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Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, do you believe in luck? Do you think

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Speaker 1: you're a lucky person? I'm not sure. I guess I'm

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Speaker 1: pretty happy with how things have turned out. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: But was that luck or was it inevitable? I'm sure

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Speaker 1: there was a lot of randomness involved. I guess I'd

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Speaker 1: have to study the multiverse to see how often Daniel

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Speaker 1: gets to be a physics professor. But wait, is that

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Speaker 1: the lucky outcome. Wouldn't the lucky outcome be the one

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Speaker 1: where you get to be a movie star or a

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Speaker 1: billionaire or maybe a billionaire movie star physics professor. That's

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Speaker 1: a lot of titles there. It might cause the universe

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Speaker 1: to collapse on itself, physicists always ending the universe. We

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Speaker 1: might have caused it, but it doesn't mean it's our fault.

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Speaker 1: That sounds like a logical contradiction. Wouldn't that also collapse

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Speaker 1: the universe into a puff of logic? Hi am Jorhanmay,

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Speaker 1: cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel.

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Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine,

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Speaker 1: and I'm doing my best to understand the universe without

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Speaker 1: collapsing it. You're doing your best. I feel like your

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Speaker 1: best is not enough, like I guarantee is not enough.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you should look into that before doing it. I'll

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Speaker 1: check with my legal department. I'll do twice my best

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Speaker 1: time of that still not enough. Ending the universe twice

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Speaker 1: is still ending the universe. Maybe it's like negative signs.

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Speaker 1: You know, if you do it twice, it comes back.

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Speaker 1: But then are you going to be a physics professor again?

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Speaker 1: Are we going to be that unlucky? Maybe when everything

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Speaker 1: snaps back, that's when I get to be a billionaire.

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Speaker 1: But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain

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Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio, where we try our

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Speaker 1: best to make sense of this crazy universe. When you

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Speaker 1: look out there in the cosmos and try to understand

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Speaker 1: the way things are, the way things might be, and

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Speaker 1: how it all can possibly make sense. We do our

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Speaker 1: best to cram this incredible, giant, fantastical universe into our

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Speaker 1: tiny little primate brains and squish it all around until

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Speaker 1: it makes sense to us and hopefully makes sense to you. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it is an amazing universe, or maybe an amazing multiverse,

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Speaker 1: or might be more than one universe out there, But

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Speaker 1: at least the one we're in. It seems pretty amazing,

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Speaker 1: pretty awesome to explore and to ask questions about, and

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Speaker 1: to wonder about the logic of it. Yeah, as we

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Speaker 1: look out into the universe, we wonder why is it

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Speaker 1: this way and not some other way? Why are we

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Speaker 1: in this part of the universe and not some other

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Speaker 1: part of the universe? Are we lucky that we ended

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Speaker 1: up here? Was it just a fluke or is it

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Speaker 1: pretty common our experience of the universe? Is the universe

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Speaker 1: guaranteed to be logical? Daniel? Do you think is it

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Speaker 1: logical that the universe is not logical? Yeah? A guarantee

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Speaker 1: itself rests on logic, and so if the universe is illogical,

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Speaker 1: then it cannot provide any kind of guarantees at all.

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Speaker 1: Philosophically speaking, we don't know why the universe makes sense

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Speaker 1: to us at all, Like, why is it even possible

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Speaker 1: to describe it in terms of pretty simple mathematical stories.

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Speaker 1: We don't know, But we do know that it seems

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Speaker 1: to work, and it works really really well. Well, the

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Speaker 1: universe is random, right at the quantum level, things are random?

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Speaker 1: Is random the same as logical. Well, that's a really

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Speaker 1: interesting point. Because even if quantum mechanics is random, it's

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Speaker 1: still also logical, Like quantum mechanics makes very specific predictions

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Speaker 1: for the probabilities of different things to happen, even if

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Speaker 1: it doesn't actually pin down what will happen. So quantum

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Speaker 1: mechanics being random doesn't mean it's like crazy, you're out

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Speaker 1: of control. It still makes very specific predictions about what

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Speaker 1: can and cannot happen and the probabilities of those things happening.

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Speaker 1: Right although technically acquantic to quantum physics, like a pink

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Speaker 1: unicorn could technically appear in front of me out of

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Speaker 1: the boob right now, or in front of any of

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Speaker 1: us right now, right and that would be logical. According

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Speaker 1: to physicists, that would be logical, even though it would

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Speaker 1: also be fantastical. And that's something we're always trying to

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Speaker 1: understand about the universe. We see what happens to us,

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Speaker 1: we wonder was that just a random, lucky fluke, or

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Speaker 1: is that the kind of thing we expect to see

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Speaker 1: in the universe. And there's this overriding principle in science

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Speaker 1: called the Copernican principle, which argues that our experience is

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Speaker 1: not weird, that everywhere in the universe is the same,

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Speaker 1: and nothing is special anywhere, and so when we look

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Speaker 1: out into the universe, we tend to try to explain

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Speaker 1: what we see without resorting to lucky chances and random flukes.

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Speaker 1: But lucky flukes is why we're here, Daniel, Lucky flukes

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Speaker 1: are the best. Well, every individual person, of course, has

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Speaker 1: an almost astronomically tiny chance of ever existing with all

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Speaker 1: of their constituent details. But what we don't know is

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Speaker 1: what are the chances of any person existing? You know,

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Speaker 1: one of the deep questions in the universe is what

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Speaker 1: are the chances for life evolving, for intelligent life to evolve?

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Speaker 1: Are we unusual or are we common in the universe?

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Speaker 1: And we'd like to be able to explain our existence

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Speaker 1: here without resorting to a one in a trillion chance

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Speaker 1: of all of this is happening. Well, it seems like

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Speaker 1: there's a sort of a fine line between illogic and

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Speaker 1: unlikeliness or as you said, improbability. Yeah, that's right, and

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Speaker 1: often we can tell the difference, you know, we have

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Speaker 1: just this one example of our lives and the part

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Speaker 1: of the universe that we can see. And often we

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Speaker 1: look out into the universe and we see stuff that

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Speaker 1: seems weird, that seems like a weird coincidence, and we

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Speaker 1: want to try to explain it. We don't want to

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Speaker 1: just like brush it under the rug and say, hm,

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Speaker 1: that's random, seems weird. I guess sometimes you just get lucky.

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Speaker 1: We'd like to understand if there's something else going on,

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Speaker 1: something deeper behind it. But you know, there isn't always

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Speaker 1: an explanation, like, for example, the sun in the moon

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Speaker 1: take up about exactly the same space in our sky,

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Speaker 1: which allows for very dramatic eclipses, and that's just a coincidence.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes coincidences happen, but sometimes they do have deeper explanations

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Speaker 1: that we can look for. Yeah. So one way we

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Speaker 1: try to explore the logic of the universe is by

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Speaker 1: coming up with situations in our minds or that maybe

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Speaker 1: we get hints at out there of events or things

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Speaker 1: that seem to break the logic of the universe. And

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Speaker 1: these are paradoxes. Yeah. One very famous paradox is the

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Speaker 1: Fermi paradox, which says where are all the aliens? You know,

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Speaker 1: if the galaxy is really really old and actually filled

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Speaker 1: with stars and planets, then maybe it should also be

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Speaker 1: filled with aliens, and why haven't we seen any of

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Speaker 1: them yet? Why haven't they sent us messages? This is

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Speaker 1: called the Fermi paradox because if you accept all of

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Speaker 1: those assumptions, then we should have heard from aliens, and

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Speaker 1: yet we haven't. So paradoxes are fun because they make

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Speaker 1: you re examine those assumptions to say, well, we haven't

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Speaker 1: heard from aliens, then which of those assumptions must be wrong?

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Speaker 1: And what does that tell us about the universe. Well.

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Speaker 1: Another famous paradox is the grandfather of paradox. Right, This

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Speaker 1: idea that if you go back in time and you

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Speaker 1: somehow prevent your grandfather from giving birth or making your

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Speaker 1: father or mother haven't, then that creates an illogical consistency

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Speaker 1: because then how could you have existed to them prevent

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Speaker 1: your grandfather from doing that. That's one of the most

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Speaker 1: famous logical paradoxes, right, And that's like something that doesn't

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Speaker 1: make sense logically, but it could maybe happen. Well, we

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Speaker 1: don't know if that could maybe happen exactly. That's one

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Speaker 1: of the paradoxes inherent in time travel. It's the kind

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Speaker 1: of thing that makes people wonder like, well, what are

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Speaker 1: we overlooking? Is there something in time travel which would

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Speaker 1: prevent that from happening. And there are various ideas about

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Speaker 1: cosmic censorship that might prevent paradoxes from cropping up if

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Speaker 1: you could actually achieve time travel. So you're right, it's

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Speaker 1: a really interesting idea and it focuses your thinking on

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Speaker 1: the issues to say, well, what can we do to

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Speaker 1: prevent this paradox from happening, because, as you say, the

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Speaker 1: universe seems logical, and so anything that creates a contradiction,

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Speaker 1: a logical contradiction, we don't think that that could exist.

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Speaker 1: The universe can't exist in two states that disagree with

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Speaker 1: each other simultaneously. Yeah, so there is another interesting paradox

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Speaker 1: out there. Then maybe the challenges the logic of us

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Speaker 1: being here in the first place, or at least of

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Speaker 1: our son being here in the first place. Yeah, asked

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Speaker 1: the question basically of why we're not looking up into

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Speaker 1: our sky and seeing a different kind of star than

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Speaker 1: the one that we have, or stars plural. So today

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Speaker 1: on the podcast, we'll be asking the question what is

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Speaker 1: the Red Dwarf paradox? The real Red Dwarf paradox is

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Speaker 1: why don't more people watch the show The Red Dwarf.

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Speaker 1: Is that a show? I've never seen it? Is that

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Speaker 1: a show? Oh my gosh, it's like one of the

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Speaker 1: most hilarious can't be science fiction shows ever. I've never

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Speaker 1: heard of it. Where does it er? I think it's

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Speaker 1: on the BBC, but you can find it online. Is

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Speaker 1: it really hilarious show? Sort of in the vein of

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Speaker 1: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Definitely not hard science fiction. Well,

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Speaker 1: the paradox maybe, is how come I've never shown I mean,

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Speaker 1: I've seen several seasons of Doctor Who. There you go, Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: maybe it only exists in another multiverse, and that's proof

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Speaker 1: that I came from another universe. You do seem out

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Speaker 1: of this world, Daniel, you mean out of my mind.

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Speaker 1: But so, the Red Dwarf paradox apparently is a thing.

