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Speaker 1: The best moments in science are the surprises. The reason

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Speaker 1: we do experiments is because we want our intuition, our

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Speaker 1: expectation to be confronted by reality. That's why we build

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Speaker 1: particle colliders and telescopes to force the universe to reveal

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Speaker 1: its secrets to us. And just about every time we

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Speaker 1: commission a new telescope, every time we look out into

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Speaker 1: the universe with new kinds of eyeballs, we see something new,

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Speaker 1: something surprising, something that confounds our expectations and clashes with

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Speaker 1: our understanding. Those are the best moments because they herald

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Speaker 1: some new idea, some new revelation, some new understanding of

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Speaker 1: how the universe works, something potentially groundbreaking about our cosmos.

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Speaker 1: So when we launched the James Webs based Telescope, I

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Speaker 1: was very excited for what it might reveal, and we

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Speaker 1: have not been disappointed. Today we'll dig into one of

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Speaker 1: the first, grandest and long standingist mysteries revealed by the

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Speaker 1: James Webbs based Telescope. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's extraordinarily

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Speaker 1: Surprising Universe.

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Speaker 2: Hello. I am Kelly Waidersmith.

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Speaker 3: I study parasites and space, and I have two telescopes.

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Speaker 3: One of which I cannot figure out how to use,

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Speaker 3: and one of which I can and I love it.

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Speaker 1: And what kind of things can you see through your telescope?

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Speaker 2: The moon and big stuff.

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Speaker 1: Through your neighbor's windows.

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Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, you can't see any of my

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Speaker 3: neighbor's windows from where I live.

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Speaker 2: Oh right, I'm not creepy.

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Speaker 1: I guess in Virginia people respect their privacy. That's good

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Speaker 1: to hear. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist from California,

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Speaker 1: and I study particles and aliens, and I own zero telescopes.

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Speaker 2: You own zero telescope? Well, I guess you know.

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Speaker 3: In California it can be hard to get away from

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Speaker 3: the light pollution. But there's some parts of California where

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Speaker 3: you can get away from the light pollution. Probably it's

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Speaker 3: easy for me here in Virginia.

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Speaker 1: We have different kind of stars here in California, just

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Speaker 1: glittering human beings.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I know, but lots of plastic surgery and stuff.

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Speaker 3: It takes a lot of money to get that glitter.

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Speaker 1: California glamb does have its downsides.

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Speaker 2: Well, I don't want to be so negative about California.

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Speaker 3: But but my question for you is today we're talking

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Speaker 3: about an amazing new ish telescope that we have. Out

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Speaker 3: of the amazing telescopes that have been proposed, if you

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Speaker 3: could make any of them appear, which one would you

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Speaker 3: like to have exist?

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Speaker 1: Ooh, great question. Well, first of all, we should build

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Speaker 1: all of them. We should build a thousand space telescopes.

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Speaker 1: I can't believe that we have the technology, we have

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Speaker 1: the money, we have people eager, you know, chomping at

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Speaker 1: the bit to build these things, to run them, for

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Speaker 1: us to send us incredible pictures from around the universe.

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Speaker 1: We're just deciding not to. We're spending it on other

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Speaker 1: stuff instead. To me, that's insane. But anyway, if I

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Speaker 1: could only build one of them, I think I would

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Speaker 1: build the HabEx. This is the Habitable Exoplanet Observatory, and

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Speaker 1: it's designed to directly image planetary systems around Sun like stars.

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Speaker 1: And you know, I want to see those aliens. And

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Speaker 1: to me, it's incredible that we can get like pictures

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Speaker 1: of planets around other stars. Not artists conceptions, right, not imaginations,

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Speaker 1: actual photographs of planets around other stars. Oh my gosh,

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Speaker 1: I can't wait. Build the thing now today, launchit yesterday.

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Speaker 3: Could you look at alien windows, because clearly that's what

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Speaker 3: you want to do.

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Speaker 1: Yes, I do want to look at alien windows, and frankly,

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Speaker 1: if I could, I would, wouldn't you? I don't know.

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Speaker 3: I don't think that would be a good start to

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Speaker 3: your alien relationship to be peeping through their windows.

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Speaker 1: Hey, you don't know what it means in alien cultures.

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Speaker 1: Maybe that's very respectful and con through somebody's windows, Yes, exactly.

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Speaker 3: Yes, this is how you show you're interested in someone.

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Speaker 1: Don't project your Virginia foibles on aliens.

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Speaker 3: We don't know, all right, Hey, dKu listeners, don't show

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Speaker 3: you're interested in someone by looking through their windows. Just

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Speaker 3: for young listeners, that's not acceptable.

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Speaker 1: Solid advice when applied to humans. Yes, I agree, yes,

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Speaker 1: but no, haex can't see through alien windows. This will

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Speaker 1: limit the diffraction limits unless we have really big lenses

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Speaker 1: like the size of the sun. Then we can't image

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Speaker 1: details on exoplanets. But you know, it can characterize their atmosphere,

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Speaker 1: it can understand how much ocean there is, how much

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Speaker 1: land there is. It's going to look at the spectrum

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Speaker 1: of those planets and really understand habitability, which I think

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Speaker 1: would be super fascinating.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be awesome like to have that telescope too,

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Speaker 3: but you know, we don't want to.

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Speaker 2: Sit here being too bummed about the telescopes we don't have.

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Speaker 3: While we did somewhat recently get this amazing telescope, the

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Speaker 3: James Web Space Telescope, And yes it was over budget

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Speaker 3: and behind schedule, but we have it and now it's

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Speaker 3: giving us amazing data.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. It's incredible what we build as humans.

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Speaker 1: You know, when I see something like the Golden gate

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Speaker 1: Bridge or the Chrysler building or something, I'm just floored

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Speaker 1: at the complexity in the scale of projects that humans

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Speaker 1: can pull off, like over budget, behind schedule, whatever the

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Speaker 1: thing is in space taking pictures of the universe. It's incredible, right,

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Speaker 1: like mind blowing that we pulled it off. And the

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Speaker 1: James Web is working really, really well. It's sending us

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Speaker 1: beautiful images of the universe. And I am just always

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Speaker 1: excited about anytime we build new technological eyeballs to expand

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Speaker 1: our ability to look at the universe, because the universe

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Speaker 1: is out there doing and it's thing and screaming information

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Speaker 1: at us. So many photons are coming towards the planet

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Speaker 1: all the time with gobs and gobs of information about

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Speaker 1: the early universe, the late universe, what's happening here, what's

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Speaker 1: happening over there? Most of it is just being ignored.

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Speaker 1: Imagine the universe was emailing you answers to physics problems

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Speaker 1: and you were just like deleting it. We're just like

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Speaker 1: not reading your email. That's basically what we're doing. We

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Speaker 1: captured the tiniest of tiny fractions of photons that come

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Speaker 1: to Earth filled with rich information about the deepest secrets

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Speaker 1: in the universe. And you know, most of them just

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Speaker 1: like splash on a concrete or get ignored. So that's

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Speaker 1: a bummer. And I'm excited about every time we capture them,

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Speaker 1: and history tells us that every time we do, we

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Speaker 1: learn something mind blowing, something incredible about the universe.

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Speaker 3: Daniel, what if there are aliens trying to write you

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Speaker 3: letters and we're missing them. They're trying to say hello

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Speaker 3: to you in particular.

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Speaker 1: Oh man, make it personal, Okay.

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Speaker 3: Sorry, they're like, Daniel, we have answer all of your questions.

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Speaker 1: If you're stressing me out.

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Speaker 2: Okay, all right, let's move on. Let's move on.

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Speaker 1: Alien listeners, however, please do write to us questions at

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Speaker 1: Daniel and Kelly dot Org. Send us your questions, send

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Speaker 1: us your answers, Please email us.

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Speaker 2: Daniel is listening.

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Speaker 1: I will right back to the alien he will. But

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Speaker 1: in the meantime, today we're discussing something that James webspased

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Speaker 1: telescope has already found, has already blown the minds of astronomers,

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Speaker 1: has already led to years long debates and confusion about

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Speaker 1: what happened in the early universe.

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Speaker 3: That's right, and it's something that we didn't expect we

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Speaker 3: were going to see.

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Speaker 1: And it sounds like candy.

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Speaker 3: Oh you say, it sounds like candy. But let's go

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Speaker 3: ahead and listen to what the extraordinaries had to say

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Speaker 3: when you ask them what are the little red dots?

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Speaker 3: Because candy is not what they had on their minds.

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Speaker 1: James web telescope is infrared, so maybe the does, of course,

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Speaker 1: something to do with warmer areas in space. I think

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Speaker 1: there were small galaxies or nebulas that were forming stars

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Speaker 1: way earlier than expected after the Big Bang.

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Speaker 4: Maybe they are far far away stars getting further away

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Speaker 4: faster and faster.

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Speaker 1: Ever, or maybe it's just measles.

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Speaker 2: Dombi black cloles.

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Speaker 5: They're probably not red dwarves because they're too small, So

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Speaker 5: maybe something bigger than that could be hawking radiation.

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Speaker 6: Maybe those little red dots are like the dots at

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Speaker 6: the top of some web pages that open up a

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Speaker 6: menu of options. But this time it's about the origin

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Speaker 6: of the universe.

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Speaker 2: I'm ashamed to say that I saw something about little

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Speaker 2: red dots on Instagram, but identimy the description.

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Speaker 1: Galactic anti vexers and their space measles.

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Speaker 4: Could they be read stars objects in the very early

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Speaker 4: stage in the formation of the universe that are like

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Speaker 4: proto galaxies or something, But I don't think we're sure.

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Speaker 1: Is it some type of lensing effect.

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Speaker 4: Well, if it's red and little, it's probably red shifted

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Speaker 4: and a long long way away.

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Speaker 1: And since it's James the Web, I'm guessing something record breaking.

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Speaker 4: Evidence of large galaxies much earlier than our current theories allow,

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Speaker 4: or the teenage universe just had really bad skin the

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Speaker 4: most distant galaxies discovered so far.

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Speaker 3: Well, now, the Extraordinaries were speaking right to Kelly's heart

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Speaker 3: because they weren't thinking about candies.

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Speaker 2: They were thinking about infections.

