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Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of

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Speaker 1: our exploration of Sagittarius, a star, the compact radio source,

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Speaker 1: the supermassive black hole we think at the center of

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Speaker 1: the Milky Way galaxy. Yeah, this is uh so, so,

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Speaker 1: as we mentioned in the last episode, we had what

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Speaker 1: three episodes we've done previously just on black holes in general,

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Speaker 1: and in these two episodes deal with supermassive black holes

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Speaker 1: more specifically. Uh and uh yeah, So if you're listening

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Speaker 1: to this episode, you do need to have at least

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Speaker 1: listened to the previous supermassive black hole episode. But I

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Speaker 1: think the supermassive black hole episodes are are are tailored

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Speaker 1: to stand on their own without necessarily having listened to

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Speaker 1: the previous black hole episodes. In either case, it is

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Speaker 1: recommended that you have seen either Walt Disney's The black

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Speaker 1: Hole or Event Horizon, so they have a proper basis

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Speaker 1: for all of our terrible jokes. Which one of those

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Speaker 1: two is more kid friendly? You think, Oh, blow. I

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Speaker 1: think it's the Disney movie, but the Disney movie is

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Speaker 1: also surprisingly dark. Like, uh, Anthony Perkins is eviscerated by

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Speaker 1: a killer robot um Like this is awful scene where

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Speaker 1: Maximilian the robots coming at him with the spinning blade

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Speaker 1: arm and he holds up like a giant dictionary to

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Speaker 1: block it, and he like cuts right through the dictionary

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Speaker 1: and uh and you know, apparently like just disembowels Anthony Perkins.

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Speaker 1: It cuts out the definition of in trails. Well you

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Speaker 1: don't see any in trails, but it's still pretty horrific.

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Speaker 1: There's some scary moments in it. But I loved it

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Speaker 1: as a kid. I really need to sit down and

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Speaker 1: watch it again. Now, speaking of a visceration, we're gonna

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Speaker 1: be talking about some somewhat violent events going on around

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Speaker 1: a black hole, or at least they presumed black hole today.

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Speaker 1: And one thing we promised you last time is that

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Speaker 1: we would answer a few questions every You've always wanted

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Speaker 1: to know about the supermassive black hole at the center

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Speaker 1: of the galaxy, but we're afraid to ask. And one

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Speaker 1: of the questions people most often ask about black holes.

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Speaker 1: If you're ready to jump right in robert Is. With

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Speaker 1: this big supermassive black hole at the center of the

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Speaker 1: Milky Way, will the rest of the Milky Way, including Earth,

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Speaker 1: one day gets sucked into this black hole? And I

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Speaker 1: was trying to find a good answer for this. I

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Speaker 1: think the short answer is no, or at least that's

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Speaker 1: not a given. All evidence indicates that, of course, the

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Speaker 1: Milky Way does have this supermassive black hole at its center.

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Speaker 1: The galaxy is sort of orbiting around it, or at

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Speaker 1: least roughly orbiting around it, But our Solar system is

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Speaker 1: in a stable orbit that is pretty far out. It's

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Speaker 1: something like light years away from the galactic center. And

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Speaker 1: black holes, even unbelievably giant black holes, still basically behave

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Speaker 1: like stars until you get really close to them. They're

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Speaker 1: not vacuum cleaners just sucking down the entire universe. You know.

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Speaker 1: They're objects traveling through space with a gravitational attraction that

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Speaker 1: is a product of their mass and your distance from them,

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Speaker 1: and like other objects, if you're far enough away, they're

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Speaker 1: gravitational attraction is negligible. So we've got no indication that

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Speaker 1: there is a risk of a black hole swallowing our

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Speaker 1: Solar system or the Earth or the rest of the

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Speaker 1: Milky Way. But of course, if anything as massive as

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Speaker 1: a black hole pass near our Solar system, I think,

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Speaker 1: I mean that that would be a problem. It might

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Speaker 1: not swallow our Solar System, but it's gravitational influence could

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Speaker 1: alter the orbits of the planets, which would be not good. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: life on Earth depends very heavily on us being where

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Speaker 1: we are relative to the Sun and other objects in

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Speaker 1: the Solar System staying where they are. You don't want

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Speaker 1: to say the orbits of comets and other objects like

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Speaker 1: that thrown out of whack, because then that can lead

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Speaker 1: to interplanetary bombardment. Yeah. I think the fact that a

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Speaker 1: black hole is an object is something that we do

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Speaker 1: have to come back to again and again because especially

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Speaker 1: with science fiction treatments, especially those especially the Disney black Hole.

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Speaker 1: So you know, there's this idea of like thinking of

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Speaker 1: it as a whirlpool it's a hungry, hungry hippo, yeah,

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Speaker 1: or thinking of it as a tunnel or just an

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Speaker 1: open like some of these you know, these analogies. They

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Speaker 1: they may be useful to a certain extent. It gives

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Speaker 1: us something to picture in our mind, but it kind

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Speaker 1: of drifts away from the idea that this is an object.

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Speaker 1: This is a highly dense thing, and now, of course

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Speaker 1: in the region really close to it, it doesn't behave

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Speaker 1: like most other objects too. But once once you get

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Speaker 1: farther away, I would say that the ways in which

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Speaker 1: it is unique become less relevant to you. Does that

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Speaker 1: make sense? Yes? Now, Um, you touched on some of this,

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Speaker 1: but but I was looking around like, Okay, what is

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Speaker 1: the scenario in which the supermassive black hole at the

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Speaker 1: center of our galaxy uh could conceivably destroy us? And

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Speaker 1: that there is one very strong possibility. So and we've

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Speaker 1: mentioned that our system is again in a stable orbit

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Speaker 1: around the galactic center. Um, we're not being pooled pulled

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Speaker 1: into Sagittarius M A star. But in four point five

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Speaker 1: billion years, the Milky Way galaxy will likely merge with

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Speaker 1: the Andromeda galaxy. And when this happens, all bets are off.

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Speaker 1: It's possible that everything gets pushed around, gets shuffled around,

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Speaker 1: and our solar system then could be gulped up or

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Speaker 1: just hideously disrupted by Sagittarius A star in the process. This,

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Speaker 1: according to Fabio Pacucci, b Hi Fellow at Harvard University

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Speaker 1: and Clay Fellow at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. He has

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Speaker 1: a wonderful ted Ed video about this. So if you

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Speaker 1: just go to if you go to YouTube and you

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Speaker 1: look up, just look up ted Ed in general, because

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Speaker 1: they're great educational short form videos to watch with the

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Speaker 1: entire family. We watch them all the time in my household.

