Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here lurking around like a weirdo,
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. That's right Interstellar dish. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And Chuck I was like, surely we've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure we have, maybe in the Galaxy episode
Speaker 1: or I think we did. It was the Black Holes. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense. Actually, um, but we've
Speaker 1: never done when I double checked, we've never done one
Speaker 1: on super Novay. That's a E on the end. That's
Speaker 1: plural um episode before and we're going to now. And
Speaker 1: I have to say, the reason we're going to know,
Speaker 1: I think for my money, is that we will be
Speaker 1: discussing probably the most interesting phenomenon in the universe. Are
Speaker 1: you think? So? That's that's my bad. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna try to sway you, persuade you if you
Speaker 1: feel differently, But that's just how I feel. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's interesting timing because of the the new
Speaker 1: images coming back from the James web Space telescope kind
Speaker 1: of like right now, I mean it looks like this thing,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a it's a thousand times greater than
Speaker 1: what Hubble can see. Yeah, and like Hubble is our
Speaker 1: our gen x is superstar. Yeah, and it's nothing to
Speaker 1: sneeze at. I mean, if it's produced some pretty amazing pictures,
Speaker 1: you know, it's fine, but it's nothing compared to the
Speaker 1: James Web. And what they're saying is that this thing
Speaker 1: is potentially um going to be able to see through
Speaker 1: space dust and you know, they're gonna be doing something
Speaker 1: that we uh can often not do, which is c supernovay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a big deal because you know, space dust
Speaker 1: can really the obscure supernova, which we'll talk about. But yeah,
Speaker 1: have you seen that. I'm sure you've seen that. That
Speaker 1: first picture they released, the Star Child amazing, Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it's almost like it looks
Speaker 1: like it was put together by a poorly trained graphic
Speaker 1: designer who like really overdid it, you know, tried to
Speaker 1: fit everything into one picture. But it just like really
Speaker 1: goes to show you how not so full the universe is.
Speaker 1: And yet imagine how spread out all that stuff is.
Speaker 1: The distance between those things. Oh yeah, unbelievable. Uh, and
Speaker 1: you know the core no uh no pun intended, But
Speaker 1: the core of this research comes from our old, our
Speaker 1: old website that we used to work for, how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com and uh one of the the most
Speaker 1: convoluted explanations of anything I've ever seen in my life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna, we're gonna pare it down to size, we're
Speaker 1: gonna tame it. Okay, it's um And hey, listen, I
Speaker 1: don't want to pick on somebody, but it almost seemed
Speaker 1: like the goal was to see how much they could
Speaker 1: confuse somebody about supernovaea clearly explain what it what's going
Speaker 1: on there. So our goal is to wind our way
Speaker 1: through this and lean into kids science websites like I
Speaker 1: always do. Okay, Yeah, and they work big time, especially
Speaker 1: for this kind of thing, because um, to me, one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I find talking about supernova so attractive
Speaker 1: is that it's really understandable when you kind of like
Speaker 1: dig into it. But when you realize, like, oh I
Speaker 1: get this stuff. You you you come to realize that,
Speaker 1: like you understand like the most superficial understanding of of
Speaker 1: what's actually going on, and it's still like generally the
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts, the principle of it, but there's so
Speaker 1: much more detail that people you know, um, dedicate their
Speaker 1: entire careers to studying these things, and we're just gonna
Speaker 1: go over it in less than an hour. How about that?
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and if you uh, I say, far less
Speaker 1: than an hour. But if you if you look at
Speaker 1: what you're trying to understand, and even if you can understand,
Speaker 1: like the tiniest concepts which you're also understanding, are the
Speaker 1: tiniest building blocks of everything. Basically, because out of supernova
Speaker 1: are born, are are heavy elements, and without heavy elements,
Speaker 1: there is no life on Earth. Yeah. So like that
Speaker 1: saying that we're all made of star dust, it feels
Speaker 1: like a Sagan saying, Um, that's very true, and that
Speaker 1: star dust comes in large part from supernovae. Um. Also
Speaker 1: Steven stills it, Oh, yeah, you're right, but I think
Speaker 1: he might have been smoking dubes with Carl Sagan at
Speaker 1: the time. Dubes, Well that's what they called their words,
Speaker 1: not mine, just to enshrine our generation next nous of
Speaker 1: this whole thing. That's right. I didn't say split at least, right,
Speaker 1: that would be genets. I guess dubes would be more boomer, right,
Speaker 1: exactly so. So, but that's a I mean, that's a
Speaker 1: really accurate statement, right, everything planets are made from it,
Speaker 1: Other stars are made from it. Um, anything alive on
Speaker 1: the planet in Earth, as far as we know, uh,
Speaker 1: is made of that same stuff that gets ejected from
Speaker 1: stars during supernovae. And if you if you study this,
Speaker 1: what we're talking about really is the end stage of
Speaker 1: the life cycle of a particular star. But if you
Speaker 1: follow it back beyond that that endpoint and watch that
Speaker 1: star dust and like kind of track it and trace it,
Speaker 1: you'll see that it goes to onto four more stars.
