WEBVTT - Updates: The First Monster and Oumuamua 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:04.840 My welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of 0:00:04.880 --> 0:00:13.640 I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:15.720 Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:18.000 and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're bringing you a kind 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:20.000 of short episode today. But that's because we wanted to 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:22.560 cover updates to a couple of things we've talked about 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:25.040 this year. That's right. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:27.720 primarily a show about science, of course, but we also 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:31.639 discuss history, philosophy, mythology, various other subjects on the show. 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:34.680 But of course we do so with science as the bedrock, 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:37.800 and science, as we frequently discussed, is perpetually in a 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:40.520 state of change. It's that slime mold working its way 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:43.720 through the maze of reality, and so pretty much nothing 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:46.919 that we record is guaranteed to be evergreen. As they 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:49.160 say in the you know, the publishing world. Well sure, 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:52.120 it's the kind of funny irony is that science is 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:55.040 probably it's the best tool we have for understanding reality, 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:58.279 but it's very rarely the final word because it's all, 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:01.080 you know, We're always getting a better idea. That's it's 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:03.120 one of the reasons I cringe when people talk about 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:07.319 starting the podcast back from the beginning from ten years ago. 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:09.520 I mean part of it is like when I when 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:11.320 we started out, like we didn't really know what we 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:14.520 were doing. But then also you know, it's like the 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:16.760 science changes, like we had there's an older episode on 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:20.800 the Ender Tols. Uh, and I don't really recommend anyone 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:22.759 listen to that because there's been so much there's been 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:25.240 been so many more studies about in the Ender Toll 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:27.800 since the publication of that episode. I just don't I 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:31.360 don't trust the science to be uh accurate, to be 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:35.040 the best version of of our understanding. Well, I hope 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:36.920 the way we approach things now we we try to 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:39.759 make episodes at least partially evergreen, baking in the idea 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:42.319 that you know, results are tentative, that you know, the 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:45.120 outcome of one study is not the answer forever. You know, 0:01:45.280 --> 0:01:47.800 things in the future could upend it. Oh, absolutely, And 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:51.080 I do think we we do that. But uh, but yeah, 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:53.320 today's episode is going to be about doing a little 0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:56.520 upkeep on a couple of well, one is a recent 0:01:56.560 --> 0:01:59.000 episode or a pair of episodes from this year. Another 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:03.280 is an older episode from seventeen that we also recently 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:07.120 re ran back in October. And of course the main 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:09.600 thing too is that both of these are exciting topics 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:13.679 where new findings UH can kind of change the way 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:18.839 we understand the cosmos or understand the history of humanity. Yeah, 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:21.920 and I guess also both of these UH findings have 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:24.960 to do with primacy, right, So so yeah, let's go 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:27.920 straight into the first one. And this concerns the episode 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:29.400 that we recorded I guess it was a couple of 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:31.680 years ago, and then re ran about the idea of 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:36.560 the first Monster. Yeah, back in ten we recorded an 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:39.840 episode of Stuff to Play your Mind titled the First Monster. Again, 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:42.800 we reran it and in this most recent October. But 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:45.960 in the episode we discussed UH the Lionman or the 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:50.760 Loan Ninch, which was this this figure that resembled UH 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:55.920 was a human with a lion's head, a hybrid, a 0:02:56.000 --> 0:03:01.079 hybrid being combining animal and human likeness into a single like. Now, 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:05.720 this was this particular artifact. The Lowan Mench was discovered 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:08.600 in nineteen thirty nine at a stone age cave site 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:15.160 known as Stottlehole or Stable Cave at Hollenstein near Vogelherd 0:03:15.320 --> 0:03:17.720 in Germany. But it would be another thirty years before 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:20.480 anyone got a chance to examine these broken pieces of 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:25.839 ivory due to the World Wars. But eventually, thirty years later, 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:29.360 that's when German archaeologist Yoheim Hahn discovered that these two 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:32.440 hundred fragments came together to form a thirty one centimeter 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:36.160 or just over a foot long figure carbon fourteen dated 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:39.800 to put two between thirty five and forty thousand years old. 