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Speaker 3: Measls came up more than once, and you know, maybe

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Speaker 3: we should have an episode on beasles too, we'll see.

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Speaker 2: But yes, so how close were these answers?

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Speaker 1: There's some good answers in here. You know, there's stuff

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Speaker 1: in here about the early universe, things that are red shifted.

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Speaker 1: That's pretty solid. And clearly some people had heard about

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Speaker 1: this mystery.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm gonna be honest, I have.

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Speaker 3: I've been sort of like living in a cave with

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Speaker 3: my fingers in my ears, not paying attention to the news.

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Speaker 2: I had not.

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Speaker 3: Heard about the little red dots, and so I'm excited

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Speaker 3: to have you tell me about them today.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. All right, Well, let's start out by reminding ourselves

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Speaker 1: what is the James Webspace Telescope and what can it see?

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Speaker 1: Because that's going to turn out to be really important

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Speaker 1: to understand how it sees the universe, what it can see,

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Speaker 1: what it cannot see.

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Speaker 2: All right, So when do we get this new tool?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so December twenty twenty one, this thing launched on

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Speaker 1: a rocket out into space and James Webspace Telescope very powerful,

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Speaker 1: very awesome. But it's not like a descendant of Hubble

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Speaker 1: or replacement for Hubble. It's more like a compliment to Hubble.

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Speaker 1: Hubble is an optical telescope, meaning that it mostly is

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Speaker 1: good at seeing light in the visible spectrum. Remember, light

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Speaker 1: is just electromagnetic radiation. It comes in all sorts of frequencies,

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Speaker 1: from infrared and radio waves with very low frequencies long

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Speaker 1: wavelengths up to the visible spectrum we are used to

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Speaker 1: seeking light, and then up beyond it into the ultraviolet,

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Speaker 1: the X rays, the gamma rays, where you have very

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Speaker 1: high energy, very short wavelength, very high frequency. There's a

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Speaker 1: huge spectrum of radiation and different parts of the universe.

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Speaker 1: Different stuff in the universe at different temperatures, and different

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Speaker 1: chemical compositions absorbs or emit at different frequencies. So if

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Speaker 1: we want to look at the universe, we should try

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Speaker 1: to look at it lots of different wavelengths. So Hubble

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Speaker 1: is really really good at seeing in the visible James

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Speaker 1: web Space telescope is designed to see in the long

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Speaker 1: wavelengths in the infrared, well below what the human eye

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Speaker 1: can see.

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Speaker 3: Okay, So Hubble can see the stuff that we could see,

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Speaker 3: but obviously can see stuff way farther out and way

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Speaker 3: better than we can with our naked eyes. Yes, and

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Speaker 3: James Webspace Telescope is seeing stuff that our eyes couldn't

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Speaker 3: detect at all.

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Speaker 1: That's right. And remember that telescopes are really good because

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Speaker 1: their lenses are big, and so they gather more light

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Speaker 1: than your eyeball. Like if you put the hubbles place

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Speaker 1: versus your eyeball, the hubble can see more distant things

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Speaker 1: because it's gathering more photons. Imagine some super duper far

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Speaker 1: away galaxy. It's shooting out photons in all directions. If

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Speaker 1: you're ten billion light years from that galaxy, then those

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Speaker 1: photons get spread across a sphere whose radius is ten

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Speaker 1: billion light years. Imagine the size of that sphere. All

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Speaker 1: the photons get spread across that sphere. The further away

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Speaker 1: you are, the larger that sphere is. That's why the

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Speaker 1: intensity of sources goes like one over the distance squared

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Speaker 1: because the area that spheres four pi are squared. Right.

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Speaker 1: The three dimensional nature of our universe is the reason

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Speaker 1: for the inverse square law, which I always thought was

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Speaker 1: super cool connection to geometry. Anyway, the bigger your lens,

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Speaker 1: the bigger your eye, the bigger your telescope, the more

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Speaker 1: of those photons you're going to capture, so you're better

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Speaker 1: at seeing more distant things. Also, as we talked about recently.

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Speaker 1: There's the diffraction limit that tells you can you resolve

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Speaker 1: whether this photon came at this angle or a slightly

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Speaker 1: different angle, And that depends in the wavelength and also

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Speaker 1: on the size of the lens crucially, so bigger lens

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Speaker 1: being seed more distant things and get better resolution on them.

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Speaker 1: Things go from blurry to crisp. So that's why we

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Speaker 1: build these things to have as big mirror as possible.

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Speaker 1: Hubble is two point four meters across the light gathering thing,

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Speaker 1: James Webb six point five six point five meters across.

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Speaker 1: It's huge. Remember those iconic hexagonal mirrors that I think

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Speaker 1: even appear in the logo for James web that's the

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Speaker 1: reflecting surface and that's why it's so big.

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Speaker 3: That's over twenty one freedom units over twenty one feet.

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Speaker 2: That's huge.

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Speaker 3: That's like three of my dad standing on top of

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Speaker 3: each other. That is a big lens.

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Speaker 1: It is. It's a big mirror.

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Speaker 5: Ye.

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Speaker 1: And if you remember, it's gold, and the reason it's

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Speaker 1: gold is because James Webb is looking for red photons,

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Speaker 1: long wavelength photons in the infrared. Gold is really really

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Speaker 1: good at reflecting in the infrared. So the thing is

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Speaker 1: out there, it's looking for red photons. It's made of gold.

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Speaker 1: And the reason we're looking for red photons is that

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Speaker 1: things that are really really far away are moving away

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Speaker 1: from us very quickly, and that means that their light

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Speaker 1: is red shifted. So we talk about red shift as

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Speaker 1: a measure of velocity. Because there's a close connection between

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Speaker 1: velocity and distance, you can also use red shift as

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Speaker 1: a proxy for distance. So astronomers often saying something at

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Speaker 1: red shift three point four or something at red shift

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Speaker 1: seven point nine, what they mean is a distance, right,

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Speaker 1: they're using us as a way to talking about distance.

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Speaker 1: And if you're interested in the early universe, and you're

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Speaker 1: interested in stuff that's really really old, really far away,

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Speaker 1: that stuff's all going to be super red shifted. Even

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Speaker 1: if it emitted originally in the visible you had a

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Speaker 1: star and emitted visible light. Now it's moving really really

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Speaker 1: far away, that light is super red shifted, and so

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Speaker 1: we need an infrared telescope in order to see it.

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Speaker 1: So James Webb's designed to see deep into the universe

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Speaker 1: the oldest, reddest light, stuff that happened just after the

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Speaker 1: Big Bang.

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Speaker 3: And by putting it out in space, it doesn't get

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Speaker 3: distracted by all of the light that we have here

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Speaker 3: on Earth, right, is that why we put it in space.

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Speaker 1: We put it in space for a few reasons. One

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Speaker 1: is you have light pollution here on Earth. The other

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Speaker 1: is the atmosphere. Like you don't want to be looking

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Speaker 1: through an atmosphere. Atmosphere distorts images because the atmosphere has

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Speaker 1: density fluctuations as light passes through the atmosphere, if a

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Speaker 1: little pocket of air is slightly more dense than another one,

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Speaker 1: it's going to deflect the light acts like a lens.

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Speaker 1: So you have layers and layers of that happening. You

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Speaker 1: get all these atmospheric distortions and so ground bates telescopes.

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Speaker 1: It's easy to build them like fifty meters across or

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Speaker 1: easier at least than space stuff because you don't have

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Speaker 1: to launch them, right, But they suffer from atmospheric distortions.

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Speaker 1: They can compensate for that using this awesome laser technique

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Speaker 1: where they shoot a laser up into the sky so

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Speaker 1: they can measure the distortion and then they can compensate

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Speaker 1: for it in real time. They have these actuators then

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Speaker 1: bend the mirror on the telescope in real time like

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Speaker 1: super fast and many times a second to compensate for it.

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Speaker 1: It's like science fiction. It's incredible what these nerds have

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Speaker 1: come up with.

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Speaker 2: I love nerds.

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Speaker 1: The other reason it's out in space is that to

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Speaker 1: see infrared, you need to be very, very cold. Remember

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Speaker 1: that there's a connection between color and temperature. It's the

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Speaker 1: black body radiation connection. Things that are colder tend to

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Speaker 1: radiate longer wavelengths. So the Sun radiates in the visible

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Speaker 1: spectrum because of its atmospheric temperature fifty five hundred kelvin,

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Speaker 1: and so it radiates in the visible If things cool

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Speaker 1: down like the Earth, tends to radiate in the infrared.

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Speaker 1: Anything that's around our temperature is going to radiate in

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Speaker 1: the infrared. So if you're a telescope that's gathering infrared light,

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Speaker 1: you don't want to be near sources of infrared light

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Speaker 1: like the Earth, and you don't want to be yourself

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Speaker 1: a source of for red light, right, you don't want

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Speaker 1: to make a telescope out of glowing things, for example,

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Speaker 1: And so they send it out in space so it

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Speaker 1: can be far from the Earth, so that it can

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Speaker 1: stay cold and it can stay dark. The sunshade and

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Speaker 1: it's cool to negative two thirty three C.

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Speaker 3: WHOA, what is that in freedom units?

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Speaker 1: Super cold? It's super cold in freedom.

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Speaker 3: Units, that's negative three hundred and eighty seven Fahrenheits.

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Speaker 1: And so it's not out in space like orbiting the Earth.

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Speaker 1: They wanted to keep it even further from the Earth.

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Speaker 1: It's at L two, this lagrange point where you can

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Speaker 1: be stable relative to the Earth and the Sun. That

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Speaker 1: means that the Earth is constantly between James Webb and

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Speaker 1: the Sun. So it's like further from the Sun, but

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Speaker 1: it can still be stable relative to the Earth and

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Speaker 1: the Sun. And it's not actually at L two. It's

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Speaker 1: orbiting L two because you could have multiple things at

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Speaker 1: L two. You don't want them crashing into each other.

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Speaker 2: Does it take any energy to make it orbit L

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Speaker 2: two or it just does that on its own and

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Speaker 2: keeps going.