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Speaker 1: But they have an extra excellent one about black holes

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Speaker 1: that Fabio is the contributor for. Yeah, now, when we

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Speaker 1: talk about the collision of galaxies, maybe someday we could

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Speaker 1: do a whole episode just on the upcoming collision between

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Speaker 1: the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy because yeah, so

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Speaker 1: they're on a collision course. Uh. On one hand, that

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Speaker 1: sounds like, okay, so that's just the end of everything, right, Actually,

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Speaker 1: I think not necessarily, because you have to remember, well,

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Speaker 1: you know there is a lot of space in between stars, right,

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Speaker 1: you know, there's there's a lot of space for things

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Speaker 1: to go by. But one of the big fears I

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Speaker 1: think is not necessarily that like Earth will smash directly

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Speaker 1: into a star from Andromeda or something. That the fear

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Speaker 1: is about gravitational disruption. Right, things moving past each other

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Speaker 1: in space can still have a perturbation effects on on stars,

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Speaker 1: on the planet's orbiting stars, on the objects and junk

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Speaker 1: in space all around stars. Well, none of that's good. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of like, and this is a

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Speaker 1: terrible analogy, I'm sure, but it's like, if two companies merge,

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Speaker 1: your your concern is not that, you know, if you're

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Speaker 1: an editor at one company and you emerge with another company,

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Speaker 1: you're not concerned that there's another editor over there that

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Speaker 1: you're just going to smack into so hard that you

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Speaker 1: both explode. No, you're worried about redundancies. You're worried about

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Speaker 1: reshuffling of titles and priorities, etcetera. Which you know, all

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Speaker 1: of that can be can can certainly be catastrophically disruptive

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Speaker 1: to your life. Um, but you're not worried about, you know,

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Speaker 1: like physically, you know, exploding or you know, melting into

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Speaker 1: them like Ron Silver and time coop. So I guess

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Speaker 1: that is possible. I mean, whenever things drift past each

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Speaker 1: other in space, there's always a potential for a collision.

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Speaker 1: It's just you know that that's not necessarily the thing

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Speaker 1: you should be worried about. I think the bigger thing

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Speaker 1: would be, Yeah, do you get thrown out of place?

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Speaker 1: You get thrown in? You getting thrown into the near

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Speaker 1: orbit or towards the black hole would obviously be bad

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Speaker 1: and and catastrophic in its own right for sure. Alright,

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Speaker 1: So the next big question that that you might be

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Speaker 1: wondering about. Could intelligent life forms live of and or

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Speaker 1: operate in orbit around a supermassive black hole, specifically our

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Speaker 1: supermassive black hole? Uh? You know, how would this factor

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Speaker 1: into a like a galactic civilization? Yeah? Or in the

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Speaker 1: in the galaxy center more generally, right, can you get

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Speaker 1: close to the galaxy center and have life there? This

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Speaker 1: seems debatable, right, Like, So there are some scientists who

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Speaker 1: think that just the way solar systems have a habitable

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Speaker 1: zone for planetary orbits, the galaxy as a whole has

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Speaker 1: some kind of habitable zone for star systems. Now in

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Speaker 1: star systems, of course, this habitable zone has temperature as

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Speaker 1: a primary variable, right, And this depends on the radiation

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Speaker 1: coming off of the parent star and how far away

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Speaker 1: that planet is from the star. So if your planet

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Speaker 1: is too close it's too hot to have liquid water,

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Speaker 1: you'd be something like mercury, or could be a hot

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Speaker 1: gas planet too far away, it's too cold to have

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Speaker 1: liquid water. You might be like Jupiter or Saturn, And

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Speaker 1: it's generally believed that liquid water is sort of a

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Speaker 1: prerequisite for life, or at least the kind of life

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Speaker 1: that we understand. Could it be the galaxies as a

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Speaker 1: whole have zones kind of like this where life is

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Speaker 1: statistically more likely to emerge, thrive, and survive than in

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Speaker 1: other zones of the galaxy. Some scientists have proposed this.

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Speaker 1: And if that is the case, what characterizes this zone? Uh?

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Speaker 1: First of all, if the proponents of the idea of

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Speaker 1: a galactic hapitable zone are correct, the zone of the

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Speaker 1: galaxy most suitable for life would tend to be a

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Speaker 1: sort of wide ring around the center of the galaxy,

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Speaker 1: so not farther out in the galactic halo, not not

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Speaker 1: way out there, but also not deep in the middle

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Speaker 1: near the galactic center. Now, why would this region be

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Speaker 1: potentially better to live in than say, the galactic center. Uh?

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Speaker 1: Just the short and basic version of your main consideration

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Speaker 1: here would be first of all, conditions that give rise

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Speaker 1: to life, and then the conditions that can sustain life.

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Speaker 1: So to give rise to life, we assume you need

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Speaker 1: first of all, terrestrial planets with stable orbits, right, and

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Speaker 1: and this means solar systems with a moderate amount of

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Speaker 1: metal in them. If you've got a solar system that's

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Speaker 1: like mostly hydrogen and doesn't have much that looks like

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Speaker 1: it could turn into rocky terrain, that probably means you're

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Speaker 1: not going to have life forms at least as we

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Speaker 1: understand them. But this isn't the primary concern for our question. Uh.

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Speaker 1: A big one for our question would be conditions that

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Speaker 1: can sustain life, Like how often or how intensely would

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Speaker 1: a planet in a given region be subjected to outside

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Speaker 1: damaging influences. Examples of this could be radiation from violent

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Speaker 1: nearby phenomena their stars. Uh, you know, violent things going

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Speaker 1: on Obviously nearby supernova would be a huge problem. If

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Speaker 1: a star anywhere near I you goes supernova, it will

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Speaker 1: blast your planet and could potentially sterilize it. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: near passage of of other massive objects like stars or

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Speaker 1: black holes is a huge issue that could potentially disturb

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Speaker 1: planetary orbits or bring about a bombardment of terrestrial planets

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Speaker 1: by comets and other junk from space. So like, if

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Speaker 1: something passes through your Solar System, and it's really heavy.

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Speaker 1: It will disturb these commetary orbits and then suddenly, you know,

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Speaker 1: things that haven't been hitting your planet for a long

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Speaker 1: time suddenly are This even makes me think about the

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Speaker 1: Lisa Randall dark matter and the dinosaurs hypothesis. I can't

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Speaker 1: remember if we ever talked about that on the show,

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Speaker 1: but basically her idea was that, you know, it's possible that, uh,

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Speaker 1: some extinction events in Earth's history are correlated to Earth's

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Speaker 1: passage through a region of the galactic plane where dark

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Speaker 1: matter is concentrated, and the extra gravitational influence of that

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Speaker 1: dark matter along that plane, uh disturbs the orbits of

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Speaker 1: some objects in the Solar System and makes you know,

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Speaker 1: the Earth get bombarded by stuff or maybe influences. I

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Speaker 1: can't remember. I think it was mainly comments she was

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Speaker 1: talking about, but maybe it was also vulcanism. I didn't

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Speaker 1: actually read the book, but I remember reading articles about

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Speaker 1: it when it came out. It seemed interesting. Maybe we'll

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Speaker 1: have to come back and take a look at that someday. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that sounds frightening. I don't know whether that theory is

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Speaker 1: widely believed to to you know, have credence or not.

