
Speaker 1: And so the further away we can look, the deeper

1089
00:53:50,360 --> 00:53:52,799
Speaker 1: into the past we can look. The more we can

1090
00:53:52,800 --> 00:53:55,719
Speaker 1: see these very far away type on a supernova, the

1091
00:53:55,760 --> 00:53:58,360
Speaker 1: more we can learn of the history of that cosmic

1092
00:53:58,400 --> 00:54:01,719
Speaker 1: acceleration and get some answers. It's like, what is this

1093
00:54:01,800 --> 00:54:05,320
Speaker 1: thing that's driving the universe crazy? What's going on? Hasn't

1094
00:54:05,320 --> 00:54:07,320
Speaker 1: been doing it for the whole history the universe to

1095
00:54:07,400 --> 00:54:09,799
Speaker 1: be really fascinating to like see that all laid out

1096
00:54:09,840 --> 00:54:13,440
Speaker 1: through time. So, like, do we know where these supernovas

1097
00:54:13,440 --> 00:54:15,239
Speaker 1: are that we want to point the telescope it, or

1098
00:54:15,239 --> 00:54:17,840
Speaker 1: do you just have to hope that as you're scanning

1099
00:54:17,840 --> 00:54:19,640
Speaker 1: the night sky you get lucky and you find one

1100
00:54:19,680 --> 00:54:22,000
Speaker 1: of these. Yeah, we don't know exactly. We don't know.

1101
00:54:22,080 --> 00:54:24,719
Speaker 1: We can't predict it. We know that it happens when

1102
00:54:24,760 --> 00:54:28,319
Speaker 1: a star collapses and doesn't have enough math to go

1103
00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:32,120
Speaker 1: supernova and then it gobbles up something else that comes by.

1104
00:54:32,200 --> 00:54:34,960
Speaker 1: So it comes from these binary systems, and so we're

1105
00:54:34,960 --> 00:54:37,440
Speaker 1: not great yet predicting exactly where they are. So essentially

1106
00:54:37,480 --> 00:54:39,400
Speaker 1: what you have to do is scan the sky looking

1107
00:54:39,480 --> 00:54:41,400
Speaker 1: for them, and then when you see what happening, you

1108
00:54:41,480 --> 00:54:43,279
Speaker 1: point a bunch of telescopes at it to get as

1109
00:54:43,400 --> 00:54:45,879
Speaker 1: much data as you can from it. So, yeah, these

1110
00:54:45,880 --> 00:54:48,239
Speaker 1: things are tricky to see. You can't predict them. How

1111
00:54:48,280 --> 00:54:51,040
Speaker 1: does the giant Magellan telescope fit into the like big

1112
00:54:51,080 --> 00:54:53,399
Speaker 1: picture of all the telescopes that we have right now

1113
00:54:53,440 --> 00:54:55,520
Speaker 1: and all the ones that are planned. Yeah, so it's

1114
00:54:55,600 --> 00:54:58,880
Speaker 1: much bigger than anything we have right now. Like the

1115
00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:01,880
Speaker 1: largest telescope we have right now are like the Magellan

1116
00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:05,440
Speaker 1: telescopes and the very large telescopes and the Keck telescopes.

1117
00:55:05,719 --> 00:55:08,880
Speaker 1: These ones are significantly smaller there, basically a factor of

1118
00:55:08,960 --> 00:55:12,440
Speaker 1: three or four smaller than the giant Magellan telescope. When

1119
00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:14,719
Speaker 1: it comes online, it will be the biggest thing out there.

1120
00:55:14,840 --> 00:55:17,560
Speaker 1: It's a little bit smaller than its competitors, the extremely

1121
00:55:17,640 --> 00:55:20,600
Speaker 1: large telescope or the thirty meter telescope, but they're all

1122
00:55:20,640 --> 00:55:23,840
Speaker 1: about the same size. So when these things come online

1123
00:55:23,840 --> 00:55:26,000
Speaker 1: in eight to ten years, they will be the new

1124
00:55:26,120 --> 00:55:29,480
Speaker 1: giants of astronomy. They will be producing data and pictures

1125
00:55:29,520 --> 00:55:31,880
Speaker 1: that nobody can compete with and so neither one of

1126
00:55:31,880 --> 00:55:35,399
Speaker 1: those are online yet. Is the James Webb online yet?