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Speaker 1: I had also never heard of this, the paradox or

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Speaker 1: the show before coming into this episode. But it's sort

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Speaker 1: of like a thing that physicists talk about, right. It

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Speaker 1: is a thing that physicists and biologists and basically everybody

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Speaker 1: who's curious about why we ended up on this rock

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Speaker 1: around this star. Fundamentally, we're always asking the question, is

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Speaker 1: our experience unusual? Do we have to resort to shrugging

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Speaker 1: our shoulders and saying, well, I guess we were just lucky,

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Speaker 1: or is there a reason that our experience is this

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Speaker 1: way and not some other way? And in this particular case,

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Speaker 1: we're wondering about why our star is one of these

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Speaker 1: yellow stars instead of a red dwarf star. Well, this,

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Speaker 1: like you said earlier, this sort of seems similar to

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Speaker 1: the Fermi paradox, which is sort of this idea that

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Speaker 1: we should have been contacted or seen aliens right now,

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Speaker 1: but we haven't, given the size of the universe. But

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Speaker 1: I feel like those are not really logical paradoxes, right Like,

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Speaker 1: strictly speaking, it's not a logical there's no logical contradiction here.

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Speaker 1: It's just like an unlikeliness. Yeah, that's true. I mean,

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Speaker 1: the set of assumptions, when you combine them, suggest that

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Speaker 1: it would be very unlikely for us to not be

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Speaker 1: contacted by aliens. So either we're just unlucky or there's

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Speaker 1: some other reason one of the assumptions that goes into

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Speaker 1: it is wrong. And so you can always explain these

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Speaker 1: things away and say, oh, well, maybe it's just one

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Speaker 1: a million chance, and that's what it is. But you

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Speaker 1: can also sometimes make progress by digging into those assumptions

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Speaker 1: and saying, is one of those wrong, let's take another look.

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Speaker 1: You mean, it's sort of like a tool to examine

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Speaker 1: our assumptions about the universe, or as someone else might

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Speaker 1: come complete guesses. Yeah, but it's a basic part of science.

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Speaker 1: You know, anytime you think you have an understanding of

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Speaker 1: the universe, you then think about what the consequences are.

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Speaker 1: You know, if the universe is this way, then I

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Speaker 1: should be able to prove it by seeing this thing.

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Speaker 1: And if you don't see that thing happening, then you wonder, well,

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Speaker 1: what's wrong with my idea of the universe? When we thought, oh,

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Speaker 1: the universe would make more sense if it had Higgs

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Speaker 1: Boson in it, let's go look for it, and we

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Speaker 1: found it. Now, if we hadn't found it, then we

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Speaker 1: would have to go back and re examine those assumptions

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Speaker 1: that suggested it does exist and wonder which one of

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Speaker 1: them were wrong. All right, Well, this red dwarf paradox

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Speaker 1: basically just real quickly in a nutshell. It kind of

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Speaker 1: asked the question that you asked earlier, which is, why

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Speaker 1: isn't our star a red dwarf. Our son is a

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Speaker 1: nice yellow or white I guess technically white ball of fire.

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Speaker 1: It's not a red, it's not a dwarf, and so

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Speaker 1: that's kind of what the paradox is about. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: about it all right. Well, as usually, we were wondering

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Speaker 1: how many people out there had asked themselves this question,

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Speaker 1: why isn't our son different? Why isn't it a red dwarf?

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Speaker 1: So thanks very much to everybody who participates in this

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Speaker 1: segment of the podcast, and we would love to hear

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Speaker 1: your voice out there. Those of you who have been

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Speaker 1: listening for a while but haven't yet chimed in, please

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Speaker 1: write to us to participate to questions at Daniel Horge

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Speaker 1: dot com. So think about it for a second. Have

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Speaker 1: you ever asked yourself on a nice sunny day, why

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Speaker 1: our star isn't red? Here's what people had to say.

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Speaker 1: I feel like thybe it's too big, big to be

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Speaker 1: a red dwarf. That's it. I really don't know the

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Speaker 1: answer to this one. I would just imagine that it

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Speaker 1: doesn't have enough mass to either collapse into itself a

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Speaker 1: form a black hole or become a red giant. I

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Speaker 1: don't know all a son didn't follow his diet and

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Speaker 1: has eaten a lot, so it's too big to become

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Speaker 1: a red dwarf. I think the main reason our star

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Speaker 1: isn't a red dwarf is just because it's something has

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Speaker 1: to do with like the amount of mass it has

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Speaker 1: in the beginning and when it begins, because some stars

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Speaker 1: go supernova and some stars just white doors. I don't know,

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Speaker 1: I get mixed up. Maybe our son is not old

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Speaker 1: enough to be a red dwarf. Maybe it still has

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Speaker 1: a lot of fool to be larger and right, dar,

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Speaker 1: I don't think that our star is supposed to be

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Speaker 1: a red dwarf. I think that it may someday be

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Speaker 1: a red dwarf given enough time, But I think that

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Speaker 1: it's not quite yet reached that phase of stellar evolution.

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Speaker 1: All right, A lot of interesting answers here, I like

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Speaker 1: the one about the Sun not following a diet, yeah,

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Speaker 1: or the one about it not being old enough. But

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Speaker 1: I am disappointed nobody brought off Superman. I mean these answers,

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Speaker 1: what does Superman have to do with the Sun being

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Speaker 1: yellow or red? You don't know. I don't know, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you don't know. Some basic mythology about Superman. I spent

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Speaker 1: all my time watching the show Red Dwarf instead of

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Speaker 1: reading Superman comics. Well, there you go. That's a multiverse

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Speaker 1: I don't want to live in. So tell us what

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Speaker 1: a Superman have to do with red stars. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: a basic part of his mythology. So in the original comics,

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Speaker 1: he grew up in a planet with the red sun,

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Speaker 1: and so when he comes to Earth, he has all

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Speaker 1: these superpowers because our son is not red, it's yellow,

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Speaker 1: and somehow that gives him his superpowers somehow. Wow, you

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Speaker 1: just yadda yadded over all the crucial elements of it. Yeah, somehow,

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Speaker 1: you know, like how physicists do somehow the Higgs boson

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Speaker 1: is created in architectors. That's exactly what I wrote in

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Speaker 1: the paper. Yeah, that was it basically. I mean, you

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Speaker 1: use more words and formulas, but there's not much difference

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Speaker 1: between Action comics in the Journal of Physics. I'm sure

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Speaker 1: that Action Comics hired some physics consultants to work out

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Speaker 1: the details, and there's somewhere in there archives there are

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Speaker 1: formulas explaining how the yellow sun gives Superman his special powers.

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Speaker 1: What does that mean that Superman doesn't have those powers?

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Speaker 1: In the dark. Well later on, it's sort of it's

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Speaker 1: sort of like he acts like a battery, kind of

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Speaker 1: like he needs to recharge, he needs to sunbathe they

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Speaker 1: to get his superpowers. I see. So kryptonite isn't his kryptonite.

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Speaker 1: It's sunscreen. That's his kryptonite in the long run. Yes, okay, fascinating. Well,

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Speaker 1: let's dig into this red dwarf paradox and how it

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Speaker 1: might affect Superman, I guess, or all of us, because

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Speaker 1: it'd be great if we were all Superman and women. Well, actually,

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Speaker 1: what the redware paradox suggests is that most of the

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Speaker 1: universe is basically Superman, because one thing that's really interesting

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Speaker 1: about the universe is that most of the stars out

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Speaker 1: there in the universe are red stars, not yellow like ours.

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Speaker 1: All Right, well, let's dig into this topic and this

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Speaker 1: red dwarf paradox, and it's starts with the basics. What

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Speaker 1: is a red dwarf star? Daniel, So, a red dwarf

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Speaker 1: is just a kind of star. Remember that a star

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Speaker 1: is a huge ball of gas and it's squeezed down

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Speaker 1: by gravity, so at its core it's hot enough and

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Speaker 1: dense enough for fusion to happen, which is where the

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Speaker 1: light comes from and why the star burns at the

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Speaker 1: temperature at the core, and therefore the temperature at the

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Speaker 1: surface depends on the mass of the star. The more

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Speaker 1: gas you have, the higher temperature and pressure you have

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Speaker 1: at the core of the star, and so the higher

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Speaker 1: the temperature at the surface, and so the different color

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Speaker 1: of the star. Remember that everything in the universe glows,

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Speaker 1: and how it glows depends on its temperature. Our sun

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Speaker 1: is a surface temperature of five or six thousand degrees kelvin,

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Speaker 1: and so it tends to glow in our visible spectrum.

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Speaker 1: Bigger stars are hotter, and so they tend to be bluer.

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Speaker 1: Smaller stars are colder, and so they tend to be redder,

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Speaker 1: and so a red dwarf star is a smaller, colder

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Speaker 1: star that tends to be redder than our star. M

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Speaker 1: I guess maybe can you explain why smaller means lower temperature?

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Speaker 1: Is it because when you're smaller, you don't have as

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Speaker 1: much fusion, if at all, inside the core of the

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Speaker 1: gas cloud. There's definitely a close connection between the size

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Speaker 1: of the star and its internal temperature, and that's just

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Speaker 1: because of gravity. Like more mass means more gravitational pressure,

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Speaker 1: which means higher temperature. We once topped our way through

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Speaker 1: that thought experiment of like taking a big blob of

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Speaker 1: gas and squeezing it down. Squeezing it down heats it

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Speaker 1: up because you're basically applying pressure which pushes on all

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Speaker 1: those molecules, turning them around to focus them back towards

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Speaker 1: the center. You imagine like a big box containing cold gas.

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Speaker 1: As you can strict that box, you're pushing on all

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Speaker 1: the molecules that would have otherwise escaped, so you're giving

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Speaker 1: them more and more energy. So as you squeeze down

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Speaker 1: harder and harder, you're speeding up all those molecules, you're

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Speaker 1: making them hotter and hotter. So a bigger blob of

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Speaker 1: stuff has more gravitational pressure, which means a higher temperature.

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Speaker 1: Something like Jupiter, which is also a ball of gas.

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Speaker 1: It does squeeze its gas in the middle, but it

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Speaker 1: doesn't radiate light like this star of Sundust, did it.

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Speaker 1: It does not. You're right, there's a minimum mass in

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Speaker 1: order to create the conditions for fusion. Fusion is hard. Remember,

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Speaker 1: what you're doing is squeezing together two protons which have

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Speaker 1: a pretty powerful force repelling them. Right, they're both positively charged.

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Speaker 1: You don't like to get together, So to get the

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Speaker 1: protons close enough together to fuse to make helium, you

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Speaker 1: have to overcome that. So you got to squeeze them really,

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Speaker 1: really hard. And so if you don't have enough gravitational pressure,

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Speaker 1: you haven't raised the temperature enough, then fusion just doesn't happen.