Speaker 1: So really what we're looking at is a part of
Speaker 1: a cycle that very much resembles like the carbon cycle
Speaker 1: here on Earth, a closed system that is self reinforcing
Speaker 1: and self sustaining that goes over really really long periods
Speaker 1: of time. But really it just keeps regenerating itself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the other cool thing about this web telescope is
Speaker 1: they're seeing already seeing just baby star factories out there. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's really cool stuff. I guess before we get into
Speaker 1: what is actually happening at the end life of a star,
Speaker 1: we should talk a little bit probably about just sort
Speaker 1: of how rare This is like if if you don't
Speaker 1: know anything about supernova you may think that, um, this
Speaker 1: kind of thing is happening all the time in the
Speaker 1: Milky Way galaxy and we may not see it because
Speaker 1: of space dust and stuff. But it is in fact
Speaker 1: happening all over the place all the time, all over
Speaker 1: many many galaxies. But in the Milky Way galaxy it
Speaker 1: happens about every fifty years or so give or take. Uh.
Speaker 1: They track about, you know, to every hundred years, and
Speaker 1: by track, like I said, sometimes they don't see them.
Speaker 1: And up until the mid two thousand's they thought that
Speaker 1: the last one in the Milky Way was in the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds. And then they realize, hey, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: we've been following other things like this, this debris, this
Speaker 1: interstellar debris, and that's actually the remnants of a supernova
Speaker 1: just about a hundred and forty years old. We just
Speaker 1: didn't know that's what it was exactly until later. The
Speaker 1: one that they thought was the last one from the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds was described by Johann Kepler, who spotted it,
Speaker 1: and it's now called s N sixty sixteen O four
Speaker 1: supernova sixteen O four because that's when it happened um
Speaker 1: and that was discovered by Kepler because it was visible
Speaker 1: to the to the naked eye. And there have only
Speaker 1: been five recorded supernova in the last millennia that were
Speaker 1: visible to the naked eye UM one in ten oh six,
Speaker 1: one in ten fifty four, one one one in fifteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, and then Kepler's in sixteen o four. So
Speaker 1: the very ironic thing is that since we invented telescopes,
Speaker 1: there hasn't been a supernova that was visible to the
Speaker 1: naked eye, which is kind of funny. Yeah, but you
Speaker 1: can't see them with uh telescope that you or I
Speaker 1: could own. UM. In fact, the high powered telescope sometimes
Speaker 1: they're so sensitive to this, you know, as you'll see
Speaker 1: the supernova um emit a super bright light as you
Speaker 1: would imagine when a star collapses and explodes upon itself.
Speaker 1: And sometimes those telescopes, in fact, they're almost always overwhelmed
Speaker 1: and not very useful for those purposes. So UH, they
Speaker 1: count on regular people in their telescopes sometimes to see
Speaker 1: these in neighboring galaxies, like that ten year old girl
Speaker 1: inven that found one two and forty million light years
Speaker 1: away uh in January. It's it's it's cool that they
Speaker 1: actually uh kind of depend on amateur astronomers to find
Speaker 1: these things to call them in to the the AI. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that i AU Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams. Sounds like
Speaker 1: something Dan Ackroyd would spit out in an infomercial, right,
Speaker 1: and they only accept telegrams they that's right, get the
Speaker 1: wire to them. Are you gonna tell me to stop again?
Speaker 1: But you know, you can submit that and they will
Speaker 1: take a look and they will use their uh spectrometers
Speaker 1: to kind of see what radiation is being given off,
Speaker 1: and then they can tell a lot about what's going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: big time. Um. And the reason that they there's a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons they rely on those backyard astronomers. One,
Speaker 1: amateur astronomers are no joke. They know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: They also have plenty of very well documented star charts,
Speaker 1: so they're exactly the kind of people who number one
Speaker 1: are looking up at the skies in the first place.
Speaker 1: And then number two are familiar enough with what the
Speaker 1: sky is supposed to look like that they would actually
Speaker 1: notice a new star. So it actually is a thing
Speaker 1: that amateur astronomers are relied on by professional astronomers. And
Speaker 1: the coolest thing about this too is, as we'll see,
Speaker 1: like a supernova, when it shows up, it can it
Speaker 1: can be a new star that shines for a day,
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, a few months, usually not much
Speaker 1: longer than that, and then it just goes away again.
Speaker 1: And what's really neat about this is what you're seeing
Speaker 1: is an event that happened million years ago and finally
Speaker 1: that light that's uh, you know, five million light years
Speaker 1: away from us, that were it originated is finally reaching us.