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Speaker 1: It just does that on its own. It's a stable

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Speaker 1: location and it's very cool. That is cool. And you

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Speaker 1: can even turn the tull scope without using any like

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Speaker 1: reaction mass because it has these reaction wheels. The way

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Speaker 1: that works is that the telescope turns one way and

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Speaker 1: the reaction wheel turns the other way. Then there's no

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Speaker 1: net angular momentum on the telescope, and so you can

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Speaker 1: turn it without like firing a thruster. It does also

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Speaker 1: have thrusters for like corrections or whatever, but you want

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Speaker 1: to be very very sparing on how you use those

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Speaker 1: because you can't refuel, right, anything that's using up a

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Speaker 1: resource that can't be replenished is going to be limited time.

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Speaker 1: So they use the reaction wheels to point it and

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Speaker 1: they use the thrusters only when needed.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so this sounds absolutely massive. So I'm guessing that

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Speaker 3: we couldn't build it full size completely like open and

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Speaker 3: ship it up like that. So how did we get

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Speaker 3: this giant thing to space and like open it up?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that part is incredible, As you say, you can't

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Speaker 1: just build the thing in space where we can't do

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Speaker 1: that yet, and you can't build it just like completely

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Speaker 1: on the ground in perfect conditions and then ship it

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Speaker 1: up because there's a limit on the size of things

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Speaker 1: you can launch, right, which is the size of the rocket.

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Speaker 1: So they designed it to fold up so it could

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Speaker 1: go inside this rocket and then go out into space,

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Speaker 1: get to the right location and unfold. And that was

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Speaker 1: a very nerve wracking moment, right, when it launched and

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Speaker 1: it didn't blow up, yea. And then it got to

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Speaker 1: its location and it unfolded correctly. Really amazing a piece

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Speaker 1: of engineering. And you know, there's no way to recover

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Speaker 1: this thing or to fix it.

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Speaker 6: Right.

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Speaker 1: Remember it's at L two, which is not close to Earth.

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Speaker 1: It's much further than the Moon, for example, and like

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Speaker 1: no astronaut has ever gone much further than the Moon.

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Speaker 1: And so we're not like sending somebody to repair it

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Speaker 1: like we did with Hubble. This thing is just out

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Speaker 1: there and inaccessible.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I imagine that must have been absolutely petrifying, because we

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Speaker 3: did have to fix Hubble right when it went out there.

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Speaker 3: There was a problem with the lens, and I remember

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Speaker 3: reading Mike mass Amino's biography and he was talking about

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Speaker 3: going out there to fix it. And so I can

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Speaker 3: imagine the first images that we looked at from the

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Speaker 3: James web Space telescope.

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Speaker 2: That must have been a pretty tense moment, Like, but

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Speaker 2: there's no going back.

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Speaker 1: I know, you spent your whole career eying this thing,

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Speaker 1: and one thing goes wrong, it can all just be

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Speaker 1: for nought, right yea. And then you know, also you're

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Speaker 1: endangering future missions right, if you wasghe ten billion dollars, like,

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Speaker 1: it makes it pretty hard to ask for another's based telescope. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so there's a lot on the line. But these folks

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Speaker 1: dreamed big and they delivered. It's amazing. It's been working

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Speaker 1: really well so far. It's got enough fuel for like

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Speaker 1: twenty years. They planned for like eleven years. But because

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Speaker 1: they launched it so accurately and they didn't have to

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Speaker 1: have like a lot of course corrections along the way,

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Speaker 1: they think that it's going to have enough for twenty

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Speaker 1: years of like small corrections.

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Speaker 2: Way to go, NASA exactly.

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Speaker 1: And so but we still have to spend like the

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Speaker 1: first few months of James webs based telescopes lifetime, like

401
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Speaker 1: aligning the mirrors, getting everything perfectly crisp right, because you know,

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Speaker 1: the thing unfolds and then you have to like tweak

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Speaker 1: it and adjust for it and the hardware things there

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Speaker 1: and software things there. But now we have it, and

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Speaker 1: it's out there and it's gathering infrared light about the

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Speaker 1: early universe and about exoplanets because red light comes not

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Speaker 1: just from bright stuff which is now red shifted, it

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Speaker 1: also comes from things that just originally emit in the infrared,

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Speaker 1: like planets right the Earth emits in the infrared, You

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Speaker 1: emit in the infrared. Your neighbors are emitting in the

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Speaker 1: infrared out their bathroom windows, and so James web Space

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Speaker 1: Telescope is good at seeing things in the infrared, which

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Speaker 1: means it's good for seeing like planetary formation and protoplanetary

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Speaker 1: discs and exoplanets, not in the visible but in the infrared.

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Speaker 3: All right, everyone, we're going to take a break and

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Speaker 3: I'm gonna have a little chat with Daniel about why

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Speaker 3: all of these references to looking into people's windows are

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Speaker 3: really creepy. And I'm gonna, you know, try to make

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Speaker 3: sure that Daniel doesn't dwell too hard thinking about all

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Speaker 3: the messages he might have missed while the James web

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Speaker 3: Space Telescope was getting calibrated early on. And when we

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Speaker 3: come back, we're going to talk about what we expected

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Speaker 3: to see when the James web Space Telescope got turned on.

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Speaker 3: Welcome back to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. I promise

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Speaker 3: Daniel's going to be less creepy in this next segment,

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Speaker 3: or at least I've done what I can to try

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Speaker 3: to make that happen.

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Speaker 1: Kelly What if the aliens are expecting us to communicate

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Speaker 1: with them via our bathroom windows. What if they've trained

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Speaker 1: their telescope on our bathroom windows and they're like, I

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Speaker 1: don't see anything. These guys are just not interested in conversation.

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Speaker 2: Then we just got to let them go, Daniel. We

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Speaker 2: got to take that chance, let them know.

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Speaker 1: No. Unacceptable, unacceptable.

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Speaker 3: Oh Daniel, you live in this world, play by this

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Speaker 3: world's rules.

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Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, that's not the.

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Speaker 1: Recipe for meeting aliens, Kelly. You got to think outside

439
00:22:50,840 --> 00:22:52,320
Speaker 1: the box and outside the window.

440
00:22:52,480 --> 00:22:55,040
Speaker 2: It's the recipe for staying out of jail. Daniel. It's

441
00:22:55,080 --> 00:22:57,920
Speaker 2: a good recipe. It's a good recipe.

442
00:22:58,040 --> 00:22:58,199
Speaker 6: You know.

443
00:22:58,560 --> 00:23:00,720
Speaker 1: If I'm willing to vaporize the planet to meet aliens,

444
00:23:00,880 --> 00:23:02,000
Speaker 1: I'm willing to risk prison.

445
00:23:03,040 --> 00:23:05,640
Speaker 3: I think maybe we should just put you in prison. Actually,

446
00:23:05,960 --> 00:23:08,440
Speaker 3: so it would all be safer if you were there,

447
00:23:10,400 --> 00:23:13,280
Speaker 3: But then we wouldn't get to enjoy your wonderful explanations.

448
00:23:13,359 --> 00:23:15,520
Speaker 1: So I wonder if you could do a podcast from prison.

449
00:23:15,600 --> 00:23:18,200
Speaker 1: Probably anyway, let's hope that never happens.

450
00:23:18,880 --> 00:23:23,080
Speaker 3: I get I'm torn, but all right, So what did

451
00:23:23,119 --> 00:23:27,000
Speaker 3: we expect to see from the James Web space telescope.

452
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:30,720
Speaker 1: So we were hoping to learn more about the early universe. Remember,

453
00:23:30,800 --> 00:23:33,760
Speaker 1: James web is good at seeing the infrared. Stuff that's

454
00:23:33,800 --> 00:23:36,399
Speaker 1: really far away is red shifted. We're seeing that far

455
00:23:36,440 --> 00:23:38,800
Speaker 1: away stuff now because light has taken a long time

456
00:23:38,840 --> 00:23:41,520
Speaker 1: to get to us from it, which means we're seeing

457
00:23:41,520 --> 00:23:44,119
Speaker 1: really out of date information. But we're seeing from the

458
00:23:44,119 --> 00:23:47,680
Speaker 1: early universe. So our goal was to see more about

459
00:23:47,680 --> 00:23:50,760
Speaker 1: the early universe, and we have ideas about the early universe,

460
00:23:50,800 --> 00:23:53,119
Speaker 1: but they were a little bit fuzzy. The basic picture

461
00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:55,520
Speaker 1: of the early universe that we have is we start

462
00:23:55,640 --> 00:23:59,560
Speaker 1: with some very hot, very dense, unexplained state. Remember the

463
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:02,720
Speaker 1: big band does not include a singularity. It starts from

464
00:24:02,760 --> 00:24:06,840
Speaker 1: a hot, dense state filling the whole universe, but it

465
00:24:06,880 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 1: has tiny fluctuations in it. It's not perfectly smooth. So

466
00:24:10,600 --> 00:24:12,840
Speaker 1: where you have a fluctuation that gives you higher density,

467
00:24:12,880 --> 00:24:15,160
Speaker 1: you can have a little bit more gravity and that

468
00:24:15,200 --> 00:24:17,200
Speaker 1: tends to pull stuff towards it and you get higher

469
00:24:17,240 --> 00:24:20,520
Speaker 1: density and higher density. So there's a runaway effect. If

470
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:23,400
Speaker 1: the universe started out perfectly smooth, you would get no structure.

471
00:24:23,680 --> 00:24:26,320
Speaker 1: But if there's little fluctuations and a lot of time

472
00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:29,480
Speaker 1: gravity will work to build those structures. So you start

473
00:24:29,560 --> 00:24:33,320
Speaker 1: from a primordial plasma, very hot and dense, those fluctuations

474
00:24:33,400 --> 00:24:37,800
Speaker 1: probably come from quantum mechanics. Gravity gradually builds up structure.

