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Speaker 1: Hi, It's Jorge and Daniel here. And this holiday season,

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Speaker 1: if you're looking for a gift for yourself, for a friend,

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Speaker 1: or for your your family, why not get him the

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Speaker 1: gift of Answers about the Universe. So check out our

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Speaker 1: new book Frequently Ask Questions about the Universe. You can

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Speaker 1: find details at universe f a q dot com. Thanks

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Speaker 1: for supporting the podcast. Happy holidays everyone, he or Hey?

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Speaker 1: What words come to mind when you look up at

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Speaker 1: the night sky? M? I don't know, maybe a celestial

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Speaker 1: cosmic clear, crisp. You never think like dusty or dirty?

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Speaker 1: What what do you mean like space is dirty? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: Actually space turns out to be super dusty, and that

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Speaker 1: dust doesn't even stay up there in the sky. There

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Speaker 1: are literal tons of space dust falling on Earth every day. Man,

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Speaker 1: are you saying the universe is like a slob? I know, right? Like,

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Speaker 1: come on, Universe, clean up your mess, Universe. It's like

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Speaker 1: a bad roommate. At least you have someone else to

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Speaker 1: blame for your house being dusty. We need to get

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Speaker 1: like a space vacuum mega made. Wait, isn't the space

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Speaker 1: already in a vacuum? How can it be dusty? I

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Speaker 1: am or Hammy cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics.

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Speaker 1: H I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor

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Speaker 1: at you see Irvine, And I like getting a little

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Speaker 1: bit of space dust in my eye. Oh yeah, you'd

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Speaker 1: like to sprinkle a little space magic in your face?

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Speaker 1: Everyone's in a while. Well, you know, we all are

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Speaker 1: made of star dust, and so it's just sort of

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Speaker 1: like a reunion between these little bits of matter that

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Speaker 1: might have burned inside a star billions of years ago

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Speaker 1: and been missing each other ever since. Wow, doesn't make

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Speaker 1: you like tear up literally and literally when you think

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Speaker 1: about space dust literally? Also, I think dust just gains

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Speaker 1: a whole new kind of level when you put the

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Speaker 1: words star in front of it. Like if you say

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Speaker 1: we're made at a star dust, that sounds awesome. But

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Speaker 1: if you say we're made out of dust, usually don't

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Speaker 1: want that until after you die. Does that work for

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Speaker 1: other things like star trash? Does that sound exotic and fantastic?

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Speaker 1: Star dirty dishes, star chores? There you go, I'll send

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Speaker 1: that to my kids. You don't just have chores, you

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Speaker 1: have star chores. Then maybe we should get your star

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Speaker 1: kids to do it. They say they are stars. There

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Speaker 1: are stars in my world. But welcome to our podcast

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Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of Our

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio in which exploring the universe is not a

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Speaker 1: chore but a great joy because we cast our minds

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Speaker 1: out there into the deep universe, through the clouds of

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Speaker 1: gas and dust, penetrating into everything that's out there and

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Speaker 1: trying to get an answer for you answers about the biggest, deepest, oldest,

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Speaker 1: most important questions in the universe. How big is everything,

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Speaker 1: what's it all made out of, how does it all work?

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Speaker 1: Can it possibly make sense? And what is the latest

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Speaker 1: crazy thing that we have learned about the universe? Wit?

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Speaker 1: Are you saying that my allowance doesn't depend on me

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Speaker 1: doing this podcast? Depends on which allowance you're talking about.

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Speaker 1: Do I get paid anyways? That doesn't sound right. Either

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Speaker 1: do the podcast or do the dishes? So which is

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Speaker 1: more fun? Do the dishes? Anyways? But anyways, Yeah, you're right.

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Speaker 1: It is a huge universe full of oxperious things and

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Speaker 1: a lot of interesting things to discover and learn about.

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Speaker 1: Because the universe is a surprising place all the time.

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Speaker 1: It's surprising us with new truth new ways in which

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Speaker 1: it works, but only sort of if we get to

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Speaker 1: see it right, only if we get a good view

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Speaker 1: of what's going on out there. And it's an amazingly

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Speaker 1: good view that we have. It's incredible how far you

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Speaker 1: can see out into space. You know, if you stand

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Speaker 1: on the top of a mountain and you can see

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Speaker 1: fifty miles a hundred miles, you think, wow, this is

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Speaker 1: instagram worthy. Well, you are sitting on top of an

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Speaker 1: earth size mountain. Look how billions and billions of light

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Speaker 1: years into space. They can give you a bit of

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Speaker 1: vertigo sometimes if you think about it. But it's really

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Speaker 1: the best view in the universe. Yeah, And it's not

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Speaker 1: just a nice view. It's like a three sixty all overview, right,

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Speaker 1: Like it's it's up and down, left and right all

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Speaker 1: over in every direction. We can see out millions and

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Speaker 1: millions and millions of miles away. Yeah, almost every direction.

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Speaker 1: I mean, the Earth isn't transparent. It would be pretty

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Speaker 1: cool if the Earth was like made of glass, so

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Speaker 1: you could see in every direction. At the same time.

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Speaker 1: That sounds like an episode idea, Daniel, What if the

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Speaker 1: Earth was made out of glass? That sounds like an

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Speaker 1: episode of Black Mirror? Should you throw stones at it,

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Speaker 1: but the stones would mean at a glass too. But

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Speaker 1: if somebody turned the earth in the glass and then

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Speaker 1: we would have no night and be pretty hard to sleep.

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Speaker 1: So maybe that wasn't such a great idea. Well, I

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Speaker 1: guess what I mean is like, you know, people in

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Speaker 1: Australia are you know, also getting a pretty good view

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Speaker 1: of the universe, and we're getting pretty good view, and

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Speaker 1: when Europe are getting pretty good view, it's like we're

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Speaker 1: surrounded by infinite emptiness, almost in crystal clear emptiness in

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Speaker 1: all directions. It is pretty amazing. And we even look

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Speaker 1: looking out at the sky for a long time, right

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Speaker 1: for thousands and thousands of years, proto humans probably looked

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Speaker 1: up at stars and wondered what they are. And these

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Speaker 1: days we have a pretty good picture for what most

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Speaker 1: of what we're seeing is. The thing that's sort of

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Speaker 1: incredible is that there's still stuff out there that we

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Speaker 1: don't really understand. Yeah, it's pretty amazing that you think,

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Speaker 1: after all this time of looking up, you know, with

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Speaker 1: powerful telescopes and incredible spacecraft that go out there to

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Speaker 1: explore it, there might still be things that we don't

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Speaker 1: fully understand about what's out there. And where it comes from. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and not just things that scientists can see through their

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Speaker 1: powerful telescopes, things that you can see with your eyeballs,

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Speaker 1: naked eye observations. Some of those things we still don't understand. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So to be on the podcast, we'll be asking the

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Speaker 1: question what is zodiacal light? Now? Did I pronounce that correctly?

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Speaker 1: Zodical or zodiacal? You say zodiacal, I'll say zodiacal. Let's

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Speaker 1: call the whole thing off and go have some tomatoes

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Speaker 1: and tomatoes. I think of it as zodiacal because I

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Speaker 1: think it comes from the zodiac zodiac, right, But zodiac

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Speaker 1: zodac has the emphasis on the Oh, so wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: zodical light, does it? Though? I say zodiac, not Zodiac.

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Speaker 1: You say zodiac zodiac And welcome to a podcast about linguistics. Well,

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Speaker 1: maybe they should be a podcast episode about the Zodiac killer.

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Speaker 1: Those are very popular, those crime podcasts. Isn't he the

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Speaker 1: Senator for Texas? Right now? We'll say no more, will

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Speaker 1: say no more about the star State. But rearrenting ourselves

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Speaker 1: back up to the night sky. I do think it's

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Speaker 1: really pretty awesome that there are things you can see

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Speaker 1: out there with your naked eye that scientists are still

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Speaker 1: trying to figure out. It means that you know, there

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Speaker 1: are still puzzles out there. There's still things that are

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Speaker 1: huge and big and obvious that have mysteries behind them. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and like you say, you don't need a big telescope

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Speaker 1: to see this big mystery, this zodical light. It's something

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Speaker 1: you can see with their naked eye almost every day, right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: technically it's kind of hard to spot, but if you

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Speaker 1: know where a look, you can see it. So it's

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Speaker 1: a's kind of an interesting thing. I've never heard of

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Speaker 1: this before. I have to say I was a little

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Speaker 1: puzzled when I got the outline for this, but it's

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Speaker 1: pretty interesting and it's kind of a big mystery, that's right,

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Speaker 1: And it's an active area of research, and amazingly it

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Speaker 1: even connects to popular music. All right, let's get into it.

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Speaker 1: But first we were wondering how many people out there

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Speaker 1: had heard of this idea, this concept is phenomenon of

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Speaker 1: the zodical light, and so Daniel went out there to

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Speaker 1: ask people on the internet if they have heard of

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Speaker 1: the zodical light. So those of you out there on

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Speaker 1: the internet, maybe doing your dishes, right now. Who would

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Speaker 1: like to participate for future episodes of the podcast. It's easy.

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Speaker 1: Just write me a message to questions at Daniel and

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Speaker 1: Jorge dot com. I'll send you the questions back and

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Speaker 1: you can record your answers in the privacy of your

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Speaker 1: own home, with or without the sounds of dishes. So

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Speaker 1: think about it for a second. If you were talking

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Speaker 1: to a physicist, what would you guess is zodical light?

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Speaker 1: Here's what people had to say. If I received this

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Speaker 1: question from somebody else, then you, I would think something

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Speaker 1: about Virgo or something. But this is coming from from you.

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Speaker 1: I don't know what to answer right now. My guests

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Speaker 1: of what zodiacal light or zodiacal light is would be

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Speaker 1: maybe the light from space that doesn't consist of man

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Speaker 1: made objects, so our original mapping of the stars before

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Speaker 1: we started, including satellites and whatnot, Light that comes from

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Speaker 1: the Zodiac constellations, Light that comes particularly from constellations or

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Speaker 1: things of that nature. I mean that the zodiacs stars

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Speaker 1: are real, guests, right there is there light special and

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Speaker 1: surely not that just the arbitrary star, don't they Zodiac?

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Speaker 1: I believe that's the twelve constellations that rotate throughout the year.

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Speaker 1: Hence astrologists say things like the sun is in verbo.