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:41.960 It had the body of a man in the head 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:45.200 of a lion. In two thousand three, another lionman was 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:47.960 discovered in southwestern Germany. This one was carbon dated to 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:51.480 around the same time period and by by some estimates. 0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:54.600 You know, first of all, these are amazing just for 0:03:54.600 --> 0:03:58.160 no other reason. They're just they're just fascinating figures that 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:02.080 they give us some insight in to what ancient people 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:04.720 were doing, what they were making. But they also seemed 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:09.000 to be the oldest examples of figurative art. You know, 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:13.040 we've seen the Venus of Whole Fells take the title before. 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:15.760 I think it's from thirty five thousand to forty thousand 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:18.880 years ago, discovered in two thousand eight and two thousand sixteen. 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:22.560 But you know, while the venus is the depiction of 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:25.760 the feminine form of the loan Minch is a human 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:27.880 fused with the beast. Yeah, and this is what we 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:30.480 were drawing attention to in the episode, the idea that 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:33.960 this is the earliest example that we knew about of 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:38.880 fantasy art. It is an imagined being. Yeah, as stated 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:42.360 by Clive Gamble, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton, UK, 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:45.680 as quoted in Nature quote, they depict an animal world 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:49.240 in a semi realistic way. It shows early man moving 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:52.760 from his immediate world to an imaginative world. So that's 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:55.839 just a brief breakdown of the Loan minch. Uh. Certainly 0:04:55.839 --> 0:04:57.640 go back and listen to that episode that we did 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:01.400 if you want more on that topic. But here's the 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:03.560 cool thing. And imagine a number of you have have 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:05.839 caught this news already because it was covered a number 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:07.800 of places that I even saw it featured on Stephen 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:11.640 Colbert's show. But in December of twenty nineteen, a new 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:14.760 discovery was made and it might just blow the Lionman 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:18.160 and the Venus out of the water. This is so cool. Yeah. 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:20.360 So this story takes us to a different corner of 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:23.919 the world. It takes us to Sulawesi, Indonesia one of 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:27.400 the four Greater Sunda Islands, and it's actually the world's 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:30.920 eleventh largest island. I read so we've known about applies 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:33.400 to scene settlements in the area for quite some time, 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:36.680 and early Homo sapiens are known to have reached UH 0:05:36.839 --> 0:05:40.800 this area between sixty thousand and forty five thousand years ago. 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:45.800 Previous studies from some of the same archaeologists involved in 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:48.400 in this particular find, which is the the arch team 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:52.240 out of Australia UH, they've revealed prehistoric art and ornaments 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:55.440 dating back thirty thousand to twenty two thousand years ago 0:05:56.400 --> 0:05:58.920 in this area and Homo sapiens apparently made it here 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:02.760 again some time prior to fifty thousand years ago. So 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:07.120 here's how this new finding came about. In a spelunker 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:11.640 named Hamrula climbed into a previously uncharted chamber in a 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:16.479 Suluesti cave system known as Marrow's pun Cap. It's a 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:19.560 limestone cave system. And while he was there, performing a 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:22.440 government survey of the case. And if you're wondering, was 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:25.000 Hamrula his first name or his last name? Apparently a 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:27.040 lot of people in Indonesia just go by one name, 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:30.320 just just just the one name. Anyway, he gets he 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:33.240 crawls through a narrow space into this new chamber and 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:37.360 he discovers cave paintings. And the cave paintings were subsequently 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:41.160 examined and written about by Aubert at All in Earliest 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:45.599 Hunting Scene in Prehistoric Art, published December twenty nineteen in Nature. 