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Speaker 1: But but generally, if something disturbs the gravitational field of

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Speaker 1: your of your star system, that can be really bad

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Speaker 1: for anything living there. Yes, and so there are a

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Speaker 1: lot of variables at play, but generally these kinds of

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Speaker 1: dangerous conditions, like being subjected to more intense or more

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Speaker 1: frequent radiation or radiation events, and more more frequent disturbances

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Speaker 1: of gravity by large objects, that's going to be more

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Speaker 1: likely in densely packed regions of a galaxy, like closer

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Speaker 1: to the galactic center. The higher the density of nearby

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Speaker 1: stars and other stuff, the more dangerous there are. And

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Speaker 1: a very crude analogy is you're more likely to have

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Speaker 1: some kind of auto accident or mishap on a busy

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Speaker 1: city street than on some empty country road. Right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're just well there's you know, there's just more going

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Speaker 1: on there. But then again, I do want to say

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Speaker 1: it seems like a lot of the writing about galactic

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Speaker 1: habitable zones is subject to ongoing criticism and dispute. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it does seem clear that there are at least some

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Speaker 1: risks to life associated with moving closer to the galactic center.

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Speaker 1: But you know where exactly this habitable zone of a

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Speaker 1: galaxy would be if it in fact is true that

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Speaker 1: some regions of the galaxy or on average more habitable

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Speaker 1: than others. I think that's highly disputed. So this is

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Speaker 1: not settled science. Alright, We're gonna take a quick break.

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Speaker 1: When we come back, we have a little more information

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Speaker 1: about just how chaotic and destructive uh, the inner reaches

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Speaker 1: of the galaxy seem to be, and then we'll move

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Speaker 1: on to some other possibilities for uh, extraterrestrial activity in

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Speaker 1: the inner galaxy. All right, we're back, all right, So

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Speaker 1: we were just talking about this question of like, could you,

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Speaker 1: you know, could you tend to find life for intelligent

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Speaker 1: life forms in orbit around a central supermassive black hole

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Speaker 1: in our galaxy or in the galactic center more generally,

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Speaker 1: would you expect to see something like that? Would it

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Speaker 1: be a survivable region? And and it uh, it seems

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Speaker 1: like this is not fully settled, but we were discussing

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Speaker 1: some potential risks of living in the galactic center. Yes,

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Speaker 1: I was looking around for some more details on this,

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Speaker 1: and this brought me as questions like this often due

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Speaker 1: to Centauri Dreams, which is a wonderful space website and

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Speaker 1: I was reading a blog post by the writer Paul

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Speaker 1: Gilster of The Planetary Society, in which he looks to

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Speaker 1: the work of Sergey n Action at Leicester on the

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Speaker 1: idea that the doughnut shaped dust clouds obscuring half of

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Speaker 1: supermassive black holes might be the you know, the result

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Speaker 1: of crashes between planets and asteroids occurring at a thousand

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Speaker 1: kilometers per second speeds, pounding everything into micros copic dust.

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Speaker 1: So it's a realm of you know, of a violent

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Speaker 1: collision high radiation. But he points out that while those

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Speaker 1: planets are doomed, you know anything, actually any of the

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Speaker 1: planets actually in that region or potentially doomed, the resulting

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Speaker 1: dust blocks harmful radiation from all of this chaos from

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Speaker 1: reaching the rest of the galaxy, the host galaxy. That's interesting.

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Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, we were talking in the last episode

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Speaker 1: about how dust clouds obscure the galactic center from our

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Speaker 1: point of view, like it's harder to do astronomy looking

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Speaker 1: towards the galactic center. I mean, I would imagine that

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Speaker 1: brightness has something to do with it. But also, yeah,

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Speaker 1: the dust blocks our view and does significant dimming. It

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Speaker 1: causes many magnitudes of extinction to the sources coming from

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Speaker 1: that direction. But we do have methods of looking that

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Speaker 1: way now, and we can do astronomy focused on the

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Speaker 1: center of the galaxy, I think, you know, due to

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Speaker 1: stuff like looking at infrared and X rays. I was

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Speaker 1: also looking around, uh and found some writings on this

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Speaker 1: from Phil Plate of Bad Astronomy, always a great read

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Speaker 1: on space related topics, and he points out in some

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Speaker 1: galaxies called active galaxies, gas and dust fall into the

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Speaker 1: yawning black hole at the center of the galaxy, forming

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Speaker 1: a disc of material sometimes hundreds of light years across. Again,

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Speaker 1: this here is going to be a realm of high temperatures,

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Speaker 1: high radiation, and intense light that outshines the rest of

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Speaker 1: the galaxy, and that would mirror some of the phenomenon

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Speaker 1: we were talking about in the last episode, where yeah,

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Speaker 1: like you've got like this quasar or something super powerful

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Speaker 1: in the middle of the galaxy that just sort of

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Speaker 1: like you know, it sort of is the galaxy, right,

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Speaker 1: But fortunately, the Milky Way galaxy is not an active galaxy.

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Speaker 1: It's a quiescent galaxy, so it's not quite the cosmic

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Speaker 1: forge we find in other galaxies where you know, it's

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Speaker 1: just super intense. It is to a certain extent slumbering,

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Speaker 1: and we're able. I mean, I keep coming back to

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Speaker 1: the idea of their just being like an awful, all

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Speaker 1: powerful eldric deity the center of the cosmos, and we're

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Speaker 1: just lucky that it's that we're in a cosmos. It's

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Speaker 1: a little worn out and take in a lengthy slumber.

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Speaker 1: I think at the end of the last episode you Were,

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Speaker 1: You Were, you sort of fought against the idea of

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Speaker 1: thinking of black I know, I don't want to think

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Speaker 1: of a black hole as being you know, and this

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Speaker 1: has his off figure, but it's hard and it's hard

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Speaker 1: not to when we used to read things like this.