Speaker 1: I just find that so colossally awesome, and I know
Speaker 1: that applies to every bit of starlight and even sunshine.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's instantaneous. It takes you know, light
Speaker 1: years to to reach us, where it has to travel
Speaker 1: across the light years to reach us. But for some reason,
Speaker 1: the idea that that that that's the basis of a
Speaker 1: supernova is really neat to me. Yeah. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the very first one on record was about two thousand
Speaker 1: years ago in China. There were astronomers there who um,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden saw a new light like you
Speaker 1: would today, and they started following it and making notes
Speaker 1: and chronicling the you know what, this thing was doing
Speaker 1: there and then I think it took about eight months
Speaker 1: in that case, uh, which is pretty long, so maybe
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe they were off or something. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is US two thousand years ago. No, I mean
Speaker 1: they were the Chinese astronomers of the stage were pretty
Speaker 1: they were pretty sharp, so they would have they would
Speaker 1: have probably been pretty accurate. Well, at any rate, it disappeared,
Speaker 1: and they quite didn't quite understand like what was going
Speaker 1: right at the time, right, but they did write it
Speaker 1: down in a book a couple of centuries later called
Speaker 1: them the Book of the Later han As in the
Speaker 1: Han dynasty. And I guess at some point somebody came
Speaker 1: across this and realized that what they were describing was
Speaker 1: a supernova. And what's even more mind blowing about it
Speaker 1: is we've reached the point where, using things like spectrographs
Speaker 1: and and other um like incredibly sensitive telescopes, we can
Speaker 1: um look at the remnants and see what they're made of,
Speaker 1: how hot they are, how fast they're traveling, and basically
Speaker 1: reverse engineer their origin to determine how old something is.
Speaker 1: And they've actually found that supernova supernova six that was
Speaker 1: originally described in the by the Han astronomers. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we'll get to why it's useful to chart this stuff anyway,
Speaker 1: because it's not I mean, you might think, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a dead or dying and dead star like who cares.
Speaker 1: But it can be very useful as far as mapping
Speaker 1: the universe and uh, finding out what how things behave
Speaker 1: in neighboring galaxies. And it's all super useful. And of
Speaker 1: course we've already talked about the elemental factor, which is
Speaker 1: why we're here. That's right, it's not us, right exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think the last one that was visible not
Speaker 1: to the naked I think you had to use binoculars
Speaker 1: was u S. And um, that one was outside of
Speaker 1: our galaxy. It was technically it came from the Large
Speaker 1: Magillianic Cloud, which is a dwarf satellite galaxy to the
Speaker 1: Milky Way. So again it wasn't it wasn't one of
Speaker 1: those fifty that happened every year in the Milky Way.
Speaker 1: It was outside of it, but you could kind of
Speaker 1: see it. And it was a big deal because by
Speaker 1: about that time, we were starting to get just enough
Speaker 1: at it's to like really start to make hay out
Speaker 1: of the data that we were getting from it, so
Speaker 1: it was pretty cool. But wasn't that one a two banger?
Speaker 1: Didn't that one rear? It said again in um so
Speaker 1: what they figured out and this will make more sense
Speaker 1: once we explain with how like an actual supernova works.
Speaker 1: But the the um initial, the secondary explosion, like you said,
Speaker 1: the double banger, I think that's actually the technical term.
Speaker 1: The second explosion caught up with the material from the
Speaker 1: first explosion and interacted released a ton of energy and
Speaker 1: it actually brightened. So yeah, just from tracking the stuff,
Speaker 1: I think they were like, we didn't know that could
Speaker 1: do that, and just from watching s they learned something new. Yeah,
Speaker 1: twenty four years later, which is really interesting. Yeah, exactly
Speaker 1: should we take a break? Uh? Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: All right, you seem hesitant, Well, I do want to
Speaker 1: throw him one more thing. Since we're talking about these
Speaker 1: things and seeing him with the naked eye. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons why you can see him with the naked
Speaker 1: eyes because these things are so bright. Some of them
Speaker 1: outshine entire galaxies for the time that they're shining, and
Speaker 1: they they'd be brighter than the full moon here on
Speaker 1: Earth and so bright that you could actually see them
Speaker 1: during full daylight too, So that's pretty bright. That's quite bright. Okay,
Speaker 1: now I'm ready, Chuck, all right, we're gonna take a break.
Speaker 1: We're gonna come back. We're gonna talk about the types
Speaker 1: of two types of supernova right after this and try
Speaker 1: and make some sense out all of this stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you want to break down the types of supernova,
Speaker 1: you don't have to work very hard because there are
Speaker 1: two types, uh, and then there are some sub types
Speaker 1: will get into. But these were first classified by an
Speaker 1: astronomy name Rudolph Minkowski. And like we said, they use
Speaker 1: spectrographs to get a good picture of what is going
Speaker 1: on inside of a burning star because they can look
Speaker 1: at their their color lines, their absorption lines. And if
Speaker 1: we start at the beginning, we have type one supernova
Speaker 1: that have absorption lines that indicate that they don't have hydrogen,
Speaker 1: and they are super super bright, but for a very
Speaker 1: short amount of time Type one, right, and then type
Speaker 1: two do have hydrogen full stop. That's right. But then
Speaker 1: they started this is m Minkowski was working in the forties,
Speaker 1: like you said. So as time went by and we
Speaker 1: got better and better at observing the universe, by the eighties.
Speaker 1: They're like, we could subdivide these even further. So you've
Speaker 1: got the type one A, Type one B, Type one C,
Speaker 1: and then type two and Type one A is totally
Speaker 1: its own animal we'll talk about in a second. But
Speaker 1: Type one B, one C and Type two they generally
Speaker 1: undergo the same colossal kind of explosion. But the big
Speaker 1: differences they have like different kinds of UM elements in
Speaker 1: them or they don't UM. That's really the only different
Speaker 1: difference that I can see, and it really doesn't make
Speaker 1: much difference for what we're going to talk about, right.
