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Speaker 1: Hey, Kelly, are your kids into mystery novels? My oldest

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Speaker 1: is really into reading, but right now she's mostly into

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Speaker 1: comic books with like cats and dogs that have big

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Speaker 1: sweetler lies and you know, things with with really cute

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Speaker 1: little animals. Well, have you tried to hook them on

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Speaker 1: like the Grandest Mystery of all time? Now? I am

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Speaker 1: onto you. This is probably about planet killing asteroids or

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Speaker 1: the death of the sun. You are definitely going to

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Speaker 1: be finding some way to frighten my kids, right, Oh

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Speaker 1: my gosh, Kelly, I would never Oh man, oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: why don't I believe? You know? The Grandest Mystery is

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Speaker 1: not at all about death and destruction. It's about the

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Speaker 1: birth and the creation of planets. Well, that sounds more

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Speaker 1: like a romance than a mystery. It's a bit of

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Speaker 1: the astronomical birds and bees. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a

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Speaker 1: particle physicist and a professor if you see Irvine, and

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Speaker 1: I love seeing new planets get born. And um, Kelly Waynersmith,

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Speaker 1: I'm a parasitologist with Rice University, and I love hearing

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Speaker 1: about new planets being born. Do you love getting those

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Speaker 1: announcements like come check out our new cute little planet

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Speaker 1: it's got little googly eyes. Yeah, that's the best. No,

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Speaker 1: I guess baby planets actually aren't that attractive. They're like,

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Speaker 1: you know, covered in lava and pretty nasty looking. Actually, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna go ahead and blow your mind

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Speaker 1: here and say that, you know, human babies are kind

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Speaker 1: of kind of gross. Oh, I'm so glad you admitted that.

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Speaker 1: I totally agree with you. Like, there's the rare cute baby,

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Speaker 1: but most of them look like, you know, Richard Nixon

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Speaker 1: or like Winston Churchill or something. On a bad day,

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Speaker 1: that's the one that looks like Dandy DeVito. And I

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Speaker 1: was like, man, and you know, it's a good thing

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Speaker 1: that parents live their babies. It is a good thing.

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Speaker 1: And I'm sure for you, dear listener, your baby is

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Speaker 1: the one cute baby out there. Really gorgeous. Great job

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Speaker 1: with that kid, amazing, amazing, a plus. But the joy

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Speaker 1: of life and the joy of seeing your friends have

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Speaker 1: kids is not because their baby is necessarily cute. It's

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Speaker 1: because it's an incredible process. Because what you're witnessing is

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Speaker 1: the creation of new life and the continuation of this

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Speaker 1: incredible journey. And in the astronomical context, the same is true.

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Speaker 1: We're excited to see the birth of new planets, not

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Speaker 1: just because that planet is cute and lava colored, but

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Speaker 1: because it tells us something about our context, where we

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Speaker 1: came from, how our planet was born. But I bet

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Speaker 1: it's a lot more complicated than just watching human babies.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. Do you have to feed planets? You

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Speaker 1: have to change their diaper? I mean they never wake

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Speaker 1: up screaming, do they? Those are all excellent points. Yes,

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Speaker 1: if all you have to do is look through a telescope,

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Speaker 1: you should consider yourself lucky. And looking through telescopes is

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Speaker 1: mostly what we do because we're interested in solving this

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Speaker 1: detective mystery, in unraveling the story of the creation of

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Speaker 1: our own Solar system, in understanding how Earth got to

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Speaker 1: be where it is, and is that unusual? Are there

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Speaker 1: other Earths out there in other solar systems? All of

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Speaker 1: these questions can be answered, but first we have to

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Speaker 1: dig up clues, clues that lie in wait for us

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Speaker 1: all over the Solar system, and we need to get

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Speaker 1: money to do that. Now. Some of those clues, of course,

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Speaker 1: are right here on Earth. You know. We can dig

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Speaker 1: into the crust of the Earth and understand things about

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Speaker 1: the formation of the Earth, things that have shocked previous

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Speaker 1: generations of scientists. Imagine living in a time when we

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Speaker 1: thought the Earth might be like thousands of years old.

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Speaker 1: We had no idea of the geological time scale. Like

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Speaker 1: reading those stories about people who study glaciers or geology

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Speaker 1: and come up with these calculations, are like, hold on

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Speaker 1: a second, this suggests the Earth is billions of years old.

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Speaker 1: That's crazy. It must be wild to come up with

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Speaker 1: a finding like that and think, my goodness, how am

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Speaker 1: I going to convince everybody that we've been off by

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Speaker 1: by so many orders of magnitude. It's one of those

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Speaker 1: like open your third eye sort of moments, like you've

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Speaker 1: been smoking banana peals around the campfire and you suddenly

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Speaker 1: have this new vision right of the way the universe works.

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Speaker 1: Jokes aside that for me is like my scientific fantasy

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Speaker 1: to make a discovery that just like pulls the rug

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Speaker 1: out of our entire understanding of how everything works, Like

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Speaker 1: what this is super crazy old, that's amazing. But so

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Speaker 1: I assume that those kinds of discoveries happen less frequently

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Speaker 1: the longer science goes on. What do you think your

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Speaker 1: chances are of having one of those moments. Oh, I

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Speaker 1: think that there are lots of opportunities left. I think actually,

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Speaker 1: as time goes on in the last hundred years, our

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Speaker 1: estimate of the fraction of knowledge we have about the

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Speaker 1: universe just keeps dropping and dropping and dropping, like we

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Speaker 1: keep making discoveries like, oh, turns out of the matter

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Speaker 1: out there in the university is something else nobody's ever

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Speaker 1: studied before. Oh, it turns out two thirds of the

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Speaker 1: energy in the universe is something weird and new and bonkers,

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Speaker 1: like dark energy. So as time goes on, we certainly

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Speaker 1: learn more, but we realized that we have a smaller

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Speaker 1: and smaller fraction of the total knowledge than we thought.

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Speaker 1: So I think there's lots of discoveries ahead. What do

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Speaker 1: you think. I think you need to pass the banana

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Speaker 1: peal because you just blew my mind. Well. One of

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Speaker 1: the ways that we find these things is by looking

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Speaker 1: for sort of like time capsules. We try to figure

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Speaker 1: out what has been undisturbed since the early times of

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Speaker 1: the Solar system, to find like a scoop of the

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Speaker 1: early Solar system and study it before everything has gotten

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Speaker 1: like messed up in the intermediate ages. And one way

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Speaker 1: we can do that, of course is look into the Earth.

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Speaker 1: But the Earth is sort of dynamic, you know, like

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Speaker 1: the Earth is four and a half billion years old,

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Speaker 1: but also a lot of stuff has happened on Earth,

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Speaker 1: and so one thing we can do is like look

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Speaker 1: on Earth for really really old rocks that might tell

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Speaker 1: us like what was Earth put together from? What were

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Speaker 1: the basic building blocks of the Earth. What was going

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Speaker 1: on in the Solar system four and a half billion

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Speaker 1: years ago that led to the formation of the Earth.

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Speaker 1: But you know, there's something puzzling there. I don't know

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Speaker 1: if you have the same sense, Kelly, when we talk

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Speaker 1: about like the age of rocks. I remember hearing about

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Speaker 1: this when I was a kid and being like, what

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Speaker 1: do you mean the age of rocks? Like that rock

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Speaker 1: is made out of like iron and silicon and carbon.

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Speaker 1: That stuff is super duper old. What are you talking

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Speaker 1: about the age of rocks? Did that confuse you when

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Speaker 1: you were a kid? Yeah, no, absolutely, And even sometimes

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Speaker 1: I still find it a little confusing now to think

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Speaker 1: about rocks having different ages. Yeah, And I think the

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Speaker 1: way to think about it is not in terms of

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Speaker 1: like the building blocks of the rocks, Like pick up

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Speaker 1: a rock in front of you, it's got in it elements,

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Speaker 1: and those elements were formed the hearts of stars or

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Speaker 1: in supernovas or neutron star collisions that may be much

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Speaker 1: much older than our solar system, right, because our solar

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Speaker 1: systems like four and a half billion years old, but

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Speaker 1: the universe is almost fourteen billion years old, and there's

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Speaker 1: been many cycles of this process where stars pulled together

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Speaker 1: with helium and fuse heavier and heavier elements and then

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Speaker 1: blow that out into the universe to make the raw

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Speaker 1: materials for new solar systems. So, like the iron that's

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Speaker 1: in your body, maybe much much older than our solar system.

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Speaker 1: But when we talk about the age of rocks, we're

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Speaker 1: not talking about the age of the stuff inside of it.

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Speaker 1: We're talking about the age of this arrangement. So it's

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Speaker 1: sort of like if you have a pile of lego pieces,

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Speaker 1: you know, and somebody puts something together and then it

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Speaker 1: sits on your shelf for a few years. How old

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Speaker 1: is that, like lego dinosaur that your kid built, Well,

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Speaker 1: it's five years old, right, because that's when you put

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Speaker 1: it together, not twenty five years old. The age of

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Speaker 1: lego pieces. So it's more like the age of the

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Speaker 1: arrangements of the things that make it this current rock

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Speaker 1: that sort of defines the age of the rock. Does

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Speaker 1: that make sense? That does make sense, But it sounds

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Speaker 1: like a lot of looking down for an astronomer to

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Speaker 1: be doing, don't you guys usually look up? Well, we

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Speaker 1: like to look up, right, We like to see how

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Speaker 1: things are going outside in the universe. But that's a

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Speaker 1: lot harder to look at, right, And so typically people

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Speaker 1: do dig around and try to find asteroids that have

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Speaker 1: hit the Earth recently, because asteroids are these incredible time

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Speaker 1: capsules while the Earth has gone through all sorts of

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Speaker 1: cycle of like melting and reforming, and the rocks here

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Speaker 1: can be fairly young, right. We have like rocks that

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Speaker 1: were formed yesterday. You go to Hawaii and you'd like

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Speaker 1: pick up a piece of lava that's, you know, still

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Speaker 1: a little warm. That rock is like, you know, a

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Speaker 1: week old rock. Cute little baby rock. Right. But there

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Speaker 1: are some rocks in the Solar System that were formed

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Speaker 1: four and a half billion years ago in those early

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Speaker 1: moments when people were putting those lego pieces together and

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Speaker 1: haven't really been doing much since. Right, They didn't get

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Speaker 1: pulled into a planet. There's just sort of like the

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Speaker 1: leftover bits, like when you're making bread and your countertop

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Speaker 1: and there's all that flour leftover that didn't like make

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Speaker 1: it into the bread, right, that's sort of the leftover

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Speaker 1: ingredients and stuff that didn't make it into the solar system.