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Speaker 1: Maybe zodiacal light is light coming from objects that are

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Speaker 1: in the Earth's orbital plane and therefore obscured by the time.

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Speaker 1: All right, pretty interesting answers. Most people, I guess connected

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Speaker 1: it to the like we said, the zodiac or as

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Speaker 1: you pronounce the zodiac. Now you're making me self conscious

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Speaker 1: about it. It's in the stars, Daniel, Oh no, this

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Speaker 1: is not going to become an astrology podcast that made.

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Speaker 1: That might make us more popular if we start protacting

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Speaker 1: people's features. I for see more physics in your future

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Speaker 1: than me too. Me too. I'm not sure that's a

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Speaker 1: prediction or a curse. Well, I'm guessing it. It's sort of.

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Speaker 1: It's related to the zodiac, like the zodiac signs, right,

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Speaker 1: which are the constellations like Leo and what are some

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Speaker 1: of the other constellations Gemini, Cancer, Yeah, all those exactly.

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Speaker 1: But you're not a big fan of constellations, right, I've

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Speaker 1: heard you rant about them before. Constellations are fun to

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Speaker 1: look at, but they're not really astronomy because when you

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Speaker 1: look at constellation in the sky, it's totally just an

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Speaker 1: artifact of where we happen to be in space. Like

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Speaker 1: the stars and the constellation aren't clustered together in the universe.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes some of them are very close and so other

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Speaker 1: ones are like deep, deep, deep in space. It just

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Speaker 1: happens to be from our perspective that they make a

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Speaker 1: specific pattern. They're not really anything astronomical. They have no

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Speaker 1: meaning or information, but you know, they are a way in.

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Speaker 1: They are like people look at the stars and they

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Speaker 1: look at these constellations. It's sort of a way in.

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Speaker 1: But to me, it's a little bit like you know,

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Speaker 1: teaching people about meteorology and starting with the Greek gods

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Speaker 1: of weather or something. Well, this is when I feel

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Speaker 1: like it's a little bit different, because you know, the

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Speaker 1: constellations were part of astronomy at some point in human history, right,

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Speaker 1: like there were a way for humans to start mapping

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Speaker 1: the night sky or like keeping track of how things

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Speaker 1: were moving in the night sky. Yeah, I'm not really

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Speaker 1: sure that's astronomy. I mean, it's definitely important for navigation

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Speaker 1: and for understanding where you are on the Earth and stuff,

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Speaker 1: But you know, astronomy like the study of the universe

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Speaker 1: and the stars and trying to understand what's really going

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Speaker 1: on out there. I don't know. The constellations don't really

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Speaker 1: play a big role in that in my opinion, but

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Speaker 1: you know, of course they have historical importance and there

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Speaker 1: are what a lot of people like to look at it,

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Speaker 1: you know, when you look up at the night sky

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Speaker 1: and spot them. That part is fun, right, and they

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Speaker 1: determine your future. You're just baiting me, just baiting me,

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Speaker 1: just skeptic because you're an aries, right, I'm not even

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Speaker 1: in aries, As if that made any difference. I almost

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Speaker 1: got you there. No, you're trying to pay me into

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Speaker 1: the anti fun corner. It's definitely fun to look at

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Speaker 1: the constellations and to think about this stuff, just you know,

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Speaker 1: don't confuse it with actual science. Well, and actually sort

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Speaker 1: of a red herring because the article light has almost

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Speaker 1: nothing to do with the constellations, right, that's right, almost

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Speaker 1: nothing to do with the constellations, except that it appears

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Speaker 1: along the ecliptic, this plane of rotation of the Solar system,

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Speaker 1: you know, the plane that the planets are on, and

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Speaker 1: the Earth moves around that which is sort of aligned

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Speaker 1: in the sky where we see the planets, where the

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Speaker 1: Sun moves along for example, is what we call the ecliptic. Oh,

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Speaker 1: zodiacal light or the zodiacal light appears along the ecliptic,

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Speaker 1: and you know, which is also where a lot of

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Speaker 1: constellations appear. And so I think that's why it's called

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Speaker 1: zodiacal light. Oh right, yeah, because I guess our entire

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Speaker 1: Solar system is on a disc. Right, All of the

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Speaker 1: planets that we know are on a disc, and so

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Speaker 1: on the night sky, they all follow the same line, right,

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Speaker 1: I've never sort of thought about it too hard before. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: planets should definitely fall in a line. Like if you're

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Speaker 1: looking up in the night sky and you see three

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Speaker 1: bright objects that are not in a line, then they

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Speaker 1: can't all be planets because they all are in a disk,

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Speaker 1: you know, and we are on that disc. Also, you

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Speaker 1: always see them line up and it's roughly the same

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Speaker 1: line that the Sun moves along. Oh interesting, Yeah, they

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Speaker 1: all sort of follows the same line, like the like

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Speaker 1: the beads on a string. Yeah, And so that's super

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Speaker 1: cool to think about because it gives you like a

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Speaker 1: three D perspective where we are in the Solar system.

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Speaker 1: It's easy to imagine sort of things moving across our

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Speaker 1: sky as if they're sort of like on a screen.

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Speaker 1: But if you make like a mental switch, you can realize,

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Speaker 1: I'm looking out and being when things are at different distances,

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Speaker 1: and I'm really seeing a three D view of this

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Speaker 1: incredible cosmic object, the Solar system, right, and I'm seeing

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Speaker 1: like bits of it that are further and further away.

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Speaker 1: It's really it's kind of incredible. Can make you almost

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Speaker 1: fall over when you realize that the scale of the

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Speaker 1: thing that you're looking at. And so maybe step us

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Speaker 1: through this what is then zodical light or zodiacal light,

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Speaker 1: And I'm guessing it's something then that happens in the

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Speaker 1: plane of the Solar system. Yeah, exactly. Now people are

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Speaker 1: familiar with like the Northern lights or the Southern lights.

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Speaker 1: That's caused when high energy particles hit the atmosphere and

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Speaker 1: then spiral up to the North pole or the South

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Speaker 1: pole because of the magnetic field. And you can only

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Speaker 1: really see those if you're sort of pretty far north

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Speaker 1: or pretty far south, because that's where those particles end up.

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Speaker 1: But the zodiacal light is pretty cool because you don't

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Speaker 1: have to be in the north pole or the South pole,

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Speaker 1: or even pretty far north or south to see it.

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Speaker 1: You can see it from almost anywhere on the Earth,

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Speaker 1: and it's actually most visible near the equator in the

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Speaker 1: tropical regions. And what it looks like, it's sort of

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Speaker 1: a cone of light, like a hazy bright pyramid. It's

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Speaker 1: not very crisp, it's not as colorful. It's sort of

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Speaker 1: white that appears above the sunrise or the sunset point.

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Speaker 1: So you can see it just like just after the

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Speaker 1: sun has set or just before the sun is going

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Speaker 1: to rise. I see, so like as the sun is

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Speaker 1: dipping down below the mountains, as it dips down below

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Speaker 1: sort of the horizon and over the mountains that you're

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Speaker 1: looking at, you'll suddenly see like a column or like

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Speaker 1: a huge pyramid of light above it. Yeah, and it

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Speaker 1: happens after the sun is already past the horizon. So

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Speaker 1: you see the sunset, you see the after glow, etcetera,

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Speaker 1: all that red beautifulness, and then before the dark night

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Speaker 1: really kicks in, you see this glow, this pyramid. And

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it's like sudden. It doesn't just like

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Speaker 1: pop into your sky. You know, it's sort of as

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Speaker 1: the sun is fading, this is sort of what's left

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Speaker 1: interesting and you know, people can look at this up

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Speaker 1: on the internet and do a Google image search of

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Speaker 1: zodical light and they can get some pretty impresive pictures.

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Speaker 1: They're pretty beautiful. Yeah. Some those pictures obviously taken by

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Speaker 1: like professional photographers and ideal conditions after years of practice,

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Speaker 1: So you can also see some amateur photographs. You could

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Speaker 1: also just sort of have seen it and not really

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Speaker 1: realized it because it can kind of look a little fuzzy.

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Speaker 1: You can look just sort of like a smear of

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Speaker 1: light and you might have imagined, oh, it's just like

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Speaker 1: light from a city over the horizon, you know, light

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Speaker 1: pollution from a nearby football field or something. Right, but

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Speaker 1: it's pretty concentrated, right, Like, it has a particular shape, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: it's not like a semicircle or it's not doesn't take

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Speaker 1: over half of this guy. It's like, you know, right

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Speaker 1: where the sun sort of dips below the horizon, you

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Speaker 1: see this sort of column, triangular column of light. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it happens that the ecliptic is like at ninety

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Speaker 1: degrees to your horizon, it's going to be straight up

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Speaker 1: and down if the ecliptic is slanted, because you know,

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Speaker 1: at a different time of the year, then it's going

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Speaker 1: to be slanted along the ecliptic really sort of points

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Speaker 1: the direction that the planets will appear on. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: because I guess if you're in the equator, then you're

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Speaker 1: looking at the sunrise and sunset pretty close to the

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Speaker 1: plane of the Solar system, right, But if you're maybe

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Speaker 1: the closer to the north pole, it's going to be

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Speaker 1: kind of tilted, right, yeah. And it also depends on

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Speaker 1: the season, right, because the earth tilt relative to the

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Speaker 1: plane depends on sort of where we are in our

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Speaker 1: orbit around the Sun, and so the ecliptic tilts more,

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Speaker 1: for example, in the winter and summer than it does

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Speaker 1: in the spring and fall if you're in the northern hemisphere,

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Speaker 1: but if you're in the southern hemisphere is the opposite exactly.