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Speaker 1: So there's a minimum threshold above which fusion happens and

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Speaker 1: below which it doesn't. So Jupiter is below that threshold

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Speaker 1: by like a factor of ten. In order to get

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Speaker 1: Jupiter to have fusion to ignite at its core, you'd

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Speaker 1: have to add like nine more Jupiter's worth of mass

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Speaker 1: to get it to that threshold. Red dwarfs are stars

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Speaker 1: that are just above that minimum threshold, like eight percent

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Speaker 1: of the mass of the Sun. It's like the minimum

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Speaker 1: amount of stuff you need to get fusion going. So

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Speaker 1: red dwarfs are like basically the smallest fusion reactor you

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Speaker 1: can have. So red dwarf is a star in the

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Speaker 1: sense that it has fusion inside of it. If you

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Speaker 1: don't make it to the threshold fusion, like if you're

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Speaker 1: like point ninety ninety nine below the fusion limit, would

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Speaker 1: you still glow or did you just be like a

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Speaker 1: giant gas planet like Jupiter. You'd be a giant gas

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Speaker 1: planet like Jupiter. You wouldn't have fusion, but you would

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Speaker 1: still be kind of hot. Even just having that much

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Speaker 1: mass and that pressure makes you kind of hot. Like

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Speaker 1: the core of Jupiter is not cool, right, it's very

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Speaker 1: high density, high temperature, just not high enough to be fusion. Now,

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Speaker 1: because you're pretty hot, you are going to glow. You're

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Speaker 1: gonna glow very deep in the infrared, and you're not

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Speaker 1: going to be nearly as bright as stars that actually

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Speaker 1: have fusion happening in them. All right, well, I'll take

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Speaker 1: being kind of hot, but not being hot, although being

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Speaker 1: cool it's also pretty cool. These stars are really fascinating,

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Speaker 1: these red dwarfs, and they're kind of cool. As we say, so,

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Speaker 1: they tend to radiate in the red region, and they're

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Speaker 1: also really really dim, Like these things are not nearly

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Speaker 1: as bright as our sun. As a star gets bigger,

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Speaker 1: it gets hotter, and then the fusion happens faster, and

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Speaker 1: so they get brighter and brighter, which is why like

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Speaker 1: really big massive stars starts like one hundred or two

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Speaker 1: hundred times the mass of our sun burn really brightly,

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Speaker 1: very blue, and don't last for very long. They can

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Speaker 1: burn out just a few million years. Stars that are

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Speaker 1: about the size of our sun last for billions of years.

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Speaker 1: But if a star is smaller and cooler, it doesn't

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Speaker 1: burn as bright, it's much dimmer. It can actually last

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Speaker 1: much much longer. So a red dwarf can last for

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Speaker 1: longer than the age of the universe, or even much longer. WHOA,

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Speaker 1: I guess, because it's got like the heat on low

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Speaker 1: basically right, it's like it's got just enough gravity to

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Speaker 1: make fusion, but not enough to like burn a lot

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Speaker 1: of it, So it's just burning a little bit in

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Speaker 1: the center of it like a candle, more like a bonfire,

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Speaker 1: and there's something else going on like the heart of

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Speaker 1: these red dwarfs. Because they're cooler, the way the heat

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Speaker 1: gets mixed around in their core is a little bit

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Speaker 1: different than in our star. Like at our star, a

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Speaker 1: lot of the heat transfer is what we call radiative transfer.

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Speaker 1: Like fusion happens, and photons zoom out and the energy

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Speaker 1: gets dispersed through the star towards the outside by radiation.

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Speaker 1: Right these photons are flying out and so the outer

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Speaker 1: parts of the star get hotter and hotter, and helium

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Speaker 1: the fusion product tends to fall towards the core in

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Speaker 1: our star, and that's actually a problem for our star

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Speaker 1: because that helium tends to sort of put out the fusion,

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Speaker 1: and so then fusion only happens on the outside of

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Speaker 1: the star. But in a red dwarf it's a little

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Speaker 1: bit different. Remember it's not as bright the outside of

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Speaker 1: a star. What do you mean for a star like

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Speaker 1: our sun near the end of its life, as it

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Speaker 1: accumulates helium at its core, most of the fusion will

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Speaker 1: not be happening at its core anymore. Instead, it'll be

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Speaker 1: happening on the outer layers of the star, which is

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Speaker 1: one reason why our sun will grow eventually become like

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Speaker 1: a red giant. It'll puff out to have like a

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Speaker 1: radius the size of Earth's orbit, because the fusion will

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Speaker 1: be happening like in the outer layers, and the core

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Speaker 1: will be the sort of cooler helium. But a red

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Speaker 1: dwarf won't have that problem. A red dwarf mixes in

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Speaker 1: a different way because there's not so much radiation produced

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Speaker 1: at its core, so there tends to be more convection

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Speaker 1: of the plasma like mixes more thoroughly, so you don't

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Speaker 1: get this accumulation of helium at the core, and it

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Speaker 1: can basically just sort of like burn steadily for a

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Speaker 1: long time. This tends to prolong the fusion. It's another

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Speaker 1: reason why these red dwarves last a really long time.

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Speaker 1: And we don't know because the universe isn't old enough,

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Speaker 1: but some calculations suggest that a small star like ten

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Speaker 1: percent the mass of our sun could last for ten

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Speaker 1: trillion years. WHOA, that's like ten thousand billion years, right,

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Speaker 1: that's ten thousand billion years, or almost a thousand times

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Speaker 1: the current age of the universe. Like some of these

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Speaker 1: red dwarfs that were created very early on in the universe,

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Speaker 1: they could be less than one one thousands of the

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Speaker 1: way through their life cycles so far. By lasting, you

427
00:21:55,960 --> 00:21:59,240
Speaker 1: mean like sustaining fusion at their core, yeah, exactly, because

428
00:21:59,240 --> 00:22:02,280
Speaker 1: eventually they will burn through their fuel and these things

429
00:22:02,280 --> 00:22:05,400
Speaker 1: will become blue dwarfs and then white dwarfs. Eventually, the

430
00:22:05,440 --> 00:22:07,440
Speaker 1: life cycle of one of these red dwarves, we think

431
00:22:07,560 --> 00:22:11,880
Speaker 1: ends with it basically becoming a cooler blob of heavier metals,

432
00:22:11,880 --> 00:22:15,879
Speaker 1: probably helium. Sounds like the cosmic version of the tortoise

433
00:22:15,960 --> 00:22:19,879
Speaker 1: in the hair there that's slow and steady kind of

434
00:22:19,880 --> 00:22:23,000
Speaker 1: wins the race. Yeah, exactly. So really big stars burn

435
00:22:23,119 --> 00:22:25,400
Speaker 1: really brightly but don't last for very long, and really

436
00:22:25,440 --> 00:22:29,840
Speaker 1: small stars burn cooler, but they last forever almost And

437
00:22:29,840 --> 00:22:32,080
Speaker 1: this is really useful when we're looking out into the

438
00:22:32,160 --> 00:22:35,840
Speaker 1: universe trying to understand how recently stars were made. If

439
00:22:35,840 --> 00:22:37,359
Speaker 1: you're looking at a part of the universe and you

440
00:22:37,400 --> 00:22:41,080
Speaker 1: see blue stars, you see hot, bright young stars, that

441
00:22:41,119 --> 00:22:44,320
Speaker 1: means stars must have been made recently. If all you're

442
00:22:44,359 --> 00:22:47,200
Speaker 1: looking at our redder stars, then you know that it's

443
00:22:47,240 --> 00:22:50,480
Speaker 1: pretty old because all the hot young blue stars have

444
00:22:50,560 --> 00:22:53,480
Speaker 1: already burned out. So it's a really helpful lever for

445
00:22:53,600 --> 00:22:56,720
Speaker 1: understanding what's going on out there in the universe. So

446
00:22:56,880 --> 00:23:02,320
Speaker 1: they're like looking at TikTok only stars there. All right, Well,

447
00:23:02,320 --> 00:23:05,200
Speaker 1: that's what a red dwarf is. Until the big question

448
00:23:05,359 --> 00:23:08,680
Speaker 1: is why isn't our star a red dwarf? And would

449
00:23:08,680 --> 00:23:12,080
Speaker 1: we all have superpowers if it were? So let's dig

450
00:23:12,119 --> 00:23:26,919
Speaker 1: into that, But first let's take a quick break. All right,

451
00:23:26,960 --> 00:23:29,920
Speaker 1: we're talking about the red dwarf paradox. Basically, why isn't

452
00:23:29,960 --> 00:23:31,960
Speaker 1: our son a red dwarf. I feel like this is

453
00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:34,920
Speaker 1: an insensitive question, Daniel. I mean, how would our son feel?

454
00:23:38,119 --> 00:23:39,760
Speaker 1: Maybe we should have asked it the other way, to say,

455
00:23:39,840 --> 00:23:43,160
Speaker 1: why is our star so special and wonderful? Yeah, there

456
00:23:43,200 --> 00:23:45,560
Speaker 1: you go. That sounds better. Maybe it should be the

457
00:23:45,640 --> 00:23:51,040
Speaker 1: yellow sun bonus situation. There you go straight from our

458
00:23:51,040 --> 00:23:54,119
Speaker 1: pr department. But our son is kind of special. I mean,

459
00:23:54,160 --> 00:23:57,080
Speaker 1: if you look out in the universe, our son is

460
00:23:57,200 --> 00:24:01,520
Speaker 1: not the most common kind of son. Instead, like seventy

461
00:24:01,520 --> 00:24:04,840
Speaker 1: five percent of the stars in the galaxy are red dwarves.

462
00:24:05,080 --> 00:24:08,479
Speaker 1: These things like dominate the galaxy. Most of the stars

463
00:24:08,520 --> 00:24:12,120
Speaker 1: out there are red dwarves, not yellow stars like ours.

464
00:24:12,400 --> 00:24:14,199
Speaker 1: What do you mean dominate? What kind of numbers are

465
00:24:14,200 --> 00:24:16,800
Speaker 1: we talking about? So three quarters of all stars in

466
00:24:16,880 --> 00:24:22,080
Speaker 1: our galaxy are red dwarfs. It's like overwhelming. M Well,

467
00:24:22,280 --> 00:24:24,720
Speaker 1: that's kind of interesting. So three quarters of the stars

468
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:27,200
Speaker 1: in our galaxy are red dwarves, but they don't look

469
00:24:27,240 --> 00:24:29,520
Speaker 1: red when you look out into the night sky. Yeah,

470
00:24:29,560 --> 00:24:32,000
Speaker 1: this is really fascinating. Most of the stars in the

471
00:24:32,080 --> 00:24:35,679
Speaker 1: galaxy are red dwarves, but none of the stars you

472
00:24:35,720 --> 00:24:38,440
Speaker 1: can see in the sky with the naked eye are

473
00:24:38,480 --> 00:24:41,480
Speaker 1: red dwarfs. And The reason as that these red dwarfs

474
00:24:41,520 --> 00:24:44,200
Speaker 1: are pretty dim. Remember they can be like ten thousand

475
00:24:44,240 --> 00:24:48,280
Speaker 1: times less bright than our sun, and so they're all

476
00:24:48,320 --> 00:24:50,399
Speaker 1: over the place. They're out there. But the stars we

477
00:24:50,440 --> 00:24:52,840
Speaker 1: see in the sky are not red dwarves. We see

478
00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:57,320
Speaker 1: the bright ones, the rare ones. MM. Interesting. So I

479
00:24:57,359 --> 00:25:00,040
Speaker 1: guess if you looked at the sky with maybe like

480
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:03,119
Speaker 1: an infrared glasses, or if you could see into the

481
00:25:03,359 --> 00:25:06,760
Speaker 1: lower frequency light spectrum, then you might see a whole

482
00:25:06,760 --> 00:25:09,400
Speaker 1: bunch more stars when you look at the nice sky. Yeah.