Speaker 1: Uh So, the one I was mentioning when I said
Speaker 1: type one are very bright for very short amount of time,
Speaker 1: it's actually one A more specifically, and they happen basically
Speaker 1: when a white dwarf star orbits a bigger star, it's
Speaker 1: got to be orbiting another star, because what it's gonna
Speaker 1: do is suck matter off of that big star until
Speaker 1: it gets to basically boom size exactly. And they actually
Speaker 1: have figured out, well I should say Dr Chandra scar
Speaker 1: figured it out, um the the exact amount and moment
Speaker 1: where the mass and the matter that it sucked off
Speaker 1: of the other star reaches that boom level, and it's
Speaker 1: called the Chandra Scar limit, and it equals basically one
Speaker 1: point four solar masses. And it will probably surprise no
Speaker 1: one that a solar mass is a mass equal to
Speaker 1: our Sun, and a white dwarf might start out as
Speaker 1: less than that. But once it sucks enough matter off
Speaker 1: of its twin star in that binary system, it will
Speaker 1: hit that limit, and all of a sudden, a thermonuclear
Speaker 1: reaction happens, a chain reaction exactly like the kind that
Speaker 1: happens in a thermonuclear bomb um and that runaway chain
Speaker 1: reaction actually blows the star to smithereens as you assume
Speaker 1: Indy Sam would put it. Uh, that's right, And you know,
Speaker 1: let me jump back a set because I think it's
Speaker 1: helps to understand kind of what's going on at the
Speaker 1: core of these stars anyway. Um, if you have a
Speaker 1: massive star, it is burning just huge, huge amounts of
Speaker 1: that nuclear fuel at the core, and that produces a
Speaker 1: ton of energy and obviously it is going to be
Speaker 1: really really hot. U. The same kind of thing like
Speaker 1: when we talked about our nuclear fusion uh for nuclear
Speaker 1: power and stuff like that, The same kind of thing
Speaker 1: is going on. But that's gonna generate a ton of pressure,
Speaker 1: and a star is basically a balancing act. You have
Speaker 1: two forces that are kind of keeping one another in
Speaker 1: check because the star always has this gravity that's trying
Speaker 1: to squeeze it down to the smallest, you know, possible size.
Speaker 1: But then you have this nuclear reaction going on, creating
Speaker 1: all this pressure going out and it's that outward push
Speaker 1: kind of battling against the inward squeeze of gravity that
Speaker 1: keeps a star from that keeps this from happening all
Speaker 1: the time. Uh. And when it finally does run out
Speaker 1: of that fuel, which we'll talk about kind of how
Speaker 1: that happens, it's gonna cool off, and that causes that
Speaker 1: pressure to drop, gravity winds, and then you've got your
Speaker 1: big bang, not the big bang, but a big bang,
Speaker 1: right And that's that's the type two supernova that you
Speaker 1: talked about. But both stars type one A and type
Speaker 1: two they will they they burn um hydrogen and turn
Speaker 1: it into healing. The same process goes. It's just what
Speaker 1: happens after they run out of fuel is the big
Speaker 1: difference between them, right? Well, yeah, but is the running
Speaker 1: out of fuel basically is it working its way through
Speaker 1: the elemental chart, right, creating all these different elements until
Speaker 1: it gets to iron and nickel. Yeah, So so let's
Speaker 1: talk about that stars burn hydrogen. They as they burn hydrogen,
Speaker 1: it fuses into helium. Heliums have heavier, so it actually
Speaker 1: starts to settle more towards the core because of that
Speaker 1: um that gravity, because gravity can exert a stronger force
Speaker 1: and something with more mass, and helium has more mass
Speaker 1: than than hydrogen, So the hydrogen kind of stays in
Speaker 1: the outer layers of the star and the core is
Speaker 1: made up of helium. Well, as that hydrogen starts to
Speaker 1: wear out, the core starts burning off the helium, like
Speaker 1: using that to keep itself going as fuel, and then
Speaker 1: eventually it starts fusing it into heavier and heavier elements
Speaker 1: like you were saying. And it's all fine, it's all good.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's getting a little panicky. The stars like
Speaker 1: got that cartoon sweat jumping off its forehead. But it's
Speaker 1: still producing more energy than it's using, so it can
Speaker 1: keep that that gravity at bay, although it's getting harder
Speaker 1: and harder. Right, And then, like you said, once it
Speaker 1: starts producing iron, it reaches the point where there's a
Speaker 1: net energy loss because it takes more energy to combine
Speaker 1: uh molecules into iron than the energy that's released from
Speaker 1: that process. And that, my friend, is where the star
Speaker 1: starts to go boom. Yeah. And here's the part I
Speaker 1: don't quite get. Maybe you can help me, is I
Speaker 1: know that's how a type two works. But does a
Speaker 1: Type one A do the same thing? But just by
Speaker 1: sucking in matter from its neighbor? No, no, no, Type
Speaker 1: one A blows up like a nuclear bomb. Okay, I
Speaker 1: got you. It just sets off that chain reaction and
Speaker 1: it just blows itself up, all right. The other way
Speaker 1: that a Type one A can go out is if
Speaker 1: it has so it's got to reach that Chandra Scar
Speaker 1: limit of one point four solar masses, and then that
Speaker 1: chain reaction happens. If that star never reaches that limit, um,
Speaker 1: but it runs out of fuel, it'll go from a
Speaker 1: white dwarf to a black dwarf. And a black dwarf
Speaker 1: is basically like a star that's a campfire that you
Speaker 1: stopped adding would too, and it eventually just gets dimmer
Speaker 1: and dimmer, and then it finally goes out on its own.