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Speaker 1: You know, it still blows my mind that we can

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Speaker 1: pick up a rock and be like, you're not from

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Speaker 1: around here, and and figure out what rocks came from

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Speaker 1: the solar or you know, from outside Earth, and which ones, uh,

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Speaker 1: we're born here. It is really incredible and it's a

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Speaker 1: testament to all of this careful work by geologist understanding

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Speaker 1: how rocks can form, what are the conditions to make

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Speaker 1: this kind of rock. Amazing thing to me is that

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Speaker 1: these rocks are sort of stable. Like some kind of

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Speaker 1: rocks you can only form under crazy conditions super high pressure.

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Speaker 1: But then you can take them and put them on

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Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth and they stay that way, right.

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Speaker 1: They don't like automatically revert and melt back to their

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Speaker 1: basic ingredients. It's not like ice where you can make

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Speaker 1: it in the freezer, but then when you take it

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Speaker 1: out it turns back into water. These rocks, you make

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Speaker 1: them in crazy conditions and then they just sort of

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Speaker 1: like freeze that way forever, even if you bring them

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Speaker 1: to new conditions. That's sort of amazing, Like that's the

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Speaker 1: only reason why a lot of geology is possible. It's

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Speaker 1: very helpful of them. It's very helpful of them, exactly.

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Speaker 1: And just like when we talked about in the episode

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Speaker 1: about where is most of the water on Earth? You know,

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Speaker 1: there's some of these rocks that are formed like in

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Speaker 1: the presence of water and trop water inside of them

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Speaker 1: and then come up to the surface and you can

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Speaker 1: like get a little core sample of what's going on

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Speaker 1: deep unto the Earth. It's really amazing. That is really amazing.

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Speaker 1: So we've done a lot of work here on Earth

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Speaker 1: to try to understand like how Earth was formed, and

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Speaker 1: we've picked up rocks we think came from space. But

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Speaker 1: scientists are invasion to learn more and want to understand

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Speaker 1: how the Solar System was formed, and so of course

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Speaker 1: we want to look at asteroids like in sit you,

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Speaker 1: we want to go to the asteroids and visit them

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Speaker 1: ourselves and study them and see like what are these

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Speaker 1: basic building blocks of the universe. Why are there these

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Speaker 1: legos left over that nobody put together into planets. And

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Speaker 1: that sounds really hard. It does, i'd really hard. But

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Speaker 1: fortunately we have really clever people with really fun beards

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Speaker 1: who are working on this project. Did you say with

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Speaker 1: really fun beards, with really fun beards exactly? That's really important.

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Speaker 1: It's not important that people have beards while working on

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Speaker 1: these projects. Beards are not necessary. But the project we're

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Speaker 1: talking about today is led by somebody with a really

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Speaker 1: awesome Santa Claus style beard. Nice. That always makes me

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Speaker 1: feel very comforted to see somebody with the Santa Claus

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Speaker 1: style beard. I feel like they're going to give me

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Speaker 1: something nice and I want to sit next to them.

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Speaker 1: And so on today's episode, we'll be asking the question

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Speaker 1: what will the Lucy Mission teach us? And in fact,

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Speaker 1: the Lucy Mission is headed by Harold Levison, which if

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Speaker 1: you google him, he's got an awesome smile and a

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Speaker 1: huge beard and he looks like he's about to give

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Speaker 1: us all science presents. Oh do you know him? Is

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Speaker 1: he Santa esque in personality as well? I don't know him,

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Speaker 1: but I did actually watch a video with him, and

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Speaker 1: he's like bubbling over with excitement and enthusiasm. He's like

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Speaker 1: a kid on Christmas morning. About to unwrap secrets of

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Speaker 1: the universe. Oh, I just looked up a picture and

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Speaker 1: I like him already. He does look like he's a

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Speaker 1: happy looking guy. I know. It's a lot of fun.

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Speaker 1: And So the reason that Harold is so excited about

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Speaker 1: these asteroids, and the reason I'm and so excited about

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Speaker 1: these asteroids is that they might contain secrets about the

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Speaker 1: formation of our Solar System. They might even have hints

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Speaker 1: about the formation of life on Earth. You know, during

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Speaker 1: the early Solar System. We think that some of the

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Speaker 1: carbon based molecules and the other volatile materials that serve

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Speaker 1: as the building blocks of life, some of those may

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Speaker 1: have actually been brought to Earth via asteroid and calm

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Speaker 1: the terry impacts. So if we can go out and understand,

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Speaker 1: like what's in these asteroids, are there organic molecules out there,

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Speaker 1: we might get a better clue to understand how life

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Speaker 1: on Earth form, not just the planet, but like the

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Speaker 1: critters on top of it. Well, so there's nobody who's

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Speaker 1: proposing that life started on asteroids and got deposited here,

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Speaker 1: But the idea is that the building blocks of life

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Speaker 1: were on the asteroids and got deposited here and then

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Speaker 1: life could come about? Is that right? I don't think

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Speaker 1: it's fair to say nobody is proposing that. Somebody out

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Speaker 1: there is definitely thinking that. I'm not sure if it's

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Speaker 1: just the person who currently has the banana pe Like,

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Speaker 1: you've probably heard the idea that life may have started

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Speaker 1: elsewhere and then landed on Earth. You know, we are

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Speaker 1: all martians. Sort of an idea, you know that's not

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Speaker 1: necessarily well found, that it's just speculation, But it is

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Speaker 1: a question, like what do we find out there in

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Speaker 1: the asteroids? Is it just the basic building blocks of life?

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Speaker 1: Are there complex organic molecules out there formed in the

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Speaker 1: collisions of objects in the early Solar System? We just

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Speaker 1: don't know. It's a big question mark because we haven't

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Speaker 1: gone to look. And what we do know is that

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Speaker 1: the universe holds lots of surprises for us. Every time

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Speaker 1: we dig into something, we find things that are shocking

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Speaker 1: that up end our understanding of the universe. So it's

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Speaker 1: always worth looking, and there's always good job security you'll

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Speaker 1: always find the next question exactly way to make a

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Speaker 1: cynical I mean, I'm just waxing poetic here about knowledge

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Speaker 1: for knowledge's sake, And you're like, Daniel, you're just worried

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Speaker 1: about your four oh one k that's the role I

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Speaker 1: play in this diet. I'm okay with that. I'm the

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Speaker 1: dream killer in my relationship with Zach too. All right, Well,

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Speaker 1: unless this turns into a marriage therapy podcast, let's move

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Speaker 1: on and talk about what we can learn about the

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Speaker 1: early Solar system. And so, as usual, I was curious

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Speaker 1: if this was a mission that people had heard about,

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Speaker 1: if people knew what the Lucy Mission might teach us,

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Speaker 1: what makes it unusual, what its special abilities are, and specifically,

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Speaker 1: what questions it might answer for us about the nature

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Speaker 1: of our own solar system. So I went out there

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Speaker 1: as usual and ask folks to comment on these questions.

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Speaker 1: If you'd like to participate in this fun game for

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Speaker 1: a future episode, please don't be I write to us

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Speaker 1: two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. So think

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Speaker 1: about it for a minute before you hear these answers.

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Speaker 1: What do you think the Lucy Mission might teach us?

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Speaker 1: Usually people had to say, I have not heard of

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Speaker 1: this mission, but I do know that physicists and uh

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Speaker 1: astronomers like to name things with acronyms. So whatever the

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Speaker 1: mission will teach us I am sure it is within

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Speaker 1: the name somewhere an acronym form so UM. From what

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Speaker 1: I understand, I mean, I guess it's it's going to

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Speaker 1: teach us more about the makeup of those asteroids and

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Speaker 1: UM and in turn the makeup of our Solar System. Okay,

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Speaker 1: I think I just saw news about the Lucy mission,

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Speaker 1: something about the Solar panels. Maybe not deploying correctly, but

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Speaker 1: hopefully if all goes well. UM. I'm pretty sure the

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Speaker 1: Lucy mission is looking at asteroids and how they helped

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Speaker 1: form primordial planets when the Sol System was forming, or

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Speaker 1: at least I think that's the goal of the mission.

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Speaker 1: I think it's going for the Trojan asteroids that they

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Speaker 1: go in front and back of Jupiter. Everybody thinks that

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Speaker 1: these asteroids they are from the beginning of the formation

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Speaker 1: of the Solar System, and it will teach us a

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Speaker 1: lot about how and when and a lot of things

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Speaker 1: about Solar system. I actually have no idea what the

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Speaker 1: Lucy mission is, but I hope it results in less

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Speaker 1: click bait about asteroids coming very close to Earth. If

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Speaker 1: I remember correctly, the Lucy Mission UM is going to

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Speaker 1: bring information about the composition of asteroids like what is

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Speaker 1: inside an asteroid? So I really liked the first answer

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Speaker 1: because it was the first thing that I thought of.

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Speaker 1: And so NASA does love some acronyms. Is Lucy an acronym? Unfortunately, no,

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Speaker 1: Lucy is actually not an acronym. But there is a

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Speaker 1: funny story there. The Lucy Mission is named after the

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Speaker 1: Lucy fossil, which is this famous ancient fossil dug up

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Speaker 1: in Africa that's sort of a missing link that shows

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Speaker 1: like an important step in human evolution. And that fossil,

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Speaker 1: of course, is famously named after the Beatles song Lucy

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Speaker 1: and the Sky with Diamonds, which of course was written

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Speaker 1: after the Beatles themselves had been smoking bananappeals. So there

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Speaker 1: is a connection there. Oh good good, Yeah, we're all connected,

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Speaker 1: to say. But the concept is, the reason they named

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Speaker 1: it after a fossil is that they think of asteroids

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Speaker 1: as fossils. They're like, these are captured bits from earlier times.

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Speaker 1: This is like a snapshot of what was going on

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Speaker 1: four and a half billion years ago. If we dig

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Speaker 1: into this, we can understand something about the Solar system

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Speaker 1: at a time when we don't otherwise have access to it.