483
00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:12,560
Speaker 1: In fact, that the closest star to us, Proximus Centauri,

484
00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:15,440
Speaker 1: is a red dwarf. It is like twelve point five

485
00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:18,040
Speaker 1: percent the mass of the Sun. You can't see it

486
00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:20,920
Speaker 1: with the naked eye, even though it's the closest star

487
00:25:21,040 --> 00:25:23,280
Speaker 1: to Earth. Most of the stars so you're looking at

488
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 1: in the sky are what we call like FK or

489
00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:29,560
Speaker 1: G type stars instead of red dwarfs. Well, it's super interesting.

490
00:25:29,600 --> 00:25:32,200
Speaker 1: So I guess animals I can see that have night vision,

491
00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:35,680
Speaker 1: basically I can see infrared more that would they look

492
00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:38,119
Speaker 1: out into the nice sky and see a totally different

493
00:25:38,160 --> 00:25:40,960
Speaker 1: picture than we would. Wow, that's a super fascinating question.

494
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:42,239
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess we'll have to have an

495
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:45,600
Speaker 1: animal on the podcast as a guest, our first animal astronomer,

496
00:25:45,600 --> 00:25:48,440
Speaker 1: and ask them all about what they see. Yeah, sounds good.

497
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 1: Which animal would that be? An anteater? Of course for Ucia. Now,

498
00:25:53,320 --> 00:25:57,040
Speaker 1: but we have built infrared eyeballs, right, James Webb. Remember

499
00:25:57,200 --> 00:26:01,720
Speaker 1: is an infrared telescope. It specializes in seeing in the infrared.

500
00:26:01,960 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 1: And we have lots of other infrared facilities that can

501
00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:07,520
Speaker 1: see these spectra, and so we have, of course observed

502
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 1: these stars. We look out into the universe and notice them.

503
00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:12,320
Speaker 1: That's how we know that they are there. But it's

504
00:26:12,359 --> 00:26:14,399
Speaker 1: really interesting to me to think, like, not only is

505
00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:16,680
Speaker 1: our star not a red dwarf, but none of the

506
00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:20,200
Speaker 1: stars we see are red dwarfs, even though they dominate

507
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:23,560
Speaker 1: the universe. I guess maybe the first question I would have,

508
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:26,119
Speaker 1: and I imagine anyone would have, is why is the

509
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:28,720
Speaker 1: universe mostly made out of red dwarves? Why is it

510
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:32,200
Speaker 1: seventy stars in the galaxy are red dwars? Why isn't

511
00:26:32,200 --> 00:26:35,080
Speaker 1: it more distributed? Yeah, it's a really cool question. There's

512
00:26:35,119 --> 00:26:39,000
Speaker 1: this concept in astronomy called the initial mass function, which

513
00:26:39,080 --> 00:26:42,840
Speaker 1: tries to describe basically how much stuff a star gets.

514
00:26:43,320 --> 00:26:45,960
Speaker 1: You know, ask the question like, if you're forming a star,

515
00:26:46,080 --> 00:26:48,240
Speaker 1: how much stuff are you likely to get? What's the

516
00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:51,480
Speaker 1: distribution of the mass of stars, for example, and what

517
00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:53,760
Speaker 1: turns out to be like a power law, You're much

518
00:26:53,880 --> 00:26:56,479
Speaker 1: much less likely to make a big star than a

519
00:26:56,560 --> 00:26:59,920
Speaker 1: small star. And you know, as gas clouds are sort

520
00:26:59,920 --> 00:27:03,600
Speaker 1: of coming together and forming stars, you're just less likely

521
00:27:03,680 --> 00:27:06,560
Speaker 1: to grab a bigger blob of stuff. You're more likely

522
00:27:06,600 --> 00:27:10,720
Speaker 1: to form multiple smaller stars than a single larger star

523
00:27:11,040 --> 00:27:13,399
Speaker 1: because it's just how gravity works out there in space

524
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:16,800
Speaker 1: in a gas cloud. Yeah, it's actually quite complicated because

525
00:27:16,800 --> 00:27:20,280
Speaker 1: it involves not just gravity but also where metals are

526
00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:23,760
Speaker 1: and how they're distributed. Imagine this big gas cloud where

527
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:26,760
Speaker 1: gravity pulls things together to make stars depends on where

528
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:29,280
Speaker 1: you have little bits of density to start with, and

529
00:27:29,320 --> 00:27:32,320
Speaker 1: the universe is mostly hydrogen, but it's also sprinkled with

530
00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:35,880
Speaker 1: a bunch of metals, right, the metals from previous stars

531
00:27:35,880 --> 00:27:38,560
Speaker 1: that burned and fused these heavy things and then sprayed

532
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:41,639
Speaker 1: them out into the universe. So we think that also

533
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:44,639
Speaker 1: as time goes on and the universe gets more and

534
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:48,359
Speaker 1: more metallic, less hydrogen and more heavy stuff, that the

535
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:51,679
Speaker 1: size of stars decreased, like the first generation of stars

536
00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:54,199
Speaker 1: will be weirdly call type three. We think these were

537
00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:57,679
Speaker 1: all really really big, hugely massive stars, like three or

538
00:27:57,680 --> 00:27:59,879
Speaker 1: four hundred times the mass of our sun, and they

539
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:02,080
Speaker 1: burned out really really quickly. But while they burned, they

540
00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:04,879
Speaker 1: also made some heavier metals, So the next generation of

541
00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:08,240
Speaker 1: stars got seated with more overdensities because you have this

542
00:28:08,320 --> 00:28:11,359
Speaker 1: like spray of little dots of metal to start more

543
00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 1: stars and sort of collapsed more easily into these cold blobs.

544
00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:18,080
Speaker 1: So it's a complicated interplay with like the temperature of

545
00:28:18,080 --> 00:28:20,800
Speaker 1: these gas clouds and the distribution of where the metal

546
00:28:20,880 --> 00:28:23,439
Speaker 1: seeds are to start these things, and there's a lot

547
00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:26,680
Speaker 1: of uncertainty. People aren't really sure exactly what the shape

548
00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:29,640
Speaker 1: of this initial mass function is, but we are sure

549
00:28:29,680 --> 00:28:32,439
Speaker 1: of the overall trend that bigger stars tend to be

550
00:28:32,520 --> 00:28:35,800
Speaker 1: more rare and smaller stars more common, and that's why

551
00:28:35,840 --> 00:28:39,800
Speaker 1: we have more small stars than big stars. M Interesting.

552
00:28:39,960 --> 00:28:42,720
Speaker 1: I wonder what that was like when we first discovered

553
00:28:42,720 --> 00:28:45,800
Speaker 1: that effect that most of the stars in the universe

554
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:48,280
Speaker 1: are red dwarfs, Because I imagine we looked that into

555
00:28:48,280 --> 00:28:50,160
Speaker 1: the sky and saw a bunch of starts and thought, oh,

556
00:28:50,200 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 1: that's pretty neat. But then we looked at the universe

557
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:54,520
Speaker 1: at a different kind of line, and so I'm lean, boom,

558
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:57,280
Speaker 1: there's like a three times more stars than we thought

559
00:28:57,320 --> 00:28:59,400
Speaker 1: there were. Yeah, exactly. It's one of my favorite things

560
00:28:59,440 --> 00:29:01,480
Speaker 1: about a start, me that every time we build a

561
00:29:01,520 --> 00:29:03,240
Speaker 1: new kind of instrument and look out into the universe,

562
00:29:03,280 --> 00:29:05,880
Speaker 1: we discover, Wow, there's a lot more going on than

563
00:29:05,880 --> 00:29:08,600
Speaker 1: we thought. It's like a whole other universe out there

564
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 1: filled with these red dwarves. We've been looking mostly at

565
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:14,040
Speaker 1: the rare stuff and not at the common stuff, not

566
00:29:14,120 --> 00:29:17,560
Speaker 1: at the typical stuff, and it turns out that our

567
00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:20,600
Speaker 1: sun is not one of the usual ones. And that's

568
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:23,280
Speaker 1: sort of the core of the red dwarf paradox. It's like,

569
00:29:23,760 --> 00:29:26,600
Speaker 1: if most of the stars out there are red dwarfs,

570
00:29:27,160 --> 00:29:31,160
Speaker 1: and they live much much longer than our kind of star,

571
00:29:31,400 --> 00:29:34,080
Speaker 1: then why did we happen to evolve around one of

572
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:37,560
Speaker 1: these rare, shorter lived stars instead of one of the

573
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:41,520
Speaker 1: more common, longer lived ones. So that's the basic red

574
00:29:41,560 --> 00:29:44,680
Speaker 1: dwarf paradox. It's like, why didn't we get to evolved

575
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:47,120
Speaker 1: or come up in a star that's the red dwarf

576
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:49,760
Speaker 1: because there is three times more common than our kind

577
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:52,560
Speaker 1: of star, They're five times more common, and on average

578
00:29:52,600 --> 00:29:56,320
Speaker 1: they outlast our star by twenty So like, either it's

579
00:29:56,360 --> 00:29:59,680
Speaker 1: a one in one hundred chance, or maybe there's a reason,

580
00:30:00,240 --> 00:30:03,120
Speaker 1: Maybe there's an explanation why life can't happen around red

581
00:30:03,200 --> 00:30:06,400
Speaker 1: dwarves or it's less likely around red dwarves. One thing

582
00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:08,120
Speaker 1: we do know is that red dwarves tend to have

583
00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:10,680
Speaker 1: planets around them, just like our kind of star. And

584
00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:13,400
Speaker 1: so it's a fun question, like is there life around

585
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:16,600
Speaker 1: red dwarves? Are we an unusual kind of life? Is

586
00:30:16,640 --> 00:30:19,880
Speaker 1: everybody else out there in the universe? Superman? Are all

587
00:30:19,920 --> 00:30:22,880
Speaker 1: their planets called Krypton? That is what does this day

588
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:26,520
Speaker 1: up at night wondering about. But this is an interesting scenario.