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:48.360 And again I believe this is the same arch team 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:50.640 out of Australia that was involved in some previous studies 0:06:50.680 --> 0:06:54.479 in the area. So as the title implies, uh, they 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:59.680 used some dating technology uranium series dating on cave popcorn 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:03.279 or mineral deposits that they're hanging over some of the 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:05.719 motifs in the scene, and they were able to date 0:07:05.760 --> 0:07:09.440 this hunting scene back to at least forty three thousand, 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:13.720 nine hundred years ago, So that is twenty thousand years 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:16.840 older than the hunting scene on the walls of Francis 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:19.560 Lasco Caves, and coming back to the Low and Minch, 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:23.080 that's also four thousand years before the lion Man. And 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:26.920 I realized we're talking about such it's it's kind of 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:29.840 ironic that we're talking about such big periods of time, 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:33.840 such large portions of human history. That you can also 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:37.080 make four thousand years not seem like a lot, which 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:40.360 is which is bizarre. But obviously four thousand years is 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:43.040 a lot of time and to to set the record 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:46.600 back four thousand years is amazing. So uh, here's an 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:49.600 important caveat though there's more work to do. Is they 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:52.400 need to date not just the work overall, you know, 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:56.160 looking at the cave popcorn, but each figure individually before 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:58.800 we can be certain in all of this, because there's 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:02.800 ultimately the possibility that different portions of it have been 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:06.760 added at different times. Yes, and now the main archaeologists 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.320 were quoted saying they don't think that's the case, but yeah, 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:12.120 we certainly should date the different parts. I think the 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:14.840 parts that had been that have been dated so far 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:19.040 are just the regular animals, but the more interesting parts 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:22.239 let's get into that. So, yes, the overall it depicts 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:26.280 what seemed to be individuals using spears against prey animals 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:28.680 in a hunt. And this would be on its own, 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:30.760 would be an amazing find, right it would, as it 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:33.240 would predate any hunting scene we've seen before. But on 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:35.600 top of this, some of the hunters appear to be 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:39.640 um what the the researchers referred to as theory in 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:43.240 thropes or animal human hybrids, much like the Loan niche 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:48.559 as some of the humans appear to have tails or snouts, right, 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:51.640 So if this is correct, if the uh now now 0:08:51.800 --> 0:08:55.520 again the parts that have been dated already were overlapping, 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:58.000 just the animals that were being hunted, which were these 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:02.000 like buffalo type creatures and HIGs, yeah, wild pigs, and 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:04.680 then a type of buffalo called an a noah which 0:09:04.720 --> 0:09:06.600 is also known as a midget buffalo, so like a 0:09:06.600 --> 0:09:10.040 water buffalo except smaller. Okay, But and so I think 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:13.800 they haven't dated the other figures like the theory and 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:18.120 thropes or the human animal hybrids yet, but it looks 0:09:18.200 --> 0:09:20.200 like they're probably from the same period. We're just not 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:23.840 certain about that. But if so, this would this would 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:28.360 probably predate the Loan mention, making this the earliest evidence 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:32.800 we have of fantastical thinking, of like magic thinking among humans, 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:36.720 showing human animal hybrids like a human hunting a buffalo 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:40.720 with a bird's beak. Very cool. Yeah, and it's it's 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:42.880 when we get into it in that that episode about 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:45.040 the first Monster, about what this means, right, like, what 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:47.920 what ultimately does it mean to have in your mind, 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:51.360 a human with a beast's head. You know, on one hand, 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:54.440 it is imagining something that does not exist in the 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:57.839 real world, and but then on a on a deeper level, 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:01.440 it is taking what this means? What does a bird mean? 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:05.040 What are the ideas that that just the mere symbol 0:10:05.080 --> 0:10:08.760 of a bird summons, and then our idea too, of 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:11.840 a human being. What happens when these, uh, this mix 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:15.040 of symbols and meanings collide. What new ideas are born 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:19.840 out of that collision? Absolutely so, it basically shows that 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:23.400 that people from this time period of you know, four 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:26.720 thousand years earlier than we thought, may have been dealing 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:29.559 with this kind of complex thinking, mashing up of symbols, 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:34.439 ideas and concepts, concepts even taking on a humanoid form. 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:36.800 Becky Ferreira wrote an excellent piece on this for The 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:39.480 New York Times, and you know she she points out 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:42.320 in this that the researchers believed too, that these may 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:46.320 have been animal spirit helpers, something that you would commonly 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:50.319 find a shamanistic beliefs. Uh So, yeah, there's a possibility 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:54.559 that we're dealing with, you know, animism and shamanism here, right. 