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Speaker 1: Right and same way like biologists would love to go

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Speaker 1: walking around Africa two million years ago and see, like

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Speaker 1: who's climbing in the trees? Right, but we can't. Instead

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Speaker 1: of we have to just look at the fossils as

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Speaker 1: a way to get a sense for what was going

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Speaker 1: on back then. And have we thought of asteroids as

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Speaker 1: the fossils of the solar system for a long time

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Speaker 1: or is that sort of a new idea. That's a

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Speaker 1: really good question. I think in the last few decades

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Speaker 1: it's definitely been understood that asteroids played this vital role

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Speaker 1: in understanding our solar system. As we've developed this idea

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Speaker 1: for how the solar system formed, you know, I think

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Speaker 1: for a long time we imagine that maybe everything just

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Speaker 1: sort of like came together harmoniously, that you start with

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Speaker 1: this big cloud of gas and dust and just sort

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Speaker 1: of collapsed gravitationally. Now we know that the solar system

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Speaker 1: probably had a lot more drama in it than we

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Speaker 1: previously imagined. There's this model of how the solar system

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Speaker 1: formed called the Nice model, named after the city in

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Speaker 1: France where it was developed, and actually Harold Levinson played

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Speaker 1: a big role in the development of this model, and

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Speaker 1: it suggests that some of the big planets, Urinous, Neptune,

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Speaker 1: Saturn were formed closer to the Sun than they are now. Right,

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Speaker 1: that these big planets are more likely to form closer

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Speaker 1: to the Sun, and that later they got sort of

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Speaker 1: kicked out, that the gravitational interactions between these things were unstable,

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Speaker 1: and some of them got kicked out further into the

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Speaker 1: Solar System. And actually we may have even lost a

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Speaker 1: giant planet in the process. And you and I did

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Speaker 1: an episode about like where is Jupiter now and where

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Speaker 1: the Jupiter been? And we think that Jupiter may have

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Speaker 1: started on the outside and then migrated in and then

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Speaker 1: then pulled back out by Saturn, and in the process

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Speaker 1: we think that these leftover ingredients, these asteroids probably got

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Speaker 1: scattered all over the Solar System. And so I think

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Speaker 1: like this recent understanding of this process to form Solar

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Speaker 1: System has given asteroids special importance. Interesting. So, so I

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Speaker 1: know that you can find asteroids in the main asteroid belt,

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Speaker 1: which is out past Mars, but before you get to Jupiter,

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Speaker 1: and then there's also near Earth asteroids which are a

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Speaker 1: little closer. Are they all fossils of the Solar System

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Speaker 1: or did some of those come about at different times

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Speaker 1: or did they just sort of like end up in

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Speaker 1: different places but all sort of started at the same time.

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Speaker 1: We don't really know. So, as you say, there's this

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Speaker 1: like main belt of asteroids extends between Mars and Jupiter

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Speaker 1: from like two point one to three point three a U.

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Speaker 1: One of the interesting things about the main belt is

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Speaker 1: that there seemed to be several populations of asteroids. There

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Speaker 1: are these carbonaceous asteroids with the lots of carbon in them,

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Speaker 1: called C types. There are these stony S type asteroids.

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Speaker 1: Then there's some really rare M type asteroids that have

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Speaker 1: a lot of heavy metals in them. And they're also

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Speaker 1: seemed to be some that are like rubble piles and

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Speaker 1: other ones that are really compact. And one of the

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Speaker 1: questions we have is like, do these in fact all

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Speaker 1: come from the same original place in the Solar System

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Speaker 1: where they gathered together in some of these crazy events,

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Speaker 1: you know, where Jupiter's throwing stuff in and out of

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Speaker 1: the Solar System? Is this just like the remnants of

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Speaker 1: the mess? Like you come home after you're leaving your

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Speaker 1: kids for an hour and the floor is covered in

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Speaker 1: cheerios and also in toys, and you're like, huh, where

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Speaker 1: the eating toys materials together where those different crazy moments

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Speaker 1: in the hour I left them, right, It's it's a

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Speaker 1: fun detective mystery quote unquote fun Exactly who made a

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Speaker 1: mess of my solar system? That's really the question we're

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Speaker 1: asking today. So like I'm picturing now that room that

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Speaker 1: you talked about, and I'm also picturing you know, sci

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Speaker 1: fi movies that I've watched where they've had to move

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Speaker 1: through the asteroid belt and the asteroids are really packed

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Speaker 1: in their super close together. Is that like would you

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Speaker 1: be like dipping and dodging as you go through or

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Speaker 1: they actually more spaced out and like just for you know,

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Speaker 1: dramatic effect in the sci fi movies, they're really close together.

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Speaker 1: They're really spaced out, And so those pictures you have

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Speaker 1: of like the Millennium Falcon like dodging and dipping whatever.

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Speaker 1: You can't go evading stormtroopers in the asteroid belt because

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Speaker 1: they're really spaced out. I mean, there are a lot

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Speaker 1: of asteroids and the mass adds up to a non

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Speaker 1: trivial amount. But also space is really really big, especially

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Speaker 1: as you get further and further from the Sun, Like

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Speaker 1: the amount of volume grows as the radius cube, right,

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Speaker 1: so like the space between Mars and Jupiter, there's plenty

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Speaker 1: of room there for lots of asteroids, and you can

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Speaker 1: probably stand on one and not see any others from

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Speaker 1: the surface of it. Oh, I kind of feel like

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Speaker 1: a dream of mine has died. You are ruining sci

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Speaker 1: fi movies for making you too, are a dream killer, Daniel.

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Speaker 1: But I'm making asteroid mining more realistic, right, because it's

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Speaker 1: easier to get in and through the asteroid belt if

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Speaker 1: indeed you can stop, right. Isn't this something people imagine

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Speaker 1: that we could like stop on asteroids and dig up

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Speaker 1: a huge chunk of plutonium or platinum or something, these

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Speaker 1: incredible minerals that exist on the asteroids. Yeah, but it's

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Speaker 1: complicated by things like how do you land on a

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Speaker 1: rubble pile or how do you wrangle a giant, you know,

430
00:21:42,240 --> 00:21:45,520
Speaker 1: C type asteroid. These things are complicated, But yes, you're right.

431
00:21:45,520 --> 00:21:48,240
Speaker 1: It will facilitate things that you don't have to worry

432
00:21:48,280 --> 00:21:50,879
Speaker 1: about one asteroid slamming into another while you're trying to

433
00:21:50,880 --> 00:21:53,080
Speaker 1: get your work done. And you know, I've heard people

434
00:21:53,200 --> 00:21:56,480
Speaker 1: criticize asteroid mining is ridiculous, like how would you bring

435
00:21:56,520 --> 00:21:58,600
Speaker 1: a huge chunk of platinum back to Earth and that

436
00:21:58,640 --> 00:22:00,960
Speaker 1: would be super expensive and crash the market, etcetera. But

437
00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:04,000
Speaker 1: have you done any research into like asteroid pit stops,

438
00:22:04,080 --> 00:22:06,639
Speaker 1: Like say you're on a ship and you need extra fuel.

439
00:22:06,680 --> 00:22:08,520
Speaker 1: You're going through the asteroid belt and you stop on

440
00:22:08,560 --> 00:22:11,560
Speaker 1: a frozen blob and extract some ice from it and

441
00:22:11,600 --> 00:22:13,960
Speaker 1: get some hydrogen. Is that more realistic because you don't

442
00:22:13,960 --> 00:22:15,560
Speaker 1: need to bring it back to Earth and sell it.

443
00:22:15,600 --> 00:22:18,200
Speaker 1: You can actually like use it for your own local purpose.

444
00:22:18,520 --> 00:22:20,560
Speaker 1: Well but so, I mean, so in your example, you

445
00:22:20,600 --> 00:22:23,840
Speaker 1: are at the asteroid belt on your way somewhere else,

446
00:22:24,359 --> 00:22:26,440
Speaker 1: and where where else would you be on your way

447
00:22:26,440 --> 00:22:28,560
Speaker 1: to in the next couple of hundred years? You know,

448
00:22:28,600 --> 00:22:31,119
Speaker 1: like I don't imagine us having you know, homes on

449
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:34,639
Speaker 1: Enceladus for quite a long time. Well, I was gonna say,

450
00:22:34,640 --> 00:22:36,320
Speaker 1: I can imagine if you live on Mars, maybe you'd

451
00:22:36,320 --> 00:22:38,440
Speaker 1: want to go out to the asteroid belt for some

452
00:22:38,600 --> 00:22:41,359
Speaker 1: building materials, like you go to lows or home depot.

453
00:22:41,960 --> 00:22:43,520
Speaker 1: But you know, I think for a while the Martians

454
00:22:43,520 --> 00:22:45,520
Speaker 1: will be trying to use stuff on Mars. So I

455
00:22:45,880 --> 00:22:48,400
Speaker 1: maybe at some point the asteroid belt will be helpful

456
00:22:48,480 --> 00:22:52,760
Speaker 1: as a waypoint or a supply point. But I think

457
00:22:52,760 --> 00:22:54,920
Speaker 1: it's a little bit far off, all right, But I'm

458
00:22:54,920 --> 00:22:57,760
Speaker 1: hearing it's not impossible, folks, not impossible. We could be

459
00:22:57,800 --> 00:23:00,080
Speaker 1: making pit stops in the asteroid belt. I think it

460
00:23:00,200 --> 00:23:03,640
Speaker 1: might happen one day. Well. One of the most interesting

461
00:23:03,640 --> 00:23:05,879
Speaker 1: things about the asteroid belt to me is that the

462
00:23:05,920 --> 00:23:08,879
Speaker 1: asteroids are not just confined to the asteroid belt, like

463
00:23:08,880 --> 00:23:10,679
Speaker 1: we're all familiar with that. But it turns out that

464
00:23:10,720 --> 00:23:13,359
Speaker 1: there are more asteroids in the Solar System than just

465
00:23:13,480 --> 00:23:15,840
Speaker 1: the ones in the main belt. There are two clumps

466
00:23:15,880 --> 00:23:19,240
Speaker 1: that are super fascinating that are called the Trojans. These

467
00:23:19,280 --> 00:23:21,639
Speaker 1: are two blobs of asteroids that are not in the

468
00:23:21,640 --> 00:23:25,600
Speaker 1: main belt. They're actually in Jupiter's orbit, like one orbits

469
00:23:25,640 --> 00:23:27,960
Speaker 1: the Sun ahead of Jupiter and one orbits the Sun

470
00:23:28,119 --> 00:23:31,840
Speaker 1: behind Jupiter. Are they trying to sneak into Jupiter. Well,

471
00:23:31,840 --> 00:23:33,639
Speaker 1: one of them is called the Greek Camp and the

472
00:23:33,680 --> 00:23:36,040
Speaker 1: other one it's called the Trojan camp. So I'm sure

473
00:23:36,080 --> 00:23:39,560
Speaker 1: they've got billion year long nefarious plots that they are hatching.

474
00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:44,240
Speaker 1: They're very patient, they're very patient. But now these guys

475
00:23:44,280 --> 00:23:47,760
Speaker 1: are hanging out in sort of lagrange points. Lagrange points

476
00:23:47,800 --> 00:23:50,760
Speaker 1: became famous sort of when James Webb Space Telescope launched,

477
00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:53,520
Speaker 1: and people learned about how it's living at L to

478
00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:57,119
Speaker 1: this stable orbit. If you have two massive bodies in

479
00:23:57,160 --> 00:23:59,280
Speaker 1: the Solar System, there are only a few places you

480
00:23:59,320 --> 00:24:01,240
Speaker 1: can hang out where you can be stable, where like

481
00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:04,280
Speaker 1: the gravitational tug is not going to change where you're orbiting.