Speaker 1: That's basically a black dwarf. Okay, all right, well that
Speaker 1: makes that makes sense then, because it's basically uh fusing
Speaker 1: all all of the carbon and everything like at that core,
Speaker 1: and it just it can't handle that kind of load.
Speaker 1: The type two you mean one, uh uh no, I
Speaker 1: think it just runs out of fuel and becomes a
Speaker 1: black dwarf. Or if it has enough fuel Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: it has it has enough fuel that Yes, I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's carbon or if it's hydrogen or whatever,
Speaker 1: but it has enough of whatever it needs to um
Speaker 1: set off that runaway thermonuclear chain reaction and blow itself up.
Speaker 1: I think it's carbon, Okay, so yeah, and that would
Speaker 1: make sense. Um. But it so it turns into a
Speaker 1: thermonuclear carbon bomb, a star sized version. That's what happens
Speaker 1: with the type one A the Type two. Then this
Speaker 1: is the whole reason it's different, Chuck, is the Type
Speaker 1: two star starts out as much larger, much more massive
Speaker 1: than this type UM one a star right X the sun, Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: and so it has to be at least that that
Speaker 1: size or else it's not gonna work. It'll probably turn
Speaker 1: into um the type one a kind of super ova UM.
Speaker 1: So because it's eight times the size or the mass
Speaker 1: of the Sun. It has a really strong gravitational force
Speaker 1: working on it. And then that is what really plays
Speaker 1: that major role in a type two supernova, that gravity
Speaker 1: sucking everything in towards the core, and then the denser
Speaker 1: and more massive the core is because more stuff is
Speaker 1: getting sucked into it and more and more iron is
Speaker 1: being put together. That that is what makes it implode
Speaker 1: with such force that it actually explodes with I would
Speaker 1: guess an equal amount of force. Yeah, Like it collapses
Speaker 1: in on itself and once it gets to the center,
Speaker 1: it has nowhere to go but back out right, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And there's like a lot of details to it, where
Speaker 1: like um as stuff is getting sucked into the center
Speaker 1: that it hits that core and it's traveling. Those particles
Speaker 1: are traveling so fast, like you know how um like
Speaker 1: a piece of space dust can like go right through
Speaker 1: a satellite. Okay, so that's that's this on steroids, um or,
Speaker 1: this is that on steroids. It's pulling those particles towards
Speaker 1: the core and when they hit it, they bounce off,
Speaker 1: they release a shock wave and that actually explodes. It
Speaker 1: starts exploding against itself, and then at the same time,
Speaker 1: the pressure from gravity exerted on the core is so
Speaker 1: great that those iron um atoms actually get squeezed together
Speaker 1: so tightly that the protons and electrons get confused into neutrons,
Speaker 1: and the the solar mask can go from something like
Speaker 1: you know, five thousand miles in diameter down to twelve
Speaker 1: miles in diameter. And again, this is something I don't
Speaker 1: think we pointed out yet, so I probably shouldn't say again, Chuck,
Speaker 1: all of this is happening in less than a second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the end game happens very very fast after you know,
Speaker 1: ten billion plus life basically uh, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: really turning out instead of fading away. Not corny there,
Speaker 1: but uh, if you look at a one A when
Speaker 1: that thing explodes, it's gonna create a ton of iron
Speaker 1: being blasted out because of that heat. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: very symmetrical. And they actually use that because they're so
Speaker 1: um sort of consistent and that they the one A
Speaker 1: is all explode at the same time, uh, in their
Speaker 1: death and they peak with that same brightness. They use
Speaker 1: that and it's it's called a standard candle, and it's
Speaker 1: I think it's just basically sort of like a baseline measurement, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they can use it to as a measurement against um
Speaker 1: other stuff in the neighborhood to figure out how bright
Speaker 1: those things are, what they're made of, how old they are,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Um. So yeah, that's it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't think about it, but it does make sense
Speaker 1: that since they all follow the same process at the
Speaker 1: same time. Totally. Are we due for a breaker now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we have chuck. All right, Uh, we're gonna
Speaker 1: come back. I don't even know what we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about, so that'll be very exciting for everybody. What's left? Actually,
Speaker 1: there's a lot left, which is pretty neat. So, um,
Speaker 1: we we've learned a lot from supernova and just by
Speaker 1: studying them, we start finding things out that there's like
Speaker 1: a lot of caveats to what we just said. Not
Speaker 1: everything follows the exact same process, with the exception of
Speaker 1: those Type one A that that becomes standard candles because
Speaker 1: they follow such a a specific roadmap. But the type
Speaker 1: two are a little more chaos dick um than than
Speaker 1: what we thought before. And that's evidence from a supernova
Speaker 1: that was discovered in two thousand six. That um is
Speaker 1: named s N l S O three C three B B. Right.