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Speaker 1: So I guess we've been looking at answers for mostly

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Speaker 1: like no, we're looking at the idea of the inner

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Speaker 1: galaxy is a place where you're probably not encountering um,

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Speaker 1: you know, planets where life is evolved. There. There are

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Speaker 1: a lot of risks in the galactic center because you know,

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Speaker 1: the things are more densely packed. There's probably more radiation risk,

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Speaker 1: probably more gravity disturbance risk. But at the same time

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Speaker 1: there are more stars. You might just get more chances

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Speaker 1: for things to evolve there. So it's it's like I

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Speaker 1: was saying, it's not settled science, but you can point

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Speaker 1: to some things going on there and say it looks

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Speaker 1: like there are are risky phenomena near the galactic center. Now, indeed,

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Speaker 1: if we are dealing with habitable zones and uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: uninhabitable zones of the galaxy, one thing to keep in

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Speaker 1: mind is that technology can potentially change things. Like just

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Speaker 1: look to our solar system. Yes, Earth is the like

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Speaker 1: it's it's the bowl of porridge. That's just right. But

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Speaker 1: we've discussed on the show plenty of times that you know,

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Speaker 1: there are plans, there are ideas and concepts where with

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Speaker 1: sufficient technology, humans could live on Mars, they could live

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Speaker 1: in the clouds of Venus. Even here on Earth we

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Speaker 1: have a neutrino observatory at the South Pole. You know,

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Speaker 1: we've got or at least yeah, deepen Antarctica. That's not

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Speaker 1: a place that's inhabitable by mammals. So you know, so

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Speaker 1: like we we have found technological ways of overcoming the

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Speaker 1: environmental limitations imposed by the universe. And you can see

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Speaker 1: that even without us leaving our host planet. So you know,

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Speaker 1: if you can build a research station on the South Pole,

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Speaker 1: where no mammal like us should be able to survive

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Speaker 1: if you can potentially build it. Oh, if you can

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Speaker 1: build an I. S. S. Yeah, and live out in space.

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Speaker 1: Yeah you can imagine. Okay, just extra appellate that up. However,

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Speaker 1: many orders of magnitude of whatever scale you're talking about

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Speaker 1: to our power to live beyond our original organic means. Yea.

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Speaker 1: So we have to come back to something we've discussed

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Speaker 1: in the show before, sort of a propose technological ladder

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Speaker 1: to um to godhood if you will. The Cardassie of

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Speaker 1: scale an old favorite. Yes, so you got you got.

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Speaker 1: Basically you've got type one, Type two, and type three,

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Speaker 1: and you know, I've also seen people discuss the possibility

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Speaker 1: of the type four. But a Type four is so

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Speaker 1: far beyond where we are now it's almost not even

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Speaker 1: worth thinking about. Well, I'd say even like type three

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Speaker 1: is hard to imagine what that would look like. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, we've got more like science fiction that kind

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Speaker 1: of deals on the realm of one and two. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so we're not even type ones yet. Time close. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Type A Type one civilization, the cardassi of scale should

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Speaker 1: be capable of harnessing all the energy of their planet,

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Speaker 1: because basically that's what the scale is about. It's about,

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Speaker 1: you know, civilization's ability to to harness in yeah, to

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Speaker 1: take what's there in the universe and turn that into

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Speaker 1: the ability to do work. Now, of course that doesn't

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Speaker 1: necessarily mean work, like it's hard to do. That could

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Speaker 1: be you know, operating the video game systems of the

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Speaker 1: future or whatever to turn it into usable energy. Right. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So so again we're not type one yet. If we

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Speaker 1: could harness all the power, all the energy of our planet,

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Speaker 1: we would be type one. The next step is is

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Speaker 1: a is a type two in which a civilization has

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Speaker 1: become masters of their own star, essentially solar solar system

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Speaker 1: level power. And then that type three, which is an

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Speaker 1: an enormous step. Then from from from step to tow

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Speaker 1: a step three civilization has the power of an entire

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Speaker 1: galaxy at its disposal. That's hard to imagine, it is,

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Speaker 1: It is very difficult to imagine it. It It gets so

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Speaker 1: difficult to imagine it's almost ridiculous to try and think

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Speaker 1: of what is beyond that, you know, uh, and and

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Speaker 1: so most of our contemplations deal with one, two and three.

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Speaker 1: Most deal with one and two. So level one and

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Speaker 1: two on the Kardaship scale would theoretically have access to

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Speaker 1: technology we refer to as a Dyson sphere, named for

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Speaker 1: theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, and these are essentially means of

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Speaker 1: surrounding a power source and harvesting all of its energy.

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Speaker 1: There are different varieties of this. You don't need to

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Speaker 1: necessarily think of a hard sphere, um though I love

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Speaker 1: too because it should pops up in that episode of

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Speaker 1: Star Trek. But it could also be you know, more

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Speaker 1: like a dice in cloud. It could be you know,

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Speaker 1: satellites surrounding something and absorbing its energy. Um. So it's

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Speaker 1: maybe oversimplified, but the classic example would be just surrounding

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Speaker 1: the Sun with something like solar panels, so you get

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Speaker 1: all of the energy out of it. You can just

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Speaker 1: sort of like release the waste exhaust outside and and

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Speaker 1: use everything the sun can give you. Yeah, the still

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Speaker 1: suits of Dune are sort of like Dyson spheres for

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Speaker 1: human sweat, you know, for human moisture. Don't waste to drop.

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Speaker 1: So how does this tie into supermassive black hole old holes?

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Speaker 1: You might wonder, Well, I was reading a very interesting paper. Uh,

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Speaker 1: this is from a two thousand and eleven edition of

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Speaker 1: the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. And this is

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Speaker 1: by an o U and you Ku titled Type three

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Speaker 1: Dicen sphere of highly advanced civilizations around a supermassive black hole.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, I'm gonna read a quick quote from this quote.

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Speaker 1: A society of a highly advanced civilization is supposed to

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Speaker 1: require a huge amount of energy to operate the social system.

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Speaker 1: As the gravitational energy released by the accretion of matter

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Speaker 1: into a supermassive black hole is huge, a system must

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Speaker 1: be developed to use this energy. In such a society,

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Speaker 1: the condition around a supermassive black hole at the center

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Speaker 1: of a of a galaxy would be more efficient both

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Speaker 1: in extracting energy and exhausting the waste energy for advanced

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Speaker 1: civilizations than those of a Dicen sphere. So basically they're arguing, like, hey,

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Speaker 1: like we've touched on before, there's a lot going on

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Speaker 1: on at the center of the galaxy. There's a lot

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Speaker 1: of energy at the center of the galaxy. Any sufficiently

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Speaker 1: advanced civilization would go where the energy is and presumably

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Speaker 1: have the technology to harness it right, extract that energy

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Speaker 1: and do something with it rather than letting it just

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Speaker 1: turn into radiation and in space. Yeah. So yeah. They

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Speaker 1: point out that a huge amount of radiation energy generates

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Speaker 1: in close vicinity to a supermassive black hole, and here,

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Speaker 1: you know, this accretion disc rotates around it, so the

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Speaker 1: potential energy of the accreting matter releases to form a

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Speaker 1: hot and dense disk. Sorry, I was just for a

428
00:23:35,080 --> 00:23:37,840
Speaker 1: moment trying to imagine what we would do with it,

429
00:23:37,920 --> 00:23:40,479
Speaker 1: and it would be like, I, let's load up, you know,

430
00:23:40,600 --> 00:23:44,040
Speaker 1: ten billion spaceships full of coal and take them to

431
00:23:44,200 --> 00:23:47,320
Speaker 1: the center of the galaxy and let the supermassive black

432
00:23:47,320 --> 00:23:51,199
Speaker 1: hole burn the coal and then we can use the

433
00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:54,400
Speaker 1: heat from the cold power. So yeah, that's our solution.