482
00:24:04,320 --> 00:24:07,000
Speaker 1: One of those is L ones, for example, and the

483
00:24:07,119 --> 00:24:10,080
Speaker 1: Earth and the Sun. L one is a point between

484
00:24:10,119 --> 00:24:11,840
Speaker 1: the Earth and the Sun. You can hang out right

485
00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:14,760
Speaker 1: there and you're gravitationally stable. Nobody's tugging you out of

486
00:24:14,800 --> 00:24:16,639
Speaker 1: that spot. L two is the same, but on the

487
00:24:16,720 --> 00:24:18,879
Speaker 1: other side of the Earth, like in the shadow of

488
00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:21,359
Speaker 1: the Earth, and that's where James Webb is. L three

489
00:24:21,440 --> 00:24:23,719
Speaker 1: is like on the other side of the Sun than

490
00:24:23,800 --> 00:24:26,520
Speaker 1: the Earth. But there's also these other two points L

491
00:24:26,640 --> 00:24:29,399
Speaker 1: four and L five which are stable where you're like

492
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:33,159
Speaker 1: sixty degrees behind the Earth or Jupiter sixty degrees ahead

493
00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:36,200
Speaker 1: of the Earth or Jupiter, and you can orbit stable there.

494
00:24:36,680 --> 00:24:39,239
Speaker 1: So they think that back when the crazy days, when

495
00:24:39,320 --> 00:24:42,080
Speaker 1: Jupiter was scattering cheerios and asteroids all over the Solar

496
00:24:42,080 --> 00:24:44,520
Speaker 1: System because the parents weren't around, that some of them

497
00:24:44,600 --> 00:24:46,480
Speaker 1: landed in L four and L five and have been

498
00:24:46,520 --> 00:24:48,919
Speaker 1: hanging out there ever since the interesting I thought some

499
00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:52,359
Speaker 1: of those were only like mostly stable, but you still

500
00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:54,720
Speaker 1: still kind of drifted. But like, are all of those

501
00:24:54,760 --> 00:24:57,560
Speaker 1: stable stable? Like those asteroids are not going anywhere for

502
00:24:57,600 --> 00:24:59,639
Speaker 1: as long as we uh, you know, were to be

503
00:24:59,640 --> 00:25:01,520
Speaker 1: able to go one check, well, none of these points

504
00:25:01,520 --> 00:25:04,320
Speaker 1: are like totally stable, even L two, right, it's not

505
00:25:04,359 --> 00:25:06,919
Speaker 1: a hundred percent stable. You can get boosted out of it.

506
00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:08,919
Speaker 1: And L four and L five are less stable than

507
00:25:09,080 --> 00:25:11,240
Speaker 1: L one, two and three. But they've been there for

508
00:25:11,280 --> 00:25:13,520
Speaker 1: a long time, right, those guys have been floating there,

509
00:25:13,560 --> 00:25:16,200
Speaker 1: we think, for billions of years, and so they found

510
00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:18,280
Speaker 1: a little sweet spot. Also, the other thing that makes

511
00:25:18,320 --> 00:25:20,520
Speaker 1: these unstable is that there's more than one thing, so

512
00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:23,359
Speaker 1: there's complicated dynamics. All this goes out the window if

513
00:25:23,359 --> 00:25:25,119
Speaker 1: you get bumped by your neighbor and now you have

514
00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:27,840
Speaker 1: like a new velocity vector that takes you in another direction.

515
00:25:27,920 --> 00:25:29,760
Speaker 1: But you know, it's been billions of years and lots

516
00:25:29,760 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 1: of the bumps have happened, and so these things are

517
00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:34,840
Speaker 1: mostly flying around pretty happy, and we expect that they

518
00:25:34,880 --> 00:25:37,280
Speaker 1: will stay there, most of them, for billions of years.

519
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:39,840
Speaker 1: Of course, occasionally you get collisions and things fall into

520
00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:42,840
Speaker 1: the Solar System and wipe out dinosaurs, etcetera. Yeah, the

521
00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:45,040
Speaker 1: little thing like that. So is there any reason to

522
00:25:45,160 --> 00:25:47,960
Speaker 1: be interested in these relative to what's happening in the

523
00:25:48,040 --> 00:25:50,280
Speaker 1: main asteroid belt? Would they be easier for us to

524
00:25:50,359 --> 00:25:53,760
Speaker 1: send something to to go study for example? No, these

525
00:25:53,840 --> 00:25:56,240
Speaker 1: are not easier to get to. But we think that

526
00:25:56,280 --> 00:25:58,840
Speaker 1: they might have a different collection of stuff than the

527
00:25:58,880 --> 00:26:01,639
Speaker 1: other asteroid belts. Everything the Solar System seems to like

528
00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:04,960
Speaker 1: a different composition of the stony type and the metal

529
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 1: type and the carbon type, and so people haven't studied

530
00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:10,399
Speaker 1: these nearly as much, and so it's sort of like

531
00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:14,239
Speaker 1: an untapped pocket. It's places people haven't explored yet. Well,

532
00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:16,480
Speaker 1: so it seems like there's lots of places that would

533
00:26:16,520 --> 00:26:20,359
Speaker 1: be fun for Lucy to visit. Where is Lucy going? Right? So,

534
00:26:20,560 --> 00:26:23,360
Speaker 1: Lucy is a really fun and very exciting mission that's

535
00:26:23,359 --> 00:26:25,200
Speaker 1: going to explore a lot of these things. I want

536
00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:27,720
Speaker 1: to get into more about it and exactly what Lucy

537
00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:29,639
Speaker 1: is going to tell us about the nature of the

538
00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:45,360
Speaker 1: Solar System. But first let's take a quick break. All right,

539
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:48,360
Speaker 1: welcome back. So, Dan, you were just about to tell

540
00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:51,560
Speaker 1: us where Lucy is going, So Lucy is actually going

541
00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:55,480
Speaker 1: to visit eight different asteroids on this one trip. It's

542
00:26:55,560 --> 00:26:58,639
Speaker 1: kind of crazy. They're gonna stop by one main Belt

543
00:26:58,720 --> 00:27:02,199
Speaker 1: asteroid and it's gonna go visit seven Trojans. It's going

544
00:27:02,240 --> 00:27:05,160
Speaker 1: to go both to the Trojan camp and to the

545
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:08,840
Speaker 1: Greek camp. The whole thing is this crazy zigzag around

546
00:27:08,840 --> 00:27:11,320
Speaker 1: the Solar System. So how did they pick their one

547
00:27:12,040 --> 00:27:15,159
Speaker 1: main asteroid Belt one to visit? That must have been

548
00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:18,480
Speaker 1: a hard choice. Actually, it's funny. They're visiting one called

549
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:22,240
Speaker 1: Donald Johansson, which is named after the discoverer of the

550
00:27:22,359 --> 00:27:26,439
Speaker 1: Lucy fossil itself. Right, So the Lucy mission is going

551
00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 1: to go visit the Donald Johansson asteroid. So there's a

552
00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:31,240
Speaker 1: part of me that thinks it would be sort of

553
00:27:31,280 --> 00:27:33,640
Speaker 1: beautiful to have that connection and that that's a fine

554
00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:35,280
Speaker 1: reason to pick it. But there's another part of me

555
00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:38,080
Speaker 1: that feels like there must be a better criteria for

556
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:40,520
Speaker 1: picking which out of all the Main Belt asteroids you're

557
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:43,440
Speaker 1: going to visit, and so why did this one get picked? Well,

558
00:27:43,520 --> 00:27:45,840
Speaker 1: part of it is just what is possible. You know,

559
00:27:45,880 --> 00:27:48,640
Speaker 1: in the Solar System, things move slowly, and so if

560
00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:51,000
Speaker 1: you want to visit stuff you have to visit stuff

561
00:27:51,040 --> 00:27:53,520
Speaker 1: that happens to be fairly close to each other at

562
00:27:53,560 --> 00:27:56,000
Speaker 1: the time that you are there. For example, that one

563
00:27:56,000 --> 00:27:58,720
Speaker 1: of the reasons that like Voyager and Pioneer could visit

564
00:27:58,760 --> 00:28:00,920
Speaker 1: so many planets back in the seventies is that there

565
00:28:00,960 --> 00:28:03,199
Speaker 1: was this window when you could fly out from the

566
00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:06,320
Speaker 1: inner Solar System and visit those planets as they came

567
00:28:06,359 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 1: around the Sun. Some of these things have a super

568
00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:11,479
Speaker 1: duper long orbits and so this is dictated mostly just

569
00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:13,960
Speaker 1: by what's going on in the Solar System. And actually

570
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:17,119
Speaker 1: there's a hilarious story about how they designed this mission.

571
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:20,679
Speaker 1: The original plan was like, Okay, here's two asteroids we're

572
00:28:20,720 --> 00:28:23,000
Speaker 1: gonna plan to visit, and they planned the whole trajectory.

573
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:26,400
Speaker 1: And then in two thousand and fourteen, before NASA selected

574
00:28:26,440 --> 00:28:29,399
Speaker 1: this as a mission, Brian Sutter, a long time mission

575
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:33,320
Speaker 1: trajectory designer, was walking Harold Levinson through a computer simulation

576
00:28:33,359 --> 00:28:35,520
Speaker 1: of the proposed route and Levison was like, hold on

577
00:28:35,560 --> 00:28:37,760
Speaker 1: a second, We're gonna come kind of close to this

578
00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:41,440
Speaker 1: other one, Patroclus, which is this pair of Trojan asteroids

579
00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:43,360
Speaker 1: that orbit each other, and this is like one of

580
00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 1: his favorite Trojan it's this weird binary pair where Patroclus

581
00:28:48,320 --> 00:28:51,840
Speaker 1: and Monoecius are like rotating around each other. It's super fascinating.

582
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:55,040
Speaker 1: And as he saw like the projected trajectory of Lucy,

583
00:28:55,080 --> 00:28:57,160
Speaker 1: He's like, wait a second, can we stop there at

584
00:28:57,160 --> 00:28:59,480
Speaker 1: the time? And so Sutter is like, you know what,

585
00:28:59,600 --> 00:29:02,600
Speaker 1: I think we could. And so then they went and

586
00:29:02,600 --> 00:29:04,720
Speaker 1: they like dug through the orbit. SE's like, what else

587
00:29:04,760 --> 00:29:07,720
Speaker 1: are we going by? And he fed like seven and

588
00:29:07,760 --> 00:29:12,480
Speaker 1: fifty thou known asteroid orbits into this crazy Excel spreadsheet.