Speaker 1: Is that is that the one they nicknamed Champagne Supernova? Yes,
Speaker 1: because it was two thousand six. Were you into Oasis
Speaker 1: or Brit Pop at all? Yeah? I like Brit pop,
Speaker 1: but I like more eighties Brit pop, like um that
Speaker 1: whole uh like twenty four Party People era. Okay, all right, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not dogging on anything else. I'm holding my tongue,
Speaker 1: holding my tongue. No, No, I wasn't. I wasn't an
Speaker 1: Oasis fan, although there's a couple of the songs I
Speaker 1: really liked, but that was an era for me where
Speaker 1: I think I was just listening to other stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: Emily was really into that era Brit pop though she was.
Speaker 1: She she liked that stuff. And it's fine. Every time,
Speaker 1: you know, she puts on a little Brit pop mix,
Speaker 1: it's fine. What else is she listening to from the era? Uh? Uh?
Speaker 1: Who verve that Bittersweet Symphony? Yeah? I think a little
Speaker 1: bit of um early only cold Play. Uh It's it's
Speaker 1: almost like it's and it seems very uncool to even
Speaker 1: mentioned Cold Light. Now, Am I wrong? I did that?
Speaker 1: But I think those first couple of albums she liked,
Speaker 1: Uh who else? It seems like there were some other
Speaker 1: Brit pop bands I'm just not thinking about. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's plenty of others for sure. I mean, we can
Speaker 1: just talk about brit pop for the rest of the end. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: We've got to go back to Supernova and specifically this
Speaker 1: Champagne Supernova from two thousand six, right, Blur, that's another one, Okay, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Blur's great. Sure, Absolutely the Doves she liked them. I
Speaker 1: never Oh yeah, I like them too. Actually I didn't
Speaker 1: realize they were Brit pop. Yeah I think, uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: not not as Brit poppy as like Travis and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But okay, yeah, I like those Doves albums.
Speaker 1: Those were good. Yeah, they really were good. Definitely an
Speaker 1: overlook group. Alright, So they called this one the Champagne
Speaker 1: Supernova in two thousand six s n L S zero three.
Speaker 1: You already said it, but it's fun to say. But
Speaker 1: this one was h This one kind of rocked everyone's
Speaker 1: world because it was only not only it extended up
Speaker 1: to two times solar mass and it exceeded that Shandra's
Speaker 1: car limit, which was one point four previously. When we
Speaker 1: thought that was that was it like it couldn't go
Speaker 1: any higher than it turned it not to eleven but
Speaker 1: to two. Yeah, and so it not only um contradicted
Speaker 1: the then understanding of type one A supernova, it contradicted
Speaker 1: something I said not ten minutes ago. Well, and does
Speaker 1: that mean that's now just thrown out forever and like
Speaker 1: anything can happen, or is it still generally one point four?
Speaker 1: I would guess it's generally generally one point four because
Speaker 1: I don't think they made it up. I think the
Speaker 1: math suggested it. Probably just have to figure out, like
Speaker 1: how to adjust the math to include this phenomenately. And
Speaker 1: that's actually physicists love that stuff. Like the whole reason
Speaker 1: they're running the Large Hadron Collider is because they're trying
Speaker 1: to create stuff that they've never seen before so that
Speaker 1: you can figure out how it works. Um, they've reached
Speaker 1: the levels of of theory and now need like more data,
Speaker 1: and that's what they're doing. So when they come across
Speaker 1: more data like this in the field of astronomy, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure it's the exact same thing, they're like, yes,
Speaker 1: this is a total anomaly, and now we're going to
Speaker 1: have a better understanding. Once we figure out how this
Speaker 1: thing fits into our current understanding. Keene, that was another
Speaker 1: brit pop band. They were Okay, yeah, yeah, that was
Speaker 1: the They were the one from the Lake House with
Speaker 1: Keanu and Sandra Bullock. That song, Oh I never saw that.
Speaker 1: Emily watches that movie over and over just because of
Speaker 1: the house. That it's a great house, but also the
Speaker 1: tree part is really amazing too. I love it. She
Speaker 1: will watch bad movies for architecture alone, over and over. Okay,
Speaker 1: but I suspect she also probably likes that movie because
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. Just bring your clean X if you
Speaker 1: sit down and watch. All Right, it's a good one.
Speaker 1: Anything Kanna reeves Us is great for sure. I love
Speaker 1: that guy. Okay, hey, he's great. He's great and everything.
Speaker 1: I'll say that. How about that, I mean just a
Speaker 1: great human. I like that guy. Sure? Yeah? Um, all right,
Speaker 1: So where are we? I've wasted enough time. Okay, here's
Speaker 1: where we get to another really interesting part. Okay. The
Speaker 1: type two supernova can produce a couple of different outcomes,
Speaker 1: and it depends on the size of the star when
Speaker 1: it's at its main sequence, which is that those billions
Speaker 1: of years that it's burnings it reaches its adult size.