434
00:23:55,480 --> 00:23:58,320
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that's not quite the system that that that

435
00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:01,600
Speaker 1: they're proposing. Here, this is what they add quote, radiation

436
00:24:01,720 --> 00:24:04,480
Speaker 1: from the accretion disk will be collected by a mirror

437
00:24:04,520 --> 00:24:09,040
Speaker 1: system as a type three dycen sphere. Waste material and

438
00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:12,400
Speaker 1: energy could be thrown off towards the central supermassive black hole,

439
00:24:12,640 --> 00:24:15,320
Speaker 1: and the supermassive black hole would be the final reservoir

440
00:24:15,440 --> 00:24:19,359
Speaker 1: for all the waste materials for any civilizations. Thus, the

441
00:24:19,400 --> 00:24:23,160
Speaker 1: most advanced civilizations would develop their activities using a supermassive

442
00:24:23,359 --> 00:24:27,439
Speaker 1: black hole efficiency, putting the power plants around the supermassive

443
00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:31,000
Speaker 1: black hole at the center of their home galaxy. Wow, well,

444
00:24:31,040 --> 00:24:34,840
Speaker 1: I mean that's pretty out there. Yeah, that that's interesting. Yeah.

445
00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:37,639
Speaker 1: So from here they lay out a power plant system

446
00:24:37,680 --> 00:24:41,040
Speaker 1: that amounts to a sort of Dyson's sphere or shell.

447
00:24:41,480 --> 00:24:44,639
Speaker 1: The energy from the power plants is then transferred by

448
00:24:44,680 --> 00:24:49,600
Speaker 1: electromagnetic waves the habitats of advanced civilizations, which would be

449
00:24:49,640 --> 00:24:56,320
Speaker 1: as imagining more sustainable, stable regions. And then these transmissions

450
00:24:56,320 --> 00:24:58,720
Speaker 1: would also serve would serve as a power grid, but

451
00:24:58,800 --> 00:25:02,680
Speaker 1: also as highways, four vessels, uh, you know, more or

452
00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:05,320
Speaker 1: less sailing them as if they were sailing, you know,

453
00:25:05,400 --> 00:25:09,960
Speaker 1: the solar wind. So putting power plants on a supermassive

454
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:13,520
Speaker 1: black hole, well, well, not quite on, but close to.

455
00:25:13,680 --> 00:25:15,719
Speaker 1: And then they touched on that to uh you know,

456
00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:18,560
Speaker 1: basically asking asking answering the question how close would these

457
00:25:18,560 --> 00:25:22,840
Speaker 1: power plants be. Yeah, they say that considering Sagittarius a star,

458
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:27,520
Speaker 1: that the closest you would be dealing with the closest distance,

459
00:25:27,680 --> 00:25:32,160
Speaker 1: the closest orbit would be six hundred r s. That's

460
00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:35,679
Speaker 1: a swords child radius, and uh, they say that the

461
00:25:35,760 --> 00:25:38,240
Speaker 1: proper area for the power plants and their model would

462
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:41,359
Speaker 1: be around one hundred three to one hundred four r

463
00:25:41,600 --> 00:25:46,400
Speaker 1: s is um. Also basically just like a hundred of

464
00:25:46,560 --> 00:25:50,480
Speaker 1: the radius of the black hole region itself out And

465
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:55,160
Speaker 1: that sounds frighteningly close. But then again, conceivably this would

466
00:25:55,160 --> 00:25:59,280
Speaker 1: be a civilization that assuming they're not entirely technological by

467
00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:01,359
Speaker 1: this point, you know, and they even have any kind

468
00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:05,880
Speaker 1: of like you know, a physical remainder in their their

469
00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:09,400
Speaker 1: their being and their culture. Again, it's difficult to imagine

470
00:26:09,440 --> 00:26:11,800
Speaker 1: some of these civilizations with him they could consist of.

471
00:26:12,320 --> 00:26:16,840
Speaker 1: But even if they were in some way organic, still like,

472
00:26:17,040 --> 00:26:19,800
Speaker 1: surely this would be the domain of robots that they

473
00:26:19,840 --> 00:26:22,640
Speaker 1: send out, sending the robots in to do the hard

474
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:25,399
Speaker 1: work at the center and then being that energy back

475
00:26:26,040 --> 00:26:29,600
Speaker 1: to the centers of civilization. I feel so two ways

476
00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:32,960
Speaker 1: about this, because on one hand, it's like, I love

477
00:26:33,040 --> 00:26:35,800
Speaker 1: the idea of people trying to work out how CARDASHEV

478
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:40,040
Speaker 1: level three power plants would work out would function. But

479
00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:42,320
Speaker 1: on the other hand, it's just like, we don't even

480
00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:45,640
Speaker 1: we're not even you know, level one yet, So you

481
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:48,840
Speaker 1: you have to imagine that even if these authors are

482
00:26:48,840 --> 00:26:51,159
Speaker 1: totally on the right track, there's probably a lot of

483
00:26:51,200 --> 00:26:54,119
Speaker 1: details we haven't we haven't really faced yet and and

484
00:26:54,160 --> 00:26:56,680
Speaker 1: don't really know how to incorporate. But at the same time,

485
00:26:56,800 --> 00:27:00,280
Speaker 1: this is this is such a blessed project, trying to eagine.

486
00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:03,280
Speaker 1: All right, maybe like a billion years in the future,

487
00:27:03,480 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 1: what does what does the civilization do to get their power? Yeah?