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Speaker 1: So what this thing looks like depends on the time

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Speaker 1: of year, and that makes it sort of easier and

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Speaker 1: harder to see. At different times of year. When it's

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Speaker 1: slanted over really really far, it's harder to notice because

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Speaker 1: it doesn't rise it's high above the horizon. So it's

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Speaker 1: easiest to notice when it's sort of like the sharpest

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Speaker 1: angle with the horizon because then it rises further above

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Speaker 1: the horizon and you can more easily spot it. Well,

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Speaker 1: how people google search this and look up images of

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Speaker 1: it because it's pretty interesting. But what sort of one

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Speaker 1: important clue about it is that it doesn't come from

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Speaker 1: the Earth. Like when you look at the sunset or

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Speaker 1: sunrise and you see the beautiful red sky and and

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Speaker 1: the beautiful sort of cloud patterns, that's all stuff that's

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Speaker 1: happening on Earth, in our atmosphere, right, the red shift

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Speaker 1: of the light. But this the fact the zodical light,

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Speaker 1: it's is actually happening outside of Earth, right, It's in space. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's really cool because, as you say, it's not something

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Speaker 1: caused by our atmosphere. You know, sunsets and sunlights are

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Speaker 1: red because our atmosphere tends to scatter the blue light,

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Speaker 1: and so during sunrise and sunset, it's that red light

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Speaker 1: that's getting to you, getting to your eyes. So that's

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Speaker 1: an effect of our atmosphere. And even the northern lights

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Speaker 1: and the Southern lights are effects of our atmosphere. There

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Speaker 1: are the solar wind and cosmic radiation raining down on

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Speaker 1: our atmosphere and glowing here on Earth. But the zodiacal

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Speaker 1: light is something else, it's something different. It comes from

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Speaker 1: outer space. As you say, it's something that you could

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Speaker 1: see even on a planet with no atmosphere. It's out

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Speaker 1: of this world alien. It's extraterrestrial for sure. Are you

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Speaker 1: saying the zodiac are aliens? Daniel, boy is gonna be

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Speaker 1: a popular So no. But I guess what you mean

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Speaker 1: is like, if you're out in space, you're not going

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Speaker 1: to see the northern lights and you're not going to

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Speaker 1: see a red sunset, but you might see this zotical light. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you definitely should. All right, well, let's get into what

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Speaker 1: causes this interesting and mysterious effect, and let's talk about

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Speaker 1: what it could be and what we can learn from it.

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Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break. All right, Daniel,

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Speaker 1: we are reading the signs of the universe, we are

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Speaker 1: aligning the planet, and we are looking at the zotical light,

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Speaker 1: which is an interesting and maybe mysterious effect that you

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Speaker 1: can see out in space coming off of the sun. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's really cool because it's something that you can see

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Speaker 1: with your naked eyes. Right, you don't need any equipment.

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Speaker 1: You just have to be sort of in the right time,

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Speaker 1: at the right place, and you can see this weird

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Speaker 1: space glow. And the cool thing is that it does

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Speaker 1: come from our atmosphere. As you say, it's a property

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Speaker 1: of the solar system itself, all right, So I assume

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Speaker 1: by now people and during the break when and Google

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Speaker 1: search zotical light and look the cool images of it.

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Speaker 1: And so now we know that it doesn't come from

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Speaker 1: our atmosphere, comes out from something in space. And so

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Speaker 1: step us through this. What is causing this mysterious light pattern. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's caused by the dirt and the dust that's in

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Speaker 1: the solar system. When you think of the solar system,

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Speaker 1: of course you imagine the Sun and the planets and

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Speaker 1: all their moons. But really the solar system is not

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Speaker 1: that crisp and clean and empty. It's actually filled with

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Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. Of course, there's radiation from the

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Speaker 1: Sun shooting out particles, protons and electrons and gamma rays, etcetera, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: But also the solar system is not so neat and clean,

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Speaker 1: is huge dust clouds everywhere, and that dust is what

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Speaker 1: we are seeing. We are seeing the sun reflect off

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Speaker 1: of the dust that's in the plane of the solar system.

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Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, wait, so our solar system is dirty.

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Speaker 1: Is that what it's dusty? Is it like dust left

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Speaker 1: over from when the Solar system formed, or is it

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Speaker 1: dust from like asteroids crashing? You know, where does this

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Speaker 1: does come from? Well, there's a long debate about the

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Speaker 1: origin of the dust, and it's not something we still

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Speaker 1: fully understand. Scientists are still trying to figure it out.

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Speaker 1: And one of the mysteries is that we're pretty sure

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Speaker 1: it can't be dust left over from the formation of

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Speaker 1: the Solar System because all that stuff got cleaned up

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Speaker 1: and slurped up into larger objects billions and billions of

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Speaker 1: years ago. All of our models of formations of solar

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Speaker 1: systems have this like collapse into a sun and a

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Speaker 1: protoplanetary disk, which then forms planets. But it's pretty efficient

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Speaker 1: and gathering up little bits of old stars and dust

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Speaker 1: and everything else that forms planets and meters and asteroids

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Speaker 1: and all that stuff. So when that's done, you really

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Speaker 1: shouldn't have much dust left over. You know, that dust

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Speaker 1: either should fall into the star or it should get

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Speaker 1: captured by other objects, right like like a planet X,

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Speaker 1: like a giant vacuum in the vacuum of space. Right

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Speaker 1: like if you have a giant rock flowing by, you're

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Speaker 1: going to be gravitationally attracted to it. Yeah. The whole

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Speaker 1: process of solar system formation is taking a big cloud

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Speaker 1: of gas and dust and collapsing it into bigger objects.

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Speaker 1: And once gravity gets that started, it's pretty effective. You

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Speaker 1: have a big mass, it's going to slurp stuff together.

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Speaker 1: And so we're pretty sure that the fact that we

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Speaker 1: still have dust means there needs to be a new source.

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Speaker 1: It needs to be replenished. It's like if you know,

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Speaker 1: when you built your house, it was clean, right, didn't

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Speaker 1: have any dust in it. Ten years later, if it

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Speaker 1: has dust in it, you know it's not from the

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Speaker 1: original builders, Right, there's some new source of dust making

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Speaker 1: your house dusty. Wow. Well, all right, we'll get into

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Speaker 1: the origin potential origin of this dust later. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of an interesting mystery. But I guess maybe explain to

424
00:21:43,280 --> 00:21:47,080
Speaker 1: us how this this dust forms this interesting light panttern. Yeah. Well,

425
00:21:47,080 --> 00:21:50,200
Speaker 1: this dust are like tiny little rocks, you know, they're

426
00:21:50,240 --> 00:21:54,160
Speaker 1: like one to three microns. These are really small, little,

427
00:21:54,200 --> 00:21:56,800
Speaker 1: tiny little particles, and they're flying out there in space,

428
00:21:56,840 --> 00:21:59,600
Speaker 1: and like most things in the solar system, they don't glow, right,

429
00:21:59,600 --> 00:22:02,760
Speaker 1: They're not on fire. They're not tiny little stars that

430
00:22:02,800 --> 00:22:06,400
Speaker 1: are shooting off photons. Instead, they're reflective. You know. These

431
00:22:06,440 --> 00:22:09,840
Speaker 1: things are like either frozen drops of hydrogen or they

432
00:22:09,880 --> 00:22:12,640
Speaker 1: have silka in them or something else, but they're reflective.

433
00:22:13,080 --> 00:22:15,320
Speaker 1: And so just like the Earth or the Moon or

434
00:22:15,359 --> 00:22:19,320
Speaker 1: the other planets, the Sun's light reflects off of this dust,

435
00:22:19,480 --> 00:22:21,399
Speaker 1: and so you can imagine what happens is that a

436
00:22:21,400 --> 00:22:23,119
Speaker 1: beam of light is shooting out of the Sun and

437
00:22:23,200 --> 00:22:25,560
Speaker 1: it hits this dust and it reflects just at the

438
00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:27,879
Speaker 1: right angle to come to Earth. Of course, it reflects

439
00:22:27,960 --> 00:22:30,439
Speaker 1: all sorts of crazy angles. So if you're above the

440
00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:33,399
Speaker 1: Solar System, you could also see this dust glowing, but

441
00:22:33,560 --> 00:22:35,639
Speaker 1: some of it will reflect right down on to Earth.

442
00:22:35,960 --> 00:22:38,720
Speaker 1: And that's what we see is the zodiacal light. Oh

443
00:22:38,800 --> 00:22:41,159
Speaker 1: I see. So it's sort of like sand almost like

444
00:22:41,200 --> 00:22:44,600
Speaker 1: there's just a cloud of sand out there, like covering

445
00:22:44,880 --> 00:22:47,600
Speaker 1: the dish of the Solar system. Right. It's not like

446
00:22:47,640 --> 00:22:50,320
Speaker 1: above the dish or below the dish. It's like it's

447
00:22:50,400 --> 00:22:52,879
Speaker 1: gathering kind of like a like a frisbee around the

448
00:22:52,880 --> 00:22:55,439
Speaker 1: Solar system. Yeah, exactly, it's in a disk like everything

449
00:22:55,440 --> 00:22:58,040
Speaker 1: else in the Solar System, and that's because it's rotating

450
00:22:58,080 --> 00:23:00,399
Speaker 1: with everything else in the Solar system. You know, you

451
00:23:00,480 --> 00:23:02,560
Speaker 1: might wonder, like, why does the Solar system have this

452
00:23:02,640 --> 00:23:06,199
Speaker 1: weird disc pattern, And that's because it's rotating. You know.

453
00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:08,639
Speaker 1: The reason that the Earth does not collapse into the

454
00:23:08,680 --> 00:23:11,440
Speaker 1: Sun is because it's moving really really fast around the Sun,

455
00:23:11,560 --> 00:23:15,200
Speaker 1: has this angular momentum that keeps it from collapsing into

456
00:23:15,200 --> 00:23:17,959
Speaker 1: the Sun. That only happens on the plane of this

457
00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:21,560
Speaker 1: rotation of the original mass of stuff. In the other direction,

458
00:23:21,640 --> 00:23:24,720
Speaker 1: like sort of above and below this disc, there's no rotation,

459
00:23:24,760 --> 00:23:27,040
Speaker 1: and so it's free to collapse. So that's why the

460
00:23:27,040 --> 00:23:29,159
Speaker 1: Solar system ends up as a disc and not like

461
00:23:29,200 --> 00:23:31,760
Speaker 1: a sphere, because it can collapse sort of in the

462
00:23:31,920 --> 00:23:35,359
Speaker 1: up and down direction along the Sun's axis, but it

463
00:23:35,440 --> 00:23:38,960
Speaker 1: can't collapse in the plane around the Sun. And so

464
00:23:39,080 --> 00:23:41,200
Speaker 1: like everything else, the disc is sort of trapped by

465
00:23:41,240 --> 00:23:43,960
Speaker 1: this rotation. But you know, like it slows down and

466
00:23:44,040 --> 00:23:46,439
Speaker 1: it falls into the Sun and like the Earth might

467
00:23:46,520 --> 00:23:49,560
Speaker 1: eventually m M I see. So it's sort of like

468
00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:53,879
Speaker 1: this giant disc cloud of sand and little tiny rocks,

469
00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:56,720
Speaker 1: and it's glowing, you're saying, because it's basically a reflecting

470
00:23:56,800 --> 00:23:59,080
Speaker 1: light from the Sun, Like the Sun shoots out light

471
00:23:59,119 --> 00:24:01,879
Speaker 1: and it hits this sand cloud, this dust cloud, and

472
00:24:01,880 --> 00:24:04,000
Speaker 1: then it makes it glow and we see it. And

473
00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:05,520
Speaker 1: that's kind of why we see it as a as

474
00:24:05,600 --> 00:24:08,680
Speaker 1: like a column in the sky, because there's no dust

475
00:24:08,760 --> 00:24:12,000
Speaker 1: above or below or you know, not in the plane

476
00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:14,639
Speaker 1: of the solar system. That's right. And you might be confused,

477
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:17,640
Speaker 1: like why does dust glow? Dust doesn't seem like it glows.