475
00:24:38,240 --> 00:24:41,400
Speaker 1: And most of the universe is dark matter, right, Most

476
00:24:41,440 --> 00:24:44,000
Speaker 1: of the matter in the universe is dark matter, not

477
00:24:44,119 --> 00:24:48,760
Speaker 1: visible matter, not hydrogen, not helium, but dark matter. And

478
00:24:48,840 --> 00:24:51,200
Speaker 1: so it's really the dynamics of that dark matter that

479
00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:54,520
Speaker 1: shape the structure of the universe. People often write to

480
00:24:54,560 --> 00:24:56,800
Speaker 1: me about dark matter and they say, oh, it's just

481
00:24:56,840 --> 00:24:59,159
Speaker 1: to fill in the gap of galaxy rotation curves. But

482
00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:02,159
Speaker 1: it's so much more. We need dark matter at every

483
00:25:02,200 --> 00:25:05,080
Speaker 1: stage of the universe. Without dark matter in your model,

484
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:08,120
Speaker 1: you cannot explain how structure formed in the universe. There

485
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:11,439
Speaker 1: isn't enough time in the universe to pull together gas

486
00:25:11,440 --> 00:25:14,800
Speaker 1: to make stars and galaxies in fourteen billion years without

487
00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:18,040
Speaker 1: the gravity of dark matter. So you need dark matter

488
00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:20,680
Speaker 1: everywhere in the universe. It's definitely a thing, folks. It's

489
00:25:20,680 --> 00:25:23,600
Speaker 1: not just a fudge factor. I'm overresponding to a particular

490
00:25:23,640 --> 00:25:24,800
Speaker 1: email I got this morning for a.

491
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:29,439
Speaker 3: Listeners that sounds surprisingly specific, But this is not the

492
00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:31,800
Speaker 3: kind of thing that emits in the infrared right, So

493
00:25:31,920 --> 00:25:35,280
Speaker 3: James web Space telescope would not be seeing dark matter, right.

494
00:25:35,359 --> 00:25:38,040
Speaker 1: That's right. Dark matter, we think, doesn't emit at all,

495
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:41,840
Speaker 1: but it shapes the structure that we do see, right,

496
00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:44,680
Speaker 1: And so what you end up with is over densities

497
00:25:44,720 --> 00:25:48,000
Speaker 1: of darkmounter of these gravitational wells that pull in gas.

498
00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:50,879
Speaker 1: So you have huge clouds of gas where you have

499
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:53,720
Speaker 1: dark matter. So the gas tells you where the dark

500
00:25:53,760 --> 00:25:56,840
Speaker 1: matter is, right, It's like a tracer. And then that

501
00:25:56,920 --> 00:25:59,639
Speaker 1: gas collapses also for the same reason that you have

502
00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:02,880
Speaker 1: little pockets of over density, and so you get collapse

503
00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:06,040
Speaker 1: into stars, and the first set of stars then come

504
00:26:06,080 --> 00:26:08,040
Speaker 1: together to form galaxies.

505
00:26:08,880 --> 00:26:11,000
Speaker 2: The gas tells you where the dark matter is.

506
00:26:14,080 --> 00:26:15,800
Speaker 3: I think I heard the rest of what you said,

507
00:26:15,840 --> 00:26:17,680
Speaker 3: but maybe I didn't make it past that part.

508
00:26:18,359 --> 00:26:20,439
Speaker 1: And who's mine is stuck in the bathroom now, Kelly.

509
00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:22,439
Speaker 3: As long as no one's looking, I could keep it

510
00:26:22,480 --> 00:26:24,840
Speaker 3: to myself and that's fine.

511
00:26:25,680 --> 00:26:28,280
Speaker 1: And so you know, that's the rough picture of the

512
00:26:28,560 --> 00:26:30,960
Speaker 1: very early universe, and from there you get stars and

513
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:34,040
Speaker 1: galaxies dot. But there's a lot of details that we

514
00:26:34,119 --> 00:26:37,600
Speaker 1: didn't understand. For example, we didn't know for a long time.

515
00:26:38,200 --> 00:26:41,080
Speaker 1: Do you form big galaxies like the Milky Way, which

516
00:26:41,119 --> 00:26:43,440
Speaker 1: is huge, hundreds of billions of stars. Do you form

517
00:26:43,440 --> 00:26:45,720
Speaker 1: me that all at once, like a bunch of stars

518
00:26:45,760 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 1: come together to make a big galaxy. Is there like

519
00:26:48,000 --> 00:26:50,800
Speaker 1: a monolithic collapse where you have a huge cloud of

520
00:26:50,800 --> 00:26:52,560
Speaker 1: gas and they all form stars and boom you have

521
00:26:52,560 --> 00:26:58,200
Speaker 1: a galaxy? Or do small galaxies form and then merge? Right?

522
00:26:58,280 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 1: And so for a long time people thought the galaxies

523
00:27:00,880 --> 00:27:05,760
Speaker 1: formed big, right, big monolithic collapse happen, they have waves

524
00:27:05,760 --> 00:27:09,760
Speaker 1: of star formation. But the new idea from observations of

525
00:27:09,760 --> 00:27:13,600
Speaker 1: the early universe and from more distant galaxies is that

526
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:16,359
Speaker 1: there's a merger cycle, right that you start with these

527
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:21,440
Speaker 1: early stars, these population three stars terribly named Population three.

528
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:24,119
Speaker 1: Oh you guys, I know, the first stars were really

529
00:27:24,119 --> 00:27:27,080
Speaker 1: really big, like one hundred to three hundred times the

530
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:29,080
Speaker 1: mass of the Sun and so big that they burned

531
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:31,639
Speaker 1: really hot and they were really short lived and then

532
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:34,479
Speaker 1: they die, and see it another generation of stars and

533
00:27:34,520 --> 00:27:37,760
Speaker 1: those come together to form small mini galaxies, and then

534
00:27:37,800 --> 00:27:41,320
Speaker 1: galaxies merge to make big galaxies. So it's like a

535
00:27:41,440 --> 00:27:45,159
Speaker 1: hierarchical formation of the galaxies. This is sort of what

536
00:27:45,200 --> 00:27:48,280
Speaker 1: we expected. And so when we turned James Weball, and

537
00:27:48,320 --> 00:27:52,240
Speaker 1: we were expecting to see a bunch of little galaxies

538
00:27:52,359 --> 00:27:55,040
Speaker 1: before they emerged. You know, some are regular and some

539
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:57,600
Speaker 1: of this and some that, but we're expecting to see

540
00:27:57,920 --> 00:27:59,320
Speaker 1: early galaxy formation.

541
00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:02,400
Speaker 3: Okay, And given how good you guys are at naming things,

542
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:04,640
Speaker 3: the galaxies, we're going to be like M one four

543
00:28:04,760 --> 00:28:10,159
Speaker 3: two nine, right, as opposed to like, you know, Lisa

544
00:28:10,200 --> 00:28:11,680
Speaker 3: Simpson or something amusing.

545
00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:14,760
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Well, you know, it's a hard problem because

546
00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:18,720
Speaker 1: there are lots of galaxies. Like you cannot fathom how

547
00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:21,640
Speaker 1: many galaxies we're talking about. If you hold up your

548
00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:24,760
Speaker 1: finger at arms length and point it up at the sky,

549
00:28:25,119 --> 00:28:27,520
Speaker 1: then like the part of the sky blocked by your

550
00:28:27,520 --> 00:28:32,480
Speaker 1: fingernail on your pinky contains about a million galaxies. Whoa

551
00:28:32,600 --> 00:28:36,119
Speaker 1: right there, pinky fingernail. Okay, there's a million in there.

552
00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:39,360
Speaker 1: So there's so many galaxies, and the deeper you look

553
00:28:39,400 --> 00:28:42,280
Speaker 1: into the sky, the more you see. And the reason

554
00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:45,240
Speaker 1: we talk about galaxies is because that's what the universe

555
00:28:45,320 --> 00:28:47,600
Speaker 1: is made out of. That's basically the building block of

556
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:51,400
Speaker 1: the universe is galaxies. And also we can't see individual

557
00:28:51,400 --> 00:28:54,920
Speaker 1: stars mostly like these galaxies are so far away that

558
00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:57,840
Speaker 1: you can just resolve them and you can see this

559
00:28:57,920 --> 00:29:00,480
Speaker 1: galaxy maybe a little bit about the shape, but you

560
00:29:00,520 --> 00:29:03,240
Speaker 1: can't like zoom in on an individual star. Remember, there's

561
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:06,920
Speaker 1: still this diffraction limit. There's a pixelization even before we

562
00:29:06,960 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: digitize our data, right because the diffraction limit of optics,

563
00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:14,440
Speaker 1: because we're talking about waves and there's interference when things

564
00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:17,920
Speaker 1: come through an aperture. So there's a fundamental pixelization of

565
00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:21,240
Speaker 1: the data we can see, so we can't resolve finer details,

566
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:22,840
Speaker 1: which is why we study galaxies.

567
00:29:23,120 --> 00:29:26,800
Speaker 3: And this was all true before the James Web Space Telescope,

568
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:29,640
Speaker 3: or we're talking about the case. Now that we have

569
00:29:29,720 --> 00:29:32,600
Speaker 3: the James Web Space Telescope, we're still just looking at galaxies.

570
00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:35,000
Speaker 1: We're still just looking at galaxies, and we were before

571
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:38,440
Speaker 1: James Web. Like Hubble's Deep Field, for example, is just

572
00:29:38,600 --> 00:29:41,440
Speaker 1: like stare at into space and gather light for a

573
00:29:41,480 --> 00:29:44,160
Speaker 1: little while and see what comes out into the dark bits.

574
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 1: And the answer is galaxies. So many galaxies. Oh my gosh, galaxies.

575
00:29:48,920 --> 00:29:51,840
Speaker 1: It's just galaxies everywhere, which is amazing. And that's what

576
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:54,480
Speaker 1: we understood before James Web turned on, and so we

577
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:58,000
Speaker 1: expected to get more clarity on this picture. How are

578
00:29:58,000 --> 00:30:01,320
Speaker 1: these galaxies forming. What are the look like. We also

579
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:04,680
Speaker 1: were wondering about the supermassive black holes. Remember that we

580
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:06,880
Speaker 1: see black holes in the early universe, and we can

581
00:30:06,920 --> 00:30:09,800
Speaker 1: see them because they're really, really bright. We call them quasars.

582
00:30:10,360 --> 00:30:13,440
Speaker 1: They emit really powerful streams of light out of the

583
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 1: center of the galaxies. And these quasars are really bright,

584
00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:20,040
Speaker 1: which suggests the black holes are really big. And this

585
00:30:20,160 --> 00:30:23,280
Speaker 1: model we've talked about about gradually merging galaxies and then

586
00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:26,600
Speaker 1: their black holes also merge, can't account for the black

587
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:29,400
Speaker 1: holes that we already saw before James Web, Like we

588
00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 1: saw these quasars, which means black holes that are really big,

589
00:30:32,680 --> 00:30:36,120
Speaker 1: very early in the universe. This model of slowly building

590
00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 1: galaxies cannot get you big enough black holes fast enough

591
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:43,400
Speaker 1: to explain the supermassive black holes we saw before James Web.