589
00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 1: What Yeah, I spent months running calculations on it. And

590
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: so they used Excel to design the trajectory of this

591
00:29:19,200 --> 00:29:22,360
Speaker 1: thing and found all these other opportunities, and they ended

592
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 1: up adding, you know, six different stops. So this thing

593
00:29:25,640 --> 00:29:29,880
Speaker 1: went from visiting two asteroids to visiting eight asteroids because basically,

594
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:34,560
Speaker 1: you know, science Santa Claus enthusiasm and Excel spreadsheets. That's awesome.

595
00:29:34,920 --> 00:29:36,800
Speaker 1: On the one hand, I can imagine the guy who

596
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 1: thinks his job is done and then someone's like, well

597
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:42,880
Speaker 1: what about this, and being like, oh, like, I've had

598
00:29:42,920 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 1: so many moments in science where I've been like, oh

599
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:47,480
Speaker 1: I thought I was done. But that's awesome. So we

600
00:29:47,560 --> 00:29:49,520
Speaker 1: have to find out. I know, it's like when you're

601
00:29:49,600 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 1: driving between two errands and you're like, oh, there's a

602
00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:54,520
Speaker 1: donut shop. I don't really want to stop, but I

603
00:29:54,560 --> 00:30:00,600
Speaker 1: do want a donut, right, That's right? And because exactly,

604
00:30:00,800 --> 00:30:03,440
Speaker 1: and so this mission is going to visit more different

605
00:30:03,480 --> 00:30:08,120
Speaker 1: destinations and independent orbits than any other space mission in history.

606
00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:11,720
Speaker 1: And I totally encourage you to google the Lucy trajectory

607
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:14,520
Speaker 1: because it's kind of bonkers. So it launched already, They

608
00:30:14,600 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 1: launched it in October one, and it's starting out. It's

609
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:21,480
Speaker 1: going to take like two different gravity assists around the

610
00:30:21,560 --> 00:30:24,040
Speaker 1: Earth over the next few years to try to get

611
00:30:24,120 --> 00:30:27,040
Speaker 1: up a little bit of speed before launching out into

612
00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:30,520
Speaker 1: the outer Solar System. That's incredible to me. The fact

613
00:30:30,560 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 1: that we ever figured out gravity assists is also incredible. So, Okay,

614
00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:36,239
Speaker 1: we're gonna spend a little time hanging out with our

615
00:30:36,240 --> 00:30:38,720
Speaker 1: buddy the Earth for a while and then what's next. Yeah,

616
00:30:38,760 --> 00:30:40,920
Speaker 1: And remember, the idea of a gravity assist is just

617
00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:43,600
Speaker 1: to limit how much fuel you need. You need fuel

618
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:45,640
Speaker 1: later on in the mission to help you like change

619
00:30:45,680 --> 00:30:47,600
Speaker 1: course and go from one asteroid to the other. Do

620
00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:50,120
Speaker 1: you want to minimize how much fuel you spend on

621
00:30:50,240 --> 00:30:52,680
Speaker 1: like getting out there to the asteroid belt, and you know,

622
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:54,760
Speaker 1: the more fuel you carry, the more fuel you need.

623
00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 1: It's a very thin budget, and so we use gravity

624
00:30:57,160 --> 00:30:59,720
Speaker 1: assists because it takes longer, but it means you don't

625
00:30:59,760 --> 00:31:02,080
Speaker 1: need a much fuel. And the way a gravity asists

626
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:04,479
Speaker 1: works is that you like swing close by a planet,

627
00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:07,560
Speaker 1: you come out going another direction. You can actually also

628
00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:10,200
Speaker 1: pick up a little bit of speed, which is kind

629
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:13,040
Speaker 1: of crazy, not just like a totally symmetric operation. You're

630
00:31:13,080 --> 00:31:16,320
Speaker 1: actually stealing a little bit of energy from the planet

631
00:31:16,520 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 1: that your gravity assisting around, like an you know, imperceptibly

632
00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:22,480
Speaker 1: small amount of energy. This thing is gonna make two

633
00:31:22,480 --> 00:31:28,040
Speaker 1: swoops around the Earth and then it's gonna go visit

634
00:31:28,080 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 1: this asteroid Donald Johansson, which is in the main belt.

635
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:35,080
Speaker 1: That's like four years from starts to initial visits. So

636
00:31:35,160 --> 00:31:37,600
Speaker 1: like out of the eight places, four years later, it's

637
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:40,280
Speaker 1: just reached the first one. When a grant gets funded,

638
00:31:40,720 --> 00:31:43,280
Speaker 1: what happens to those people for the four years in between,

639
00:31:43,440 --> 00:31:45,680
Speaker 1: Like I do they have a lot of work to

640
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:49,200
Speaker 1: do or is the like trajectory sort of programmed in?

641
00:31:50,040 --> 00:31:51,560
Speaker 1: They have to monitor it right and they have to

642
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:53,240
Speaker 1: keep on track of it in case it goes off

643
00:31:53,280 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 1: of course, etcetera. But there isn't a lot of work

644
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:58,480
Speaker 1: in between these stops to planning these projects. It's a

645
00:31:58,480 --> 00:32:00,880
Speaker 1: little tricky, right You have to have people who have

646
00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:04,040
Speaker 1: different expertise at different times. And this project is going

647
00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:06,480
Speaker 1: to last for fifteen years, like some of the data

648
00:32:06,480 --> 00:32:08,719
Speaker 1: they're going to get in the mid twenty thirties, and

649
00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:11,720
Speaker 1: you know, science Santa Claus is not that young. So actually,

650
00:32:11,800 --> 00:32:13,840
Speaker 1: what they've done for the major parts of the mission

651
00:32:13,840 --> 00:32:15,920
Speaker 1: where the lead is kind of old, is that they've

652
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:19,640
Speaker 1: designated a successor, like a younger person in their career

653
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:22,880
Speaker 1: who can take over in case they need a replacement.

654
00:32:23,120 --> 00:32:25,800
Speaker 1: You know, this is like a game of Throne style planning.

655
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:28,760
Speaker 1: You know, that's a little morbid, but but probably smart.

656
00:32:28,880 --> 00:32:32,040
Speaker 1: And so I guess no grad students, I mean maybe

657
00:32:32,080 --> 00:32:34,160
Speaker 1: you if you're a grand student working on this project.

658
00:32:34,160 --> 00:32:36,240
Speaker 1: It's because your advisors on the project and you get

659
00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:38,440
Speaker 1: some of the data. You have to be careful with

660
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:41,120
Speaker 1: students and post docs who have sort of short time

661
00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:43,560
Speaker 1: horizons working on this stuff. You can do a pH

662
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:45,360
Speaker 1: d thesis on a project like this where it's like

663
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:49,080
Speaker 1: development of it, or you know, stabilization of it, or

664
00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:52,160
Speaker 1: guidance systems or navigation, and then somebody else can come

665
00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:54,600
Speaker 1: along into a pH D thesis. It's like analysis of

666
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:57,480
Speaker 1: the data. Those are all, you know, totally valid contributions.

667
00:32:57,680 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 1: I think these days we recognize that some of these

668
00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:02,960
Speaker 1: projects I have such long time cycles that we need

669
00:33:02,960 --> 00:33:05,360
Speaker 1: people to work on the initial bits, for example and

670
00:33:05,400 --> 00:33:09,000
Speaker 1: particle accelerators. People have been writing pH DDCs on the

671
00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:12,480
Speaker 1: Atlas detector before it was even built, you know, stimulated

672
00:33:12,520 --> 00:33:14,680
Speaker 1: studies for how we should build this kind of thing.

673
00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:17,960
Speaker 1: It's an important contribution to the field, you know, Yeah, yeah, okay,

674
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:20,360
Speaker 1: fair enough. Alright, So it takes us four years to

675
00:33:20,400 --> 00:33:23,920
Speaker 1: get to Donald Johannsson and tell me a little bit

676
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 1: more about what Donald Johansson is. Like, we don't really

677
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:28,840
Speaker 1: know that much about it, but it's really fascinating. It's

678
00:33:28,880 --> 00:33:32,200
Speaker 1: actually quite small, it's like only four kilometers wide. But

679
00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:35,080
Speaker 1: they suspect that it's a fragment of a collision from

680
00:33:35,120 --> 00:33:38,080
Speaker 1: like a hundred and thirty million years ago. They think

681
00:33:38,120 --> 00:33:41,440
Speaker 1: there was a meta asteroid they got smashed into and

682
00:33:41,440 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 1: created like all of this shrapnel, and that Donald Johansen

683
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:46,680
Speaker 1: is like a piece of that and so by studying

684
00:33:46,720 --> 00:33:48,960
Speaker 1: that they hope to understand like what happened and what

685
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:51,120
Speaker 1: was that big one made out of and sort of

686
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:53,960
Speaker 1: like get a sense by the inside of that mega asteroid,

687
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:55,960
Speaker 1: because you know, some of these things are rubble piles,

688
00:33:55,960 --> 00:33:58,480
Speaker 1: but some of them have layers. You know, some of

689
00:33:58,520 --> 00:34:01,000
Speaker 1: these things were like pro to planets has sort of

690
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:04,280
Speaker 1: started to form and then got arrested because no more

691
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:07,840
Speaker 1: material came by. Like there are actually dwarf planets living

692
00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:11,879
Speaker 1: inside the asteroid belt or like Vesta and Series. These

693
00:34:11,880 --> 00:34:14,680
Speaker 1: are layered with like dense material at their cores. They

694
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:16,759
Speaker 1: were on their way to becoming planets. They had just

695
00:34:16,800 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 1: gotten bigger helpings of the raw materials. Okay, And so

696
00:34:20,560 --> 00:34:23,920
Speaker 1: so we started Donald Johansson and then where are we

697
00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:28,040
Speaker 1: going next? We visit the L four cloud, which is

698
00:34:28,080 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 1: the Greek Camp. This is the one orbiting like sixty

699
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:33,520
Speaker 1: degrees ahead of Jupiter. And there it's going to visit

700
00:34:33,560 --> 00:34:36,319
Speaker 1: a bunch of asteroids and hang out for a little bit.

701
00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:39,080
Speaker 1: It's gonna sort of like swoop through and stop by

702
00:34:39,160 --> 00:34:40,759
Speaker 1: and check out a couple of them, and then it's

703
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:43,000
Speaker 1: going to swing back around and it's going to visit

704
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:46,360
Speaker 1: Earth again. In twenty thirty one, this time to change

705
00:34:46,400 --> 00:34:49,080
Speaker 1: directions so and can go out to the other Trojan camp.