589
00:30:27,320 --> 00:30:30,160
Speaker 1: You're saying that most red dwarfs are kind of just

590
00:30:30,200 --> 00:30:33,360
Speaker 1: like our stars. They can have planets orbiting around them.

591
00:30:33,440 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 1: What would their sun look like to someone living at

592
00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:38,080
Speaker 1: a planet like that, Well, if you're at the same

593
00:30:38,200 --> 00:30:41,800
Speaker 1: distance from that red dwarf as we are from our sun,

594
00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:45,240
Speaker 1: then of course there'd be a lot dimmer, right and colder, right, Yeah, exactly,

595
00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:48,640
Speaker 1: dimmer and colder. It'd be dark and chilly. Of course,

596
00:30:48,840 --> 00:30:50,840
Speaker 1: you could be closer up and then you'd be brighter

597
00:30:50,920 --> 00:30:54,400
Speaker 1: and warmer. But the star itself also would look different.

598
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:57,440
Speaker 1: The star itself is colder, which means it's light is redder.

599
00:30:57,560 --> 00:30:59,400
Speaker 1: So you look in the sky, you wouldn't see like

600
00:30:59,440 --> 00:31:02,160
Speaker 1: a yellow or white sun. You see like a pale

601
00:31:02,200 --> 00:31:04,960
Speaker 1: orange or a red disc in the sky. It would

602
00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:07,600
Speaker 1: be a very different experience. Well, I wonder if it

603
00:31:07,640 --> 00:31:10,320
Speaker 1: would be different, you know, because you would have to

604
00:31:10,320 --> 00:31:13,000
Speaker 1: be closer to the star to get the same warmth

605
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:15,280
Speaker 1: as us. So it is possible for there to be

606
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:17,480
Speaker 1: a planet I run, a red dwarf that feels like

607
00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:21,200
Speaker 1: our situation here, and you'd be closer to it, so

608
00:31:21,200 --> 00:31:23,400
Speaker 1: would be just as warm and maybe just as bright

609
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:26,520
Speaker 1: as our sun is to us, wouldn't it. Yeah, you

610
00:31:26,520 --> 00:31:29,440
Speaker 1: could definitely have a planet in a habitable zone where

611
00:31:29,520 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 1: water is liquid at the surface and it's about the

612
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:34,600
Speaker 1: same temperature as Earth. But it would look different in

613
00:31:34,600 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 1: the sky, right, It would still be red instead of yellow.

614
00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:39,680
Speaker 1: Though if you evolve on that planet, then who knows

615
00:31:39,880 --> 00:31:43,080
Speaker 1: what your experience of red is. Yeah, that's what I mean, Like,

616
00:31:43,200 --> 00:31:45,680
Speaker 1: it would only look red if a human went over

617
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:49,040
Speaker 1: there and landed on that planet. But to some species

618
00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:51,480
Speaker 1: that evolved there, it would just look like white light,

619
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:54,440
Speaker 1: or it would be what they call white light, because

620
00:31:54,480 --> 00:31:57,480
Speaker 1: they would maybe see a different, totally different spectrum of light.

621
00:31:57,840 --> 00:32:00,320
Speaker 1: The visible spectrum would be you know, shifted it over,

622
00:32:00,800 --> 00:32:03,920
Speaker 1: but they would call that white light, right. I don't

623
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:05,680
Speaker 1: know what they would call it, but you're totally right

624
00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:08,760
Speaker 1: that it's very likely that their visible spectrum would be

625
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:12,000
Speaker 1: different from ours because ours evolved in response to the

626
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:14,720
Speaker 1: light that happens to be here on Earth. What we

627
00:32:14,800 --> 00:32:18,000
Speaker 1: call visible is no coincidence. Peaks around the light that

628
00:32:18,040 --> 00:32:21,160
Speaker 1: the sun puts out our sun, and so it makes

629
00:32:21,160 --> 00:32:24,120
Speaker 1: a lot of sense, as you say, for aliens around

630
00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:27,000
Speaker 1: a red dwarf, for their visible sensitivity to peek around

631
00:32:27,040 --> 00:32:29,880
Speaker 1: the light emitted by their star instead of ours. Whether

632
00:32:29,920 --> 00:32:32,160
Speaker 1: they would call that white or not, I'm not sure

633
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:34,160
Speaker 1: what they would experience it, what would their art be like?

634
00:32:34,400 --> 00:32:35,760
Speaker 1: You know, I guess what I mean is like what

635
00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:38,440
Speaker 1: we call white light is just light that has all

636
00:32:38,440 --> 00:32:42,440
Speaker 1: the frequencies in our visible spectrum. Like that's our experience

637
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:44,440
Speaker 1: of white light. And so if you're growing up in

638
00:32:44,480 --> 00:32:47,960
Speaker 1: that red dwarf planet, you know, your eyes would probably

639
00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:51,720
Speaker 1: evolve to also interpret, you know, everything that's in your

640
00:32:51,840 --> 00:32:54,920
Speaker 1: visible spectrum to be you know, the white or what

641
00:32:54,960 --> 00:32:57,959
Speaker 1: we would call white. And so you know, they wouldn't

642
00:32:57,960 --> 00:33:00,080
Speaker 1: know they're in a red planet. That's interesting. And if

643
00:33:00,080 --> 00:33:02,440
Speaker 1: they tend to paint like all their walls white, we

644
00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 1: show up to visit, there would be like, why is

645
00:33:04,120 --> 00:33:06,520
Speaker 1: everything painted red? You guys have like a red sun.

646
00:33:06,560 --> 00:33:08,680
Speaker 1: It's not enough. You'll also have to paint all of

647
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:11,400
Speaker 1: your walls red, right, That's what I mean. Or if

648
00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:13,760
Speaker 1: they came to our planet, they'd be like, why is

649
00:33:13,800 --> 00:33:17,320
Speaker 1: everything blue? You guys are nuts. That's not blue. That's

650
00:33:17,920 --> 00:33:19,840
Speaker 1: not white. That blue. We say, we just got the

651
00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:21,560
Speaker 1: blues because we didn't get to grow up around a

652
00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:24,520
Speaker 1: red dwarf. We got the yellow dwarf blues. Yeah, and

653
00:33:24,560 --> 00:33:26,680
Speaker 1: so our star is not a red dwarf. It's a

654
00:33:26,720 --> 00:33:30,920
Speaker 1: different kind of star. It's bigger. We have a G dwarf. Wait,

655
00:33:30,960 --> 00:33:33,520
Speaker 1: it's still a dwarf. Well, you might not be surprised,

656
00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:35,479
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of disagreement about what to call them.

657
00:33:35,520 --> 00:33:37,440
Speaker 1: Some people call it a yellow dwarf or a G

658
00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:40,280
Speaker 1: type or a G dwarf, but it's part of a

659
00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:44,040
Speaker 1: category of stars F, G, and K, where those letters

660
00:33:44,080 --> 00:33:46,960
Speaker 1: just indicate basically the mass of the star and therefore

661
00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:49,440
Speaker 1: it's temperature. So every star that has a mass of

662
00:33:49,480 --> 00:33:52,160
Speaker 1: our sun within about ten percent we call a G

663
00:33:52,400 --> 00:33:55,960
Speaker 1: type or G dwarf. And then there are F type

664
00:33:55,960 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 1: and K type that can be like a little bigger

665
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:01,120
Speaker 1: or a little hotter or whatever. Lots of famous stars

666
00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:05,840
Speaker 1: like Alpha Centauri, for example, is also a G type star. Interesting, well,

667
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:08,160
Speaker 1: I like our star. It's pretty nice and sunny for

668
00:34:08,239 --> 00:34:10,680
Speaker 1: us here. Maybe my next question is like, why is

669
00:34:10,719 --> 00:34:14,680
Speaker 1: this a paradox? I feel like maybe you're stretching the

670
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:16,640
Speaker 1: definition of the work because it doesn't feel like a

671
00:34:16,719 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 1: logical inconsistency. It just feels like a philosophical question, like

672
00:34:21,520 --> 00:34:24,400
Speaker 1: why did we happen to live around a star that represents,

673
00:34:24,480 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 1: you know, the fifteen percent of all the stars in

674
00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:29,759
Speaker 1: the universe. I think it's called a paradox because it

675
00:34:29,800 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 1: asks a basic question. It says, if it's true that

676
00:34:32,640 --> 00:34:36,240
Speaker 1: these stars are just as likely to have life as ours,

677
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:39,720
Speaker 1: then it's much more likely that we would have evolved

678
00:34:39,760 --> 00:34:42,200
Speaker 1: on a red dwarf instead of a G type star.

679
00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:44,960
Speaker 1: And so you have to either say all right, something

680
00:34:45,160 --> 00:34:48,960
Speaker 1: very unlikely happened, or there's a reason. This an explanation

681
00:34:49,360 --> 00:34:51,440
Speaker 1: is to again just a tool to dig into all

682
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:55,320
Speaker 1: of those assumptions. In this case, it's not like ridiculously unlikely.

683
00:34:55,560 --> 00:34:57,960
Speaker 1: We're talking about it's like a one in a hundred chance.

684
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:01,840
Speaker 1: If life is equally like need to evolve around G type,

685
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:05,359
Speaker 1: F type K type and red dwarfs, then it's like

686
00:35:05,400 --> 00:35:07,600
Speaker 1: a one one hundred chance to not end up evolving

687
00:35:07,640 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 1: around a red dwarf. And that's not crazy. You know,

688
00:35:10,239 --> 00:35:12,840
Speaker 1: one and one hundred chances happen, But it's an invitation

689
00:35:12,880 --> 00:35:14,879
Speaker 1: to dig deeper. And for those of us who want

690
00:35:14,920 --> 00:35:18,480
Speaker 1: to understand the universe, these are opportunities. These are clues

691
00:35:18,560 --> 00:35:21,279
Speaker 1: that say maybe there's something else going on. All right, well,

692
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:24,279
Speaker 1: let's dig into what could be going on there. What

693
00:35:24,360 --> 00:35:26,680
Speaker 1: kinds of assumptions are we making about life here on

694
00:35:26,760 --> 00:35:29,399
Speaker 1: Earth and what life could be like around a red

695
00:35:29,480 --> 00:35:32,040
Speaker 1: dwarf planet. So let's tag into that. But first let's

696
00:35:32,080 --> 00:35:47,360
Speaker 1: take another quick break. All right, we're talking about Superman.

697
00:35:47,880 --> 00:35:53,160
Speaker 1: What's your favorite Superman storyline, Denny? The one where Daniel

698
00:35:53,239 --> 00:35:57,400
Speaker 1: didn't know that Superman required sunlight to work. You didn't

699
00:35:57,440 --> 00:36:00,520
Speaker 1: know Superman was big on solar energy. The one where

700
00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:04,200
Speaker 1: Superman makes a crossover on my favorite TV show, Red Dwarf.

701
00:36:04,680 --> 00:36:07,600
Speaker 1: That might happen. You never know, You know, all these

702
00:36:07,600 --> 00:36:10,759
Speaker 1: companies keep getting bought out by other companies. That's right.

703
00:36:10,760 --> 00:36:13,959
Speaker 1: If DC buys the BBC and we have the DC

704
00:36:14,239 --> 00:36:20,520
Speaker 1: BBC extended Universe, maybe it'll happen. Right the DBC. We're

705
00:36:20,560 --> 00:36:23,799
Speaker 1: talking about red dwarves, and apparently our star, the one

706
00:36:23,840 --> 00:36:26,600
Speaker 1: we see during the day, is not the most common

707
00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:29,360
Speaker 1: type of star in the universe. It's only maybe fifteen

708
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:32,320
Speaker 1: percent of all it's kind, It's only fifty percent of

709
00:36:32,360 --> 00:36:34,720
Speaker 1: all the stars out there in the galleys in our galaxy.

710
00:36:34,920 --> 00:36:37,879
Speaker 1: Most of the stars seventy stars in the galaxy are

711
00:36:37,920 --> 00:36:41,440
Speaker 1: red dwarves, which are different, smaller, cooler, And so maybe

712
00:36:41,480 --> 00:36:43,839
Speaker 1: a question you can ask is like, why isn't our

713
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:46,200
Speaker 1: star a red dwarf? I guess I'm wondering what we're

714
00:36:46,239 --> 00:36:49,319
Speaker 1: really asking here. We're asking why our star is not

715
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:53,400
Speaker 1: a red dwarf? Or are we asking why we're not

716
00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:55,879
Speaker 1: a species that grew up around a red dwarf? Yeah?

717
00:36:55,960 --> 00:36:58,160
Speaker 1: The second one we're asking is it just chance that

718
00:36:58,160 --> 00:37:01,399
Speaker 1: we haven't evolve not in the most likely situation, or

719
00:37:01,520 --> 00:37:04,359
Speaker 1: is there a reason or we misunderstood where life is

720
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:07,400
Speaker 1: possible and likely. I guess that's a weird question to ask,

721
00:37:07,480 --> 00:37:11,719
Speaker 1: because the answer could be both. Right. It could be

722
00:37:11,760 --> 00:37:16,719
Speaker 1: that there's equal chances of a species growing up around

723
00:37:16,760 --> 00:37:18,960
Speaker 1: any star, but we just happened to be one one

724
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:21,719
Speaker 1: of the ones that grew up around a yellow star. Yeah. Absolutely,

725
00:37:22,040 --> 00:37:24,040
Speaker 1: it certainly could be both, and it could also just

726
00:37:24,120 --> 00:37:27,600
Speaker 1: be chanced. Those coincidences do happen. But we've made a

727
00:37:27,640 --> 00:37:31,440
Speaker 1: lot of progress in science just by pushing this basic principle.

728
00:37:31,480 --> 00:37:34,480
Speaker 1: The Copernican principle is saying, let's never assume that there's

729
00:37:34,480 --> 00:37:38,040
Speaker 1: something special or weird about our situation. Let's try to

730
00:37:38,080 --> 00:37:40,480
Speaker 1: describe what we see under the assumption that no place

731
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:43,480
Speaker 1: is special. And that's been very useful. It's not a

732
00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:45,520
Speaker 1: hard and fast rule, but it's guided our thinking and

733
00:37:45,600 --> 00:37:47,919
Speaker 1: helped us make discoveries. All Right, Well, if you apply

734
00:37:48,040 --> 00:37:50,400
Speaker 1: that principle, what would be some of the answers to

735
00:37:50,440 --> 00:37:53,160
Speaker 1: the red poarf paradox. Well, one way you could reduce

736
00:37:53,239 --> 00:37:56,400
Speaker 1: the unlikeliness of the paradox is to think about how

737
00:37:56,520 --> 00:37:59,920
Speaker 1: fast life does evolve into intelligent life. One thing we're

738
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:02,080
Speaker 1: saying is that these red dwarfs is five times as

739
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:04,879
Speaker 1: many of them, and they last twenty times is long.

740
00:38:05,320 --> 00:38:08,160
Speaker 1: It seems to suggest that you're like a hundred times

741
00:38:08,160 --> 00:38:10,560
Speaker 1: more likely to revolve around a red dwarf than our

742
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:13,480
Speaker 1: kind of star. But that is actually making some assumptions.

743
00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:15,879
Speaker 1: That's assuming, for example, that life might take a long

744
00:38:15,960 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 1: time to evolve. You know, that's very unlikely, and so

745
00:38:19,239 --> 00:38:21,600
Speaker 1: these Red Dwarfs, because they last longer and they're more

746
00:38:21,600 --> 00:38:24,319
Speaker 1: of them, they're basically like buying more lottery tickets, and

747
00:38:24,360 --> 00:38:27,400
Speaker 1: so they're more likely to win. But instead, if intelligent

748
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:31,360
Speaker 1: life evolves pretty rapidly, it doesn't take very long to evolve,

749
00:38:31,920 --> 00:38:34,480
Speaker 1: then the fact that Red Dwarves happen to live longer,

750
00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:37,920
Speaker 1: have longer lifespan doesn't necessarily help them. And so in

751
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:41,080
Speaker 1: that scenario, instead of being like one hundred to one,

752
00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 1: it's more like five to one odds. It's just basically

753
00:38:44,160 --> 00:38:47,600
Speaker 1: the relative rates of occurrence that determines your likelihood of

754
00:38:47,680 --> 00:38:50,440
Speaker 1: being around a Red dwarf or a yellow star. I

755
00:38:50,440 --> 00:38:53,120
Speaker 1: guess maybe I'm not quite sure I understand that argument.

756
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:55,799
Speaker 1: If you are around longer, if a red Dwarf is

757
00:38:55,800 --> 00:38:57,880
Speaker 1: around longer, which it is, As you say, can we

758
00:38:57,960 --> 00:39:00,760
Speaker 1: get even less longer than the eight of the universe

759
00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:03,600
Speaker 1: doesn't make it more likely that it has or at

760
00:39:03,640 --> 00:39:05,759
Speaker 1: some point in its history will have life. Then let's

761
00:39:05,800 --> 00:39:08,480
Speaker 1: say our star. If life is really unusual or it

762
00:39:08,480 --> 00:39:11,359
Speaker 1: takes a long time to evolve, then yes, But say

763
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 1: life happens really quickly when it does. Right, then the

764
00:39:14,640 --> 00:39:16,239
Speaker 1: fact that the red Dwarf is going to last for

765
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:19,680
Speaker 1: trillions of years means that civilization gets to live longer

766
00:39:19,719 --> 00:39:21,840
Speaker 1: around its star. But it doesn't mean that it's twenty

767
00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:24,600
Speaker 1: times as likely to evolve around one of those Why not?

768
00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:27,520
Speaker 1: I guess you know you're assuming that life is sort

769
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:30,120
Speaker 1: of a certainty if you have a certain set of conditions.

770
00:39:30,120 --> 00:39:32,800
Speaker 1: But maybe it's a probability thing for life to occur,

771
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:35,319
Speaker 1: right like if you need to roll the die and

772
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:38,239
Speaker 1: get a certain number to get any kind of seed

773
00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:40,920
Speaker 1: of life when you're around your star, then the longer

774
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:43,719
Speaker 1: you are, the more times you get to throw the die.

775
00:39:43,840 --> 00:39:46,520
Speaker 1: You're assuming it's a certainty, but it's not right. It's

776
00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:49,399
Speaker 1: maybe chance base it maybe is right. But what we're

777
00:39:49,400 --> 00:39:52,640
Speaker 1: doing here is we're examining which assumptions could possibly explain.

778
00:39:52,680 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 1: It's what assumptions will we have to change in order

779
00:39:55,080 --> 00:39:57,799
Speaker 1: to explain what we're seeing. You're totally right that if

780
00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:00,399
Speaker 1: it's like rolling the dice and it's very unlikely, then

781
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:02,280
Speaker 1: the more times you roll the dice, the more odds

782
00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:04,000
Speaker 1: you have, and so then you would be much more

783
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:06,400
Speaker 1: likely to evolve around a red star. But if it's not,

784
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:09,200
Speaker 1: if it's basically certain it happens pretty quickly, then you

785
00:40:09,200 --> 00:40:12,000
Speaker 1: would expect life to happen around red dwarfs only five

786
00:40:12,080 --> 00:40:14,960
Speaker 1: times as often as around yellow stars, because that's the

787
00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:18,239
Speaker 1: relative rate of their occurrence, and the time wouldn't be

788
00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 1: a factor. And that could be the case, right, it

789
00:40:21,640 --> 00:40:25,279
Speaker 1: could be five times more Kryptonians and Earthlings out during

790
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:28,359
Speaker 1: the universe. There certainly could be. And we also don't

791
00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:31,160
Speaker 1: really know, you know, how common is life? How long

792
00:40:31,239 --> 00:40:34,280
Speaker 1: does it take to evolve? We think that on Earth,

793
00:40:34,520 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 1: life itself evolved pretty quickly. There's like fossil records going

794
00:40:38,280 --> 00:40:41,120
Speaker 1: billions of years back, so we think it didn't take

795
00:40:41,239 --> 00:40:44,440
Speaker 1: very long for life itself to evolve, although intelligent life

796
00:40:44,680 --> 00:40:48,279
Speaker 1: is much more recent development, and so it might be

797
00:40:48,360 --> 00:40:50,400
Speaker 1: that life is very common in the universe and all

798
00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:54,680
Speaker 1: those red dwarfs are teeming with little bacteria. But intelligent life,

799
00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:57,120
Speaker 1: you know, people making podcasts and writing comic books and

800
00:40:57,160 --> 00:40:59,239
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, is more rare. We just

801
00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:01,520
Speaker 1: don't know the answer to those questions. Well, if it

802
00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:04,360
Speaker 1: is more rreer, then having five times more stars and

803
00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:08,280
Speaker 1: being around longer would make that so much more likely

804
00:41:08,320 --> 00:41:11,239
Speaker 1: that they have intelligent life, right exactly. Yeah, so this

805
00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:13,240
Speaker 1: isn't a great answer to the question, but it changes

806
00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:16,600
Speaker 1: the probabilities, right, the likelihood and the time it takes

807
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:20,359
Speaker 1: for intelligent life to evolve does change how likely you

808
00:41:20,400 --> 00:41:23,320
Speaker 1: are to evolve around a red star or a yellow dwarf.