592
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:46,680
Speaker 1: That's a long standing mystery, like what is the origin

593
00:30:46,760 --> 00:30:49,320
Speaker 1: of the supermassive black holes in the universe. So we

594
00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:51,880
Speaker 1: were hoping when we turned on James Web to see

595
00:30:51,920 --> 00:30:55,160
Speaker 1: some more clarity about this formation or the early universe,

596
00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:57,600
Speaker 1: how these things are coming together, what's going on. And

597
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:02,080
Speaker 1: you know, they expected to see relatively faint, irregular proto

598
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:06,520
Speaker 1: galaxies and a small number of black holes forming over time,

599
00:31:07,160 --> 00:31:10,240
Speaker 1: and so you know, basically refine existing models. That's the

600
00:31:10,280 --> 00:31:12,360
Speaker 1: sort of naive expectation.

601
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 3: Oh, you physicists with your cute little ideas about how

602
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:16,680
Speaker 3: the world works.

603
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 1: But you know, we also were hoping to be surprised.

604
00:31:21,520 --> 00:31:23,760
Speaker 1: That's sort of like your best guess based on the data.

605
00:31:23,880 --> 00:31:25,920
Speaker 1: But the reason we build these things is not to

606
00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:28,840
Speaker 1: refine our models. And like dot i's and cross t's,

607
00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 1: we build these things to blow our minds. We build

608
00:31:31,320 --> 00:31:34,719
Speaker 1: these things to explore the universe. Right. We build these

609
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:37,760
Speaker 1: things because we don't want to rely on our intuition.

610
00:31:37,880 --> 00:31:40,800
Speaker 1: We want to be confronted by reality. We want the

611
00:31:40,920 --> 00:31:43,640
Speaker 1: universe to give up the ghost and say, okay, here's

612
00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:46,120
Speaker 1: what's going on. Check out this crazy thing. You never

613
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:50,800
Speaker 1: even imagined. You know, nobody imagined pulsars before we discovered them.

614
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:53,440
Speaker 1: There's so many times we have looked out into the

615
00:31:53,520 --> 00:31:56,719
Speaker 1: universe and seen something crazy that blew our minds and

616
00:31:56,800 --> 00:31:59,760
Speaker 1: forced us to reimagine how we see the universe. And

617
00:31:59,800 --> 00:32:02,320
Speaker 1: you know, so that's science at work. Science is not

618
00:32:02,440 --> 00:32:05,040
Speaker 1: like let's protect the dogma so I can keep getting

619
00:32:05,080 --> 00:32:08,880
Speaker 1: my grand funding. Science is like, let's discover something crazy

620
00:32:08,880 --> 00:32:10,640
Speaker 1: and new so I can get more grand funding.

621
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 3: Right, No, you looked down into the universe and you

622
00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 3: saw job security because there's something we hadn't even thought of. No,

623
00:32:18,880 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 3: I'm just kidding, and it blew your mind. I totally agree, exactly.

624
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:24,400
Speaker 2: Okay, So what did we see that was so surprising?

625
00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:24,600
Speaker 6: Then?

626
00:32:24,640 --> 00:32:26,680
Speaker 3: So we had this model, we thought we kind of

627
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:27,960
Speaker 3: knew what we were going to see, but we were

628
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 3: hoping we'd also see something exciting.

629
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:31,520
Speaker 2: What was the exciting thing we saw?

630
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:35,560
Speaker 1: So we saw little red dots And that's why we're

631
00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:39,160
Speaker 1: focusing on this for today's episode because these things were

632
00:32:39,200 --> 00:32:43,960
Speaker 1: weird and unexpected. So what are little red dots? Well,

633
00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:46,400
Speaker 1: they are literally if you look at the James webs

634
00:32:46,440 --> 00:32:49,880
Speaker 1: based telescope images, they are a little red and dotted, right,

635
00:32:50,080 --> 00:32:54,560
Speaker 1: So they're bright, they're red, and there's a lot of them.

636
00:32:54,960 --> 00:32:57,040
Speaker 1: So we've discovered a few hundred of them so far

637
00:32:57,120 --> 00:32:59,480
Speaker 1: because we only looked in a few places, but there's

638
00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:01,560
Speaker 1: a lot of them relative to the number of galaxies

639
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 1: we've seen, you know, so like a few percent of

640
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:06,520
Speaker 1: the objects we've seen in the early universe are these

641
00:33:06,680 --> 00:33:08,160
Speaker 1: little red dots?

642
00:33:08,520 --> 00:33:12,520
Speaker 2: Huh? And are they in galaxies. Are there between galaxies?

643
00:33:12,520 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 2: Are they randomly distributed?

644
00:33:14,600 --> 00:33:17,800
Speaker 1: They are their own thing, right, and so people are wondering, like,

645
00:33:17,960 --> 00:33:20,320
Speaker 1: are they a weird kind of galaxy? Are they an

646
00:33:20,360 --> 00:33:24,040
Speaker 1: early stage of galaxies? They were really strange, and nobody

647
00:33:24,080 --> 00:33:26,560
Speaker 1: expected to see these things, like maybe one or two

648
00:33:26,800 --> 00:33:29,280
Speaker 1: if a galaxy got really weird. But there's just too

649
00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:32,920
Speaker 1: many of these, and they formed really early in the universe.

650
00:33:32,920 --> 00:33:36,120
Speaker 1: So we're talking about like six hundred million years after

651
00:33:36,360 --> 00:33:38,960
Speaker 1: that t equals zero moment when things were really hot

652
00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:42,280
Speaker 1: and really dense, and then they went away, so by

653
00:33:42,360 --> 00:33:44,440
Speaker 1: like a billion and a half years after the beginning

654
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:48,040
Speaker 1: of the universe, no more little red dots. So these

655
00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:52,120
Speaker 1: things are strange because they're really compact, they're very bright

656
00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:55,800
Speaker 1: and very red, and also they have a really strange spectrum.

657
00:33:56,160 --> 00:33:59,320
Speaker 1: Remember that when you're looking at something from the early universe,

658
00:33:59,400 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 1: we can see it and even though we can't always

659
00:34:01,920 --> 00:34:04,400
Speaker 1: resolve spatial features, like we can't see is there a

660
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:06,719
Speaker 1: bump on it, or like what color is that window,

661
00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:10,400
Speaker 1: we can look at the intensity at different wavelengths, So

662
00:34:10,400 --> 00:34:12,879
Speaker 1: there's like this other dimension we can always do. We'd

663
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:15,680
Speaker 1: like take the light and split it into prism and ask, oh,

664
00:34:15,760 --> 00:34:17,400
Speaker 1: how much red is there, how much green is there,

665
00:34:17,400 --> 00:34:19,600
Speaker 1: how much blue is there, how much of this frequency?

666
00:34:20,200 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 1: And usually we see like a peak somewhere based on

667
00:34:24,239 --> 00:34:26,680
Speaker 1: the temperature, you know, like if you're looking at the

668
00:34:26,719 --> 00:34:29,239
Speaker 1: Earth from space, you would see a peak at a

669
00:34:29,280 --> 00:34:31,960
Speaker 1: frequency determined by a surface temperature. And when you look

670
00:34:31,960 --> 00:34:34,360
Speaker 1: at a star the same thing. You can tell the

671
00:34:34,360 --> 00:34:37,279
Speaker 1: temperature of distant stars by looking at their peak. Or

672
00:34:37,400 --> 00:34:40,719
Speaker 1: you see strong emission lines from some particular interaction, like

673
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:44,320
Speaker 1: black holes that have really hot gas that emidst x rays,

674
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:47,840
Speaker 1: or you see dust that absorbs at a certain frequency.

675
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:50,840
Speaker 1: These guys have a really weird frequency that has a

676
00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:54,280
Speaker 1: V shape in it, so it's like this broad emission

677
00:34:54,280 --> 00:34:56,960
Speaker 1: at lower wavelengths and then a huge dip in the middle,

678
00:34:57,160 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 1: and then broad emission and higher wavelengths. So it's weird

679
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 1: because it doesn't look like a young galaxy and also

680
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:07,799
Speaker 1: doesn't look like a black hole. It looks sort of

681
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:11,880
Speaker 1: like something new and weird, with maybe like a cloud

682
00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:16,240
Speaker 1: around it that's absorbing light at some frequency. So maybe

683
00:35:16,239 --> 00:35:19,719
Speaker 1: something like shrouded in dust that we don't understand. What

684
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:20,160
Speaker 1: is it?

685
00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:22,240
Speaker 2: My guess is killing me?

686
00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:24,839
Speaker 3: Okay, so I mean, could it just be like all

687
00:35:24,840 --> 00:35:28,359
Speaker 3: the stuff sort of collecting and it's dusty and it's

688
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:30,799
Speaker 3: just very early what's going on?

689
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:33,160
Speaker 1: So we have a few theories.

690
00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:35,399
Speaker 3: And we're going to go to a break and when

691
00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:57,280
Speaker 3: we come back, Daniel will tell us about them.

692
00:35:57,320 --> 00:36:00,000
Speaker 2: All Right, that break was particularly painful.

693
00:36:00,520 --> 00:36:03,799
Speaker 3: Daniel, what do we think these little red dots are

694
00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:07,479
Speaker 3: that appear to maybe be dusty clouds that.

695
00:36:07,480 --> 00:36:10,239
Speaker 2: Emit at weird spectrum? Yeah, tell us what do we

696
00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:10,840
Speaker 2: think they could be?

697
00:36:11,600 --> 00:36:14,800
Speaker 1: So there's no theory that perfectly describes what we're seeing,

698
00:36:15,160 --> 00:36:17,000
Speaker 1: but there's a bunch of proto theories. And I love

699
00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:19,760
Speaker 1: that because what you're seeing again is science in action.