478
00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:20,080
Speaker 1: And if you look at sand doesn't seem like a mirror, right,

479
00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:23,159
Speaker 1: But sand and dust are visible in sunlight. Right. The

480
00:24:23,200 --> 00:24:25,359
Speaker 1: reason you can see a beach, the reason it's not

481
00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:29,160
Speaker 1: like invisible or transparent, is because it is reflecting sunlight.

482
00:24:29,440 --> 00:24:31,439
Speaker 1: You know, the sun hits the sand and then comes

483
00:24:31,480 --> 00:24:34,080
Speaker 1: to your eye, and that's why you see it. If

484
00:24:34,119 --> 00:24:36,520
Speaker 1: sand didn't reflect light, if it just absorbed on the light,

485
00:24:36,560 --> 00:24:38,560
Speaker 1: it would be jet black, right, I guess it would

486
00:24:38,560 --> 00:24:40,720
Speaker 1: be like a black sand beach. So it's you know,

487
00:24:40,760 --> 00:24:43,160
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like a property of dust or sand

488
00:24:43,200 --> 00:24:46,240
Speaker 1: to be reflective, but of course they do reflect some light,

489
00:24:46,520 --> 00:24:48,040
Speaker 1: and that's what you see. Or if you've ever seen

490
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:50,920
Speaker 1: like moats of dust floating, you know, in the sunbeam,

491
00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:53,399
Speaker 1: then you're seeing them because they reflect light. And so

492
00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:55,440
Speaker 1: that's what's happening. And the reason we see it in

493
00:24:55,480 --> 00:24:57,919
Speaker 1: the sky is sort of fuzzy is because it's not

494
00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:01,760
Speaker 1: like a crisply defined object but sharp edges like a planet.

495
00:25:02,119 --> 00:25:05,399
Speaker 1: It's just this big cloud of dust that nobody's swept up, right,

496
00:25:05,440 --> 00:25:06,879
Speaker 1: I guess it's kind of like maybe like in a

497
00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:09,720
Speaker 1: foggy night, or in like a sort of like dewey

498
00:25:09,880 --> 00:25:12,040
Speaker 1: kind of human night. You see sort of a glow

499
00:25:12,080 --> 00:25:14,359
Speaker 1: around street lamps, right, That's kind of what it is.

500
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:16,840
Speaker 1: It's the glow around street lamps is just the light

501
00:25:16,880 --> 00:25:19,480
Speaker 1: from the lamp kind of hitting the water or air

502
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:21,760
Speaker 1: thus particles around it, and so you see this kind

503
00:25:21,760 --> 00:25:25,240
Speaker 1: of halo around street lamps, right exactly. And in principle,

504
00:25:25,359 --> 00:25:27,879
Speaker 1: you could see it during the day, you know, because

505
00:25:27,880 --> 00:25:31,040
Speaker 1: there's a huge clouds of it extending on either directions,

506
00:25:31,040 --> 00:25:33,920
Speaker 1: sort of along the path of the sun. But during

507
00:25:33,960 --> 00:25:36,119
Speaker 1: the day it's too bright, right, you just can't see it.

508
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:38,639
Speaker 1: It's outshined by everything else. For the same reason you

509
00:25:38,680 --> 00:25:41,359
Speaker 1: can't see stars during the day. They're up there, they're

510
00:25:41,400 --> 00:25:43,879
Speaker 1: sending you photons, you're getting them, you just don't notice

511
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:46,720
Speaker 1: it because you have this basically flashlight right in your

512
00:25:46,720 --> 00:25:48,840
Speaker 1: eyes of the sun. But the reason you can see

513
00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:52,000
Speaker 1: it just after the sun dips over the horizon is

514
00:25:52,040 --> 00:25:54,359
Speaker 1: that now the sky is dark enough and the angle

515
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:56,880
Speaker 1: is just right for this part of the disc that's

516
00:25:56,920 --> 00:25:59,439
Speaker 1: sort of just over the horizon to get the Sun's

517
00:25:59,520 --> 00:26:02,840
Speaker 1: rays and and bounce right back to your eyes. I

518
00:26:02,920 --> 00:26:05,119
Speaker 1: see you were saying you're comparing it to the Milky

519
00:26:05,119 --> 00:26:07,240
Speaker 1: Way a little bit, because the Milky Way is also

520
00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:09,600
Speaker 1: sort of in a disc, and we're on that disc.

521
00:26:09,800 --> 00:26:11,359
Speaker 1: And so when you look at the night sky you

522
00:26:11,520 --> 00:26:12,840
Speaker 1: and you were able to see the Milky Way, you

523
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:15,400
Speaker 1: see it as a streak across the sky. But that's

524
00:26:15,440 --> 00:26:18,040
Speaker 1: only I guess, because the Milky Way itself glows, right,

525
00:26:18,040 --> 00:26:20,119
Speaker 1: it's made out of stars, and so you see it

526
00:26:20,119 --> 00:26:22,000
Speaker 1: as a streak. But this one it needs to catch

527
00:26:22,040 --> 00:26:24,159
Speaker 1: the light of the Sun in a certain way. Yeah, exactly,

528
00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:26,080
Speaker 1: the Milky Way is visible because, as you say, these

529
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:28,919
Speaker 1: are their own stars that have their own careers, and

530
00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:32,400
Speaker 1: they glow brightly on their own And it's a different line, right.

531
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:34,800
Speaker 1: The plane of the Milky Way is not aligned with

532
00:26:34,880 --> 00:26:37,240
Speaker 1: the plane of the Solar system. So the Milky Way

533
00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:39,199
Speaker 1: in the zodiacal light don't have to line up, and

534
00:26:39,240 --> 00:26:41,720
Speaker 1: the milky Way is best seen deep, deep into the night.

535
00:26:41,720 --> 00:26:43,919
Speaker 1: When this when we're in the Earth's shadow and you

536
00:26:43,960 --> 00:26:46,320
Speaker 1: can't see the sun at all because it glows on

537
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:48,560
Speaker 1: its own, but the zodiacal light, as you say, has

538
00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:50,760
Speaker 1: to reflect the light of the sun. And so if

539
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:52,840
Speaker 1: the sun is on the other side of the Earth

540
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:55,600
Speaker 1: it's like midnight or something, or deep in the morning,

541
00:26:55,800 --> 00:26:57,359
Speaker 1: then you're not gonna be able to see any of this.

542
00:26:57,880 --> 00:27:01,199
Speaker 1: Actually you can see a little bit sometimes, you can

543
00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:03,400
Speaker 1: see a little bit of it that reflects back from

544
00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:06,280
Speaker 1: the other direction. Yeah, because we are in the middle

545
00:27:06,320 --> 00:27:08,080
Speaker 1: of this, so you should see the outer edge of

546
00:27:08,080 --> 00:27:10,360
Speaker 1: the this too, right, Yeah, if the sun is right

547
00:27:10,359 --> 00:27:12,440
Speaker 1: behind us, like right in the middle of the night,

548
00:27:12,720 --> 00:27:14,800
Speaker 1: you can just hit some of this dust and it

549
00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:17,879
Speaker 1: can reflect back at just the right angle to our eyes.

550
00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:20,199
Speaker 1: So this this other thing in the middle of the

551
00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:23,760
Speaker 1: night called the gagan shine, which is a German word

552
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:26,840
Speaker 1: for counter glow that are probably mispronounced. And it's at

553
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:30,480
Speaker 1: the anti solar point, anti solar point being like the

554
00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:33,200
Speaker 1: opposite direction of the sun. So you draw a line

555
00:27:33,600 --> 00:27:36,679
Speaker 1: from the Sun to your head, and it's sort of

556
00:27:36,760 --> 00:27:39,720
Speaker 1: through that line in the other direction. It's like in

557
00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:42,560
Speaker 1: the shadow of the earth, right, Yeah, And this is

558
00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 1: very hard to see, it's very faint, but in just

559
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:47,640
Speaker 1: the right conditions you can see this sort of glowy

560
00:27:47,800 --> 00:27:50,680
Speaker 1: spot in the middle of the sky in the deep night.

561
00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:55,040
Speaker 1: And that's this counterglow. That's the light passing over the

562
00:27:55,040 --> 00:27:57,719
Speaker 1: earth from the sun and then hitting the dust and

563
00:27:57,760 --> 00:28:00,880
Speaker 1: coming back to your eyes. So sort like illuminating a

564
00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:04,280
Speaker 1: different part of this disc of dust that's out there, right,

565
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:06,399
Speaker 1: Would you then see it as like a streak across

566
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:08,359
Speaker 1: the sky? You you would, right now, I wouldn't just

567
00:28:08,359 --> 00:28:10,680
Speaker 1: be a spot. If you could illuminate the whole disk

568
00:28:10,920 --> 00:28:13,080
Speaker 1: and get back to your eye, you would see it

569
00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:15,280
Speaker 1: as a streak. But it's sort of like a fuzzy

570
00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 1: spot because I think the shortest angles and the brightest

571
00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:21,600
Speaker 1: part of it is the parts that's directly illuminated, because

572
00:28:21,600 --> 00:28:24,639
Speaker 1: it's brightest when it directly back scatters, like when the

573
00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: light hits the dust and you get like the full reflection. Interesting,

574
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:30,560
Speaker 1: and so that in fact you can also see maybe

575
00:28:30,600 --> 00:28:32,720
Speaker 1: with your naked eye in in the middle of the night. Yeah,

576
00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 1: And this is something I've never seen, but now I

577
00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:36,959
Speaker 1: want to. So next time. I'm happy to be up

578
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 1: at three am. I'm going to go outside and look

579
00:28:38,960 --> 00:28:43,560
Speaker 1: for the gig and shine. Yeah, but I guess you

580
00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:46,080
Speaker 1: live in a major city, or at least near a

581
00:28:46,120 --> 00:28:48,520
Speaker 1: major city, so that that might be pretty hard. Yeah,

582
00:28:48,560 --> 00:28:50,160
Speaker 1: I think it probably would be. Well, next time I

583
00:28:50,160 --> 00:28:54,480
Speaker 1: go camping and you're up its sleeping in your satellite mattress.