706
00:34:49,320 --> 00:34:51,359
Speaker 1: This is why physics makes no sense. How does it

707
00:34:51,400 --> 00:34:53,319
Speaker 1: make sense to go back to Earth to go back

708
00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:56,359
Speaker 1: out to Jupiter. You guys are tricking us. I think

709
00:34:56,480 --> 00:34:59,400
Speaker 1: we'll remember that these things are on opposite sides of

710
00:34:59,440 --> 00:35:01,400
Speaker 1: the solo sits them, right, The Greek camp and the

711
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:05,200
Speaker 1: Trojan camp are each sixty degrees separated from Jupiter, which

712
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:07,879
Speaker 1: means they're a hundred twenty degrees separated from each other,

713
00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:10,120
Speaker 1: and a hundred eighty is the opposite side of the

714
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:13,680
Speaker 1: Solar system. So these Greeks and Trojans are really distant

715
00:35:13,719 --> 00:35:15,440
Speaker 1: from each other. So if you're at one and you

716
00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:17,920
Speaker 1: want to head to the other, stopping by Earth on

717
00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 1: the way, it's not really like out of the way.

718
00:35:20,200 --> 00:35:23,600
Speaker 1: We really are the donut shop between two errands. Alright, Alright,

719
00:35:23,640 --> 00:35:26,480
Speaker 1: that checks out. So then they go to the Trojan camp,

720
00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:28,359
Speaker 1: and then there's somewhere to go after that. So then

721
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:30,040
Speaker 1: they go to the Trojan camp. There they get to

722
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:32,680
Speaker 1: visit a couple of those really interesting asteroids we talked about,

723
00:35:32,840 --> 00:35:37,200
Speaker 1: Patroclus and Venetius. These are really fascinating because they're orbiting

724
00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:39,680
Speaker 1: each other, they're like in a very tight binary orbit,

725
00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:42,640
Speaker 1: sort of like weights like a dumbbell, spinning around each other,

726
00:35:42,680 --> 00:35:45,440
Speaker 1: but without any connection in between them. And people don't know,

727
00:35:45,600 --> 00:35:48,360
Speaker 1: is this like part of the process of forming larger

728
00:35:48,400 --> 00:35:51,600
Speaker 1: objects that you get this like binary inspiral which gradually

729
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:54,400
Speaker 1: comes together to form a larger object, or is this stable?

730
00:35:54,480 --> 00:35:56,480
Speaker 1: Could they last like this forever? And one of the

731
00:35:56,480 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: fascinating things about this pair is that they don't actually

732
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:02,080
Speaker 1: orbit in the ecliptic right Most of the stuff in

733
00:36:02,080 --> 00:36:03,799
Speaker 1: the Solar System or based in sort of like a

734
00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:07,759
Speaker 1: flat plane, like Venus and Earth and Jupiter and all

735
00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:10,000
Speaker 1: the way after like Neptune and Uranus, are mostly in

736
00:36:10,040 --> 00:36:12,560
Speaker 1: the same disc because they have the same angler momentum

737
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:14,319
Speaker 1: as most of the stuff in the Solar System. But

738
00:36:14,360 --> 00:36:16,120
Speaker 1: a few things are a little crazy in the orbit

739
00:36:16,160 --> 00:36:18,560
Speaker 1: like above or below the ecliptic. Means that they're not

740
00:36:18,640 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 1: often in the ecliptic right there, like at an angle,

741
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:25,080
Speaker 1: And these guys are orbiting above typically the ecliptic and

742
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:27,600
Speaker 1: then dip down below, and so they're actually gonna pass

743
00:36:27,760 --> 00:36:31,200
Speaker 1: right through just when Lucy gets there, so will be

744
00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:34,480
Speaker 1: a really rare opportunity to see these guys up close. Man,

745
00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:37,040
Speaker 1: it seems like this team looked out in a lot

746
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:40,480
Speaker 1: of ways. Yeah, it's a really happy coincidence that they're

747
00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 1: going to get to visit all of this stuff, and

748
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:44,880
Speaker 1: then after they visit this trojan camp, they're going to

749
00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:48,000
Speaker 1: go into a stable six year orbit back and forth

750
00:36:48,040 --> 00:36:50,600
Speaker 1: between these L four and L five clouds just to

751
00:36:50,640 --> 00:36:52,920
Speaker 1: get like as much data as possible. There's no point

752
00:36:52,960 --> 00:36:55,400
Speaker 1: in like bringing this thing back to Earth, so they figured, like,

753
00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:58,040
Speaker 1: let's just let it hang out out there and gather

754
00:36:58,080 --> 00:36:59,920
Speaker 1: as much data as we can until it runs out

755
00:36:59,920 --> 00:37:02,719
Speaker 1: of fuel. Oh so the six years is when it

756
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:04,960
Speaker 1: runs out of fuel. I think six years is how

757
00:37:05,040 --> 00:37:07,040
Speaker 1: long it's going to take to go between L four

758
00:37:07,080 --> 00:37:10,000
Speaker 1: and L five after its last visit. So every six

759
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:12,399
Speaker 1: years after that it's going to pass between L four

760
00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:15,560
Speaker 1: and L five and it will continue sending data back.

761
00:37:15,680 --> 00:37:18,520
Speaker 1: I guess. So is this powered by like, uh, you know,

762
00:37:18,600 --> 00:37:21,600
Speaker 1: radioactive material the decay slowly, is it going to keep

763
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:24,319
Speaker 1: sending information or is it gonna you know, peter out

764
00:37:24,360 --> 00:37:26,759
Speaker 1: pretty quick. We think it might last for a long time.

765
00:37:26,800 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: It actually has solar panels. The way this thing looks

766
00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:31,960
Speaker 1: as kind of cool as like a central blob with

767
00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:34,920
Speaker 1: two like circular solar panels. It looks a little bit

768
00:37:34,960 --> 00:37:37,360
Speaker 1: like a tie fighter if you took those wings and

769
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:40,280
Speaker 1: flatten them out instead of having them be like parallel

770
00:37:40,280 --> 00:37:42,360
Speaker 1: to the main ship. And so this thing is capable

771
00:37:42,400 --> 00:37:45,040
Speaker 1: of gathering energy and sort of living for a long time.

772
00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 1: It's not going to take a whole lot of energy

773
00:37:46,719 --> 00:37:48,759
Speaker 1: at that time, you know, just to send messages back

774
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:51,080
Speaker 1: to Earth. And so a lot of these missions, you know,

775
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:53,960
Speaker 1: they have an official life cycle which is pretty short

776
00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:56,120
Speaker 1: ten years, fifteen years, but sometimes they can go for

777
00:37:56,160 --> 00:37:59,000
Speaker 1: a very very long time if the electronics is hardy

778
00:37:59,120 --> 00:38:01,239
Speaker 1: enough and for things. So this doesn't have like a

779
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:04,800
Speaker 1: radioactive heat or unit keeping like it's core at a

780
00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:07,520
Speaker 1: normal temperature. It's all solar power. Yeah, this one is

781
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:10,239
Speaker 1: just solar power. It doesn't have a blob of plutonium

782
00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:13,480
Speaker 1: or something else like thermoelectrically heating it. It show it's

783
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 1: relying on photons from the Sun, and you know out

784
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:17,759
Speaker 1: there by Jupiter's orbit, this is of course a lot

785
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:19,840
Speaker 1: less Sun than there is out here, but it doesn't

786
00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:22,120
Speaker 1: take that much energy to operate this thing. Once he's

787
00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:25,919
Speaker 1: out there in this orbit. Unfortunately, when they launched this thing,

788
00:38:26,320 --> 00:38:28,600
Speaker 1: one of the solar arrays open perfectly and the other

789
00:38:28,640 --> 00:38:32,000
Speaker 1: one didn't. It opened only like somewhere between eighty and

790
00:38:33,120 --> 00:38:36,680
Speaker 1: they're not sure, and it didn't like latch open. This

791
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:39,280
Speaker 1: thing is supposed to like unfold and then like click

792
00:38:39,320 --> 00:38:42,640
Speaker 1: into place, so they're not exactly sure how much it

793
00:38:42,719 --> 00:38:45,880
Speaker 1: didn't open and why it didn't open. They're also like

794
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:48,440
Speaker 1: not sure what to do about it. You know, on

795
00:38:48,440 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: one hand, it's in okay shape, it's getting a lot

796
00:38:50,680 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 1: of energy. The other hand, you know, maybe they could

797
00:38:52,719 --> 00:38:54,520
Speaker 1: crack it open a little bit, and they're sort of

798
00:38:54,520 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 1: limited in what they could do. They could like press

799
00:38:56,640 --> 00:38:58,840
Speaker 1: the button again and try it again, but you know,

800
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:01,520
Speaker 1: something else might ki. You never know. Oh, that must

801
00:39:01,520 --> 00:39:03,880
Speaker 1: have been such a devastating moment at the moment. Do

802
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:06,640
Speaker 1: they have any projections for how many years that might

803
00:39:06,719 --> 00:39:10,359
Speaker 1: cut off the experiment or they're just not thinking about

804
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:11,759
Speaker 1: it because maybe they can fix it and they're just

805
00:39:11,760 --> 00:39:13,480
Speaker 1: going to move on for now. They're just gonna move

806
00:39:13,520 --> 00:39:15,600
Speaker 1: on for now because things are working and there's always

807
00:39:15,600 --> 00:39:17,719
Speaker 1: a bit of a buffer. Right when they engineer these things,

808
00:39:17,800 --> 00:39:20,239
Speaker 1: they always provide more power than they need just in

809
00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:22,319
Speaker 1: case something like this happens, and so they think it's

810
00:39:22,360 --> 00:39:24,400
Speaker 1: not going to cut into the operating of the mission.

811
00:39:24,480 --> 00:39:26,360
Speaker 1: Of course, it is better to have more power and

812
00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 1: to not have this like weird mechanical failure that always

813
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:30,680
Speaker 1: makes you worried. Right, It's like if you get a

814
00:39:30,719 --> 00:39:32,840
Speaker 1: new car and something breaks the first week, you're like,

815
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:35,879
Speaker 1: hold on a second, what's next exactly? Maybe the whole

816
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:39,440
Speaker 1: things that disaster, But usually it's fine, Okay, Well, so

817
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:41,560
Speaker 1: now we've talked about where it's going to go and

818
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:43,640
Speaker 1: what's powering this thing. So let's take a break and

819
00:39:43,640 --> 00:39:45,400
Speaker 1: then we'll find out what kind of data that's going

820
00:39:45,440 --> 00:40:01,200
Speaker 1: to collect. All right, and we're back. Okay, So we

821
00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:03,680
Speaker 1: know that we've got these solar arrays, and those solar

822
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:06,360
Speaker 1: arrays are going to get used to power equipment. What

823
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:09,680
Speaker 1: kind of equipment is Lucy carrying with her? So Lucy

824
00:40:09,760 --> 00:40:13,680
Speaker 1: has a few different scientific instruments on board. There's a

825
00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:16,839
Speaker 1: high resolution camera produced like sort of looking at these

826
00:40:16,880 --> 00:40:19,360
Speaker 1: things and trying to understand the shape of them, and

827
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:22,319
Speaker 1: just like the surface, one big question scientists have is

828
00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:24,640
Speaker 1: like exactly what is the shape of these things that

829
00:40:24,640 --> 00:40:26,640
Speaker 1: will help them in their models for how these things

830
00:40:26,680 --> 00:40:30,160
Speaker 1: are formed. Another is a spectrometer. That's something that very

831
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:33,240
Speaker 1: carefully measures the energy of all the photons that you're getting.