700
00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:23,800
Speaker 1: You know, science is not done by developing perfect theories

701
00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:26,800
Speaker 1: or waiting to publish until your theory is perfectly formed

702
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:30,440
Speaker 1: and describes the data. It's always work in progress. It's like,

703
00:36:30,520 --> 00:36:32,400
Speaker 1: here's an idea, here's how well it works, here's the

704
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:35,600
Speaker 1: pros and the cons right, and then there's an ongoing

705
00:36:35,640 --> 00:36:39,239
Speaker 1: discussion or argument about as these theories develop, which one

706
00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:41,880
Speaker 1: works best, and eventually one of them wins out. And

707
00:36:41,880 --> 00:36:43,120
Speaker 1: this is how science happens.

708
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:46,479
Speaker 3: Right, No, seriously, friends, it's awesome that after an hour

709
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:47,600
Speaker 3: you don't get an answer.

710
00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:50,720
Speaker 2: But no, really, this is how science works.

711
00:36:50,880 --> 00:36:53,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so nobody knows the answer. One theory is

712
00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:58,200
Speaker 1: that these are young galaxies, right, and they're so unexpectedly

713
00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:02,200
Speaker 1: right because they're undergoing intense bursts of star formation. So

714
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:06,000
Speaker 1: these are called starburst galaxies because remember we talked about

715
00:37:06,040 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 1: this giant cloud of gas and it's collapsing to form stars.

716
00:37:09,600 --> 00:37:11,880
Speaker 1: If that happens all at the same time, for like

717
00:37:11,920 --> 00:37:14,960
Speaker 1: these mini galaxies instead of having a mega collapse to

718
00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:17,680
Speaker 1: the Milky Way, we start with many galaxies. But if

719
00:37:17,719 --> 00:37:20,560
Speaker 1: that's somehow coordinated across the galaxy, you have a bunch

720
00:37:20,560 --> 00:37:23,239
Speaker 1: of stars all born at the same time, then you're

721
00:37:23,239 --> 00:37:26,440
Speaker 1: gonna get really bright emissions. That's the idea. And this

722
00:37:26,520 --> 00:37:28,239
Speaker 1: is a nice idea because it doesn't require you to

723
00:37:28,280 --> 00:37:30,359
Speaker 1: invent some new thing in the universe. It's just like

724
00:37:30,640 --> 00:37:33,880
Speaker 1: a new arrangement of stuff we already knew. And it

725
00:37:33,960 --> 00:37:37,440
Speaker 1: tries to explain this v shape in the spectrum, this

726
00:37:37,560 --> 00:37:39,759
Speaker 1: dip in the middle of the spectrum by saying, well,

727
00:37:39,800 --> 00:37:42,560
Speaker 1: it's not actually a dip, there's nothing that's being absorbed there.

728
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:44,960
Speaker 1: It's just that the edges are really bright. So the

729
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:48,759
Speaker 1: center looks like a dip. So instead of like subtracting

730
00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:51,880
Speaker 1: away the center of the spectrum, they're enhancing the sides

731
00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:55,640
Speaker 1: of the spectrum by saying that comes from starburst formation.

732
00:37:55,960 --> 00:37:57,640
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's not that it's dusty.

733
00:37:58,040 --> 00:38:02,319
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just the messages getting thrown off because it's

734
00:38:02,360 --> 00:38:02,880
Speaker 3: so bright.

735
00:38:03,400 --> 00:38:06,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So it looks like the center is suppressed,

736
00:38:06,640 --> 00:38:08,879
Speaker 1: but it's really that the edges are enhanced, and that's

737
00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:13,080
Speaker 1: why the center looks dimmer than the edges of the spectrum. Okay,

738
00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:17,400
Speaker 1: so that's one idea. It's not a great theory because

739
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 1: we don't understand how you form these galaxies so quickly.

740
00:38:21,160 --> 00:38:24,879
Speaker 1: They're really bright. The models of galaxy formation do not

741
00:38:24,960 --> 00:38:27,839
Speaker 1: predict this, so that you get these galaxies that are

742
00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:30,840
Speaker 1: so bright and so intense and having these starbursts all

743
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:34,360
Speaker 1: at the same time, and the emission spectrum is predicted

744
00:38:34,480 --> 00:38:37,799
Speaker 1: by these theories don't describe this very easily. You don't

745
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:40,560
Speaker 1: get this kind of spectrum, So it's not a great fit.

746
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:43,600
Speaker 1: It's like, let's take the current idea what we expected

747
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:46,120
Speaker 1: to see and try to tweak the knobs on it

748
00:38:46,160 --> 00:38:48,319
Speaker 1: as much as we can to get it to describe it,

749
00:38:48,360 --> 00:38:50,279
Speaker 1: and it's like you can kind of get there a

750
00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:52,399
Speaker 1: little bit, but it's really just not a good fit.

751
00:38:52,680 --> 00:38:56,120
Speaker 1: And that's what's exciting, right. It's exciting because it suggests that, like, well,

752
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:57,440
Speaker 1: we need new ideas.

753
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:02,279
Speaker 3: But do we see other young galaxies anywhere? Are we

754
00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:05,759
Speaker 3: proposing that these red dots are a kind of young

755
00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:08,800
Speaker 3: galaxy or is this like we looked for young galaxies,

756
00:39:08,840 --> 00:39:11,080
Speaker 3: we don't see them anywhere, and we're like, well, maybe

757
00:39:11,080 --> 00:39:12,680
Speaker 3: this is what it is because we can't find them.

758
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:15,239
Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's the funny thing is that we do

759
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:19,280
Speaker 1: see some of those proto galaxies, the ones that we expected, irregular,

760
00:39:19,320 --> 00:39:23,960
Speaker 1: clumpy shapes, they're like actively forming stars, they're not super compact,

761
00:39:24,160 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 1: they're normally bright. And we also, in addition, see these

762
00:39:28,200 --> 00:39:31,920
Speaker 1: little red dots, the very compact, very red, very bright

763
00:39:32,160 --> 00:39:34,799
Speaker 1: with a weird spectrum. So we don't just see what

764
00:39:34,840 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 1: we expected. We also see these weird guys that we

765
00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:39,280
Speaker 1: can't quite fit into the model.

766
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:42,400
Speaker 2: Huh okay, all right, so then what else could they be.

767
00:39:43,040 --> 00:39:45,879
Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot of excitement about black holes, right,

768
00:39:46,360 --> 00:39:50,160
Speaker 1: Maybe these things are black holes forming early in the

769
00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:53,520
Speaker 1: universe and then with a lot of dust around them,

770
00:39:53,640 --> 00:39:57,120
Speaker 1: so like dust obscured black holes, maybe at the centers

771
00:39:57,200 --> 00:40:00,520
Speaker 1: of very very young galaxies. Remember that there's a mystery

772
00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:02,840
Speaker 1: about where do the super massive black holes and the

773
00:40:02,960 --> 00:40:06,400
Speaker 1: universe come from? How did they get so big so fast?

774
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:10,279
Speaker 1: So maybe we're seeing those black holes being born and

775
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:14,040
Speaker 1: for some reason there's dust around them that's making the

776
00:40:14,120 --> 00:40:18,080
Speaker 1: dip in this spectrum, that's absorbing that light to suppress

777
00:40:18,160 --> 00:40:20,720
Speaker 1: the center of the spectrum. That's one idea.

778
00:40:21,640 --> 00:40:23,000
Speaker 2: How good is that idea?

779
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:26,239
Speaker 3: And every time you say super massive black hole, does

780
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:28,840
Speaker 3: it also make you want to go to a muse concert.

781
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:31,160
Speaker 2: Don't you know?

782
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:34,920
Speaker 1: So it really does have a rhythm to it, doesn't it?

783
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 1: Super massive black hole? It's good because it explains why

784
00:40:39,120 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 1: these things are small, right, black holes are very very dense,

785
00:40:42,719 --> 00:40:46,040
Speaker 1: and why these things are bright. Black holes have really

786
00:40:46,120 --> 00:40:49,640
Speaker 1: intense radiation because they heat up the stuff nearby. Remember

787
00:40:49,640 --> 00:40:53,320
Speaker 1: the black holes not directly glowing. The accretion disk around

788
00:40:53,360 --> 00:40:56,080
Speaker 1: them has a lot of friction and a lot of gravity,

789
00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 1: and that's the thing that gets really hot and glows.

790
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:01,799
Speaker 1: And so it explains that. It also can explain the

791
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:04,279
Speaker 1: dip in the spectrum because you have a lot of

792
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:07,400
Speaker 1: dust there that's obscuring that part of the spectrum. But

793
00:41:07,440 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 1: there's some problems with this theory. Like number one, black

794
00:41:10,640 --> 00:41:12,719
Speaker 1: holes tend to be really really hot and they tend

795
00:41:12,719 --> 00:41:15,120
Speaker 1: to glow in the X ray right, Like we see

796
00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:17,839
Speaker 1: black holes out there. We've discovered some just by their

797
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:20,120
Speaker 1: X rayh ebisions. They're very bright in the X ray

798
00:41:20,160 --> 00:41:22,560
Speaker 1: because of this hot gas. We do not see a

799
00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:25,640
Speaker 1: lot of X rays from these little red dots, and

800
00:41:25,719 --> 00:41:28,560
Speaker 1: so that doesn't really fit with the black hole scenario.

801
00:41:28,920 --> 00:41:31,600
Speaker 1: But there's a counter to that concern, which is James

802
00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:33,799
Speaker 1: Web can see in the infrared, it's not great at

803
00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:36,960
Speaker 1: seeing the X rays. And a lot of these places

804
00:41:36,960 --> 00:41:39,120
Speaker 1: where we have imaged with the James Web and we've

805
00:41:39,120 --> 00:41:41,359
Speaker 1: seen these little red dots, we have not yet had

806
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:45,000
Speaker 1: a chance to point X ray telescopes at these things. Right,

807
00:41:45,120 --> 00:41:47,880
Speaker 1: So what you want is to see the sky in

808
00:41:48,000 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 1: multiple frequencies. You want all of your telescope pointed at

809
00:41:50,960 --> 00:41:53,160
Speaker 1: the same thing, so you see the infrared, you see

810
00:41:53,200 --> 00:41:55,920
Speaker 1: the optical, you see the X ray. That's really expensive.