584
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:57,000
Speaker 1: That's right, And it's sort of incredible that what you're

585
00:28:57,040 --> 00:28:59,920
Speaker 1: seeing are these tiny little things, like they are one

586
00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:03,800
Speaker 1: to three hundred microns. Like imagine if I told you, like, hey,

587
00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:08,320
Speaker 1: there's something three hundred microns in size floating out near Mars.

588
00:29:08,640 --> 00:29:10,400
Speaker 1: Go look about the night sky and see if you

589
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:13,080
Speaker 1: can see it. You know that sounds ridiculous, right. You

590
00:29:13,080 --> 00:29:16,040
Speaker 1: couldn't even see like a boulder between here and Mars.

591
00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:18,240
Speaker 1: You couldn't, like if somebody put the Empire State Building

592
00:29:18,560 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 1: near Mars, you'd have no chance of seeing it. But

593
00:29:21,000 --> 00:29:23,640
Speaker 1: you get enough dust together and you get those photons,

594
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:25,520
Speaker 1: they add up. It really can come to your eyes

595
00:29:25,520 --> 00:29:27,480
Speaker 1: and you really can't see it, right, They sort of

596
00:29:27,520 --> 00:29:29,920
Speaker 1: add up, not just because there's a lot, but because

597
00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:32,240
Speaker 1: there's a lot of space between here and Mars, right

598
00:29:32,320 --> 00:29:35,160
Speaker 1: and here in the sun and and so there, even

599
00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:38,240
Speaker 1: though it's mostly clear, all those little bits of dust

600
00:29:38,280 --> 00:29:41,040
Speaker 1: and sand add up. Yeah, and it's a lot of space.

601
00:29:41,400 --> 00:29:43,880
Speaker 1: And so even though we say like there's dust everywhere,

602
00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:47,680
Speaker 1: it's not actually that dense. Like the average distance between

603
00:29:47,720 --> 00:29:51,239
Speaker 1: these dust particles is like five miles, you know, like

604
00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:55,160
Speaker 1: eight kilometers, with the average distance between like little grains

605
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:59,480
Speaker 1: of sand in space five miles. Yeah, exactly. If you

606
00:29:59,520 --> 00:30:02,200
Speaker 1: went on a tour, like you know, pub crawl from

607
00:30:02,240 --> 00:30:04,320
Speaker 1: dust mode to dust mode, it would take a while

608
00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:06,560
Speaker 1: to get from one to the other. I imagine if

609
00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:08,960
Speaker 1: they would be hard to find as well, like how

610
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:11,680
Speaker 1: do you find one grain of sand in a five

611
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 1: miles fear of space? Yeah, and also they're moving pretty fast.

612
00:30:15,080 --> 00:30:18,320
Speaker 1: These things are moving at like tens of kilometers per second,

613
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:20,800
Speaker 1: which is one reason why it's been a challenge to

614
00:30:20,840 --> 00:30:23,880
Speaker 1: study these things because it's hard to collect them. You know,

615
00:30:23,880 --> 00:30:26,840
Speaker 1: they're moving very very fast, and they're sort of sparse. Well,

616
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:29,520
Speaker 1: as you said before, this kind of dust in the

617
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:32,600
Speaker 1: Solar system wasn't always here, and it shouldn't be here

618
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 1: if the solar system was just left with its own devices, right,

619
00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:37,720
Speaker 1: Like the solar system in a way is sort of

620
00:30:37,800 --> 00:30:40,600
Speaker 1: like self cleaning. Like if there was any dust, it

621
00:30:40,640 --> 00:30:43,040
Speaker 1: would all either fall into a planet or into an

622
00:30:43,040 --> 00:30:45,760
Speaker 1: asteroid or into the Sun. So we should have a

623
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:49,000
Speaker 1: pretty clean Solar system, but we don't. We have all

624
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:51,560
Speaker 1: this dust. Yeah, gravity does a pretty good job of

625
00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:53,640
Speaker 1: tidying up. You know, you just leave things around and

626
00:30:53,680 --> 00:30:56,120
Speaker 1: they should just clump together and eventually form a black

627
00:30:56,120 --> 00:30:58,560
Speaker 1: hole of all of your garbage. Try that at home, folks.

628
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:00,960
Speaker 1: That seems to happen in my house any because I'm

629
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:03,320
Speaker 1: the only one who takes out the trash, and uh,

630
00:31:03,560 --> 00:31:05,760
Speaker 1: sometimes I put that off. But yeah, so it's kind

631
00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:08,360
Speaker 1: of a big mystery, then, where all this dust is

632
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:11,320
Speaker 1: coming from, because the universe of the Solar System shouldn't

633
00:31:11,320 --> 00:31:14,960
Speaker 1: have any dust. Yeah, exactly. It's an area of research

634
00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:18,040
Speaker 1: right now, like people are doing studies and building models

635
00:31:18,040 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 1: and trying to understand where this comes from. And it's

636
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:22,800
Speaker 1: something that people have been working on for, you know,

637
00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:26,440
Speaker 1: fifty sixty years. It was first discovered in the seventies

638
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:30,080
Speaker 1: when people sent balloons up the upper atmosphere to gather

639
00:31:30,200 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: some of this cosmic dust that was falling to the Earth,

640
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 1: and that was pretty cool to discover. Wait, so we

641
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:37,479
Speaker 1: we I guess we had seen this light effect for

642
00:31:37,520 --> 00:31:40,840
Speaker 1: a long time, probably a very long time, I imagine, right,

643
00:31:40,880 --> 00:31:43,720
Speaker 1: And so we didn't know what it was until the seventies.

644
00:31:43,720 --> 00:31:46,040
Speaker 1: It wasn' until the seventies people started sort of asking

645
00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:48,600
Speaker 1: what this was. Yeah, there were ideas that space dust

646
00:31:48,680 --> 00:31:51,120
Speaker 1: should exist or there should be out there, but people

647
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:53,320
Speaker 1: weren't sure about how much dust there was, like is

648
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:56,080
Speaker 1: it all interstellar dust? Is it really all cleared out

649
00:31:56,160 --> 00:31:59,000
Speaker 1: in the Solar System? And it wasn't until the seventies

650
00:31:59,000 --> 00:32:00,920
Speaker 1: that we started to sample the stuff and really measure

651
00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:03,680
Speaker 1: like how much cosmic dust is there? You know, they

652
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:06,320
Speaker 1: sent up these balloon experiments and then later really high

653
00:32:06,400 --> 00:32:09,720
Speaker 1: flying airplanes to try to gather cosmic dust. And you

654
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 1: can tell the difference between dust that comes from the

655
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 1: Solar System and dust that comes from outside the Solar

656
00:32:15,040 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 1: System and things that are just like you know, dust

657
00:32:17,360 --> 00:32:20,440
Speaker 1: storms from Earth, because they all have a different makeup. Wait,

658
00:32:20,480 --> 00:32:22,640
Speaker 1: so I can put up a balloon that goes out

659
00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 1: into near Earth orbit and I can catch some of

660
00:32:25,520 --> 00:32:28,880
Speaker 1: this space dust, Yeah, because tons of its falls to Earth. Right,

661
00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:31,320
Speaker 1: we say that there's just a grain every five miles

662
00:32:31,400 --> 00:32:33,400
Speaker 1: or so. But there's a lot of it, and so

663
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:35,680
Speaker 1: some of it falls to Earth. Every day, It's like

664
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:38,240
Speaker 1: tons of it is falling onto the Earth's surface. So

665
00:32:38,280 --> 00:32:40,760
Speaker 1: we can gather it up and we can study it. Wow,

666
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:43,040
Speaker 1: like a little vacuant, Like put out a vacuum cleaner

667
00:32:43,200 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 1: out there in space. Well that's the process, right, Like

668
00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:47,640
Speaker 1: we're talking about how the Solar system cleans itself up.

669
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:49,560
Speaker 1: That's how it happens. The Sun pulls some of it

670
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:51,880
Speaker 1: into Earth pulls some of it, and everybody pitches in

671
00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:54,920
Speaker 1: and cleans this stuff up. We're flying through this cloud

672
00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 1: of dust and the Earth is gathering it as we go.

673
00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:00,880
Speaker 1: That is definitely not how my household works. I wish

674
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:03,040
Speaker 1: everyone pitched in. Tell your kids they just have to

675
00:33:03,120 --> 00:33:05,400
Speaker 1: run through the house and they'll just like gather all

676
00:33:05,400 --> 00:33:07,600
Speaker 1: the dirt on them. Yeah, they're it's part of their

677
00:33:07,600 --> 00:33:12,080
Speaker 1: star chores for their star allowance. All right, Well, let's

678
00:33:12,120 --> 00:33:15,000
Speaker 1: get into the origin of this dust, what it could

679
00:33:15,040 --> 00:33:17,280
Speaker 1: be made out of, and where it could be coming

680
00:33:17,320 --> 00:33:20,360
Speaker 1: from out there in space, and what we're doing to

681
00:33:20,560 --> 00:33:36,400
Speaker 1: study it. But first, let's take another quick break. All right,

682
00:33:36,520 --> 00:33:40,000
Speaker 1: So the Solar system apparently is pretty dusty. It's not

683
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:43,000
Speaker 1: clean and Christine, as we thought it was, But it's

684
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:45,960
Speaker 1: not the solar system's fault. Like, the solar system is

685
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:48,560
Speaker 1: trying to keep a tidy pom here, but dust keeps

686
00:33:48,680 --> 00:33:51,960
Speaker 1: raining down on it and accumulating and forming this disk

687
00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:55,720
Speaker 1: around in the solar system that causes interesting light effects,

688
00:33:55,920 --> 00:33:57,840
Speaker 1: That's right. And people have been trying to figure out,

689
00:33:57,920 --> 00:34:00,120
Speaker 1: like where does this does come from? If the solar

690
00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:03,280
Speaker 1: system is constantly cleaning itself up, then what's the source

691
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:05,880
Speaker 1: of dust? And for a long time people had a

692
00:34:05,920 --> 00:34:08,279
Speaker 1: couple of sort of obvious explanations. They were like, well,

693
00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:10,840
Speaker 1: what makes a mess in the solar system? You know,

694
00:34:10,920 --> 00:34:15,160
Speaker 1: what contributes to making new stuff or breaking stuff up?

695
00:34:15,760 --> 00:34:19,800
Speaker 1: And so one culporate our asteroids, asterids that like baying

696
00:34:19,880 --> 00:34:22,759
Speaker 1: into each other, because we have this big collection of

697
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:25,560
Speaker 1: rocks out there between Mars and Jupiter and it's a

698
00:34:25,640 --> 00:34:27,719
Speaker 1: huge number and sometimes they hit each other and they

699
00:34:27,760 --> 00:34:30,880
Speaker 1: break up and that causes debris, and so people thought, well,

700
00:34:31,080 --> 00:34:32,920
Speaker 1: you know that must make a mess. You know, it's

701
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:35,080
Speaker 1: like when your kids are cooking, you know, this spray

702
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:38,560
Speaker 1: stuff everywhere. Wow? Yeah, yeah, because I guess you know,

703
00:34:38,640 --> 00:34:40,880
Speaker 1: the soliar sistem system is trying to clean itself. But

704
00:34:40,960 --> 00:34:44,560
Speaker 1: maybe whenever too asteroids crash, they just created a big

705
00:34:44,680 --> 00:34:48,279
Speaker 1: dust of basically rock little rocks, right, and so maybe

706
00:34:48,360 --> 00:34:51,440
Speaker 1: that's polluting the Solar system. That definitely is part of it.

707
00:34:51,520 --> 00:34:55,279
Speaker 1: And another culprit are comets. Remember, we have these objects

708
00:34:55,320 --> 00:34:58,640
Speaker 1: out there in the art cloud, these frozen balls, probably

709
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:01,960
Speaker 1: trillions of them really are out, thousands and thousands of

710
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:04,480
Speaker 1: au out there. It's really sort of incredible. Those of

711
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:06,239
Speaker 1: you interested in that kind of stuff, check out our

712
00:35:06,239 --> 00:35:10,000
Speaker 1: whole podcast episode about the rag cloud. Really amazing stuff.

713
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:12,880
Speaker 1: But what happens when comments come through the Solar system?

714
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:16,040
Speaker 1: They zoom down towards the Sun and the Sun blows

715
00:35:16,040 --> 00:35:18,160
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff off of them. Right. Why do

716
00:35:18,239 --> 00:35:21,279
Speaker 1: comments have tails? Not because they literally have tails, but

717
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:24,360
Speaker 1: because the Sun is boiling them away and stuff is

718
00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:27,319
Speaker 1: leaving the comet and so you can literally see it

719
00:35:27,520 --> 00:35:30,319
Speaker 1: leaving dust in a trail across the sky. That's what

720
00:35:30,400 --> 00:35:34,200
Speaker 1: the commets tail is. So that was another potential contribution to,

721
00:35:34,719 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 1: you know, the mysterious source of the space dust. If

722
00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:39,920
Speaker 1: it was comments would in those little grains that does

723
00:35:39,960 --> 00:35:42,879
Speaker 1: be made out of water. Then yeah, some of them are, right,

724
00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:44,840
Speaker 1: some of the space dust does come from water. And

725
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:47,520
Speaker 1: as you say, the more we can study this space us,

726
00:35:47,520 --> 00:35:50,080
Speaker 1: the more we can figure out like who's contributing it,

727
00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:53,600
Speaker 1: because asteroids and comments are made out of very different things.

728
00:35:53,920 --> 00:35:57,520
Speaker 1: So those are two potential sources. Where where this mysterious dust.

729
00:35:57,560 --> 00:35:59,279
Speaker 1: But one other clue we know about it is that

730
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:03,080
Speaker 1: it's sort of slowly falling into the solar system, right

731
00:36:03,320 --> 00:36:05,359
Speaker 1: like it's it doesn't seem to be kind of like

732
00:36:05,520 --> 00:36:08,520
Speaker 1: um made here. Maybe it's it seems to be sort

733
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:12,040
Speaker 1: of moving and spiraling. Yeah, it's definitely spiraling in towards

734
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:14,319
Speaker 1: the Sun. And if you look at a map for

735
00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:17,279
Speaker 1: like where it is, it's densest nearest the sun, right,

736
00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:20,040
Speaker 1: so the Sun pulls this stuff in. And you might wonder, like, well,

737
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:22,560
Speaker 1: why doesn't the dust itself just orbit the way the

738
00:36:22,600 --> 00:36:25,440
Speaker 1: Earth does, like the Earth maybe very slowly falling in

739
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:28,160
Speaker 1: towards the Sun, but it's or it's not decaying that rapidly.

740
00:36:28,320 --> 00:36:30,560
Speaker 1: And the reason is that these things do absorb a

741
00:36:30,560 --> 00:36:32,759
Speaker 1: good amount of light and then they radiate that light

742
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:35,640
Speaker 1: off and that slows them down. So they're like absorbing

743
00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:37,840
Speaker 1: some of this energy and shooting it back off, so

744
00:36:37,920 --> 00:36:40,879
Speaker 1: that tends to slow them down, and so mostly it's

745
00:36:40,920 --> 00:36:44,320
Speaker 1: dense near the Sun and then it drops off extends

746
00:36:44,320 --> 00:36:47,520
Speaker 1: out just past Mars, and past that there's really not

747
00:36:47,719 --> 00:36:52,080
Speaker 1: very much space dust interesting, So it's not coming from

748
00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:54,879
Speaker 1: outside the Solar System. Maybe, is that kind of sort

749
00:36:54,880 --> 00:36:57,759
Speaker 1: of the what you would draw from that, since it's

750
00:36:57,760 --> 00:37:00,000
Speaker 1: only sort of in the inner Solar System, it's most

751
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:01,560
Speaker 1: see in the inner Solar System. The truth is, we

752
00:37:01,560 --> 00:37:03,640
Speaker 1: don't really know what's going on in the outer Solar

753
00:37:03,640 --> 00:37:06,279
Speaker 1: System because we don't have great detectors. Like these things

754
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:08,319
Speaker 1: are hard to measure, and as you get further out,

755
00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:10,399
Speaker 1: it's less and less and dense, which means it's harder

756
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:12,440
Speaker 1: and harder to find them. So we actually have very

757
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:14,960
Speaker 1: little data for the outer Solar System, but it seems

758
00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:17,680
Speaker 1: like it drops in density, it's ends around Mars, and

759
00:37:17,719 --> 00:37:20,560
Speaker 1: then there's basically nothing before Jupiter. Jupiter is like a

760
00:37:20,600 --> 00:37:24,040
Speaker 1: giant vacuum cleaner that like sucks up everything. But also

761
00:37:24,080 --> 00:37:26,000
Speaker 1: we do think that a little bit of it probably

762
00:37:26,040 --> 00:37:30,320
Speaker 1: does come from outside the Solar System. These interstellar star grains,

763
00:37:30,400 --> 00:37:34,440
Speaker 1: these leftover bits from the surfaces of stars that formed

764
00:37:34,440 --> 00:37:37,080
Speaker 1: and are floating out there. Some of those do appear

765
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:40,320
Speaker 1: in our Solar System as space dust, but it's probably

766
00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:44,200
Speaker 1: not a huge contribution though. It's super fascinating actually because

767
00:37:44,239 --> 00:37:47,439
Speaker 1: you can tell what the stage of the star's life

768
00:37:47,440 --> 00:37:50,760
Speaker 1: when the grains were formed because of the materials fusing

769
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:54,160
Speaker 1: inside of them. Yeah. Absolutely, And you can like see

770
00:37:54,200 --> 00:37:58,719
Speaker 1: grains that were made specifically during supernova, like these specific chemicals,

771
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:02,160
Speaker 1: these specific elements that can only refused during supernova, and

772
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:04,840
Speaker 1: these they make these specific grains which you can find

773
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:08,080
Speaker 1: on Earth and use them to do studies. It's really

774
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:11,440
Speaker 1: kind of amazing the sort of stellar archaeology you can

775
00:38:11,480 --> 00:38:15,080
Speaker 1: do by looking at these interstellar grains. But for space dust,

776
00:38:15,160 --> 00:38:17,880
Speaker 1: that's like a tiny fraction of what's out there. Interesting,

777
00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:20,360
Speaker 1: So then the origin of this dust must be within

778
00:38:20,400 --> 00:38:23,000
Speaker 1: our Solar system. Then it seems like it's within our

779
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:25,880
Speaker 1: Solar system. And so you know, one culpritive course is

780
00:38:25,920 --> 00:38:28,319
Speaker 1: the asteroids, and the asteroids are out there sort of

781
00:38:28,360 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 1: past Mars, and so that doesn't really fit right because

782
00:38:31,239 --> 00:38:33,840
Speaker 1: the space dust is densest near the Sun and it

783
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:36,759
Speaker 1: sort of dies out just around Mars. And if it

784
00:38:36,840 --> 00:38:39,720
Speaker 1: was being generated in the asteroid belt, which is between

785
00:38:39,760 --> 00:38:42,239
Speaker 1: Mars and Jupiter, you would expect a lot more of

786
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:44,239
Speaker 1: it to be out there, but it gets cleaner and

787
00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:47,960
Speaker 1: cleaner as you get closer to the asteroid belt. Couldn't

788
00:38:47,960 --> 00:38:50,880
Speaker 1: it originate in the asteroid belt and then fall into

789
00:38:50,920 --> 00:38:53,040
Speaker 1: the inner Solar System and that's why you would see

790
00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:54,920
Speaker 1: you sort of see it, you know, not there and

791
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:57,640
Speaker 1: more here, But that would have a different distribution. You

792
00:38:57,640 --> 00:39:00,000
Speaker 1: would definitely see more of it in the asteroid belt

793
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:02,439
Speaker 1: before it falls in, right, But we see almost none

794
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:04,880
Speaker 1: of it there. So they have some ways to study

795
00:39:04,920 --> 00:39:07,359
Speaker 1: these things. They have some detectors that they send up,

796
00:39:07,400 --> 00:39:09,960
Speaker 1: Like basically every probe that we send end to the

797
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:12,839
Speaker 1: Solar System has a dust detector on it. But these

798
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:16,080
Speaker 1: things are pretty small. Like the New Horizons probe had

799
00:39:16,080 --> 00:39:18,120
Speaker 1: a dust detector on it, but it was like an

800
00:39:18,200 --> 00:39:21,160
Speaker 1: eighth of a meter squared, which is pretty small. And

801
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:23,800
Speaker 1: these things are pretty hard to catch because they're moving

802
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:26,080
Speaker 1: so fast. So our studies of these things have been

803
00:39:26,080 --> 00:39:31,320
Speaker 1: pretty limited until we accidentally invented an awesome space dust detector.