Speaker 1: And if a type two star has a size that's
Speaker 1: greater than forty solar masses, has a mass forty times
Speaker 1: our own son or more, when that thing goes off,
Speaker 1: when it reaches the end of its life and that
Speaker 1: core collapse happens, it will um actually turn into a
Speaker 1: black hole. It gets sucks so thoroughly into itself that
Speaker 1: it basically goes pupe and becomes a black hole. Well
Speaker 1: that's another reason we might not see it right. Yes,
Speaker 1: but that's why some supernova kind of like flicker for
Speaker 1: a second then go out, and that you just you
Speaker 1: know that it was a greater than for forty solar
Speaker 1: bodies um mass star that just underwent supernova. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's and that amazing because all that same stuff
Speaker 1: that's going on that creates that collapse doesn't let the
Speaker 1: explosion happen. The force of gravity is so great because
Speaker 1: this thing is so massive that it doesn't let it
Speaker 1: escape and it eventually just sucks itself into a black hole.
Speaker 1: The other way it can go, which for my money,
Speaker 1: is equally interesting, is if it has a mass of
Speaker 1: less than forty solar bodies, it will become a neutron star,
Speaker 1: so that core sticks around. Remember I said it can
Speaker 1: go from a five thousand mile diameter star down to
Speaker 1: a twelve mile diameter in a second. That twelve mile
Speaker 1: diameter core can stick around. And that's what's called the
Speaker 1: neutron star. And one of the cool things about neutron
Speaker 1: stars is that sometimes they spin, and when they spin,
Speaker 1: they're putting off so much energy that they release a
Speaker 1: flash of light on a really regular schedule. And those
Speaker 1: are what's called pulsars. That's right, and that's I know
Speaker 1: we've talked about pulsars before. Surely we have before too.
Speaker 1: But there's one in particular. Did you see that one
Speaker 1: that's the fastest spinning pulsar in the universe? But do
Speaker 1: you mean psr J eight dash to four four six
Speaker 1: a d the one and only. Do they have a
Speaker 1: cool name for that one? I don't think so I
Speaker 1: didn't see it. I think they think that's a cool
Speaker 1: name for it. Dah boy, it's that the kind of
Speaker 1: people were dealing with. It is sixteen kilometers in diameter, which, uh,
Speaker 1: it sounds big, but as far as stars go, is
Speaker 1: not that big, right? No? Because I mean, like it's
Speaker 1: the size of an American city, you know, the downtown
Speaker 1: part of it. And then but it's the same mass
Speaker 1: or greater of our own son, up to forty times
Speaker 1: the mass of our own sun. But in that small
Speaker 1: of the package, that's dense. Baby it Uh, this thing
Speaker 1: is really cooking though. It's spinning at about seven hundred
Speaker 1: and sixteen times per second, which is an equivalent of
Speaker 1: close to forty three RPMs. Yeah, so imagine downtown Los
Speaker 1: Angeles spinning seven hundred and sixteen times per second out
Speaker 1: there in outer space. Sometimes it feels like that, am
Speaker 1: I right? Yeah, especially after a long night. Uh. If
Speaker 1: all this sounds potentially dangerous, you know as far as
Speaker 1: us here on Earth, Um, it would be super dangerous
Speaker 1: if there was one that exploded close to Earth, it
Speaker 1: would be very huge. First of all, there would be
Speaker 1: all kinds of the gnarly radiation that would not be
Speaker 1: good for us. However, Um, it has to be a
Speaker 1: really really really big star are too explode as a supernova,
Speaker 1: And we know what's out there right now, and there
Speaker 1: aren't any stars that are nearly close enough. It would
Speaker 1: be millions of years uh for a start close enough
Speaker 1: to us to be big enough to become a supernova
Speaker 1: so you don't have to worry about it. But there
Speaker 1: it has happened in the past. There are traces a
Speaker 1: past supernova here on Earth, uh, in particular radioactive iron sixty,
Speaker 1: which I don't think it's an open and shut case,
Speaker 1: but it's a it's a really good indicator that that
Speaker 1: was there's supernova debris um just buried down there on
Speaker 1: the sea floor. Yeah, And they're trying to correlate it
Speaker 1: with some of the mass extinctions that took place in
Speaker 1: Earth's history, and they think that maybe you know, just
Speaker 1: like blow you know, the mastodon off of its feet
Speaker 1: and put it in extinction. But instead it might have
Speaker 1: had a real effect on the ozone layer which allowed
Speaker 1: more UV than normal through, which could have triggered a
Speaker 1: climate change that led to a mass extinction. Well, they
Speaker 1: say it does at least correspond close to the beginning
Speaker 1: of the plies to see an ice age, So I
Speaker 1: don't think they've said like that's the cause. But I
Speaker 1: don't know. I couldn't couldn't have helped for it to
Speaker 1: be like a genuinely planet sterilizing event, though it would
Speaker 1: have to be within a hundred two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: light years um or no fifty light years and the
Speaker 1: closest one that could go supernova is one K Pegasus
Speaker 1: and it's a hundred and fifty light years away. So,
Speaker 1: like you said, we're not We're not in any kind
Speaker 1: of danger. And our son will never go supernova because
Speaker 1: it's not um eight solar masses and it's not going
Speaker 1: to reach one point four solar masses because it's not
Speaker 1: a part of a binary star, and obviously it's one
Speaker 1: solar mass because the solar mass is equal to our
Speaker 1: son's mass. I think Planet Sterilizing Event should be our
Speaker 1: Brit pop album title. I think yes. I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1: It's not very Brit poppy, but we could push the boundaries. Sure,
Speaker 1: as long as like we're wearing white jeans that are
Speaker 1: pegged with black patent leather shoes on the cover, doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what we name it. Did we do this one
Speaker 1: one more thing? There's such things as zombie stars. This
Speaker 1: is a new thing that they figured out in the
Speaker 1: last few years. That's an an anomaly that we don't understand.