832
00:40:33,280 --> 00:40:35,400
Speaker 1: It tells you like are you getting green photons or

833
00:40:35,400 --> 00:40:38,880
Speaker 1: red photons. That's very important for understanding like what's inside

834
00:40:38,920 --> 00:40:41,720
Speaker 1: these things, how much light are they reflecting? What kinds

835
00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:44,480
Speaker 1: of light? And then they have a disc of lab

836
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:50,239
Speaker 1: grown diamonds or a special infrared spectrometer that's able to

837
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:53,759
Speaker 1: measure the energy of photons sort of on the longer wavelength.

838
00:40:53,920 --> 00:40:55,840
Speaker 1: And why would you want to know about that because

839
00:40:55,920 --> 00:40:58,279
Speaker 1: it doesn't just give you more information about what the

840
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:01,600
Speaker 1: asteroid is made out of. Yeah, because as asteroids are cold, right,

841
00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:04,600
Speaker 1: they're not hot. They don't glow from their own light.

842
00:41:04,640 --> 00:41:06,920
Speaker 1: The only time you get light from an asteroid is

843
00:41:06,960 --> 00:41:09,560
Speaker 1: when the sun shines on it, and so it's always

844
00:41:09,560 --> 00:41:12,320
Speaker 1: reflected light. Another way you can study these objects is

845
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:15,680
Speaker 1: from their own very small amount of heat. Remember that

846
00:41:15,760 --> 00:41:18,960
Speaker 1: everything in the universe does actually give off light, just

847
00:41:19,120 --> 00:41:21,719
Speaker 1: maybe at temperatures that you can't see with the naked eye.

848
00:41:22,239 --> 00:41:24,279
Speaker 1: So like the Sun glows at a certain wavelength in

849
00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:27,760
Speaker 1: the visible because it's super duper hot. The Earth also glows.

850
00:41:28,040 --> 00:41:30,319
Speaker 1: If you look to the Earth in the infrared, you

851
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:33,640
Speaker 1: would see it emitting photons just like you glow, which

852
00:41:33,719 --> 00:41:36,400
Speaker 1: is why when the predator comes to Earth to hunt humans,

853
00:41:36,640 --> 00:41:38,960
Speaker 1: it can use its infrared vision to see you, right

854
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:41,879
Speaker 1: because of your body heat, and so asteroids also glow,

855
00:41:41,920 --> 00:41:44,879
Speaker 1: but they tend to glow in the infrared. This is why,

856
00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:47,160
Speaker 1: like the James Web Telescope is gonna be really cool

857
00:41:47,200 --> 00:41:50,920
Speaker 1: at discovering exoplanets and planetary disks that are forming in

858
00:41:50,960 --> 00:41:53,520
Speaker 1: the same way. Using infrared helps you look at these

859
00:41:53,560 --> 00:41:57,160
Speaker 1: asteroids in their own native light that they are giving off. Okay,

860
00:41:57,200 --> 00:42:00,160
Speaker 1: and so then you mentioned earlier that asteroids there's what

861
00:42:00,320 --> 00:42:02,719
Speaker 1: C type, D type and P type asteroids. So the

862
00:42:03,040 --> 00:42:05,759
Speaker 1: way that they glow can tell you how to can

863
00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:09,200
Speaker 1: help you differentiate between them, Is that right? That's right.

864
00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:11,359
Speaker 1: And most of the asteroids that we've had a chance

865
00:42:11,400 --> 00:42:13,640
Speaker 1: to study in depth are the C type, the ones

866
00:42:13,680 --> 00:42:15,920
Speaker 1: that are rich in carbon, and most of the meteorites

867
00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:18,600
Speaker 1: that have landed on Earth are these C type. But

868
00:42:18,640 --> 00:42:21,960
Speaker 1: there are other types of asteroids, and these other ones

869
00:42:22,000 --> 00:42:24,719
Speaker 1: tend to have different colors. Some of these the D

870
00:42:24,880 --> 00:42:27,839
Speaker 1: type and the P type, these are much redder, which

871
00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:31,080
Speaker 1: means that maybe they have like organic and volatile elements

872
00:42:31,080 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 1: in them. And nobody's ever visited a D type or

873
00:42:33,719 --> 00:42:36,760
Speaker 1: P type asteroid or gone up close. So by looking

874
00:42:36,800 --> 00:42:39,000
Speaker 1: at the sort of light that's reflected from it, we

875
00:42:39,040 --> 00:42:41,279
Speaker 1: can tell, oh, look, it has more carbon, or has

876
00:42:41,360 --> 00:42:44,520
Speaker 1: less carbon, or it has more of this crazy element

877
00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:47,200
Speaker 1: in it. Because remember the things absorbed light and reflect

878
00:42:47,280 --> 00:42:51,080
Speaker 1: light based on their internal chemical composition. The reason the

879
00:42:51,120 --> 00:42:54,400
Speaker 1: plant is green is because it has chemicals inside of

880
00:42:54,440 --> 00:42:57,880
Speaker 1: it which tend to reflect green light, and that tells

881
00:42:57,880 --> 00:42:59,640
Speaker 1: you about something that's going on inside. It tells you

882
00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 1: about the energy levels of the electrons in those chemicals.

883
00:43:03,200 --> 00:43:05,279
Speaker 1: So by looking at the different energy of the light

884
00:43:05,320 --> 00:43:06,920
Speaker 1: that comes off of these things, you can get a

885
00:43:06,920 --> 00:43:09,880
Speaker 1: sense for what's inside without even digging into it, right,

886
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:12,560
Speaker 1: without like taking a sample and analyzing it in the lab.

887
00:43:12,760 --> 00:43:14,680
Speaker 1: And so like when we say that an asteroid is

888
00:43:14,800 --> 00:43:17,120
Speaker 1: C type or D type or P type, is it

889
00:43:17,200 --> 00:43:21,359
Speaker 1: actually like, you know, C type but also twenty five

890
00:43:21,400 --> 00:43:24,280
Speaker 1: percent D type is in there? Or are they really

891
00:43:24,360 --> 00:43:30,120
Speaker 1: like pretty homogeneous? They're definitely homogeneous. And in typical astronomy fashion,

892
00:43:30,239 --> 00:43:33,440
Speaker 1: we have these categories which are blurry right, And really

893
00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:36,120
Speaker 1: these are about what we see. So we call it

894
00:43:36,200 --> 00:43:37,880
Speaker 1: C type because it looks a certain way, and we

895
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:39,879
Speaker 1: call it D type because it looks a different way,

896
00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:43,200
Speaker 1: and we suspect that probably means something else is going

897
00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:45,719
Speaker 1: on underneath, and there are something are the fuzzy like, hm,

898
00:43:45,800 --> 00:43:48,160
Speaker 1: it's kind of red, what's this one? And so this

899
00:43:48,239 --> 00:43:51,239
Speaker 1: is just like our categorization just from studying these things

900
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:53,560
Speaker 1: through telescopes. And what we need to do is go

901
00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:55,279
Speaker 1: up there and visit them and get a much more

902
00:43:55,360 --> 00:43:59,000
Speaker 1: detailed understanding and probably try to overthrow this whole hierarchy

903
00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:00,839
Speaker 1: of C type and D n P type and get

904
00:44:00,840 --> 00:44:03,520
Speaker 1: a better understanding for where these guys came from and

905
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 1: what's been going on with them. And it is Lucy

906
00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:07,560
Speaker 1: going to be visiting at least one of each type.

907
00:44:07,600 --> 00:44:10,080
Speaker 1: Because Lucy is going to be visiting so many asteroids,

908
00:44:10,080 --> 00:44:12,000
Speaker 1: she will get to observe some D types and some

909
00:44:12,080 --> 00:44:14,080
Speaker 1: T types and some M types. Yeah. One of the

910
00:44:14,160 --> 00:44:16,480
Speaker 1: really fun things I think is that Lucy is going

911
00:44:16,520 --> 00:44:18,920
Speaker 1: to be taking these really close up pictures of the

912
00:44:18,960 --> 00:44:21,960
Speaker 1: surface of these asteroids to try to count the number

913
00:44:22,040 --> 00:44:25,000
Speaker 1: of craters. They have this high resolution but black and

914
00:44:25,040 --> 00:44:27,479
Speaker 1: white camera that's gonna like try to count the number

915
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:29,359
Speaker 1: of craters on the surface of these things to get

916
00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:31,759
Speaker 1: a sense for like how much impacts have there been,

917
00:44:32,160 --> 00:44:34,880
Speaker 1: what's going on out here? You know, are these things

918
00:44:34,960 --> 00:44:37,600
Speaker 1: mostly just frozen from the early Solar system or has

919
00:44:37,600 --> 00:44:39,919
Speaker 1: it a bit a lot of activity? Interesting that should

920
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:42,480
Speaker 1: be I can't wait to see the photos. Sometimes I wonder,

921
00:44:42,520 --> 00:44:44,840
Speaker 1: like our photos mostly just for like the general public,

922
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:46,839
Speaker 1: so that you can convince them the money was spent well,

923
00:44:46,880 --> 00:44:48,960
Speaker 1: because we really like pictures. But it seems like no,

924
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:51,400
Speaker 1: these will be helpful photos. They certainly will. And we

925
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:53,600
Speaker 1: think also that what's going on in the surface of

926
00:44:53,600 --> 00:44:56,000
Speaker 1: these things and like how much they've been cracked, how

927
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:58,680
Speaker 1: much you can see inside of them from collisions, and

928
00:44:58,719 --> 00:45:01,240
Speaker 1: how much is going on on them will help answer

929
00:45:01,280 --> 00:45:03,360
Speaker 1: some of these questions about what happened in the early

930
00:45:03,360 --> 00:45:06,720
Speaker 1: Solar system, Like was there some big event five million

931
00:45:06,800 --> 00:45:09,759
Speaker 1: years after the Solar system was formed when Jupiter got

932
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:12,600
Speaker 1: its new location and scattered everything and thinks has been

933
00:45:12,640 --> 00:45:15,360
Speaker 1: mostly frozen since then? Or have there been lots of

934
00:45:15,440 --> 00:45:17,640
Speaker 1: period of activity things we might not even be aware

935
00:45:17,640 --> 00:45:19,799
Speaker 1: of that scrambled all of these things and bang them

936
00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:22,040
Speaker 1: into each other. Fairly recently. So it's sort of like

937
00:45:22,080 --> 00:45:24,600
Speaker 1: if you dig up fossils and you discover something fairly

938
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:27,280
Speaker 1: modern that tells you like the layers have been mixed

939
00:45:27,360 --> 00:45:29,279
Speaker 1: or something. So just digging in up there, we'll tell

940
00:45:29,360 --> 00:45:31,640
Speaker 1: us something about the history of the Solar System. It's

941
00:45:31,640 --> 00:45:33,480
Speaker 1: amazing to me that you can get so much information

942
00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:38,399
Speaker 1: just from photos and photons. Yeah, like this Patrick Clus pair,

943
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:42,520
Speaker 1: they're super excited to understand, like are these surfaces very smooth?