488
00:27:06,840 --> 00:27:08,919
Speaker 1: I love I love papers like this. Now, now to

489
00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:11,880
Speaker 1: be clear again, this is all theoretical and it's something

490
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:15,320
Speaker 1: the authors say we might look for, but there's no

491
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:18,920
Speaker 1: evidence that something like this is actually going on anywhere

492
00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:21,920
Speaker 1: in the universe. Okay, So this is another example, as

493
00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:26,280
Speaker 1: has often been done before, where working out the details

494
00:27:26,320 --> 00:27:31,400
Speaker 1: of a potential uh Dyson sphere type project would be

495
00:27:31,560 --> 00:27:34,919
Speaker 1: mostly useful in the search for extraterrestrial life. Right, right,

496
00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:37,600
Speaker 1: What would be the signatures of this type of technology?

497
00:27:37,840 --> 00:27:40,160
Speaker 1: Do we look out into the universe and see anything

498
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:43,520
Speaker 1: like that? Right? And and and Astronomers have observed objects

499
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:47,960
Speaker 1: that could potentially be explained by dimming due to a

500
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:51,800
Speaker 1: Dyson sphere. For instance, in two thousand and sixteen, scientists

501
00:27:51,840 --> 00:27:56,000
Speaker 1: observed a dimming of the star Epic to zero four

502
00:27:56,080 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 1: to seven eight, nine one six that was out of

503
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:02,439
Speaker 1: keeping with a large planet, you know, passing between us.

504
00:28:02,520 --> 00:28:06,920
Speaker 1: And they presented a few possible explanations, but the last

505
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:10,440
Speaker 1: of them was a dicense fhere, because there's always aliens,

506
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:13,879
Speaker 1: should always be the last explanation we turned to, no

507
00:28:13,920 --> 00:28:17,199
Speaker 1: matter how exciting that explanation might be. But which of

508
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:20,720
Speaker 1: their potential explanations made the headlines? Well, of course it's

509
00:28:20,720 --> 00:28:22,760
Speaker 1: the dicense fhere right. In fact, I think one of

510
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:25,120
Speaker 1: the headlines I was looking at was researchers just found

511
00:28:25,119 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 1: a second dicense fhere star, What what happened to the

512
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:33,480
Speaker 1: first one? That's brilliant? Well, I mean, like, like I said,

513
00:28:33,480 --> 00:28:35,920
Speaker 1: there have been at least a couple of cases where

514
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:38,120
Speaker 1: people have seen something and they're like, we don't really

515
00:28:38,160 --> 00:28:40,720
Speaker 1: fully understand what it is, but here a list of

516
00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:43,360
Speaker 1: things it could be. And yeah, number three or four

517
00:28:43,440 --> 00:28:47,000
Speaker 1: or five is sometimes a dicense here. Yeah. Um, I

518
00:28:47,120 --> 00:28:49,200
Speaker 1: just like that. It sounds like it was assumed that

519
00:28:49,320 --> 00:28:51,960
Speaker 1: the first one they found actually is a license fhere,

520
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:54,240
Speaker 1: and not just like there's an off chance that it

521
00:28:54,280 --> 00:28:56,560
Speaker 1: could be and that would be consistent with what we saw.

522
00:28:56,960 --> 00:28:58,960
Speaker 1: All right. On that note, We're gonna take one more break,

523
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:01,280
Speaker 1: but when we come back, we have some more mysteries

524
00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:05,040
Speaker 1: to consider, not about uh, you know, hypothetical you know,

525
00:29:05,840 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 1: super advanced technological societies, but rather mysteries concerning the supermassive

526
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:16,320
Speaker 1: black hole at the center of our galaxy. Thank all right,

527
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:18,560
Speaker 1: we're back. Now it's time to talk about how our

528
00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 1: own galaxy supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A star has been

529
00:29:22,920 --> 00:29:27,040
Speaker 1: showing some weird and mysterious behavior lately, just just in

530
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 1: the past few years or this year. Yeah, that's right.

531
00:29:29,720 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 1: NASA Schandra X ray Observatory has observed a mysterious daily

532
00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:36,320
Speaker 1: flares from Sagittarius A Star, and it leads us to,

533
00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 1: you know, wonder what's going on? Um so. One theory

534
00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:42,480
Speaker 1: is that the dust cloud around it contains comments and

535
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:46,400
Speaker 1: asteroids stripped away from other stars, and then when collisions occur,

536
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:51,840
Speaker 1: it's sometimes sends one off into Sagittarius A Star. And

537
00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:54,720
Speaker 1: according to a NASA report from two thousand twelve, quote,

538
00:29:54,960 --> 00:29:57,760
Speaker 1: if the asteroid passes within about one million miles of

539
00:29:58,000 --> 00:30:00,440
Speaker 1: the black hole, roughly the distance between the Earth the Sun,

540
00:30:00,760 --> 00:30:03,120
Speaker 1: it would be torn to pieces by the tidal forces

541
00:30:03,160 --> 00:30:05,440
Speaker 1: from the black hole. So basically, you know, you're just

542
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:08,719
Speaker 1: ripping apart a huge chunk of metal or rock in space, right,

543
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 1: and this produces a flare as the asteroid than as

544
00:30:11,080 --> 00:30:14,560
Speaker 1: the pieces of it consumed by the black hole. Comets

545
00:30:14,560 --> 00:30:18,160
Speaker 1: have been observed to impact our Sun with almost identical

546
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 1: frequency uh and with a resulting flare. You can even

547
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:24,600
Speaker 1: get a really cool flare in astronomy just looking at

548
00:30:24,640 --> 00:30:26,600
Speaker 1: like Jupiter. Have you seen some of these when like

549
00:30:26,640 --> 00:30:30,920
Speaker 1: a comet goes into Jupiter. Yeah, amazing. Now there have

550
00:30:31,040 --> 00:30:36,080
Speaker 1: been other recent observations of of big flare ups right. Yeah.

551
00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 1: In May nineteen, a sizeable flare was was observed by

552
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:43,040
Speaker 1: a team using the CAT ten meter telescope, and this

553
00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 1: was in the near infrared range. There they're also variable

554
00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:49,480
Speaker 1: blasts from Sagittarius a star, and other frequencies like the

555
00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:52,760
Speaker 1: X ray range. This was the brightest flare we've ever

556
00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:56,440
Speaker 1: observed in the infrared or near infrared. In fact, according

557
00:30:56,480 --> 00:30:59,320
Speaker 1: to the u c l A astronomer Twine Doe, who

558
00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:02,560
Speaker 1: was the lead researcher on these uh, these latest latest

559
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:06,480
Speaker 1: radiation bursts are our telescopes only caught the tail end

560
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:09,520
Speaker 1: of the flare. It was probably much brighter right before

561
00:31:09,560 --> 00:31:12,680
Speaker 1: we started looking at it. Yeah, as Phil Play reported

562
00:31:12,680 --> 00:31:15,920
Speaker 1: in Bad Astronomy, the flare was well over two thousand

563
00:31:16,040 --> 00:31:18,959
Speaker 1: times more luminous than the Sun in the infrared. Right.