0:10:54.640 --> 0:10:56.880 It looks like it could be again This is just interpretation, 0:10:56.920 --> 0:10:59.319 but it looks like it could be a scene depicting 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:03.360 maybe a game beam drive, where so hunters are shown 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:08.320 driving prey animals into an ambush by other hunters, but 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:10.600 that some of the hunters appear to be human others 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:13.320 appear to be human animal hybrids, So that means they 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:17.319 could be depicting yeah, like these these otherworldly spirit helpers 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:20.280 that come into aid the humans in the hunt, right Like. Well, 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:23.280 even if they are depictions of humans dressed up as 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:26.120 animals or partial animals, they would have engaged in an 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:31.280 actual like literal right like, even that would reveal the idea. 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:34.600 This is kind of complex thinking as possible totally now. 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:37.880 The researchers also note that these paintings are are quite 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:41.000 fragile and the art is fading quote at an alarming 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:44.640 rate and for unknown reasons. So it's gonna be interesting 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:47.600 to see how this develops uh further, because it does 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:50.360 seem like there's a you know, there's there's a half 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:53.440 life in play here and uh and it's kind of 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:55.559 a question how much can we figure out about them 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:58.719 before the work is decreated? Yeah, And it also makes 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:00.880 you wonder about how much other wonderful art from the 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:05.640 prehistoric world is just already lost and we'll never see it. Tragic. 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:08.040 But on the optimistic side, how many how many more 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:10.120 caverns like this are there out in the world that 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:13.280 just haven't haven't been breached or haven't been breached in 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:17.280 a terribly long time. Yeah, that's really exciting. All right, 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:19.120 I think we should take a quick break, but we'll 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:25.880 be right back with another update. Thank thank Alright, we're back. Uh. 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:29.720 So this update follows up on our previous podcasts about 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:34.320 the first interstellar visitor, the first object from another star 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:38.280 outside our Solar System, which is known as Umuamua uh 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:41.280 and so a brief refresher on Umuma before we get 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:46.320 into the updates on it. So, on October nineteen, the 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:50.760 Pan Stars one telescope in Hawaii first registered a small, 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:55.360 previously uncataloged object zooming through the Solar System. They got 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:59.800 other observatories to to confirm it, and due to the 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:02.160 trajectory of the object, it was clear that this thing 0:13:02.240 --> 0:13:05.079 was not orbiting the Sun like everything else we see 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:07.840 in the Solar System is. Instead, it was sling shotting 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:12.400 around the Sun, coming in from outside the Sun's gravitational influence, 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:15.400 and it seemed like it was probably a rocky object 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:20.040 that somehow got ejected from another star system in the galaxy. 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:22.280 And there were a lot of reasons that this thing 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:25.080 was very interesting. So I'll just run through a few, uh, 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:27.480 a few of its attributes real quick. Uh. There was 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:30.160 its speed when it made its nearest approach to the 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:34.360 Sun around September nine, it was going a hundred and 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:37.360 ninety six thousand miles per hour, or about eighty seven 0:13:37.360 --> 0:13:40.880 point three kilometers per second. And by the time we 0:13:40.880 --> 0:13:44.480 we had this information, Mumua was already going. It was 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:47.000 like going, you know, it was already headed back out 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:49.920 of the Solar System at like seventy thousand miles per hour, 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:53.480 already past the orbit of Jupiter. In another four years, 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:55.400 it's going to be past the orbit of Neptune. Is 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:58.280 just gonna be gone. It's just going off into interstellar space. 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.480 The fly by had been completed and it had already 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:04.160 passed its nearest point by the time we saw it. 