1127
00:55:35,560 --> 00:55:38,200
Speaker 1: The James Webb is not yet online. It's said to

1128
00:55:38,239 --> 00:55:41,200
Speaker 1: be launched, who knows when. Every time I see a prediction,

1129
00:55:41,320 --> 00:55:44,040
Speaker 1: it's always sometime in the future. It was of course

1130
00:55:44,120 --> 00:55:47,120
Speaker 1: delayed like everything else by COVID, and there's hoping, you know,

1131
00:55:47,200 --> 00:55:49,840
Speaker 1: to launch it next year. Okay, So, like this is

1132
00:55:49,880 --> 00:55:55,040
Speaker 1: going to be a pretty incredible decade for epic telescopes exactly. Yes,

1133
00:55:55,400 --> 00:55:58,120
Speaker 1: the end of this decade will be very exciting as

1134
00:55:58,160 --> 00:56:00,279
Speaker 1: these things all turned on and we're gonna started to

1135
00:56:00,320 --> 00:56:02,960
Speaker 1: get some really incredible pictures of the rest of the universe.

1136
00:56:03,200 --> 00:56:05,719
Speaker 1: But you know, these things take decades to plan. Like

1137
00:56:05,760 --> 00:56:09,040
Speaker 1: they've been working on these mirrors since two thousand and five,

1138
00:56:09,120 --> 00:56:12,840
Speaker 1: and so it's like a twenty plus year project, which means,

1139
00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:15,680
Speaker 1: you know, if we want to start building the next generation,

1140
00:56:15,760 --> 00:56:18,799
Speaker 1: the overwhelmingly large telescope, we've got to get started working

1141
00:56:18,840 --> 00:56:21,440
Speaker 1: on that basically yesterday, otherwise it won't finish in like

1142
00:56:21,480 --> 00:56:23,800
Speaker 1: our lifetimes. It sounds like I plan on living a

1143
00:56:23,840 --> 00:56:27,440
Speaker 1: long time. I'm gonna hang on until the o LT

1144
00:56:27,680 --> 00:56:29,719
Speaker 1: gets built and we can see pictures in the early

1145
00:56:29,880 --> 00:56:32,040
Speaker 1: universe that's going to make me live to a hundred

1146
00:56:32,239 --> 00:56:34,520
Speaker 1: what's good motivation to take good care of yourself and

1147
00:56:34,520 --> 00:56:36,200
Speaker 1: go out and jug every day so that you can

1148
00:56:36,239 --> 00:56:38,359
Speaker 1: be around when these photos come out. Or maybe I'll

1149
00:56:38,360 --> 00:56:40,840
Speaker 1: just freeze myself cry genically when I hit fifty and

1150
00:56:40,920 --> 00:56:42,680
Speaker 1: deep thaw myself in a hundred years so I can

1151
00:56:42,719 --> 00:56:45,160
Speaker 1: see what physics has learned while I've been napping. I'm

1152
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:47,680
Speaker 1: sure that one biology will will do it's best to

1153
00:56:47,719 --> 00:56:49,920
Speaker 1: get you there, and that your family will be totally

1154
00:56:49,920 --> 00:56:54,879
Speaker 1: okay with that. All right, Well, thanks everybody for going

1155
00:56:54,880 --> 00:56:56,840
Speaker 1: on this journey with us to talk about what the

1156
00:56:56,960 --> 00:57:00,360
Speaker 1: giant Magellan telescope can teach us about the night sky.

1157
00:57:00,920 --> 00:57:04,200
Speaker 1: Thanks everyone, as usual, If you have questions about something

1158
00:57:04,280 --> 00:57:07,160
Speaker 1: coming up in physics or just generally questions about the

1159
00:57:07,239 --> 00:57:09,359
Speaker 1: universe and how we learned so much about it, send

1160
00:57:09,400 --> 00:57:12,120
Speaker 1: them to last two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.

1161
00:57:12,239 --> 00:57:15,359
Speaker 1: We love getting your emails, and thank you very much

1162
00:57:15,440 --> 00:57:18,520
Speaker 1: Kelly for joining us on this fun podcast. Thanks for

1163
00:57:18,520 --> 00:57:21,520
Speaker 1: having me. I had a blast. Tune in next time

1164
00:57:21,560 --> 00:57:33,080
Speaker 1: everyone see you. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel

1165
00:57:33,120 --> 00:57:35,640
Speaker 1: and Jorge explained the universe is a production of I

1166
00:57:35,880 --> 00:57:39,320
Speaker 1: heart Radio or more podcast from my heart Radio, visit

1167
00:57:39,360 --> 00:57:42,840
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio Apple Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

1168
00:57:42,960 --> 00:57:50,040
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. YE