811
00:41:56,200 --> 00:41:58,000
Speaker 1: Even just getting time on the James Web is a

812
00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:01,319
Speaker 1: big deal. Getting also the Hubble or also Chandra or

813
00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:03,120
Speaker 1: one of our X ray telescopes to look at this

814
00:42:03,160 --> 00:42:07,080
Speaker 1: thing very challenging, So definitely one thing to do is

815
00:42:07,120 --> 00:42:09,920
Speaker 1: follow up on these little red dots using X ray telescopes.

816
00:42:09,960 --> 00:42:11,920
Speaker 2: But are the lerd's everywhere.

817
00:42:11,760 --> 00:42:14,239
Speaker 1: The alerds are everywhere? Yeah, they're distributed, just like the

818
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:15,040
Speaker 1: galaxies are.

819
00:42:15,400 --> 00:42:17,439
Speaker 3: Okay, but you just want to make sure that you're

820
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:20,239
Speaker 3: looking at the exact same spot that the James Web

821
00:42:20,360 --> 00:42:21,960
Speaker 3: was so that you can say, Okay, we know that

822
00:42:22,040 --> 00:42:24,600
Speaker 3: James Web saw one here and okay, got it exactly.

823
00:42:25,200 --> 00:42:29,360
Speaker 1: Yeah. Another issue is that these things are weirdly uniform,

824
00:42:29,680 --> 00:42:32,080
Speaker 1: like they all look about the same, they're all the

825
00:42:32,200 --> 00:42:36,319
Speaker 1: same brightness, et cetera. Whereas galaxies with super massive black

826
00:42:36,320 --> 00:42:40,120
Speaker 1: holes in them, with active galactic nuclei like emitting bright radiation,

827
00:42:40,480 --> 00:42:43,600
Speaker 1: tend to be really variable, Like the fraction the galaxy's

828
00:42:43,680 --> 00:42:46,439
Speaker 1: mass that's contained in the black hole is usually really

829
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:49,359
Speaker 1: really small, but there's a lot of variation there, and

830
00:42:49,520 --> 00:42:52,440
Speaker 1: we don't see that kind of variability among these little

831
00:42:52,440 --> 00:42:55,279
Speaker 1: red dots, which is like, that's kind of weird. It's

832
00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:58,719
Speaker 1: not a great fit for the black hole hypothesis. Also,

833
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:01,879
Speaker 1: these guys would be really really massive, like we're talking

834
00:43:01,960 --> 00:43:05,040
Speaker 1: about masses between ten million and a billion of our

835
00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:08,920
Speaker 1: Sun's masses very early in the universe, and it'd be

836
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:12,000
Speaker 1: really cool to see that. But again, we can't explain

837
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:14,680
Speaker 1: why that would happen. There's no way to explain how

838
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:17,960
Speaker 1: you get a billion solar mass black hole this quickly

839
00:43:18,040 --> 00:43:21,960
Speaker 1: in the universe. It's like trying to grow a you know,

840
00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:25,040
Speaker 1: a skyscraper from a seed in like a couple of days.

841
00:43:25,480 --> 00:43:27,960
Speaker 1: There's just no explanation for it, which doesn't mean it

842
00:43:27,960 --> 00:43:31,080
Speaker 1: can't exist. And that's exactly the kind of discovery everybody

843
00:43:31,120 --> 00:43:34,000
Speaker 1: would love to make, right but it makes you skeptical

844
00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:37,439
Speaker 1: because it would be a really big discovery. The other

845
00:43:37,520 --> 00:43:40,759
Speaker 1: issue is that this requires a lot of dust. You know,

846
00:43:40,920 --> 00:43:44,040
Speaker 1: if you are going to quiet a very bright object

847
00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 1: in one part of the spectrum, you need a lot

848
00:43:46,560 --> 00:43:50,600
Speaker 1: of dust to admit that. Remember, dust absorbs in certain

849
00:43:50,600 --> 00:43:55,000
Speaker 1: frequencies because of its size. Right, really long wavelength stuff

850
00:43:55,080 --> 00:43:57,520
Speaker 1: is going to go through the dust. Shorter wavelength things

851
00:43:57,520 --> 00:44:00,000
Speaker 1: are like about the wavelength of the dust will interact

852
00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:02,400
Speaker 1: with a dust and get absorbed. But if you do that,

853
00:44:02,680 --> 00:44:05,719
Speaker 1: the dust absorbs that energy, then it heats up and

854
00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:08,960
Speaker 1: you expect that dust to then glow in the infrared.

855
00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:12,560
Speaker 1: So the hypothesis that like, it's a black hole which

856
00:44:12,600 --> 00:44:15,520
Speaker 1: is emitting a lot of radiation and it's being shrouded

857
00:44:15,560 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 1: by dust. Well, that dust should be heated up and

858
00:44:17,680 --> 00:44:19,480
Speaker 1: you should be able to see that dust glowing in

859
00:44:19,560 --> 00:44:23,320
Speaker 1: the infrared, and we don't. So you know, this is

860
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:24,600
Speaker 1: the kind of game you play. You come up with

861
00:44:24,600 --> 00:44:27,120
Speaker 1: a hypothesis and then you make a prediction. If this

862
00:44:27,280 --> 00:44:29,600
Speaker 1: was true, we should see the dust glowing. Oops, we don't.

863
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:32,360
Speaker 1: Uh oh, So that's like not a check mark for

864
00:44:32,400 --> 00:44:33,319
Speaker 1: that theory.

865
00:44:33,400 --> 00:44:33,719
Speaker 2: All right.

866
00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:37,240
Speaker 3: So is now when we talk about this possibly being

867
00:44:37,719 --> 00:44:38,880
Speaker 3: a message from aliens.

868
00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:44,000
Speaker 1: You know, I'd love for it to be a message

869
00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:47,200
Speaker 1: from aliens, but they're everywhere, right, It's not like here's

870
00:44:47,239 --> 00:44:50,560
Speaker 1: one system where something is going on. It's something very

871
00:44:50,600 --> 00:44:53,279
Speaker 1: early in the universe where it's hard to imagine you know,

872
00:44:53,360 --> 00:44:56,760
Speaker 1: intelligent technological life already forming just a few hundred million

873
00:44:56,840 --> 00:45:00,360
Speaker 1: years after the Big Bang. You know, Earth came fairly

874
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:03,360
Speaker 1: late in the universe. We didn't form until you know,

875
00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:06,640
Speaker 1: five billion years ago or so in a fourteen billion

876
00:45:06,680 --> 00:45:09,799
Speaker 1: year old universe. So you could imagine arguing that you

877
00:45:09,800 --> 00:45:13,479
Speaker 1: could have intelligent life earlier in the universe, but five

878
00:45:13,520 --> 00:45:16,560
Speaker 1: hundred million years after the Big Bang, that's pretty tough.

879
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:18,840
Speaker 1: It could be though, right, I would love to be surprised,

880
00:45:19,160 --> 00:45:21,759
Speaker 1: but then it would also be ubiquitous, right, it's in

881
00:45:21,800 --> 00:45:25,240
Speaker 1: every direction. That'd be pretty weird. But there are fun

882
00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:29,160
Speaker 1: ideas about weird stuff that could have caused this. Like

883
00:45:29,239 --> 00:45:33,839
Speaker 1: some people are arguing for direct collapse black holes. So

884
00:45:34,200 --> 00:45:37,440
Speaker 1: instead of black holes where first you have a star

885
00:45:37,680 --> 00:45:40,400
Speaker 1: and then it burns out and then it collapses and

886
00:45:40,440 --> 00:45:42,400
Speaker 1: to form a black hole when it runs out of

887
00:45:42,440 --> 00:45:45,879
Speaker 1: its fusion fuel, just goes straight to a black hole, right,

888
00:45:46,239 --> 00:45:50,800
Speaker 1: enough gravity to overcome any fusion pressure or any degeneracy pressure,

889
00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:54,080
Speaker 1: straight to a black hole. Nobody's ever seen this. It's

890
00:45:54,239 --> 00:46:00,359
Speaker 1: very speculative, very theoretical. It would explain super massive black holes, right,

891
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:03,919
Speaker 1: because that's a theory for how you get so big

892
00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:06,680
Speaker 1: so fast, is that you use an accumulation method that

893
00:46:06,680 --> 00:46:09,080
Speaker 1: we haven't considered. Right, going straight to a black hole

894
00:46:09,120 --> 00:46:11,640
Speaker 1: and not wasting time glowing for a few hundred million.

895
00:46:11,480 --> 00:46:13,760
Speaker 2: Years, that doesn't sound like a good use of time.

896
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:18,000
Speaker 1: It would be kind of awesome, but it feels like

897
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:20,360
Speaker 1: it should be rare. Like the calculation suggests that it

898
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:23,560
Speaker 1: shouldn't happen very often, so it's hard to use this

899
00:46:23,640 --> 00:46:27,239
Speaker 1: to explain so many little red dots. But again, we're

900
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:31,320
Speaker 1: looking for surprises, we're looking to learn, So you can't

901
00:46:31,320 --> 00:46:35,080
Speaker 1: throw out an idea because it conflicts with your previous theories.

902
00:46:35,200 --> 00:46:38,160
Speaker 1: You're hoping to conflict with their previous theories. But you

903
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:40,319
Speaker 1: know you have to find a way to make it work.

904
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:42,920
Speaker 1: You also can't just say, oh, this doesn't agree with

905
00:46:42,960 --> 00:46:45,839
Speaker 1: my theories, therefore it's true, right. You have to find

906
00:46:45,880 --> 00:46:48,799
Speaker 1: a new explanation. You have to find a coherent, holistic

907
00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:52,799
Speaker 1: theory that explains what we're seeing. So direct collapse black

908
00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:55,680
Speaker 1: holes could explain super massive black holes in the early

909
00:46:55,760 --> 00:46:58,760
Speaker 1: universe if we find a way to make them more common.

910
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:04,200
Speaker 1: The idea is that maybe we're seeing exotic or super

911
00:47:04,239 --> 00:47:07,680
Speaker 1: massive stars. Remember we talked about the first stars in

912
00:47:07,719 --> 00:47:12,359
Speaker 1: the universe being population three stars, these really massive, very

913
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:16,040
Speaker 1: short lived stars. Nobody's ever seen these because they lived

914
00:47:16,120 --> 00:47:18,840
Speaker 1: very very briefly, just a few million years or tens

915
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:22,480
Speaker 1: of millions of years, and we can't resolve individual stars

916
00:47:22,520 --> 00:47:26,560
Speaker 1: in early galaxies, so nobody's ever seen directly population three stars.