Speaker 1: But they're basically stars that undergo supernova multiple times. Doesn't
Speaker 1: really make much sense, but they are starting to figure
Speaker 1: that out. And it's not the case of uh like
Speaker 1: the one in two thousand eleven, not that I know of, no,
Speaker 1: because it would it would only hit it's you know,
Speaker 1: ejecta once. As far as I can tell, this is
Speaker 1: like like at least five or six times that they've
Speaker 1: found this one zombie Star to have gone supernova. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so too. And maybe that's the name of
Speaker 1: our brit pop band. What zombie Star? Yeah, that Zombie
Speaker 1: Star Planet Sterilizing Event, I think, yeah, right, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Although Diarrhea Planet could use Planet Sterilizing Event. That would
Speaker 1: be a great album for them. I'm sure if this
Speaker 1: has gotten back to those guys are like, why didn't
Speaker 1: you talk about us this much while we were still together?
Speaker 1: Maybe we can get a reunion going stadium tour, I
Speaker 1: would go totally, um, but yeah, zombie Star is a
Speaker 1: great name for our britt pop band. And green all right, Well,
Speaker 1: if we accomplished anything, it's that. Yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: accomplished more than that, chuck. And since I said that,
Speaker 1: I want to direct everybody to the House stuff works
Speaker 1: article how a supernova works. Clearly they hedged it, didn't
Speaker 1: just call it how supernova work. Um, and uh, there's
Speaker 1: plenty of other stuff that's really interesting all over the
Speaker 1: internet to read about it. And as I said that,
Speaker 1: like I said, it's time for listener mail. H Yeah,
Speaker 1: I watched some I watched some cool kid videos on YouTube. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're always just very instructive. I know we
Speaker 1: say it a lot, but if you haven't caught it
Speaker 1: in the past, if they are difficult scientific concepts for
Speaker 1: you to understand as an adult, or if you're a kid,
Speaker 1: that these kids websites they break it down like adult website.
Speaker 1: Should you know they'd really do it right, It's good? Um,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna call this Apparently we're we've been
Speaker 1: patronizing for a long time about the Dark Ages. We've
Speaker 1: been called out about this before, have we really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: We just never all right, well, I'm gonna do it again.
Speaker 1: This is from Greg. I know you get a lot
Speaker 1: of emails, so you'll probably never even read this. Um.
Speaker 1: I also know Josh hates correction emails. That's not true
Speaker 1: at all, true, right, but for the love of God,
Speaker 1: could you stop referring to the medieval era as the
Speaker 1: Dark Ages as you did in your latest May episode.
Speaker 1: It's an outdated Victorian concept that implies medieval people were
Speaker 1: stupid and ignorant, that nothing happened for several hundred years
Speaker 1: until the Renaissance magically appeared. It's patronizing and devalues the
Speaker 1: progress made because of great medieval thinkers, as well as
Speaker 1: supposing that the everyday person in between the tenth and
Speaker 1: fifteen centuries was a moron who bungled through life with
Speaker 1: no meaningful contribution. I would hope that your years of
Speaker 1: research into our progress as a species would have shown
Speaker 1: that this is not how people evolved. So if you
Speaker 1: could stop using such an insulting term for a significant
Speaker 1: period of human history would benefit all concerned. And then
Speaker 1: it's from Greg. And for me, Greg, I just say
Speaker 1: dark Ages because people know what we're generally talking about,
Speaker 1: as far as an arror goes. I never mean that
Speaker 1: nothing good came from the Dark Ages. But I don't know,
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe I should rethink he've been saying that. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I I think Gregg's beef is with society
Speaker 1: in general, and he's really picking on us and taking
Speaker 1: it out on us because it's exactly like you said
Speaker 1: that we're using that so people know what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: That's like saying, can you please stop saying Enlightenment like
Speaker 1: everything they did was so great? There were there were
Speaker 1: plenty of morons in the Enlightenment that aren't getting their due.
Speaker 1: Nice work, Chuck Man. You just pick Greg up and
Speaker 1: put them in a health Nelson body slammed him. No, Greg,
Speaker 1: I hug you. We're going to get another email from
Speaker 1: Greg for this one. If you want to be like
Speaker 1: Greg and call us out about something that really gets
Speaker 1: under your skin, stuck in your craw gums in your hair,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, uh, you can email to us
Speaker 1: at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff You
Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.