804
00:39:31,560 --> 00:39:35,279
Speaker 1: We accidentally invented it. We accidentally invented it. Yeah, we

805
00:39:35,360 --> 00:39:38,160
Speaker 1: built this other probe called Juno to go discover Jupiter

806
00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:41,760
Speaker 1: and it has on it these incredibly huge solar panels.

807
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:45,320
Speaker 1: These solar panels are like sixty square meters of solar

808
00:39:45,440 --> 00:39:48,080
Speaker 1: arrays to power this thing and on it, they also

809
00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:50,719
Speaker 1: have cameras, and these cameras are on the spacecraft, so

810
00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:53,120
Speaker 1: they can take pictures of the stars and you know,

811
00:39:53,160 --> 00:39:56,839
Speaker 1: orient themselves for navigation and basically tell the spacecraft where

812
00:39:56,880 --> 00:40:00,520
Speaker 1: it is. And they're constantly taking pictures. Well, one scientist, Denmark,

813
00:40:00,600 --> 00:40:02,040
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, we can do something else

814
00:40:02,080 --> 00:40:04,840
Speaker 1: with these. We could also try to catch pictures of

815
00:40:04,880 --> 00:40:07,680
Speaker 1: asteroids as we fly around the Solar System to see

816
00:40:07,680 --> 00:40:10,239
Speaker 1: if maybe there are any asteroids we missed. So he

817
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:13,120
Speaker 1: programmed this camera not just to do that navigation, but

818
00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:15,960
Speaker 1: to let him know if it spotted any new objects,

819
00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:19,200
Speaker 1: any unknown objects in the Solar System, because he thought, hey,

820
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 1: it'd be cool to discover a couple of new asteroids

821
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:24,480
Speaker 1: along the way. Interesting, like how is he or is

822
00:40:24,480 --> 00:40:27,440
Speaker 1: she expecting to find these asteroids like you know, like

823
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:29,480
Speaker 1: a photo bomb almost like if you're looking out at

824
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:31,040
Speaker 1: this base and it's like, hey, wait a minute, that

825
00:40:31,160 --> 00:40:33,960
Speaker 1: the little pinpoint they're glowing. You don't see it from Earth,

826
00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:36,440
Speaker 1: so it must be like an asteroid fly by, yea,

827
00:40:36,520 --> 00:40:38,839
Speaker 1: So it has these cameras any programmed to look for

828
00:40:38,920 --> 00:40:41,719
Speaker 1: any glint of light that corresponds to an object that's

829
00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:44,520
Speaker 1: not in the databasis, because that's how you see asteroids

830
00:40:44,600 --> 00:40:47,399
Speaker 1: right at the moment they happen to reflect light off

831
00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:49,680
Speaker 1: the Sun at just the right angle. So they have

832
00:40:49,760 --> 00:40:52,400
Speaker 1: a catalog of the known asteroids and they know where

833
00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:54,239
Speaker 1: the thing is pointing, so they can tell what they

834
00:40:54,280 --> 00:40:57,240
Speaker 1: should be able to see, you know, stars and visible asteroids,

835
00:40:57,239 --> 00:41:00,319
Speaker 1: and so any new source there is something interesting. And

836
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:02,839
Speaker 1: so he programmed this thing. He thought I'd probably not

837
00:41:02,880 --> 00:41:05,400
Speaker 1: find anything, and then it started flying through the Solar

838
00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:09,840
Speaker 1: System and his camera went crazy. There's like crazy numbers

839
00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:13,120
Speaker 1: of images. He's like thousands and thousands of new things

840
00:41:13,160 --> 00:41:16,080
Speaker 1: that nobody had seen before. Wait what So they took

841
00:41:16,120 --> 00:41:18,880
Speaker 1: these pictures while it was flying to Jupiter, and it

842
00:41:18,920 --> 00:41:20,920
Speaker 1: turns out that there is a lot more than that

843
00:41:21,080 --> 00:41:23,239
Speaker 1: is not in the database. There's they saw a lot

844
00:41:23,280 --> 00:41:26,280
Speaker 1: of streaks in there that they couldn't identify as things

845
00:41:26,280 --> 00:41:28,920
Speaker 1: in the database. And at first I thought, oh, something's

846
00:41:28,920 --> 00:41:31,719
Speaker 1: wrong with the spacecraft. It's like leaking fuel or something.

847
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:34,400
Speaker 1: We're like, you know, seeing the death of our spacecraft.

848
00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:36,480
Speaker 1: They couldn't believe that these things were like actually real

849
00:41:36,600 --> 00:41:38,960
Speaker 1: objects out there in the Solar system, and so they

850
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:41,120
Speaker 1: were really wondering what these things were, like what is

851
00:41:41,160 --> 00:41:43,960
Speaker 1: going on here? And it turned out that what's happening

852
00:41:44,480 --> 00:41:47,280
Speaker 1: is that it's space dust. You're not seeing the space

853
00:41:47,400 --> 00:41:50,480
Speaker 1: dust itself because these particles are really small and very

854
00:41:50,520 --> 00:41:53,560
Speaker 1: fast moving. But the space dust was slamming into their

855
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:57,200
Speaker 1: huge solar panels in the back and then like chipping

856
00:41:57,239 --> 00:42:00,239
Speaker 1: off a little piece that was then bouncing back, and

857
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:03,360
Speaker 1: they were seeing that. So they're seeing like space dust

858
00:42:03,719 --> 00:42:07,320
Speaker 1: ricocheting little bits off of their space probe. Wait what

859
00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 1: so wait, they weren't seeing the actual dust there was

860
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:13,640
Speaker 1: seeing the dust bouncing off of the solar panel. What's

861
00:42:13,680 --> 00:42:17,440
Speaker 1: the difference. They're seeing shrapnel from the solar panel. So,

862
00:42:17,640 --> 00:42:20,520
Speaker 1: like you know, it's like you shoot a space dust

863
00:42:20,560 --> 00:42:22,840
Speaker 1: at this thing and it knocks off a tiny little

864
00:42:22,840 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 1: bit of the solar panel and then that's what you see.

865
00:42:25,400 --> 00:42:28,080
Speaker 1: Really whoa Well, first of all, that's kind of bad news,

866
00:42:28,160 --> 00:42:31,480
Speaker 1: isn't It means your solar panels is going to disintegrate

867
00:42:31,520 --> 00:42:34,279
Speaker 1: and eventually, But why is the shrapnel more visible than

868
00:42:34,280 --> 00:42:36,399
Speaker 1: the actual dust. Yeah, that's a good question. I think

869
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:40,360
Speaker 1: the shrapnel itself is larger and probably more reflective. M M,

870
00:42:40,719 --> 00:42:42,600
Speaker 1: I see, like the actual dust you can't see, but

871
00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:45,759
Speaker 1: you can't see these little chips of solar panel. And

872
00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:48,759
Speaker 1: also the dust is moving really really fast and the

873
00:42:48,760 --> 00:42:51,160
Speaker 1: shrapnel is probably moving more slowly, so it's easier to

874
00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:55,720
Speaker 1: capture in a camera frame. WHOA, So we inadvertently created

875
00:42:55,840 --> 00:43:01,200
Speaker 1: a dust detector slash deteriorating solar panel. Yeah, so this

876
00:43:01,280 --> 00:43:05,600
Speaker 1: effectively became the largest space dust detector ever by a

877
00:43:05,640 --> 00:43:09,279
Speaker 1: factor of a thousand. Right, there are dedicated dust detectors

878
00:43:09,280 --> 00:43:11,319
Speaker 1: that have been flown out through the solar system, but

879
00:43:11,400 --> 00:43:14,520
Speaker 1: there are a thousand times smaller than the solar panels

880
00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:16,720
Speaker 1: of Juno, which in effect turned out to be pretty

881
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:19,400
Speaker 1: sensitive to space dust. But only because we sort of

882
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:22,400
Speaker 1: put cameras by accident looking at the solar panels or not.

883
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:24,239
Speaker 1: Are they are they're looking at the panels? Are it's

884
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:26,920
Speaker 1: sort of looking behind the panels. Well, they're sort of

885
00:43:26,920 --> 00:43:28,800
Speaker 1: looking in all directions, But some of the ones that

886
00:43:28,840 --> 00:43:31,400
Speaker 1: are pointing like behind the panels are the ones that

887
00:43:31,440 --> 00:43:34,239
Speaker 1: can capture these little shrapnels when it's space dust hits

888
00:43:34,280 --> 00:43:37,040
Speaker 1: the satellites. Solar panels the back side of them, which

889
00:43:37,120 --> 00:43:39,279
Speaker 1: fortunately the back side of them is the side that's

890
00:43:39,280 --> 00:43:41,480
Speaker 1: pointed away from the Sun, and so it's picking up

891
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:43,880
Speaker 1: the space dust as it flies out of the Solar system,

892
00:43:43,920 --> 00:43:46,560
Speaker 1: and are also much more protected. Right the front side

893
00:43:46,560 --> 00:43:49,000
Speaker 1: of the side that's sensitive, that's pointed towards the Sun

894
00:43:49,080 --> 00:43:51,200
Speaker 1: is much more delicate. That's that's a little dangerous, Like

895
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:53,600
Speaker 1: what if I was out there flying through space, wouldn't

896
00:43:53,600 --> 00:43:55,880
Speaker 1: I sort of be pelted by these things? And then

897
00:43:55,920 --> 00:43:59,640
Speaker 1: wouldn't they also trying into shrapnel. Yes, space is dangerous,

898
00:43:59,640 --> 00:44:01,560
Speaker 1: and if you're flying at very high speeds through space,

899
00:44:01,600 --> 00:44:04,600
Speaker 1: you need to worry about little particles and micro meteorites

900
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:07,680
Speaker 1: and space dust. These grains carry a lot of kinetic

901
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:10,680
Speaker 1: energy if you're moving at high speed. So yeah, absolutely

902
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:12,960
Speaker 1: be careful next time you take that trip. Although I

903
00:44:12,960 --> 00:44:15,040
Speaker 1: guess if I can fly through space, it must be

904
00:44:15,080 --> 00:44:18,600
Speaker 1: pretty indestructible like Superman. But this is a great source

905
00:44:18,640 --> 00:44:22,440
Speaker 1: of data. They captured more than fifteen thousands of these collisions,

906
00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:25,040
Speaker 1: which lets them make a really detailed measurement of the

907
00:44:25,120 --> 00:44:28,279
Speaker 1: density of dust in the inner Solar System, much more

908
00:44:28,320 --> 00:44:30,680
Speaker 1: detail than anything we had before, and it told us

909
00:44:30,680 --> 00:44:32,440
Speaker 1: the story, which was a little bit of a surprise.