944
00:45:42,800 --> 00:45:45,040
Speaker 1: Are they totally beat up? You know. Answers to these

945
00:45:45,120 --> 00:45:48,160
Speaker 1: questions will give scientists insight into like the relative age

946
00:45:48,200 --> 00:45:50,720
Speaker 1: of the Trojan asteroids and the conditions of the early

947
00:45:50,760 --> 00:45:53,160
Speaker 1: Solar System. It's going to be really fascinating. And right

948
00:45:53,200 --> 00:45:55,400
Speaker 1: now it's just a lot of questions. People of all

949
00:45:55,440 --> 00:45:58,240
Speaker 1: these different theories about how the Solar System might have formed,

950
00:45:58,400 --> 00:46:00,560
Speaker 1: and they make very different predictions or like what the

951
00:46:00,560 --> 00:46:03,160
Speaker 1: asteroids should look like. But because we just don't know,

952
00:46:03,280 --> 00:46:05,799
Speaker 1: we can't tell your theory is crazy, it doesn't match

953
00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:08,480
Speaker 1: the data because we don't have the data. And we're

954
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:11,719
Speaker 1: always in this cycle in physics when the theorists are

955
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:14,520
Speaker 1: going crazy with their ideas because we just haven't made

956
00:46:14,520 --> 00:46:17,120
Speaker 1: the measurements to tell them yes or know about something.

957
00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:19,080
Speaker 1: And then we finally go out there and we see something.

958
00:46:19,120 --> 00:46:22,440
Speaker 1: We get to roll out of their ideas and they're like,

959
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:24,680
Speaker 1: oh wait, but you didn't measure this, did you. Okay,

960
00:46:24,680 --> 00:46:27,120
Speaker 1: so now we can go crazy being creative about things

961
00:46:27,200 --> 00:46:30,000
Speaker 1: you haven't measured. It's like always this game with the gaps.

962
00:46:30,239 --> 00:46:33,080
Speaker 1: You go through these bottlenecks. Then the idea is proliferate

963
00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:36,480
Speaker 1: again exactly, and we hope that there will be surprises

964
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:40,000
Speaker 1: out there. Lucy's gonna look for like rings and satellites

965
00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:43,640
Speaker 1: of these asteroids, Like the asteroids themselves might have their

966
00:46:43,680 --> 00:46:46,800
Speaker 1: own like a little many moons or many rings around

967
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:51,600
Speaker 1: them that would be so cute. Today, there's one that

968
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:55,160
Speaker 1: might be pronounced Euributes that they think has a satellite

969
00:46:55,200 --> 00:46:58,719
Speaker 1: around it. This just one kilometer in size, and so

970
00:46:58,760 --> 00:47:00,520
Speaker 1: when they go visit it, they might get to see

971
00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:05,600
Speaker 1: its own little baby. Oh, that would be wonderful. It

972
00:47:05,640 --> 00:47:07,279
Speaker 1: would be a lot of fun. And you know, though,

973
00:47:07,280 --> 00:47:09,840
Speaker 1: we're gonna learn a lot about these asteroids. We're gonna

974
00:47:09,960 --> 00:47:12,680
Speaker 1: map the surfaces, we're gonna take these color pictures. We're

975
00:47:12,680 --> 00:47:15,319
Speaker 1: going to determine the masses and the densities. We're going

976
00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:18,080
Speaker 1: to study all the craters. Another thing we might do

977
00:47:18,400 --> 00:47:23,120
Speaker 1: is teach future humans something about us. You mentioned Voyager

978
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 1: and they went out into interstellar space. How are we

979
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:29,640
Speaker 1: going to teach anyone stuff about us if it's staying here. Well,

980
00:47:29,719 --> 00:47:32,120
Speaker 1: it's just gonna hang out in the Solar System, right,

981
00:47:32,120 --> 00:47:34,200
Speaker 1: It's not going to like leave the Solar System or

982
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:37,080
Speaker 1: get like crashed into some planetary body. It's just gonna

983
00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:40,959
Speaker 1: keep orbiting L four and L five basically forever. And

984
00:47:41,080 --> 00:47:44,440
Speaker 1: so they put on it a golden plaque. The golden

985
00:47:44,440 --> 00:47:46,880
Speaker 1: plaque contains its launch day, at the positions of the

986
00:47:46,920 --> 00:47:50,400
Speaker 1: planets at the launch time, what the continents on Earth

987
00:47:50,520 --> 00:47:52,799
Speaker 1: look like when we launched, and then a bunch of

988
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:56,319
Speaker 1: like crazy cultural snippets from you know, what's going on

989
00:47:56,320 --> 00:47:58,719
Speaker 1: on Earth right now. There's like Beach by Martin Luther

990
00:47:58,840 --> 00:48:02,440
Speaker 1: King Jr. Some We're from Carl Sagan, songs from the Beatles,

991
00:48:02,560 --> 00:48:05,719
Speaker 1: of course. And the idea is, you know, maybe in

992
00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:09,399
Speaker 1: a thousand years some humans will find this and they'll

993
00:48:09,400 --> 00:48:11,640
Speaker 1: be like, oh, look at this crazy relic from the

994
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:15,200
Speaker 1: early days, and it might be our own time capsule

995
00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:19,480
Speaker 1: of what's going on right now. To inform future archaeologists

996
00:48:19,560 --> 00:48:23,560
Speaker 1: about our civilization. Okay, so Voyager, we put stuff on

997
00:48:23,600 --> 00:48:26,480
Speaker 1: there so that non humans could learn about us, But

998
00:48:26,520 --> 00:48:28,359
Speaker 1: this is so that humans of the future can learn

999
00:48:28,400 --> 00:48:30,880
Speaker 1: about us. What an awesome responsibility to be one of

1000
00:48:30,880 --> 00:48:36,000
Speaker 1: the people deciding what goes on that golden plaque. I know,

1001
00:48:36,280 --> 00:48:38,760
Speaker 1: and it might be humans. It might be trans humans

1002
00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:41,239
Speaker 1: because humans have transformed by so much. It might be

1003
00:48:41,280 --> 00:48:43,560
Speaker 1: our own ai that have you wiped us out and

1004
00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:46,600
Speaker 1: then find this monument to ourselves. Oh hey, it might

1005
00:48:46,640 --> 00:48:49,520
Speaker 1: be aliens coming to the solar system long after we

1006
00:48:49,600 --> 00:48:53,000
Speaker 1: have eradicated ourselves and finding this monument we built it

1007
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:58,240
Speaker 1: to ourselves. You had to end it on like humans dying,

1008
00:48:58,360 --> 00:49:01,640
Speaker 1: didn't you? Of course, to get back to that another

1009
00:49:01,719 --> 00:49:04,879
Speaker 1: episode my kids can't listen to. But you know, let's

1010
00:49:04,960 --> 00:49:07,120
Speaker 1: end on a positive note. There's so much to learn

1011
00:49:07,160 --> 00:49:08,960
Speaker 1: about the history of our solar system. As you were

1012
00:49:09,000 --> 00:49:12,239
Speaker 1: asking earlier, you know what discoveries have left to be made. Well,

1013
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:15,839
Speaker 1: this just highlights how little we have explored even our

1014
00:49:15,880 --> 00:49:18,920
Speaker 1: own solar system. We've done our best by using telescopes

1015
00:49:18,960 --> 00:49:20,960
Speaker 1: and looking through them to try to understand what's going on.

1016
00:49:21,080 --> 00:49:22,799
Speaker 1: But there's a real limit to what you can do

1017
00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:26,000
Speaker 1: without actually going there. So I'm really excited about this

1018
00:49:26,080 --> 00:49:28,839
Speaker 1: Lucy mission going out there and taking these pictures and

1019
00:49:28,880 --> 00:49:32,040
Speaker 1: really examining these solar system fossils to give us a

1020
00:49:32,080 --> 00:49:34,839
Speaker 1: clue about the history and the story of our own

1021
00:49:34,880 --> 00:49:37,080
Speaker 1: solar system. And how exciting to have something to look

1022
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:39,440
Speaker 1: forward to you for the next decade plus as the

1023
00:49:39,520 --> 00:49:42,279
Speaker 1: data come in. That's right, but it's going to be

1024
00:49:42,320 --> 00:49:44,600
Speaker 1: about as slow as like a James Cameron project. You know,

1025
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:46,640
Speaker 1: the data is just going to drip in like every

1026
00:49:46,680 --> 00:49:49,239
Speaker 1: five years or so. But you know whom I discovered

1027
00:49:49,280 --> 00:49:53,279
Speaker 1: something new, something revolutionary. Maybe we'll find a relic from

1028
00:49:53,320 --> 00:49:56,520
Speaker 1: some other alien civilization that left us an easter egg

1029
00:49:56,640 --> 00:50:00,480
Speaker 1: in Trojan Camp. We can hope, we can hope. All right. Well,

1030
00:50:00,480 --> 00:50:02,920
Speaker 1: thank you everybody for joining us on this mission to

1031
00:50:03,160 --> 00:50:05,880
Speaker 1: understand the early Solar system and what the Lucy Mission

1032
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:07,920
Speaker 1: will teach us about it. And thank you very much

1033
00:50:07,960 --> 00:50:10,640
Speaker 1: Kelly for doing us on today's episode. Thanks for having me.

1034
00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:12,400
Speaker 1: I had a lot of fun as always, all right,

1035
00:50:12,480 --> 00:50:15,920
Speaker 1: and enjoy your time with your real live children. I

1036
00:50:16,040 --> 00:50:19,040
Speaker 1: will you do the same, all right. Thanks everybody for listening.

1037
00:50:19,080 --> 00:50:29,200
Speaker 1: Tune in next time, Thanks for listening, and remember that

1038
00:50:29,320 --> 00:50:32,080
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of

1039
00:50:32,160 --> 00:50:35,520
Speaker 1: I heart Radio. For more podcast for my heart Radio,

1040
00:50:35,680 --> 00:50:39,240
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

1041
00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:46,799
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah.