Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist. We are returning with a classic episode
Speaker 1: that speaks to our exploration of Nibiru, occurring quite recently.
Speaker 1: Back in twenty twenty, we learned that a star vanished,
Speaker 1: a cosmic murder mystery.
Speaker 2: That's weird, right, that's not supposed to happen.
Speaker 1: It's not really supposed to happen.
Speaker 2: Sometimes stars explode, but they don't vanish.
Speaker 1: They just break into like smaller bits, yeah, or they
Speaker 1: have like a spinoff band or a solo project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, turn into a black hole.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, yeah, or a white dwarf or something.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: The star collapses, but it always leaves forensic evidence. As
Speaker 1: we discovered, there was this investigation that turned into kind
Speaker 1: of a murder mystery out there in space.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: Recently, an enterprising group of astronomers, an astrophysicists found themselves
Speaker 3: transformed into space detectives to help solve this cosmic murder
Speaker 3: mystery in question.
Speaker 4: So let's join this conversation already in progress with.
Speaker 5: Us from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History
Speaker 5: is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now
Speaker 5: or learn this stuff. They don't want you to know.
Speaker 5: A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 4: My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined, as always with
Speaker 1: our super producer Paul. Mission control decands, most importantly, you
Speaker 1: are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. Today, we are investigating
Speaker 1: a mystery, and spoiler alert, it is not one that
Speaker 1: we are going to solve in today's episode. What are
Speaker 1: we talking about? Well, let's let's take a somewhat secuitous
Speaker 1: route here. Let's start comparatively local and consider the Sun.
Speaker 1: You know it, you might love it, You've definitely heard
Speaker 1: of it. It's the closest star to uh. I almost
Speaker 1: said the US, But it's the closest star to Earth
Speaker 1: and the US. Uh. It's wildly popular. It's one of
Speaker 1: the few fads that humanity can largely agree is a
Speaker 1: good thing and should be kept around. But the Sun
Speaker 1: is far from the only star in the universe.
Speaker 4: Really quickly, Ben, you know who doesn't like the sun?
Speaker 4: Me Beavis and butt Head.
Speaker 3: Oh remember that part in the movie where they're like,
Speaker 3: the sun sucks.
Speaker 4: That's all I got? Sorry, please carry I think exactly.
Speaker 2: Dehydration, Yes, my skin also is not a big fan,
Speaker 2: but it is also the life giver of you know,
Speaker 2: it is the light bringer.
Speaker 1: If you will u there we go.
Speaker 2: So so, if you're you know, standing on Earth and
Speaker 2: you look out, you see our sun. That's definitely the
Speaker 2: most prominent star out there. But if you continue to look,
Speaker 2: even with the naked eye, if you're far enough away
Speaker 2: from a city, you can see that these things are everywhere.
Speaker 2: And then you imagine just that there are billions of
Speaker 2: galaxies out there in the vast nothingness. It's not really nothingness.
Speaker 2: It's the everything news. It's something news at the very least.
Speaker 2: But within each of those billions of galaxies there are
Speaker 2: stars right.
Speaker 1: Or space as a hoax? Oh right, maybe maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know. Well, here are the facts. Let's talk about stars.
Speaker 2: Okay, so cool. If you look in one very specific
Speaker 2: direction out there into the cosmos, and then you travel
Speaker 2: let's say, seventy five million light years away from the Earth,
Speaker 2: you will find yourself in the Kinman dwarf galaxy. It's
Speaker 2: also known as PHL two ninety three B or f
Speaker 2: PHIL two ninety three B. There is a massive star
Speaker 2: inside this little dwarf galaxy and fairly little dwarf galaxy
Speaker 2: that is inside the constellation of Aquarius. If you're looking
Speaker 2: out there and looking at constellations.
Speaker 3: Yes, this object in question is known as a luminous
Speaker 3: blue variable star or LBV, and part of me wants
Speaker 3: to just pronounce that, but it doesn't roll off the
Speaker 3: tongue the way Phil does.
Speaker 4: Matt, you win with that one, sir.
Speaker 3: But it's about two and a half million times brighter
Speaker 3: than the Sun. At least at one point in time,
Speaker 3: it was so Ben, what's the skinny? What happened with
Speaker 3: this like big brother to the Sun that is now
Speaker 3: no longer that thing?
Speaker 1: Yes, as stude listeners, you may notice that we have
Speaker 1: started speaking in past tense about this star. Here here's
Speaker 1: what happened. This star is already relatively well studied in
Speaker 1: the modern day. Astrophysicists, astronomers and so on had investigated
Speaker 1: it for the better part of a decade from about
Speaker 1: two thousand and one to twenty eleven. There's nothing unusual
Speaker 1: about that. That is the routine research that scientists will do.
Speaker 1: This star, however, was different in that it was nearing
Speaker 1: the end of its stellar life. It's right, stars, just
Speaker 1: like people or living things do have a finite span
Speaker 1: of time in their existence, and this star was in
Speaker 1: its older days. It was elderly. It was an elderly
Speaker 1: star for lack of a better word. And it was
Speaker 1: also subject to these weird, unpredictable variations and brightness. So, Noel,
Speaker 1: you had said this LBV was about two point five
Speaker 1: million times brighter than the Sun. It was, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't consistently at that brightness, and this was pretty baffling.
Speaker 1: Stars like this are candidly pretty rare, but they are
Speaker 1: not unknown. So again, still, this star was not unique
Speaker 1: yet a handful of these have been discovered already. However,
Speaker 1: when people saw these fluctuations in brightness, some enterprising astrophysicists
Speaker 1: also recognized that as an enormous opportunity for possibly groundbreaking research,
Speaker 1: and so they said, out of the multitude of stars
Speaker 1: in the sky, we want to turn the telescopes back
Speaker 1: to this one and see if there's anything else we
Speaker 1: can learn.
Speaker 3: Yes, a doctoral astrophysicist student at Trinity Dublin College did
Speaker 3: just that. A gentleman by the name of Andrew Allen
Speaker 3: was very interested in the star. So back in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: he and his fellow star enthusiasts, professional star enthusias decided
Speaker 3: to use something delightfully named the European Southern Observatory is
Speaker 3: very large telescope, love it just to tell it like
Speaker 3: it is, And they wanted to use this device to
Speaker 3: get a closer look at this star as it started
Speaker 3: kind of approaching its twilight years, the end of its
Speaker 3: stellar life.
Speaker 4: And that's what potentially.
Speaker 3: Really offer some incredible research material, right Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's not as though they were going in, you know,
Speaker 2: completely blind about what may may happen. They had a
Speaker 2: pretty rough idea of what's going to happen to this star,
Speaker 2: because stars do a couple of general different things. But
Speaker 2: usually when a star, you know that's this much larger
Speaker 2: and brighter than the sun, begins to really end, truly end,
Speaker 2: it's going to explode in some kind, in some form
Speaker 2: or fashion. And there are several different types of these
Speaker 2: explosions that we're going to talk about here. But it
Speaker 2: would it would explode, and we would notice because we
Speaker 2: would see it. Even though it's seventy five light years
Speaker 2: away and it takes that light that long to reach us,
Speaker 2: we would still be able to observe it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, and so we know that stars of this
Speaker 1: size tend to have violent deaths. And also, you know,
Speaker 1: I know I'm leaning into the comparisons here, and I
Speaker 1: maybe anthropomorphizing a bit, but you'll see why these comparisons
Speaker 1: are apt. So stars have Stars of this nature tend
Speaker 1: to have violent deaths. Here's what happens. They run out
Speaker 1: of hydrogen to fuse, right, and then the weight of
Speaker 1: the stars starts squeezing on its core. It gets hotter
Speaker 1: and hotter and denser and denser, and then the star,
Speaker 1: almost as if it is struggling to prevent itself from dying,
Speaker 1: it begins to fuse heavier elements than usual and sort
Speaker 1: of a ay, a last ditch effort to keep from collapsing.
Speaker 1: So from carbon to silicon to iron, each of these
Speaker 1: steps generates heat and pressure, but it's never quite enough,
Speaker 1: and the fusion of these heavier elements they don't give
Speaker 1: the star more energy, so boom, the core collapses, and
Speaker 1: the resulting shock wave of protons and neutrons colliding will
Speaker 1: rip the star apart. The outer layers are thrown out
Speaker 1: into the ink, out into space, and it becomes a supernova,
Speaker 1: and for very brief time, comparatively, the star is enormously bright.
Speaker 1: This massive amount of chaos and pandemonium makes for a
Speaker 1: beautiful display. Actually it's weird that for us it's an
Speaker 1: amazing firework, but you know, it's tremendously damaging to the
Speaker 1: galaxies in which it occurs.
Speaker 2: And it's one of those things where if you are
Speaker 2: observing even the region around a star that is going
Speaker 2: into super and ova or beginning to supernova, or has
Speaker 2: recently gone into that process, you'd be able to see
Speaker 2: it because it's not just you know, if you think
Speaker 2: about our sun, it's not just kind of that ball
Speaker 2: of gases that's burning, right. It's now if you imagine,
Speaker 2: you've seen it before depicted in movies and science fiction
Speaker 2: television probably, but it is now kind of coloring the
Speaker 2: space around it, the darkness around it. Right, it looks
Speaker 2: like a splotch now more than kind of a spherical thing,
Speaker 2: because it's all those gases that Ben was talking about,
Speaker 2: the radiation, it all just kind of looks to have
Speaker 2: spilled out into the space around it for quite a while.
Speaker 2: It doesn't just explode and then it's done, right, It
Speaker 2: doesn't last for a few seconds the way it does
Speaker 2: in maybe a Star Wars or you know, something like that,
Speaker 2: it's there and you're observing it again over the course
Speaker 2: of several years.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so after the blast, this dense core that's left
Speaker 3: behind from stellar material might collapse into a black hole
Speaker 3: or a neutron star. And those are two of space's
Speaker 3: most head scratching kind of mysteries that we really don't
Speaker 3: know what happens when you get sucked into one of these,
Speaker 3: or at least not as much as we would like.
Speaker 3: But that's not what happened to LBV. When Andrew Allen
Speaker 3: searched for this LBV, he stumbled across a bit of
Speaker 3: a galactic mystery, sort of like a victim in some
Speaker 3: kind of cosmic noir detective story.
Speaker 4: I love this Ben.
Speaker 3: The star just just you know, like they like Kaiser
Speaker 3: SoSE like that it was gone. And in order to
Speaker 3: investigate this mystery and kind of follow the clues, the
Speaker 3: researchers had to look back at previous observations and snapshots
Speaker 3: of the star taken in two thousand and two. In
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine, and they discovered something very interesting,
Speaker 3: which was that the star I had been undergoing a
Speaker 3: very strong one of those outburst periods that Matt was
Speaker 3: talking about during that time, getting rid of throwing off
Speaker 3: enormous amounts of that stellar material at a much much
Speaker 3: faster rate than normal.
Speaker 2: I would just like to point out that is not
Speaker 2: a supernova they're talking about there, Like, it's not an explosion.
Speaker 2: It's it's ejecting material the way maybe you've seen the
Speaker 2: Sun with a coronal mass ejection or some of the
Speaker 2: filaments that just will escape from the surface of the
Speaker 2: Sun and head out into space.
Speaker 1: It's a space tantrum.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, star tantrum. It's yeah, that's essentially what we're
Speaker 2: talking about here, but at a much higher rate.
Speaker 4: That's a very good point, Matt. And so what happened next, Well.
Speaker 1: The researchers know that this kind of star variable LBV
Speaker 1: like this can experience these space tantrums as they age,
Speaker 1: and that can cause them to glow more brightly. But
Speaker 1: what they found was that the outburst they could prove
Speaker 1: and trace ended some time after twenty eleven, right when
Speaker 1: routine observation the star halted, and that meant that they
Speaker 1: needed some they needed to do some space detective work,
Speaker 1: because sometime between twenty eleven and twenty nineteen, this star
Speaker 1: simply vanished. So what happened? That's our question today, and
Speaker 1: we'll attempt to find some answers. Afterword from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy, Okay, juries out what happens.
Speaker 2: Well, that's kind of the point of this episode, guys.
Speaker 2: We don't know exactly what happened, and scientists, even brilliant
Speaker 2: younger people who are you know, getting PhDs in astrophysics,
Speaker 2: who are observing the thing directly, are trying to figure
Speaker 2: out exactly what happened. But the cool thing that occurs
Speaker 2: when you know, strange things go down is that there
Speaker 2: are a bunch of explanations, proposed hypotheses, theories about what
Speaker 2: perhaps occurred here. And what we're going to do from
Speaker 2: here on out is just explore some of the things
Speaker 2: that may have happened with this star. And some, of course,
Speaker 2: are a little more out there than others. Some are
Speaker 2: a little more mundane, little boring. But it's okay because
Speaker 2: it could be any of these because guess what's coming
Speaker 2: up in a second Ben.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, strap In, I have a clear bias on
Speaker 1: this one, guy. I have the one that I very
Speaker 1: much want to be true. We're gonna get to aliens
Speaker 1: in a second, but right now it's already spooky and
Speaker 1: disquieting enough to note that stars do a lot of things.
Speaker 1: They don't just disappear, that doesn't happen. They leave a trace.
Speaker 1: Like you said, No, there will be a black hole, right,
Speaker 1: there will be there will be some sort of detritus.
Speaker 1: But this one seems to have just vanished. So if
Speaker 1: we look at the possibilities, I suggest we start with
Speaker 1: the mundane, or as you said, Matt, maybe the more
Speaker 1: boring aka plausible stuff. First, we have to remember to
Speaker 1: a point I think one of us made earlier, that
Speaker 1: we're looking at something from a long, long, long way away.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of space in between us and this star,
Speaker 1: so much space that there's a lot of time in
Speaker 1: between us and this star. And in that space, that
Speaker 1: geographic space between us and this star, there are plenty
Speaker 1: of things that get in the way.
Speaker 3: To preface this, I want to point out something that
Speaker 3: Matt mentioned off air, that you know, in that there's
Speaker 3: that gap between the observation periods twenty eleven and twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: There anything could have and all bets are off anything
Speaker 3: could have happened in that time, So just keep that
Speaker 3: in mind. But one pretty simple and a little bit
Speaker 3: mundane explanation could be that the star dimmed considerably after
Speaker 3: its outburst and was then further obscured by a thick
Speaker 3: kind of cluster of cosmic dust. If that's the case,
Speaker 3: then the star could reappear in future observations, because again,
Speaker 3: these are these clouds, this kind of veil could drift
Speaker 3: through space, and that's a lot of time for something
Speaker 3: like that. You know, things move very slowly in space,
Speaker 3: at least far away when you're observing it. That absolutely
Speaker 3: would be a scenario where the star didn't actually go anywhere,
Speaker 3: it just wasn't observable at the time.
Speaker 2: Just what I would say here that this one feels
Speaker 2: a little odd to me is just how bright the
Speaker 2: star was in question here the LBV, because you know
Speaker 2: we mentioned at the top it was two and a
Speaker 2: half million times brighter than the sun.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Right, that's some robust cosmic dust right there, you know.
Speaker 2: Well it is for sure, It's just we don't know
Speaker 2: how far away, you know, where that veil would be
Speaker 2: located in between the two points right on that on
Speaker 2: that line.
Speaker 3: I mean, would that be sort of like an asteroid
Speaker 3: belt or something like like a cluster of like closely
Speaker 3: knit together material that would potentially obscure something from view.
Speaker 1: This is what I find hilarious about this. This is
Speaker 1: classic human This This theory is basically that it is
Speaker 1: saying that seventy five million light years is a lot
Speaker 1: of space and that there could be something in front
Speaker 1: of the telescope. We're dressing it up to sound fancy
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about some weirder stuff. But this,
Speaker 1: this is like one hunder a possibility and feels like
Speaker 1: the exact kind of delightful hyjiinks our species gets itself into.
Speaker 3: It's like the cosmic equivalent of accidentally having your thumb
Speaker 3: slightly over the corner of the camera on your phone
Speaker 3: when you're taking a selfie.
Speaker 2: You know, if your thumb was let's say, forty million
Speaker 2: light years away of a galaxy exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: So we let's get into what we you know, what
Speaker 3: we like to talk about here, the weirder and more
Speaker 3: exciting explanation.
Speaker 4: Then I think I leave this to you, my friend.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, this is this is on the way to weird.
Speaker 1: I won't say this is We're not full weird yet
Speaker 1: on this one. But what if the star never really
Speaker 1: recovered from its space tantrums, what it was bleeding out
Speaker 1: all that material? What if it just somehow collapsed into
Speaker 1: a black hole, not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Speaker 1: What if no super nova occurred? In short, like, what
Speaker 1: if there wasn't an explosion like that for us to see,
Speaker 1: it just sort of became a black hole. This is
Speaker 1: pretty crazy. This would be a rare event, and if
Speaker 1: it did happen, then the star would have made an
Speaker 1: enormous black hole. It would have a mass that was
Speaker 1: eighty five to one hundred and twenty times the mass
Speaker 1: of Earth's Sun, and we have no idea how that
Speaker 1: would have happened. That's like, that's at the stage of
Speaker 1: you know, spitballing in speculation, where someone says, maybe this
Speaker 1: could have happened, and then someone says, well, how do
Speaker 1: you think it would have occurred? And everybody has to
Speaker 1: kind of throw up their hands and shrug because that
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense. It violates what we understand about the
Speaker 1: rules of physics.
Speaker 2: Well, you know what they really would have to do, Ben,
Speaker 2: and it's something that would be completely beyond maya understanding
Speaker 2: is throw up a bunch of FIS equations that there's
Speaker 2: no way I could ever understand. But I've read some
Speaker 2: papers on this. We've all read some scientific papers on
Speaker 2: this now at this point and trying to wrap my
Speaker 2: head at least around the math that goes into calculating
Speaker 2: how it could become a black hole like that. People
Speaker 2: are doing it and they're checking it out and they're
Speaker 2: checking you know, their maths. But I certainly couldn't explain
Speaker 2: it to you on this podcast. But like you said, rare,
Speaker 2: but could have happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, could have. There's another possibility that comes to us
Speaker 1: through some research, some pretty recent research at Cornell University.
Speaker 4: Right, is this a step up in the weird spectrum?
Speaker 2: This one, This is a weird one where it feels
Speaker 2: more plausible and a little less. I don't know. This
Speaker 2: one rides the line between mundane and strange. So let's
Speaker 2: let's just get into it.
Speaker 4: I'm good with that. Yeah. They It was a project.
Speaker 3: Through an article submission to our xiv dot org that
Speaker 3: is a mouthful r xivy dot org, which is like
Speaker 3: a database, and that's through Cornell University. In February twenty
Speaker 3: twenty they weighed in on different potential outcomes that we
Speaker 3: just mentioned so far, and they added this one as
Speaker 3: another possibility, positing what if the light that these astronomers
Speaker 3: were observing all that time and observing that it had
Speaker 3: dimmed so significantly wasn't actually from an lbvstar but from
Speaker 3: the explosion of an lbvstar, from you know, a supernova lbvstar.
Speaker 3: The scientists show that a type two end supernova could
Speaker 3: account for some of these previous misinterpretations of that light
Speaker 3: that would you know, in theory, have been coming from
Speaker 3: an active star rather than an explosion.
Speaker 1: Your user error, then, is a good way to sum
Speaker 1: up that argument. It's not that the results were wrong
Speaker 1: or necessarily mysterious at that point, it's that our interpretation
Speaker 1: of those of that data was incorrect. And these scientists,
Speaker 1: you know, they make a pretty good case for this theory.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And if you know, you may think to yourself, what, no, man,
Speaker 2: there's no way brilliant people could mistake a star just
Speaker 2: being there physically somewhere and an explosion. Well, maybe think again. Here,
Speaker 2: I'm going to reading a couple quotes here from this
Speaker 2: article that was published. It says it is possible the
Speaker 2: sn supernova two end like event occurred sometime between September
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five and September nineteen ninety eight, when no
Speaker 2: photometry is available, so no actual pictures of this star
Speaker 2: and of the light being emanated from that area. Going
Speaker 2: back to the quote, in some cases supernova light curves
Speaker 2: exhibit bumps several years after the explosion. Now that would
Speaker 2: account for or you know, early on Ben was talking
Speaker 2: about how this star or wherever this light was coming from,
Speaker 2: it was very bright at times and then seemed to
Speaker 2: dim of it and then be very bright, even brighter,
Speaker 2: and then a little more dim And that's what they're
Speaker 2: describing here as these bumps in output of light. And
Speaker 2: here's another quote here. The most plausible explanations for the
Speaker 2: recent dissipation of the broad emission after an unusually persistent
Speaker 2: phase are an LBV outburst followed by a slow weekly
Speaker 2: variable phase or a very long lived s N two
Speaker 2: end event that's a supernova event, so again exactly what
Speaker 2: we described before. The most plausible things are that it
Speaker 2: just had that weird outburst, that space tantrum we talked about,
Speaker 2: then just dimmed very significantly after that, or it was
Speaker 2: a long lived supernova that we've just been observing as
Speaker 2: though it were a star, and they say the latter
Speaker 2: is more like given the lack of short timescale variability
Speaker 2: and the slowly fading light curve. Oh the language of scientists.
Speaker 4: Everyone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you did a really good job of unpacking that, Matt, though,
Speaker 3: I applaud you. And now I think we're to Ben's
Speaker 3: favorite part of today's episode, when we get legitimately into
Speaker 3: the weirdest sphere here.
Speaker 1: Oh, I yeah, I'm excited about this one. Guys. I
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's gonna be our I think
Speaker 1: we'll be unanimous in deciding this is our favorite part,
Speaker 1: this is our favorite possible explanation. But let's hold the
Speaker 1: tension just a bit longer. We'll pause for a word
Speaker 1: from our sponsor, and we'll be right back. Noel, Matt
Speaker 1: fellow conspiracy realist. Let's dream big. What if this mysterious
Speaker 1: star was never destroyed at all? What if reports of
Speaker 1: its death are exaggerated? What if, instead of being annihilated,
Speaker 1: this star was simply tamed. Which sounds crazy, right, I'm
Speaker 1: anthropomorphizing left right here, But to put a very fine
Speaker 1: point on it, what if somewhere out there in the
Speaker 1: ink and extraterrestrial civilization has somehow mastered the art of
Speaker 1: taming stars and using them for energy.
Speaker 2: Ooh, now we're talking, Ben, this is what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: Taming a star. How does one do that? Well, it's
Speaker 2: not like you can lasso it or capture it in
Speaker 2: a trap of some sort.
Speaker 1: Right, you know, we know that we haven't done it
Speaker 1: yet officially, but this is something I think we've talked
Speaker 1: about on stuff that I want you to know before,
Speaker 1: the concept of the Kardashev scale, and this is this
Speaker 1: is very interesting, but we have to explore just a
Speaker 1: little bit about this so it doesn't sound so the
Speaker 1: idea of someone taming a star doesn't sound absolutely bonkers,
Speaker 1: which maybe it is.
Speaker 3: That sounds like something Doctor Manhattan would do, or like
Speaker 3: maybe four you know, fighting a star or taming a star.
Speaker 4: But no, this is yeah, we can we can.
Speaker 3: Put this in relatively grounded terms. So in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 3: a Soviet astronomer named Nikolai Kardashev proposed that a civilization's
Speaker 3: level of technological advancement is like a direct correlation to
Speaker 3: the amount of energy that the civilization is able to utilize,
Speaker 3: and he's got three categorized of civilizations into three categories,
Speaker 3: type one, type two, type three. In a burst of creativity,
Speaker 3: as Ben would say, a type one civilization can manage
Speaker 3: the entire energy output and material resources of a planet.
Speaker 3: A Type two civilization is capable of harnessing the energy
Speaker 3: and material resources of a star and its entire planetary system,
Speaker 3: And a type three civilization is able to wrangle all
Speaker 3: of the energy and material resources of an entire galaxy.
Speaker 3: Let's just try to simplify this ever so slightly, so
Speaker 3: within this scale, it's theoretically possible that some intelligent civilization
Speaker 3: somewhere out there in space has reached the level of
Speaker 3: a type two civilization. Type three is just beast mode,
Speaker 3: and this would mean the construction of something called a
Speaker 3: Dison sphere. No, that is not a ball vacuum cleaner.
Speaker 3: But I do believe that's where the name came from.
Speaker 3: If I'm not mistaken, or is the guy's name actually Dyson.
Speaker 3: I think it's I think it's a connection because there's
Speaker 3: that Dison vacuum that has the sphere. I don't know,
Speaker 3: I'm just conjecturing here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the Dyson sphere is named after Freeman Dyson,
Speaker 1: but I don't think he's affiliated with the vacuums.
Speaker 4: No, that's Sir James Dyson. It just happens.
Speaker 3: This is just parallel thinking. James decided to keep his
Speaker 3: scientific smart's in the realm of keeping your home nice
Speaker 3: and tidy.
Speaker 1: But they're both working with vacuums. When you think about it,
Speaker 1: that's very hairs point.
Speaker 3: So I think it's perfectly spot on, and it's certainly
Speaker 3: helped help me look a little less foolish, and I
Speaker 3: appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no chumps in the squad.
Speaker 2: I just want to put out there that I think
Speaker 2: we're talking about a type two civilization building a dice
Speaker 2: in sphere here. We'll get into it. I think we're
Speaker 2: actually talking about a type three civilization, gentlemen.
Speaker 4: Here beast mode.
Speaker 2: I think we're talking about beast mode because of the
Speaker 2: time frame where the dimmy occurred. But let's continue forward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So it's interesting that scale is a tremendously
Speaker 1: humbling one. If you are familiar with Kardashev, or if
Speaker 1: you have read his work, or if you you know,
Speaker 1: if you're thinking about this and putting humanity in this context,
Speaker 1: we are yet to become a type one civilization. We
Speaker 1: are below the bottom barrel of energy. Kardashev made a
Speaker 1: scale that is a little bit difficult for the average
Speaker 1: human to relate to, perhaps or the average society. But
Speaker 1: a Dyson sphere is even cooler than a Dyson vacuum.
Speaker 1: Clear the technology, if it exists, would would be like
Speaker 1: that Arthur C. Clark quote. You know, it would be
Speaker 1: indistinguishable from magic to the average human being here on
Speaker 1: our ball of mud. The Dyson sphere is a theoretical
Speaker 1: structure that's just like the kind of trap you described, Matt.
Speaker 1: It's something that would be built or constructed somehow around
Speaker 1: the entirety of a star. Imagine putting the Sun in
Speaker 1: a box and then this sphere. This contraption would capture
Speaker 1: all of the energy emitted by the star, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: it would be able to transfer that energy converted into
Speaker 1: some sort of usable form. For the enigmatic constructors of
Speaker 1: the Dyson sphere, this thing would be huge. It would
Speaker 1: be without exceptions, without hyperbole, It would be the biggest
Speaker 1: thing ever built as far as humanity could understand. Like
Speaker 1: you think the Death Star is a big deal in
Speaker 1: star Wars. I mean, it's a huge plot point, doesn't
Speaker 1: have the best design, get it, sure, but it's massive.
Speaker 1: This would absolutely dwarf this. We have no idea how
Speaker 1: it would be built.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, at least the Dyson sphere that was put forward,
Speaker 2: as you said, by Freeman Dyson in nineteen sixty, because
Speaker 2: you're talking about bigger than a star, right, it's some
Speaker 2: constructed thing that's larger than a star. Certainly boggles of
Speaker 2: the mind there. But there have been several theoretical, obviously
Speaker 2: very theoretical types of solar grids almost that would consist
Speaker 2: of smaller essentially machines and solar capture devices that would
Speaker 2: be placed close to a star, but not in the
Speaker 2: same way as a Dyson's sphere. Wouldn't encapsulate the entire thing.
Speaker 2: But there are some really fascinating concepts out there right
Speaker 2: now about how you could begin down the road to
Speaker 2: a Dyson sphere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I do want to give credit where
Speaker 1: it's due. Dyson formalized this idea back in nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: but we believe he was inspired by earlier works of
Speaker 1: science fiction by authors like Oloff Stapleton and a fellow
Speaker 1: named J. D. Bernall, it's weird. The cool thing about
Speaker 1: science fiction is that sometimes it ends up being prescient, right,
Speaker 1: Like the US government True story has hired science fiction
Speaker 1: writers in the past and just said, Okay, yeah, whitch
Speaker 1: this to us. This is a real thing we're working on.
Speaker 1: How should we handle it? And they get some wild answers,
Speaker 1: But yeah, Dyson. Dyson had a pretty solid logic. He said, Look,
Speaker 1: if humanity can continue our merry and mad experiments of existence,
Speaker 1: eventually we are going to expand our energy demands so
Speaker 1: much so that we are going to need to figure
Speaker 1: out a way to get the total energy output of
Speaker 1: the Sun. How do we do that? How do we
Speaker 1: make that happen? He came up with a Dyson sphere.
Speaker 1: As you said, Matt, there are It sounds to bonkers,
Speaker 1: but there there are pretty I don't want to say conclusive.
Speaker 1: There are compelling and tantalizing arguments for the legitimacy or
Speaker 1: the feasibility of a Dyson's sphere. The craziest thing about
Speaker 1: this whole notion is that theoretically it's possible. Theoretically it
Speaker 1: is possible to build something around the stuff.
Speaker 3: I really quickly just want to make a pop culture
Speaker 3: reference in the one hundred and thirtieth episode of Star
Speaker 3: Trek the Next Generation called Relics the Enterprise, you know,
Speaker 3: as they typically do respond to a distress call and
Speaker 3: they discover a dice in sphere, So a fun way
Speaker 3: to kind of see it sort of fictionalized because it
Speaker 3: is there's some science behind it, but it also it's
Speaker 3: one of those things that's a little nebulous, right, Like
Speaker 3: it's conceptually possible, but it's also like a thing in
Speaker 3: Star Trek that they're presenting as though it's real, but
Speaker 3: we're not really there yet technologically to actually make that happen,
Speaker 3: And just to reiterate that was Star Trek the Next
Speaker 3: Generation Season six, episode four, aka the one hundred and
Speaker 3: thirtieth episode of the show called Relics.
Speaker 1: Relics I liked heck man, I love Star Trek. I
Speaker 1: you two parts of it are corny, but oh man, I.
Speaker 3: Find it very relaxing and comforting. I'll put it on
Speaker 3: before bed sometimes it sort of lulls me into a
Speaker 3: nice space trance.
Speaker 1: I'm super into the Borg, the Q all of Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. I want to put this out there because
Speaker 2: I maybe I just am not fully understanding. I'd pose
Speaker 2: it to you guys as a philosophical question. I don't
Speaker 2: understand why an intelligence at that level would want to
Speaker 2: fully encapsulate a star knowing that effects that that would
Speaker 2: have on all of the Solar System that you know
Speaker 2: is surrounding that star. Like it feels like you'd want
Speaker 2: to capture the energy or enough of the energy of
Speaker 2: that star while still allowing it to keep you know,
Speaker 2: the functionality of the Solar System. And maybe it's just
Speaker 2: my misunderstanding of how that would actually affect it, because
Speaker 2: you certainly wouldn't be sending heat anywhere throughout the Solar
Speaker 2: System anymore. If you put a dice and sphere on the.
Speaker 3: Thing you're saying it would affect like gravitational balance or
Speaker 3: something like that.
Speaker 2: Or what I mean, if there's any I guess you'd
Speaker 2: want to identify a star that doesn't have any life
Speaker 2: on any the planets, or observable life on any of
Speaker 2: the planets, if you're anything like the you know this
Speaker 2: crew of the starship Enterprise and you know the Federation
Speaker 2: and all that, or maybe if you don't give a
Speaker 2: crap and you're just you need that star energy. You
Speaker 2: just put a dice in sphere on that thing in
Speaker 2: if everybody else.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the here. This is a great question, and
Speaker 1: it's also unfortunately a good argument against a dice in
Speaker 1: sphere being responsible for the disappearance of this star. And
Speaker 1: it's this, it's a question of efficiency. Why build an
Speaker 1: entire box or an entire sphere around a star when
Speaker 1: you can get all the energy you need from an
Speaker 1: alternative design, like a dice in ring. Think about how
Speaker 1: much we save in terms of great Now we're space engineers,
Speaker 1: think about all the cost cutting we could institute if
Speaker 1: we just got a dice in what's sometimes described as
Speaker 1: a dice in swarm, and that would be instead of
Speaker 1: one contiguous sphere we have, we have like satellites in
Speaker 1: these positions, right, these immovable or static positions arranged in
Speaker 1: maybe a ring that would be the simplest form, or
Speaker 1: in a series of rings, like the lines of longitude
Speaker 1: on a globe. Right, we would still be harvesting a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of energy, but we would also you know,
Speaker 1: energy would be leaving the mechanism as well. And to
Speaker 1: your point, Matt, I think it's more dangerous for us
Speaker 1: to anthropomorphize alien life than it is to anthropomorphize stars,
Speaker 1: because it leads us down these dark roads, these dark paths.
Speaker 1: To your question about why someone or some entity would
Speaker 1: build a sphere knowing that it could wreak havoc on
Speaker 1: a solar system, all we can say is that if
Speaker 1: an aliens or anything like us, if an extraterrestrial mind
Speaker 1: is anything like our own, then we can look at
Speaker 1: our human past and every time we have had a
Speaker 1: chance to do the right thing for the environment during
Speaker 1: you know, energy rushes, we have decided to go with
Speaker 1: the short term profit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Prime Minister Groulp needed that star energy.
Speaker 1: Man, right right, We need that star energy. You know,
Speaker 1: the other life forms, we'll just have to deal with it.
Speaker 1: It's true, though there's no proof of this. It's just
Speaker 1: a fascinating idea. And you know, as we've discussed in
Speaker 1: previous episodes, whenever the concept of aliens somewhere out there
Speaker 1: in space comes up, they are more or less a
Speaker 1: mathematical certainty. And that makes this theory so fascinating for
Speaker 1: a few different reasons. If a Dyson sphere, we know
Speaker 1: it can be built, but if there is a civilization
Speaker 1: capable of building one, that makes the possibility of finding
Speaker 1: intelligent extraterrestrial life so much easier. There's a big thing
Speaker 1: that we can find, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: then second, if we find something like this, it would
Speaker 1: prove a powerful commonality because it would mean that these entities,
Speaker 1: these minds, whatever they are, would mean that they use
Speaker 1: energy in a way similar to us, That they, like us,
Speaker 1: derive nourishment and existence from a star. And that that
Speaker 1: sounds small, but philosophically that's astounding, that's kind of beautiful.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have to remember every single thing that
Speaker 1: about discovering a Dyson sphere would be historic, It would
Speaker 1: be mind blowing, It would be no small way terrifying.
Speaker 1: But we also have to remember, you know, when we
Speaker 1: think about life and planets that carry life, we are
Speaker 1: stuck with a sample size of one, so we have
Speaker 1: no idea this would be. I would rarely say this, guys,
Speaker 1: but this would be a revolution of a spiritual level
Speaker 1: as well as a scientific and cecular one.
Speaker 3: I really want, I really quickly want to point out
Speaker 3: that Popular Mechanics has a fantastic article called could we
Speaker 3: build a dice in Sphere? By Adam Hattisy from February
Speaker 3: twenty of this year, and so it is, you know,
Speaker 3: theoretically possible, but you know from everything that I've read,
Speaker 3: it would take like eighty years to build one, just
Speaker 3: with the metrics of what we know of how much
Speaker 3: material it would take, and just like the you know,
Speaker 3: the timeframe of constructing such a thing and just the
Speaker 3: logistics of it. But there's also a few pretty cool
Speaker 3: videos on YouTube about conceptually what it would take to
Speaker 3: build a dice in sphere. But it's it's I love
Speaker 3: the stuff that like this that's conceptually possible, but we're
Speaker 3: just not there yet because it really scratches that sci
Speaker 3: fi itch for me.
Speaker 4: And I think this is exact actly that. It's such
Speaker 4: an interesting story.
Speaker 2: Well, we're in this scenario. We're talking about roughly nine
Speaker 2: years or a little less than that, some short period
Speaker 2: of time where this star went from extremely bright to disappearing. Right, So,
Speaker 2: if a Dyson sphere was installed, I'm thinking you got
Speaker 2: two halves of a dice and sphere and you ram
Speaker 2: them together and now it's.
Speaker 1: Gone Iikeia style. I love I love it. Some assembly required, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be like one million page Ikea manual.
Speaker 1: And maybe it's also super simple. Maybe It's just the
Speaker 1: equivalent of one very vague assembly sheet, and it says
Speaker 1: take Dyson sphere half A, noted as A and attached
Speaker 1: to B not to just be I don't I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've been assembling a lot of a lot of furniture
Speaker 1: from sketchy places recently, and and I'm loving I'm loving
Speaker 1: the genre of writing that the instructions are in. But
Speaker 1: you guys are right, we can find this inspiring. The
Speaker 1: Dyson sphere is still kind of a I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a thought experiment. There's a great YouTube video about this
Speaker 1: called In a Nutshell. If you guys are familiar with
Speaker 1: those series, they do animated excellent explanations various things of
Speaker 1: this nature. But the jury is still out. If you
Speaker 1: want a Dyson sphere to be real, and you want
Speaker 1: this LBV to be evidence of one, then we have
Speaker 1: somewhat good news for you. Currently, this star has yet
Speaker 1: to reappear. No one has confirmed whether it transformed into
Speaker 1: a black hole, whether there's some kind of cosmic flotsam
Speaker 1: and jetsam in between the telescope and the star, and
Speaker 1: we don't know if it got bound into a Dyson sphere.
Speaker 1: We don't know what happened. There was no supernova, There
Speaker 1: was no sudden burst of light, no dying scream of
Speaker 1: emitted energy. Instead, like a drowning sailor, this enormous star
Speaker 1: just sort of slipped beneath the waves. Also, on a
Speaker 1: somewhat depressing philosophical note, because of the passage of time,
Speaker 1: we have to realize that if this civilization existed, they
Speaker 1: existed seventy five million years ago. So even if they
Speaker 1: were there, our odds of finding them now are very
Speaker 1: very very very very low as we understand them. We
Speaker 1: should have ended on a higher note.
Speaker 2: Sorry, it's all good. I do like that We're that
Speaker 2: we're ending here with a mystery because it gives us,
Speaker 2: you know, something to look forward to, because we will
Speaker 2: find out what happened to this star or the supernova.
Speaker 2: It's just going to take time. Thankfully, it won't take
Speaker 2: seventy five million years light years, but it will. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll get there.
Speaker 1: What if what if there's some deep space equivalent of
Speaker 1: a Leviathan or a Kraken and it's like a life
Speaker 1: form and it like eats stars. What if there's a
Speaker 1: star eater out there that's.
Speaker 2: Just swimming past the star for an elongated period of time.
Speaker 4: The stuff nightmares right there, gentlemen, we want.
Speaker 1: To hear from you, folks, think you as always so
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. What do you think happened to this? LBV?
Speaker 1: Can you solve the mystery of a star that again
Speaker 1: just disappeared? We've posed, We've posed various theories again, as
Speaker 1: Matt said, ranging across the spectrum of plausibility. But what
Speaker 1: did we miss? What do you think what would be
Speaker 1: the wildest thing that could happen? What do you think
Speaker 1: is the most likely thing that could happen? And what
Speaker 1: should what should we be looking for when we search
Speaker 1: the sky at night?
Speaker 4: Hmm?
Speaker 2: Besides giant whales or space whales? Yeah, god, yeah, I do. Now,
Speaker 2: I just want to see that has that ever been depicted?
Speaker 2: We're gonna I'm gonna start just a Google search where
Speaker 2: giant space whales. We're gonna build it somewhere.
Speaker 3: Didn't we talk about space whales in a recent episode
Speaker 3: and I and I incorrectly said that Mobius was a
Speaker 3: big purveyor of space whales, and he maybe did one
Speaker 3: space whale.
Speaker 4: But we looked up pictures.
Speaker 3: It's definitely a popular sci fi trope, but it wasn't mobias,
Speaker 3: but I don't know.
Speaker 1: Oh the art, yes, I believe so, yeah, yeah they're amazing. Well,
Speaker 1: let us know what your take on a space wheel is. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm interested. I was thinking about this earlier. If we
Speaker 1: think about the universe just in terms of size, there
Speaker 1: could easily be life forms that are larger than our
Speaker 1: entire planet and we might never know.
Speaker 4: It's just what do they breathe?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 4: How does that work? Just just energy, bro, just straight
Speaker 4: space dust. I have no idea man, space.
Speaker 1: Radiation. Maybe maybe they're like you know how whales have
Speaker 1: baileying that allows them to filter krill. Maybe they're doing
Speaker 1: something like Okay, look, this has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: this disappearance Star. We haven't solved the mystery. We want to.
Speaker 1: We want to hear from you, folks. Let us know.
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Speaker 4: Yes, if you wish, you may find me on Instagram,
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Speaker 3: smart folks out there on Twitter making crazy weird Twitter
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Speaker 3: Noel Brown.
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