917
00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:30,240
Speaker 1: They're only theoretical and so it could be that these

918
00:47:30,440 --> 00:47:35,120
Speaker 1: are population three stars, very early star formation, but much

919
00:47:35,200 --> 00:47:37,640
Speaker 1: more massive than we expected, maybe like up to a

920
00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:42,160
Speaker 1: million solar masses. There's like a limit on the size

921
00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 1: of a star sort of surprisingly above two hundred and

922
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:48,600
Speaker 1: fifty or three hundred solar masses. The interior gets so

923
00:47:48,800 --> 00:47:51,080
Speaker 1: hot and the fusion happens so fast that the star

924
00:47:51,120 --> 00:47:55,040
Speaker 1: basically blows itself apart. And those are the limits theoretically,

925
00:47:55,400 --> 00:47:57,480
Speaker 1: and we've never seen a star bigger than that. But

926
00:47:57,600 --> 00:48:00,759
Speaker 1: you know, early in the universe stars made mostly of hydrogen,

927
00:48:01,239 --> 00:48:04,680
Speaker 1: maybe up to a million solar masses. The models people

928
00:48:04,719 --> 00:48:07,480
Speaker 1: have developed for this kind of match the spectrum that

929
00:48:07,520 --> 00:48:10,840
Speaker 1: you've seen. You know, it's like the photosphere of this

930
00:48:10,920 --> 00:48:13,760
Speaker 1: star is predicted to give sort of a V shape

931
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:16,759
Speaker 1: in the spectrum, which would be really awesome and it

932
00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:20,680
Speaker 1: could help explain super massive black holes. But you know,

933
00:48:20,800 --> 00:48:24,279
Speaker 1: this is very very speculative stuff, and the models are

934
00:48:24,360 --> 00:48:26,920
Speaker 1: still a very approximate. As you develop an idea, you

935
00:48:26,920 --> 00:48:29,680
Speaker 1: first describe it simply and then you improve it iteratively.

936
00:48:30,040 --> 00:48:31,760
Speaker 1: You know, as time goes on, you have more energy,

937
00:48:31,800 --> 00:48:34,760
Speaker 1: more resources, and so the models are still very early

938
00:48:34,800 --> 00:48:36,600
Speaker 1: in development, and it could be that as we make

939
00:48:36,640 --> 00:48:39,799
Speaker 1: them more realistic, they drift away from describing the data

940
00:48:39,880 --> 00:48:42,880
Speaker 1: rather than towards it. We don't know, but you know,

941
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:44,880
Speaker 1: there are people out there working on this stuff and

942
00:48:44,960 --> 00:48:46,240
Speaker 1: maybe they're right awesome.

943
00:48:46,360 --> 00:48:49,600
Speaker 3: And so so far we've only talked about stuff that

944
00:48:49,640 --> 00:48:52,840
Speaker 3: we've already thought about, but just we're thinking about it

945
00:48:52,880 --> 00:48:55,799
Speaker 3: a little bit differently. Do you think it's possible the

946
00:48:55,840 --> 00:48:59,320
Speaker 3: answer could be something completely out of the box.

947
00:49:00,000 --> 00:49:03,320
Speaker 1: Absolutely. You know, we are doing our best to describe

948
00:49:03,360 --> 00:49:06,640
Speaker 1: something new, but it's been years already. Right, These largs

949
00:49:06,680 --> 00:49:09,920
Speaker 1: we're seen very early in the James webrun and we

950
00:49:10,040 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 1: have not explained them yet, And so the first thing

951
00:49:12,600 --> 00:49:14,720
Speaker 1: you got to do to be conscientious is like try

952
00:49:14,719 --> 00:49:17,120
Speaker 1: to find a more prosaic explanation. But at some point

953
00:49:17,520 --> 00:49:19,319
Speaker 1: you've got to be more creative and come up with

954
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:21,640
Speaker 1: like new things that might be able to describe what

955
00:49:21,680 --> 00:49:24,000
Speaker 1: we're seeing. And the best way to do that is

956
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:26,960
Speaker 1: to get more information. Look at these things in the

957
00:49:27,040 --> 00:49:30,560
Speaker 1: radio using ALMA, look at these things in X ray scans,

958
00:49:31,239 --> 00:49:33,719
Speaker 1: try to figure out what this means. You know, this

959
00:49:33,880 --> 00:49:36,560
Speaker 1: also could be a harbinger of things to come, like

960
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:39,840
Speaker 1: the James Webspace telescope is great, but it can basically

961
00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:43,080
Speaker 1: only see bright things in the early universe. It could

962
00:49:43,120 --> 00:49:45,400
Speaker 1: be that this is just like the tip of the iceberg,

963
00:49:45,560 --> 00:49:48,279
Speaker 1: and the early universe is filled with all sorts of

964
00:49:48,280 --> 00:49:51,880
Speaker 1: stuff we never imagined. We're only seeing the brightest ones

965
00:49:51,920 --> 00:49:54,480
Speaker 1: because that's what we're capable of. But maybe future telescopes

966
00:49:54,520 --> 00:49:58,080
Speaker 1: will be able to resolve dimmer things that are even weirder.

967
00:49:58,880 --> 00:50:01,760
Speaker 1: So yeah, this all a lot of potentially exciting stuff.

968
00:50:02,120 --> 00:50:06,160
Speaker 1: The fact that this mystery has survived this long suggests

969
00:50:06,160 --> 00:50:08,040
Speaker 1: we have a lot to learn about the early universe.

970
00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:13,560
Speaker 3: Either way, Give more money to telescope people, more.

971
00:50:13,440 --> 00:50:14,400
Speaker 1: Eyes on the sky.

972
00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:18,920
Speaker 3: Absolutely, you had to make it sound kind of creepy,

973
00:50:18,960 --> 00:50:19,960
Speaker 3: didn't you.

974
00:50:19,960 --> 00:50:23,879
Speaker 1: No, that's not creepy. That's just being open minded. That's

975
00:50:23,920 --> 00:50:27,279
Speaker 1: just accepting the information in the universe is sending us man.

976
00:50:27,600 --> 00:50:28,960
Speaker 2: Save it for the judge.

977
00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:36,239
Speaker 1: All right, I'm happy to be prosecuted in the universal

978
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:39,080
Speaker 1: Court of knowledge gathering, you know, as long as I

979
00:50:39,120 --> 00:50:42,040
Speaker 1: have my alien lawyer with me to explain to narrow

980
00:50:42,040 --> 00:50:49,200
Speaker 1: minded humans who can't think beyond their parochial Virginia ethics.

981
00:50:49,719 --> 00:50:52,680
Speaker 3: All right, well, I will be waving at you from

982
00:50:52,719 --> 00:50:55,440
Speaker 3: the freedom outside your cell and maybe we'll still be

983
00:50:55,480 --> 00:50:56,759
Speaker 3: able to record twice a week.

984
00:50:56,880 --> 00:51:00,000
Speaker 2: But this was awesome. I hope we figure it out.

985
00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:01,560
Speaker 3: If you have to put your money on one of

986
00:51:01,600 --> 00:51:03,200
Speaker 3: the things that we've talked about today, which one?

987
00:51:03,239 --> 00:51:05,840
Speaker 1: Do you think it is something black holy? For sure?

988
00:51:05,920 --> 00:51:08,440
Speaker 1: Because it's already a lot of black hole mysteries in

989
00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:11,560
Speaker 1: the early universe. Okay, and you know, maybe this is

990
00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:13,960
Speaker 1: just connecting the dots between two things that are weird.

991
00:51:14,360 --> 00:51:16,920
Speaker 1: But I feel like we never really understood early universe

992
00:51:16,920 --> 00:51:19,240
Speaker 1: black holes. Now we're seeing something new in the universe

993
00:51:19,280 --> 00:51:22,480
Speaker 1: we don't really understand. Maybe they're connected.

994
00:51:23,120 --> 00:51:27,680
Speaker 3: Oh, little red dots, how long before you tell the truth?

995
00:51:29,880 --> 00:51:31,440
Speaker 2: I have to get some muse in there. No, I'm

996
00:51:31,480 --> 00:51:32,640
Speaker 2: so sorry. Let's get that out.

997
00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:35,960
Speaker 1: No, that was great. Adds some musical accompaniment to developer.

998
00:51:36,160 --> 00:51:39,800
Speaker 2: Oh no, all right, thanks everybody, until next time.

999
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:49,640
Speaker 1: Keep your eyes on the sky. Thanks everybody for listening.

1000
00:51:49,719 --> 00:51:51,960
Speaker 1: Please go and do us a favor and rate the

1001
00:51:52,040 --> 00:51:54,880
Speaker 1: show on whatever podcast app you're using. It really helps

1002
00:51:54,920 --> 00:51:55,759
Speaker 1: people find us.

1003
00:51:56,280 --> 00:52:00,960
Speaker 3: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the Matt Kesselman.

1004
00:52:01,200 --> 00:52:04,439
Speaker 1: He really is a wizard. You can also find us

1005
00:52:04,520 --> 00:52:09,640
Speaker 1: online on Blue Sky, Instagram, and x D and K Universe.

1006
00:52:09,680 --> 00:52:10,919
Speaker 1: Come engage with us.

1007
00:52:11,160 --> 00:52:14,480
Speaker 3: You can email us at questions at Danielankelly dot org.

1008
00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:16,759
Speaker 3: We really do want to hear from you, and you.

1009
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:20,759
Speaker 1: Can find our website www dot danieland Kelly dot org,

1010
00:52:21,040 --> 00:52:24,160
Speaker 1: where you'll also find an invitation to join our discord

1011
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:27,920
Speaker 1: where everybody comes and talks about the amazing universe.

1012
00:52:27,719 --> 00:52:31,680
Speaker 3: And we also have the most amazing moderators. This is

1013
00:52:31,719 --> 00:52:34,279
Speaker 3: an iHeart podcast. Thanks for joining us.