809
00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:26,040
Speaker 1: So then how does this resolve the paradox? I don't

810
00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:28,600
Speaker 1: think it totally resolves the paradox, But if we did

811
00:41:28,680 --> 00:41:31,960
Speaker 1: live in a universe where intelligent life emerged very, very rapidly,

812
00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:35,520
Speaker 1: then our situation wouldn't be as unlikely. It'd be like

813
00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:37,480
Speaker 1: a one in five chance instead of a one in

814
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:41,040
Speaker 1: one hundred chance. So it reduces the tension a little bit.

815
00:41:41,719 --> 00:41:44,680
Speaker 1: I see, all right, it makes us less of a miracle,

816
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, We're less a little less weird. All right, Well,

817
00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 1: what are other possible resolutions to this paradox. Well, it

818
00:41:52,760 --> 00:41:55,520
Speaker 1: might be that it's not as easy for life to

819
00:41:55,560 --> 00:41:58,920
Speaker 1: evolve around red dwarfs, Like maybe red dwarfs are not

820
00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:03,760
Speaker 1: as habitable as yellow stars. There are more differences between

821
00:42:03,800 --> 00:42:07,400
Speaker 1: red dwarfs and yellow stars than just their brightness. Because

822
00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:09,799
Speaker 1: they're so much smaller, they tend to have different sort

823
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:13,400
Speaker 1: of behaviors, which might make it harder for life to

824
00:42:13,440 --> 00:42:16,800
Speaker 1: evolve around them. Like what kinds of behaviors? Well, for example,

825
00:42:16,840 --> 00:42:19,239
Speaker 1: we talked earlier about how to be in the habitable zone,

826
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:21,799
Speaker 1: you would have to be much much closer to the star, right,

827
00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:24,680
Speaker 1: because the star is much dimmer. In that scenario, you're

828
00:42:24,719 --> 00:42:28,160
Speaker 1: more likely to be tidally locked to the star, which

829
00:42:28,200 --> 00:42:31,040
Speaker 1: means that like one surface of the planet is always

830
00:42:31,160 --> 00:42:35,240
Speaker 1: facing the star. Tidal forces are really just gravitational forces.

831
00:42:35,600 --> 00:42:38,759
Speaker 1: Gravity hinds to tug on the closer bit harder than

832
00:42:38,840 --> 00:42:41,360
Speaker 1: on the further bit. If you can elongate the planet

833
00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:43,560
Speaker 1: a little bit, then it prevents the planet from spinning

834
00:42:43,800 --> 00:42:45,879
Speaker 1: the way. For example, the same side of the Moon

835
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:48,440
Speaker 1: is always facing the Earth, and so if you're on

836
00:42:48,440 --> 00:42:50,920
Speaker 1: a planet really close to your star, you might be

837
00:42:50,960 --> 00:42:53,560
Speaker 1: tidally locked and That means that one half of the

838
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:55,719
Speaker 1: planet would be super duper hot and the other half

839
00:42:55,719 --> 00:42:59,520
Speaker 1: would be super duper cold, and biologists disagree about whether

840
00:42:59,560 --> 00:43:02,680
Speaker 1: that's more or likely or less likely to evolve life.

841
00:43:02,880 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: Does that assume a planet the same size as Earth.

842
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:07,759
Speaker 1: What if you're a smaller planet or what if you

843
00:43:07,840 --> 00:43:10,959
Speaker 1: have some spin to begin with? Yeah, smaller planet would

844
00:43:10,960 --> 00:43:14,000
Speaker 1: be less likely to be tightly locked. That's true, And

845
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:16,839
Speaker 1: it's not guaranteed that all these planets would be tightly locked.

846
00:43:16,880 --> 00:43:18,319
Speaker 1: You right, If you have a lot of spin, you

847
00:43:18,400 --> 00:43:20,359
Speaker 1: might be able to avoid it. But more of these

848
00:43:20,400 --> 00:43:23,960
Speaker 1: planets would be tightly locked than, for example, earthlike planets

849
00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:27,520
Speaker 1: around a yellow dwarf, so it might complicate the evolution

850
00:43:27,560 --> 00:43:30,120
Speaker 1: of life. Another issue with these stars is that a

851
00:43:30,120 --> 00:43:31,960
Speaker 1: lot of red dwarfs tend to be what we call

852
00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:36,400
Speaker 1: flare stars. Unlike the Sun, which burns pretty steadily and

853
00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:39,239
Speaker 1: you know it has some flare ups and some deviations

854
00:43:39,239 --> 00:43:42,480
Speaker 1: in its brightness, red dwarfs can sometimes vary dramatically in

855
00:43:42,520 --> 00:43:45,120
Speaker 1: their brightness. A flare star is something that can be

856
00:43:45,160 --> 00:43:48,040
Speaker 1: like two or five or one hundred times as bright

857
00:43:48,080 --> 00:43:50,239
Speaker 1: as it normally is all of a sudden for a

858
00:43:50,239 --> 00:43:52,640
Speaker 1: little while and then sort of calm back down. They

859
00:43:52,719 --> 00:43:55,080
Speaker 1: don't tend to burn as steadily. Well, you're saying red

860
00:43:55,120 --> 00:43:58,680
Speaker 1: dwarves tend to flare up more than our kind of start. Yeah,

861
00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:02,000
Speaker 1: red dwarfs tend to be more variable than yellow stars.

862
00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:04,759
Speaker 1: I thought they were more like moderate and steady. It's

863
00:44:04,760 --> 00:44:07,719
Speaker 1: a subject of intense debate, and we're not sure we understand.

864
00:44:08,200 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 1: But remember that a lot of stars out there are

865
00:44:10,280 --> 00:44:13,440
Speaker 1: also binary stars, and so these red dwarves might be

866
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:17,200
Speaker 1: in binary systems, and interactions between the magnetic fields of

867
00:44:17,239 --> 00:44:20,280
Speaker 1: the two stars can interfere with what's going on inside

868
00:44:20,280 --> 00:44:22,560
Speaker 1: the star and like heat it up briefly and cause

869
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:25,080
Speaker 1: it to burn hotter for a short period. So it's

870
00:44:25,080 --> 00:44:27,239
Speaker 1: not something we understand very well. But the stars that

871
00:44:27,280 --> 00:44:30,160
Speaker 1: we have studied, most of the flare stars, tend to

872
00:44:30,200 --> 00:44:32,839
Speaker 1: be these red dwarves, and that would be pretty unpleasant

873
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:34,880
Speaker 1: for life. If all of a sudden the Sun is

874
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:37,360
Speaker 1: like a hundred times hotter than it usually is. M

875
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:40,200
Speaker 1: you might have to leave that planet right or at

876
00:44:40,239 --> 00:44:42,520
Speaker 1: least like put your son in a spaceship and send

877
00:44:42,560 --> 00:44:46,440
Speaker 1: it to another planet. It's like a yellow sun. Perhaps

878
00:44:46,560 --> 00:44:48,399
Speaker 1: that sounds like a great idea for a comic book.

879
00:44:48,400 --> 00:44:50,640
Speaker 1: You should copyright that, like fifty years ago. Let's go

880
00:44:50,680 --> 00:44:53,160
Speaker 1: back in time to your grandfather and tell him that idea.

881
00:44:53,840 --> 00:44:55,959
Speaker 1: That's right, it's called the Superman I had the idea

882
00:44:56,040 --> 00:44:58,799
Speaker 1: for Superman Paradox. So why are you wasting your time

883
00:44:58,840 --> 00:45:01,439
Speaker 1: on this podcast? You just be counting your money because

884
00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:04,239
Speaker 1: I'm stuck in this multiverse, Daniel. I could be a

885
00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:10,279
Speaker 1: billionaire cartoonist instead, I'm just a cartoonist. Just a cartoonist. Yeah,

886
00:45:10,280 --> 00:45:12,799
Speaker 1: so flare stars would make it harder for life to

887
00:45:12,840 --> 00:45:15,759
Speaker 1: evolve for at least lifelike hours. You know, maybe that

888
00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:18,319
Speaker 1: kind of environment would lead to totally different kinds of

889
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:20,799
Speaker 1: life that are less sensitive to radiation. Or maybe they'd

890
00:45:20,800 --> 00:45:23,400
Speaker 1: have to burrow underground where it might be safer and

891
00:45:23,440 --> 00:45:25,759
Speaker 1: they could still somehow tap into the heat of the sun.

892
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:28,880
Speaker 1: M right, because we don't like we assume that you

893
00:45:28,960 --> 00:45:33,000
Speaker 1: need day and nighttime cycles to thrive like we do, right,

894
00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:34,880
Speaker 1: Like you need a good night's sleep. Of course you

895
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:37,480
Speaker 1: need nighttime for that. But maybe not right, Like, maybe

896
00:45:37,600 --> 00:45:40,160
Speaker 1: it could be even the opposite, Like maybe life flourishes

897
00:45:40,200 --> 00:45:44,040
Speaker 1: better if there's no nighttime. Yeah maybe, and maybe it's

898
00:45:44,080 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 1: great to have like super duper hot summers every few

899
00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:50,000
Speaker 1: hundred years. You know, things get fried to a crisp,

900
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:53,240
Speaker 1: but the strong survive. Who knows. There's one more issue

901
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:56,480
Speaker 1: with life developing around these red dwarfs is that in

902
00:45:56,520 --> 00:45:59,040
Speaker 1: the systems we have studied so far, we see fewer

903
00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:03,120
Speaker 1: large gas giants, basically fewer Jupiters. So, you know, we

904
00:46:03,200 --> 00:46:05,800
Speaker 1: are very happy to have Jupiter or solar system because

905
00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:08,960
Speaker 1: it's big, and it's gravitational, and it tends to protect

906
00:46:09,040 --> 00:46:13,000
Speaker 1: us from comments and asteroids. Sometimes it sweeps these things

907
00:46:13,040 --> 00:46:15,360
Speaker 1: out of the inner Solar system, But in systems with

908
00:46:15,480 --> 00:46:18,480
Speaker 1: red dwarf stars, we tend to see fewer of these jupiters,

909
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:22,200
Speaker 1: which might mean that they're not as protected from asteroids,

910
00:46:22,239 --> 00:46:25,480
Speaker 1: so it might mean more big impacts like the ones

911
00:46:25,520 --> 00:46:28,319
Speaker 1: that wiped out the dinosaurs. I see. We don't see

912
00:46:28,440 --> 00:46:31,600
Speaker 1: Jupiter size planets around those other solar systems, But I

913
00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:33,960
Speaker 1: wonder if they have their own version of Jupiter. Right,

914
00:46:33,960 --> 00:46:36,799
Speaker 1: I feel like a red dwarf system would be very

915
00:46:36,800 --> 00:46:40,120
Speaker 1: similar to ours, just kind of scaled down. So maybe

916
00:46:40,160 --> 00:46:42,400
Speaker 1: you have to scale down your expectations for what a

917
00:46:42,480 --> 00:46:44,799
Speaker 1: Jupiter would be like. Yeah, as long as they're being

918
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:47,920
Speaker 1: hit by mini asteroids and maybe it's cool. And remember, also,

919
00:46:48,000 --> 00:46:50,719
Speaker 1: being hit by an asteroid isn't all bad. I mean, sure,

920
00:46:50,840 --> 00:46:53,239
Speaker 1: lots of things die, but it also can make room

921
00:46:53,280 --> 00:46:56,440
Speaker 1: for all sorts of new evolution like mammals and humans.