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:08.280 Um So the trajectory was very weird. It it entered 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:11.640 the plane of the Solar System, the ecliptic plane, at 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:14.200 an inclination of like a hundred and twenty three degrees, 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:17.080 so sort of coming straight down from above or up 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:20.080 from below, however you want to think about. It passed 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:23.560 inside the orbit of mercury, slingshot around the Sun and 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:26.600 went back out. So you know, we are ships passing 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:27.960 in the night. We are never going to see a 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:30.960 Mumu again. Now. One of the things that really captured 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:35.840 people's attention about it was its strange shape. Mum is 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:38.600 so small and so far away that it appears as 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:41.120 a point like object on our telescopes, and that means 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:44.760 we can't directly see any details about the surface or 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:46.880 the shape of the object. But of course there are 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:49.960 ways of analyzing it to draw some conclusions about its 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:53.360 shape and surface features. Like we can study the variations 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:56.600 and the flickering brightness of the object to create what's 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:59.880 known as a light curve analysis. Basically, this analyzes pas 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:03.160 turns of light intensity from this point like object in 0:15:03.240 --> 0:15:05.960 order to draw conclusions about its shape and its spin 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:09.040 and stuff. And when we did that, what what scientists 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:11.440 found is that it appears to have something like a 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:15.360 ten to one length to width and depth ratio. So 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:19.800 you can imagine a cylindrical or tube shaped object like 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:24.080 ten times longer than it is wide um and according 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:26.680 to uh Danassa, it could be up to about a 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:30.280 quarter mile long, maybe like fours and only about forty 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:35.000 meters wide. Also, its motion is not spinning the way 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:37.720 you might expect it to be, but it's tumbling, so 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:40.520 it's not rotating around a principal axis. It's got a 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:44.160 chaotic tumbling pattern, tumbling once every like seven and a 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:48.160 half hours or so, so it's like a tumbling cigar. Yeah, 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:51.480 they often characterized as a scar uh. And it looks 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:54.120 like it's surface may have a red coloration, which would 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:57.360 be consistent with objects in our solar system, like asteroids 0:15:57.400 --> 0:16:00.160 that have been bombarded with cosmic rays a lot. So 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:03.360 that's not all that surprising. But the question is where 0:16:03.360 --> 0:16:06.160 did it come from? We don't know for sure. It 0:16:06.200 --> 0:16:10.000 has this approach trajectory that makes it look like it's 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:13.800 roughly coming from the star Vega in the constellation of Lira, 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:18.800 but of course, like Vega was not there when it 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:21.200 would have been coming from that region, so you'd have 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:24.120 to sort of play back the movie of of stars 0:16:24.200 --> 0:16:26.720 moving around in the galaxy in order to figure out 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:29.160 where it actually came from. So we haven't figured that 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:31.360 out yet, and then we did a follow up episode. 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:35.160 Our first episode on Omumu was in December of seventeen, 0:16:35.200 --> 0:16:38.200 and we had an episode after that responding mainly to 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:41.000 a paper by the Harvard physicist Aviy Loeb and a 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:45.240 co author named schmool by Aali noting this weird speed 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:49.160 boost gained by the object as it left the solar system. 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:52.000 It seemed to be speeding up as it was speeding away, 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:56.080 and uh Loeb and and Bali argued that this boost 0:16:56.120 --> 0:16:59.360 and speed was consistent with the object being a light 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:03.480 sale or a solar sale, which would imply in artificial origin. 0:17:04.119 --> 0:17:06.600 But I think our conclusion was, well, you know, you 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:08.960 can't totally rule it out, but there's no really strong 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:12.000 evidence yet that it's aliens. This is an interesting paper, 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:14.920 but it did receive some criticism from people who said, 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:17.960 you know, they're jumping to conclusions, right, and it would 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:21.080 be an outstanding statement to say its aliens, and we 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:24.320 really need outstanding evidence for that to be the statement 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:27.000 we make totally. And if it were like an alien probe, 0:17:27.040 --> 0:17:29.440 for one thing, we'd probably expect it to be emitting 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:32.600 some kind of radio signal, right, we we had some 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:35.760 radio observatories try to listen to it and found nothing. 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:38.960 There no pattern radio signals at all. So there's no 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:42.640 indication that it was aliens really, except for this interesting 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:45.480 thing about its speeding up as it moved away, um, 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:48.680 which could have also been due to radiation pressure if 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:51.399 it had certain other attributes. But they were saying it 0:17:51.440 --> 0:17:53.879 didn't have the attributes that would make it you know 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:56.440 the kind of objects that would have been powered away 0:17:56.440 --> 0:17:59.600 by the solar radiation. Now, I remember us talking about 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:02.919 the post ability that it was an out of control 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:07.359 dead ship, that that if there was any kind of 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:10.080 life force around on boarded or even though like a 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:12.920 will or a purpose, that it had all been um, 