564
00:31:19,200 --> 00:31:22,760
Speaker 1: But yeah, and and furthermore, the scientists judged it to

565
00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:26,040
Speaker 1: be basically a one and two thousand occurrence compared to

566
00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:29,360
Speaker 1: two past observed fluctuations. Right, so it's probably not just

567
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:32,600
Speaker 1: a random fluctuation in the brightness of the radio source

568
00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:36,520
Speaker 1: there it is. It is a an event, right. So

569
00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:38,880
Speaker 1: this led researchers who think it might be tied to

570
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:42,440
Speaker 1: a star known as S two, which regularly makes a

571
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:46,640
Speaker 1: super close pass by the supermassive black hole. Uh, super close,

572
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:50,160
Speaker 1: you know, in astronomical terms. But in doing so, it

573
00:31:50,240 --> 00:31:53,400
Speaker 1: drags a kind of wind of particles with it. Well,

574
00:31:53,560 --> 00:31:56,280
Speaker 1: I think the star puts out a stellar wind, just

575
00:31:56,320 --> 00:31:58,280
Speaker 1: like our sun does. Yeah, and and but then there

576
00:31:58,280 --> 00:32:01,400
Speaker 1: in their particles within that wind, And so it could

577
00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:04,040
Speaker 1: be that that wind of particles is crashing into the

578
00:32:04,040 --> 00:32:07,800
Speaker 1: black hole. Uh. They considered this, but they decided, well,

579
00:32:08,120 --> 00:32:10,320
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think this would be strong enough

580
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:14,760
Speaker 1: thing to actually make that flare. So another possibility, though,

581
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:18,080
Speaker 1: is that S two's pass disturbed clouds of gas and

582
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:21,400
Speaker 1: caused them to fall into the black hole. It's also

583
00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:24,960
Speaker 1: possible that an unknown object known as G two on

584
00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:28,320
Speaker 1: a two hundred and sixty year orbit around the black

585
00:32:28,320 --> 00:32:31,440
Speaker 1: hole might have caused such a you know, in an

586
00:32:31,440 --> 00:32:33,960
Speaker 1: area of gas to fall into it. You know, it

587
00:32:34,080 --> 00:32:37,080
Speaker 1: moved close enough. In fact, it moved close enough that

588
00:32:37,240 --> 00:32:40,760
Speaker 1: you have G two itself were a dust cloud, as

589
00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:43,200
Speaker 1: some have thought it might be, it would have just

590
00:32:43,280 --> 00:32:45,440
Speaker 1: fallen in. But we don't know for sure exactly what

591
00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:47,320
Speaker 1: G two is, right, right, I thought it was maybe

592
00:32:47,320 --> 00:32:49,680
Speaker 1: gas or dust, but it didn't behave like that when

593
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:52,040
Speaker 1: it went by the supermassive black holes. Right, there's at

594
00:32:52,120 --> 00:32:54,840
Speaker 1: least one idea that it could be a star. There

595
00:32:54,840 --> 00:32:56,800
Speaker 1: could be a star in the middle of a of

596
00:32:56,800 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 1: a cloud of of of of gas and or a particle, etcetera.

597
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:02,960
Speaker 1: And the or it could be two stars that have

598
00:33:03,120 --> 00:33:06,040
Speaker 1: merged due to their you know, proximity to the black

599
00:33:06,080 --> 00:33:08,880
Speaker 1: hole and then blow they end up blowing off dust

600
00:33:08,880 --> 00:33:11,800
Speaker 1: in the process. Okay, So if there's a star within it,

601
00:33:11,880 --> 00:33:15,240
Speaker 1: that would explain like gravity holding it sort of together

602
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:18,040
Speaker 1: when goes by the black hole. Yeah, there's something strong

603
00:33:18,120 --> 00:33:20,720
Speaker 1: inside it, or the flare could just be due to

604
00:33:20,760 --> 00:33:22,760
Speaker 1: an asteroid or come it stripped away from a star

605
00:33:22,840 --> 00:33:25,480
Speaker 1: system falling into the black hole. That's that's always a

606
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:27,600
Speaker 1: possibility that's discussed as well. You know. One of the

607
00:33:27,680 --> 00:33:29,480
Speaker 1: sad things about trying to look at the center of

608
00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:32,480
Speaker 1: the galaxy is that sometimes the Sun gets in the way.

609
00:33:32,680 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: Like our our viewing window is limited because the Sun

610
00:33:35,440 --> 00:33:38,320
Speaker 1: passes between the Earth and Sagittarius at a you know,

611
00:33:38,320 --> 00:33:41,440
Speaker 1: a certain time each year. Also along the same lines

612
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:45,040
Speaker 1: of mysteries dealing with Sagittarius a star, I was reading

613
00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:47,120
Speaker 1: an article from just a couple of days ago about

614
00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:51,959
Speaker 1: weird observations regarding what are called Fermi bubbles and Sagittarius

615
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:54,400
Speaker 1: a star. This was on space dot com, authored by

616
00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:59,080
Speaker 1: the Ohio State astrophysicist Paul im Sutter. Uh So, Okay,

617
00:33:59,120 --> 00:34:02,720
Speaker 1: what you've got here are two giant bubbles of stuff

618
00:34:02,800 --> 00:34:07,080
Speaker 1: including hot gas and cosmic rays, and they're globbing onto

619
00:34:07,120 --> 00:34:10,200
Speaker 1: the middle of the galaxy, of the Milky Way galaxy.

620
00:34:10,239 --> 00:34:13,480
Speaker 1: And we can see these bubbles are emitting high frequency

621
00:34:13,600 --> 00:34:17,080
Speaker 1: radiation like gamma rays and X rays. They were discovered

622
00:34:17,120 --> 00:34:20,200
Speaker 1: in two thousand ten by researchers working with the Fermi

623
00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:25,160
Speaker 1: gamma ray space telescope, and they extend out vertically from

624
00:34:25,200 --> 00:34:28,880
Speaker 1: the flat axis of the galaxy to a distance of

625
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:31,759
Speaker 1: roughly twenty five tho light years in each direction. So

626
00:34:31,800 --> 00:34:34,000
Speaker 1: if you're trying to picture this and you're picturing the

627
00:34:34,040 --> 00:34:37,239
Speaker 1: disc of the galaxy as a vinyl record, imagine a

628
00:34:37,360 --> 00:34:40,279
Speaker 1: balloon tied to the middle of the record, like the

629
00:34:40,320 --> 00:34:42,440
Speaker 1: hole in the middle of the record on each side,

630
00:34:42,560 --> 00:34:45,440
Speaker 1: and this will give you an idea. So, these huge

631
00:34:45,520 --> 00:34:48,400
Speaker 1: blobs of stuff are referred to as Fermi bubbles, But

632
00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:50,799
Speaker 1: what are they and how do they get there? Well?