922
00:46:56,520 --> 00:46:59,480
Speaker 1: Doesn't necessarily have to be a planet wide extinction event.

923
00:47:00,640 --> 00:47:03,600
Speaker 1: But I guess you're saying that life around a red

924
00:47:03,680 --> 00:47:08,799
Speaker 1: dwarf isn't necessarily rosier than or it might be less

925
00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:14,960
Speaker 1: rosy than technically, both metaphorically and physically speaking than life

926
00:47:14,960 --> 00:47:17,640
Speaker 1: around a yellow start. Yeah, you might be wearing rose

927
00:47:17,680 --> 00:47:20,840
Speaker 1: colored glasses, but there might actually be fewer roses, or

928
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:23,160
Speaker 1: at least the situation would be different. And if we're

929
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:26,160
Speaker 1: making a simple argument about the likelihood for life to evolve,

930
00:47:26,280 --> 00:47:28,680
Speaker 1: this sort of undermines sense as well. The conditions we

931
00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:31,719
Speaker 1: know are quite different, and so life might be less

932
00:47:31,760 --> 00:47:34,279
Speaker 1: likely to evolve in those scenarios. On the other hand,

933
00:47:34,280 --> 00:47:36,960
Speaker 1: it could also be more likely. Right, maybe life in

934
00:47:37,000 --> 00:47:40,560
Speaker 1: the universe prefers that situation to ours. We just don't know.

935
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:43,680
Speaker 1: All right, Well, then what's another or maybe the last

936
00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:46,440
Speaker 1: possible resolution to this paradox? The last sort of idea

937
00:47:46,520 --> 00:47:50,080
Speaker 1: people have to explain this is that maybe there aren't

938
00:47:50,120 --> 00:47:54,320
Speaker 1: as many earthlike worlds around these red dwarfs as we think. Remember,

939
00:47:54,320 --> 00:47:57,320
Speaker 1: the red dwarfs, they're hard to study because they're small

940
00:47:57,360 --> 00:47:59,960
Speaker 1: and they're dim. Most of the ones that we study

941
00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:02,360
Speaker 1: are like the really big versions of them, sort of

942
00:48:02,360 --> 00:48:05,319
Speaker 1: on the upper edge of red dwarfs. A lot of

943
00:48:05,320 --> 00:48:07,000
Speaker 1: the red dwarfs that are out there, most of them

944
00:48:07,080 --> 00:48:09,239
Speaker 1: that are out there, are smaller. It's not just true

945
00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:12,279
Speaker 1: that there are more red dwarfs than yellow stars. There

946
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:15,960
Speaker 1: are more small red dwarfs than bigger red dwarfs. So

947
00:48:16,120 --> 00:48:18,239
Speaker 1: most of the red dwarfs out there are the ones

948
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:21,800
Speaker 1: that we have trouble seeing. So our calculations are estimates

949
00:48:21,880 --> 00:48:25,959
Speaker 1: about like how often there's an earthlike planet inhabitable zone

950
00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:28,560
Speaker 1: around these things. Those could just be wrong, and it

951
00:48:28,680 --> 00:48:30,719
Speaker 1: might be that most of the red dwarves out there

952
00:48:31,040 --> 00:48:33,680
Speaker 1: don't have planets the way our stars do. They're just

953
00:48:33,719 --> 00:48:35,600
Speaker 1: sort of too hard to study. Right now, we're like

954
00:48:35,680 --> 00:48:39,840
Speaker 1: extrapolating into the unknown, well beyond what we really have

955
00:48:39,960 --> 00:48:42,720
Speaker 1: confidence in, I see, because we haven't. We don't actually

956
00:48:42,760 --> 00:48:45,600
Speaker 1: know what the planets around those smaller red dwarves are,

957
00:48:45,640 --> 00:48:48,640
Speaker 1: like yeah, or how many there even are right. So

958
00:48:48,680 --> 00:48:51,759
Speaker 1: we're making these assumptions. We're extrapolating from our situation and

959
00:48:51,840 --> 00:48:54,400
Speaker 1: from the few examples we have been able to study

960
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:57,920
Speaker 1: about red dwarfs. But that's an extrapolation, and that could

961
00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:00,960
Speaker 1: be where we're going wrong. Maybe only the red dwarves

962
00:49:01,080 --> 00:49:02,799
Speaker 1: have these kind of planets, and most of the ones

963
00:49:02,840 --> 00:49:05,320
Speaker 1: out there, which are most of the stars in the galaxy,

964
00:49:05,600 --> 00:49:08,920
Speaker 1: don't have them. M that would make it less weird

965
00:49:08,960 --> 00:49:11,879
Speaker 1: that we exist around a yellow star. And fortunately we're

966
00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:15,440
Speaker 1: going to learn more about this soon. In twenty thirty five,

967
00:49:15,600 --> 00:49:18,800
Speaker 1: we hope to be launching a new space telescope called

968
00:49:18,880 --> 00:49:22,440
Speaker 1: have X, which is going to specialize in studying planets

969
00:49:22,480 --> 00:49:26,520
Speaker 1: around stars, even dimmer stars. It's going to be super

970
00:49:26,560 --> 00:49:29,400
Speaker 1: awesome with this like four meter sized mirror enough star

971
00:49:29,520 --> 00:49:31,719
Speaker 1: shade to block out the light from the stars, and

972
00:49:31,760 --> 00:49:34,360
Speaker 1: it's going to help us understand where are the planets

973
00:49:34,440 --> 00:49:37,080
Speaker 1: in the galaxy? Are they mostly around yellow stars? Are

974
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:40,000
Speaker 1: they also around red stars? Are they also around the smaller,

975
00:49:40,120 --> 00:49:44,080
Speaker 1: more variable red stars. What's life like over there? That's

976
00:49:44,080 --> 00:49:46,640
Speaker 1: pretty cool. So a big telescope just to look at

977
00:49:46,680 --> 00:49:50,440
Speaker 1: planets might even looking at star. It's just totally dedicated

978
00:49:50,480 --> 00:49:55,000
Speaker 1: to looking four aliens. Basically, it's really amazing technology. This

979
00:49:55,120 --> 00:49:58,000
Speaker 1: thing it has a star shade. This thing that fits

980
00:49:58,040 --> 00:50:00,799
Speaker 1: in front of it floats in space. It's bread from it.

981
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:03,920
Speaker 1: It's like a two component thing. The second piece is

982
00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:07,360
Speaker 1: just there to block out light from stars. Right, Mostly

983
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 1: telescopes are focused on stars. This one specifically has a

984
00:50:10,600 --> 00:50:14,560
Speaker 1: blind spot for stars because it wants to see the planets. Cool. Well,

985
00:50:14,560 --> 00:50:16,680
Speaker 1: that will go up in twenty thirty five, and I'm

986
00:50:16,719 --> 00:50:19,440
Speaker 1: sure we'll do an episode when we get to that point.

987
00:50:19,719 --> 00:50:23,160
Speaker 1: If we're still alive, if neither of us are billionaires

988
00:50:23,160 --> 00:50:26,919
Speaker 1: by the end, if an asteroid hasn't hit us, or

989
00:50:27,360 --> 00:50:31,120
Speaker 1: Superma's income, or other aliens wearing their rose colored glasses

990
00:50:31,320 --> 00:50:34,759
Speaker 1: having come to tell us all the secrets of the universe. Well,

991
00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:38,360
Speaker 1: wouldn't they need blue colored glasses. It's a blue flower,

992
00:50:38,600 --> 00:50:42,160
Speaker 1: a violet violet. There you go, violet colored glasses. Let's

993
00:50:42,160 --> 00:50:47,080
Speaker 1: just hope they bring violets and not violence. All right, Well,

994
00:50:47,120 --> 00:50:49,360
Speaker 1: I think this is an interesting question to think about,

995
00:50:49,560 --> 00:50:52,000
Speaker 1: you know. It against kind of makes you wonder how

996
00:50:52,120 --> 00:50:54,560
Speaker 1: rare it is for us to be here, or maybe

997
00:50:54,560 --> 00:50:57,000
Speaker 1: how common it is. Either way, it's kind of a

998
00:50:57,040 --> 00:50:59,279
Speaker 1: fun question to think about. It's all part of this

999
00:50:59,400 --> 00:51:02,600
Speaker 1: journey looking out into the universe and wondering why it

1000
00:51:02,680 --> 00:51:04,640
Speaker 1: is the way that it is, and is our corner

1001
00:51:04,680 --> 00:51:09,040
Speaker 1: of it weird or not? Yeah? Are we superman or

1002
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:12,919
Speaker 1: are we just regular earth Links? They're never talking about

1003
00:51:12,960 --> 00:51:15,000
Speaker 1: what what happens if you go from the yellow sun

1004
00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:17,200
Speaker 1: to a red sun? Do you get weaker? Maybe they

1005
00:51:17,239 --> 00:51:19,000
Speaker 1: have a comic book where earth Links go to their

1006
00:51:19,040 --> 00:51:25,799
Speaker 1: planet and they're called Underman underwear Man. Maybe, well, I

1007
00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:29,920
Speaker 1: think no one's already taken Captain Underpants. Every idea is

1008
00:51:29,960 --> 00:51:32,120
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, there you go. Maybe you can go

1009
00:51:32,160 --> 00:51:34,160
Speaker 1: back in time. All right, Well, we hope that made

1010
00:51:34,200 --> 00:51:37,520
Speaker 1: you think about your life and how likely it is

1011
00:51:37,560 --> 00:51:40,440
Speaker 1: for you to be here, and how appreciative we should

1012
00:51:40,440 --> 00:51:43,320
Speaker 1: be every time you go outside and feel the warm

1013
00:51:43,400 --> 00:51:46,520
Speaker 1: rays of our sun and wonder about those aliens out there.

1014
00:51:46,560 --> 00:51:50,400
Speaker 1: Are they also enjoying a yellow star? Or is everything

1015
00:51:50,400 --> 00:51:53,200
Speaker 1: on their planet red? Or is what they call red

1016
00:51:53,239 --> 00:51:57,399
Speaker 1: actually yellow? Thanks for joining us, See you next time.

1017
00:52:05,160 --> 00:52:08,000
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that. Daniel and Jorge Explain

1018
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:11,960
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts

1019
00:52:12,080 --> 00:52:16,680
Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever

1020
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:18,480
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.