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:15.879 you know, eradicated a long time ago. Essentially the you know, 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:20.480 the ship from alien tumbling through the through the galaxy. Yeah, 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:22.280 which should be great. But even the ship an alien 0:18:22.320 --> 0:18:25.960 was emitting a distress which we would have detected. But yeah, 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:28.639 you know, who knows. I I like to stay in 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:30.680 the in the realm of can't totally rule it out, 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:34.240 but won't go there right and again we'll also never 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:37.280 know because it's gone. Alright. On that note, we're going 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:39.480 to take a quick break, but we'll be right back 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:45.719 with the update. Than all right, we're back. So one 0:18:45.720 --> 0:18:49.280 of the weirdest things about Mumua was its apparent shape. 0:18:49.440 --> 0:18:53.320 This it was this extremely elongated cigar shape that was 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:57.240 inferred from this light curve analysis. Obviously that figured into 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:00.560 a lot of the speculation about alien probes and so forth. Right. 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:03.000 You know, you see a cigar shaped object in space. 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:06.080 That's not normal. Most objects are not shaped that way. 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:08.440 So people wanted to say, oh, yeah, that's got to 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:12.280 be some kind of probe. But are we sure that 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:14.199 that's what we're looking at? Are we sure that it 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:17.360 is this cigar shaped rocky object like we've been assuming. 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:20.439 I came across some interesting reports about a paper that 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:23.960 offered a different way of interpreting the data about the geometry, 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:26.760 and so this is a more recent development that's from 0:19:26.760 --> 0:19:29.120 a scientist. I'm sorry, I'm going to do my best 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:33.400 to pronounce. His name is Dr Zdnnick Secondina, and Secondina 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:36.520 is a check American astronomer who has worked with NASA 0:19:36.600 --> 0:19:39.560 JPL for decades. A lot of his research has focused 0:19:39.560 --> 0:19:43.040 on space dust, meteors, and comments. He's actually done research 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:47.000 on the Tunguska event, as well as Haley's comment and 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:49.959 uh and uh the giant impact that happened on Jupiter 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:53.679 in the nineteen nineties the shoemaker Levy comment. So what 0:19:53.840 --> 0:19:58.200 was his take? Well, remember, humans never saw Umuma when 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:00.920 it was on its approach right and was coming into 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:04.720 its parahelion with the Sun. Our telescopes never picked it 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:09.040 up until it had already slingshotted around the Sun and 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:12.880 was on its exit trajectory to leave the Solar System. Now, 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:16.800 of course, astrophysicists can still infer its total trajectory based 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:19.240 on the small sliver of it that we see. You know, 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:22.200 you can roughly tell where it came from. But uh. 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:26.639 Second Eina offers an interesting argument about Muamua's shape and nature. 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:31.000 He argues that the Muamua we registered with our telescopes 0:20:31.200 --> 0:20:34.920 is not the original object, but rather it is a 0:20:35.000 --> 0:20:40.600 remnant a material cosmic race that was left behind after 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:46.200 an interstellar commet passed its parahelion and disintegrated in the process. 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:48.879 So second in This paper was published on the Archive 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:52.040 preprint server in January of twenty nineteen. As always, you know, 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:55.240 a lot of physics and astrophysics papers show up on 0:20:55.240 --> 0:20:58.120 on archive these days. But just to remind you again, 0:20:58.160 --> 0:21:00.879 that's not a peer reviewed journal. That's just like a 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:03.120 lot of stuff in in this realm happens in those 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:05.399 kind of places these days, and it it just gets hashed 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:08.480 out on the internet. Um So, that's a preprint server, 0:21:08.640 --> 0:21:11.320 not pure viewed. But his analysis does seem to be 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:14.440 uh interesting and from what I can tell, pretty sound 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:18.280 like to read his words, he believes the evidence indicates 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:22.840 quote that also surviving could be a sizeable fragment resembling 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:28.400 a devolatilized aggregate of loosely bound dust screens that may 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:34.640 have exotic shape, peculiar rotational properties, and extremely high porosity. 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:39.520 So uh so weird shape tumbling being very porous and 0:21:39.560 --> 0:21:43.199 not very dense. De volatilized of course, because as it 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:45.920 passed close to the sun, it lost all of its 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:49.080 volatile molecules like water and stuff, and all that stuff 0:21:49.119 --> 0:21:52.920 would get turned to gas or vaporized, gased out and released, 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:56.360 and then what you'd have behind is this this object, 0:21:56.400 --> 0:21:59.919 this collection of dust grains. Um So, to continue with 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:02.479 his words, so that was all acquired quote in the 0:22:02.480 --> 0:22:06.359 course of the disintegration event, given that the brightness of 0:22:06.560 --> 0:22:10.600 Mumu's parent could not possibly equal or exceed the Bordal 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:14.119