633
00:34:50,840 --> 00:34:54,480
Speaker 1: An interesting development is that more recently, the Ice Cube

634
00:34:54,520 --> 00:34:59,879
Speaker 1: Neutrino Observatory and in Antarctica has observed high energy neutrinos

635
00:35:00,520 --> 00:35:04,640
Speaker 1: blasting directly from these bubbles, indicating that perhaps, in in

636
00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:08,960
Speaker 1: Sutter's words quote, some crazy sub atomic interactions are afoot.

637
00:35:09,560 --> 00:35:12,960
Speaker 1: He writes that the position of these bubbles right above

638
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:15,400
Speaker 1: and below the center of the galaxy could point to

639
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:18,399
Speaker 1: their origin, and that would be the supermassive black hole.

640
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:21,960
Speaker 1: Of course, Sagittary essay star Now, like what could have happened,

641
00:35:22,160 --> 00:35:25,759
Speaker 1: that's not really known. He supposes maybe millions of years ago,

642
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:30,080
Speaker 1: something significant fell into the black hole quote with the

643
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:34,360
Speaker 1: infalling material heating up, twisting around in a complicated dance

644
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:37,719
Speaker 1: of electric and magnetic forces, and managing to escape the

645
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:41,799
Speaker 1: clutches of the event horizon before falling in. That material

646
00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:45,239
Speaker 1: energized beyond belief, raced away from the center of the galaxy,

647
00:35:45,719 --> 00:35:49,000
Speaker 1: riding on jets of particles accelerated to nearly a speed

648
00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:52,560
Speaker 1: of light as they fled to safety. These particles spread

649
00:35:52,600 --> 00:35:56,520
Speaker 1: and thinned out, but maintained their energetic state to the

650
00:35:56,560 --> 00:36:00,560
Speaker 1: present day. So maybe we've got these gigantic, almost galaxy

651
00:36:00,640 --> 00:36:03,200
Speaker 1: sized bubbles reaching out of the top and bottom in

652
00:36:03,239 --> 00:36:06,720
Speaker 1: the milky way that it looks very possibly like something

653
00:36:07,080 --> 00:36:10,480
Speaker 1: fell or almost fell into the black hole and created these.

654
00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:14,120
Speaker 1: So possibly a star got too close, was torn apart

655
00:36:14,200 --> 00:36:18,680
Speaker 1: and ejected by the gravitational forces, or maybe many of

656
00:36:18,680 --> 00:36:20,839
Speaker 1: the stars in the dense core of the galaxy all

657
00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:24,120
Speaker 1: went supernova around the same time. This created this highly

658
00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:27,720
Speaker 1: energetic stuff to get ejected out in these these polar

659
00:36:27,840 --> 00:36:30,839
Speaker 1: jets from the black hole. But anyway, it created these

660
00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:33,800
Speaker 1: bubbles that are full of all this high energy stuff

661
00:36:33,800 --> 00:36:37,200
Speaker 1: that's still ejecting neutrinos today, and you know, that's exactly

662
00:36:37,239 --> 00:36:40,600
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that would interest be very interesting

663
00:36:40,680 --> 00:36:45,400
Speaker 1: to uh type two civilization or a type three. Uh. Yeah, well,

664
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:47,440
Speaker 1: I guess at this point we've we've come to the

665
00:36:47,520 --> 00:36:50,520
Speaker 1: end of the episode, uh, and come to the end

666
00:36:50,560 --> 00:36:55,360
Speaker 1: of this uh this two episode exploration of Sagittarius a

667
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:59,560
Speaker 1: star and supermassive black holes in general. But obviously we'd

668
00:36:59,560 --> 00:37:02,880
Speaker 1: love to hear from everybody out there. Um. You know,

669
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:06,200
Speaker 1: obviously nobody has personal experience with a supermassive black hole,

670
00:37:06,360 --> 00:37:10,000
Speaker 1: but we would love I'm always happy to hear from uh.

671
00:37:10,280 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 1: You know, some of our listeners are have read a

672
00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:15,719
Speaker 1: quite a lot of science fiction, and even they've read

673
00:37:15,719 --> 00:37:18,000
Speaker 1: science fiction that I have not read and you haven't read.

674
00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:20,759
Speaker 1: So I love to hear anytime, you know, someone's like, hey,

675
00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:23,719
Speaker 1: I actually I know a science fiction novel that or

676
00:37:23,719 --> 00:37:26,080
Speaker 1: a short story that deals with exactly that concept, and

677
00:37:26,120 --> 00:37:28,560
Speaker 1: here's their solution to it. Oh. But we also know

678
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:32,240
Speaker 1: from past listener mail that we have listeners in astrobiology,

679
00:37:32,320 --> 00:37:35,120
Speaker 1: astronomy and astrophysics. If you've got something to add to

680
00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:38,760
Speaker 1: this topic, please get in touch absolutely uh. In the meantime,

681
00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:40,239
Speaker 1: you can find all the episodes of Stuff to Blow

682
00:37:40,239 --> 00:37:41,719
Speaker 1: Your Mind at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

683
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:44,600
Speaker 1: You can find our other show, Invention and Invention Pod

684
00:37:44,680 --> 00:37:48,200
Speaker 1: dot com. Uh yeah. If you're looking for another episode

685
00:37:48,320 --> 00:37:52,400
Speaker 1: of per week from from the two of us, consider Invention.

686
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:55,719
Speaker 1: Each each episode is a different invention and it you

687
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:59,279
Speaker 1: know it is essentially an invention by invention exploration of

688
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:02,600
Speaker 1: human techno history. Uh And if you want to support

689
00:38:02,680 --> 00:38:04,279
Speaker 1: either show, really the best thing you can do is

690
00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:07,920
Speaker 1: make sure you've subscribed, and wherever you get get our shows,

691
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Speaker 1: just make sure you leave a nice rating and a

692
00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:13,160
Speaker 1: review that really helps us out huge. Thanks as always

693
00:38:13,160 --> 00:38:17,160
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producers, Maya Cole and Seth Nicholas Johnson.

694
00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:18,960
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

695
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:21,360
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

696
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:23,920
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

697
00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:27,000
Speaker 1: can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow your

698
00:38:27,040 --> 00:38:38,239
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a

699
00:38:38,239 --> 00:38:41,040
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts

700
00:38:41,040 --> 00:38:44,000
Speaker 1: from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

701
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702
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