910
00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:34,919
Speaker 1: What have we learned? Well, we knew that the dust

911
00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:37,040
Speaker 1: was dropping in density, but now we have much more

912
00:44:37,040 --> 00:44:39,840
Speaker 1: detail that it ends like sort of just after Mars.

913
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:43,080
Speaker 1: There's basically no dust after Mars, you know, until you

914
00:44:43,120 --> 00:44:45,760
Speaker 1: get to Jupiter. Past Jupiter, there's some dust, but Jupiter

915
00:44:45,840 --> 00:44:48,840
Speaker 1: like basically cleans up everything else. But there's no dust

916
00:44:48,880 --> 00:44:51,640
Speaker 1: basically between Mars and Jupiter, which sort of rules out

917
00:44:51,680 --> 00:44:54,640
Speaker 1: the asteroid belt as a large source of this dust.

918
00:44:55,040 --> 00:44:58,960
Speaker 1: Interesting because there is no dust close to the asteroid belt,

919
00:44:59,040 --> 00:45:02,040
Speaker 1: like you said, yeah, exactly, it sort of ends after Mars.

920
00:45:02,080 --> 00:45:04,759
Speaker 1: So then people thought, well, well what else could it be?

921
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 1: And it starts kind of around Mars, and so they thought,

922
00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:11,680
Speaker 1: Mars is kind of dusty. What if it's coming from Mars?

923
00:45:12,120 --> 00:45:16,640
Speaker 1: What mm hmm. But wouldn't Mars suck in dust just

924
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:19,040
Speaker 1: like the Earth. Mars does suck in some dust, but

925
00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:21,200
Speaker 1: you know, it's much smaller than Earth and so it

926
00:45:21,239 --> 00:45:23,719
Speaker 1: doesn't have its powerful gravity, and what it does have

927
00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:26,640
Speaker 1: are powerful dust storms. So they don't yet have an

928
00:45:26,680 --> 00:45:29,960
Speaker 1: understanding for like how the dust is leaving Mars, but

929
00:45:30,080 --> 00:45:33,600
Speaker 1: it has a weaker atmosphere and weaker gravity and powerful

930
00:45:33,680 --> 00:45:36,480
Speaker 1: dust storms, and so they suspect that Mars might be

931
00:45:36,520 --> 00:45:39,200
Speaker 1: the source of this dust, that little grains of stuff

932
00:45:39,239 --> 00:45:43,720
Speaker 1: are leaving Mars and basically polluting our solar system. Whoa,

933
00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:47,600
Speaker 1: whoa wait wait wait to a storm on Mars is

934
00:45:47,719 --> 00:45:51,839
Speaker 1: powerful enough to like throw things out into space, like

935
00:45:51,920 --> 00:45:54,319
Speaker 1: to have it with enough velocity to have you know,

936
00:45:54,400 --> 00:45:56,879
Speaker 1: escape velocity, because that that doesn't happen on Earth, right,

937
00:45:56,920 --> 00:45:59,359
Speaker 1: Like the Earth doesn't speak stuff out into space, does it. Well,

938
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:01,319
Speaker 1: the Earth sort of does spew stuff out into space.

939
00:46:01,360 --> 00:46:04,920
Speaker 1: Like our atmosphere, we're constantly losing it out into space

940
00:46:05,160 --> 00:46:08,000
Speaker 1: the upper edge of the atmosphere. The hottest molecules are

941
00:46:08,040 --> 00:46:11,600
Speaker 1: definitely flying out or we're losing our atmosphere gradually. And

942
00:46:11,640 --> 00:46:13,719
Speaker 1: also some of that are going to be dust particles

943
00:46:13,719 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 1: that are floating up there in the upper atmosphere. But

944
00:46:15,880 --> 00:46:18,239
Speaker 1: we have stronger gravity which makes it easier for us

945
00:46:18,280 --> 00:46:20,319
Speaker 1: to hang onto our atmosphere. But this is a part

946
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:22,840
Speaker 1: of the theory that's sort of still speculative. They don't

947
00:46:22,920 --> 00:46:26,120
Speaker 1: have a very solid model for how the dust gets

948
00:46:26,160 --> 00:46:28,759
Speaker 1: off of Mars. They just have this sort of coincidential

949
00:46:28,800 --> 00:46:31,880
Speaker 1: evidence that it seems to start around Mars, you know,

950
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:33,759
Speaker 1: and so it's sort of like your son was in

951
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:36,000
Speaker 1: the kitchen and then it was a big mess, and

952
00:46:36,000 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 1: you're like, Mars is sous? Are you saying Mars is suns?

953
00:46:40,239 --> 00:46:45,920
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly? It is red interesting, but it sounds like

954
00:46:45,920 --> 00:46:47,959
Speaker 1: we have some candidates. So it could be comments. It

955
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:51,160
Speaker 1: could still be asteroids, but maybe not so much. And

956
00:46:51,239 --> 00:46:54,120
Speaker 1: but now people are suspecting Mars. Yeah, and so it's

957
00:46:54,120 --> 00:46:57,719
Speaker 1: an activearya of research, and this is like a new element, knew,

958
00:46:57,800 --> 00:47:00,520
Speaker 1: something else to throw into the mix. Probably answer is

959
00:47:00,560 --> 00:47:02,160
Speaker 1: a little bit of all of them. There's going to

960
00:47:02,239 --> 00:47:06,640
Speaker 1: be some interstellar dust, some common tales, some asteroid debris,

961
00:47:06,680 --> 00:47:09,320
Speaker 1: and maybe some of Mars being a slab. And it

962
00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:11,760
Speaker 1: couldn't be anything else, could it. Could it be Earth

963
00:47:11,800 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 1: also being a little missy or maybe some of the

964
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:16,040
Speaker 1: other planets. It could be, but you know, it sort

965
00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:18,080
Speaker 1: of starts out there near Mars, but it could be

966
00:47:18,120 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 1: that all the planets do contribute a little bit interesting

967
00:47:21,160 --> 00:47:23,319
Speaker 1: And so this is an active area of research, but

968
00:47:23,680 --> 00:47:26,359
Speaker 1: it's not a super popular area, right. Yeah, it's really

969
00:47:26,400 --> 00:47:28,480
Speaker 1: hard to study and there's not a lot of money

970
00:47:28,520 --> 00:47:30,719
Speaker 1: for space dust and these detectors that they put on.

971
00:47:30,760 --> 00:47:33,120
Speaker 1: These probes are sort of small, like the one that

972
00:47:33,239 --> 00:47:36,279
Speaker 1: was on New Horizons was built by students, sort of

973
00:47:36,320 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: low budget experiment, really awesome, but not like the hottest topic,

974
00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:42,880
Speaker 1: and sort of slow moving progress. So slow moving that

975
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:46,319
Speaker 1: one famous scientist took a thirty seven year break from

976
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:48,719
Speaker 1: his PhD thesis and was able to come back and

977
00:47:48,760 --> 00:47:51,680
Speaker 1: finish it and have it still be relevant. Nobody had

978
00:47:51,719 --> 00:47:55,080
Speaker 1: done anything in the meantime. What could this person have

979
00:47:55,120 --> 00:47:57,440
Speaker 1: possibly been doing for the thirty seven years. So this

980
00:47:57,520 --> 00:48:00,920
Speaker 1: is Brian May, who was an astrophysics p HD student

981
00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:03,960
Speaker 1: in V one when the little band he was in

982
00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:07,280
Speaker 1: called Queen started to really take off and he decided

983
00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:11,000
Speaker 1: maybe academia is not for me, and so he went

984
00:48:11,000 --> 00:48:13,399
Speaker 1: off and had a great career with Queen, doing rock

985
00:48:13,440 --> 00:48:16,280
Speaker 1: and roll, etcetera. And then in two thousand and seven

986
00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:19,120
Speaker 1: he thought, I never finished that PhD. I bet that

987
00:48:19,160 --> 00:48:21,239
Speaker 1: would be fun to wrap up, and so he went

988
00:48:21,280 --> 00:48:23,640
Speaker 1: back and they let him finish it and he defended

989
00:48:23,680 --> 00:48:26,319
Speaker 1: his PhD. Yeah it does he hold the record for

990
00:48:26,360 --> 00:48:29,200
Speaker 1: like the longest PhD ever or at least the most

991
00:48:29,400 --> 00:48:31,399
Speaker 1: you know, rock star thesis. I think he does hold

992
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:33,200
Speaker 1: the record for the most number one hits of anyone

993
00:48:33,280 --> 00:48:36,600
Speaker 1: with a PhD. But his PhD was on the zodiacal

994
00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:39,200
Speaker 1: dust cloud, and so what he was measuring was the

995
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:42,840
Speaker 1: velocity of these particles. Yeah, I guess maybe running a

996
00:48:42,880 --> 00:48:48,120
Speaker 1: proposal to study does doesn't make anyone too excited. In yeah,

997
00:48:48,120 --> 00:48:50,439
Speaker 1: it got him excited. I mean, remember that any time

998
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:53,840
Speaker 1: we learned something in science, it's because somebody has dedicated

999
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:56,680
Speaker 1: their life and their career to that topic. When you're

1000
00:48:56,760 --> 00:48:59,560
Speaker 1: learning about, like, you know, the mating rituals of praying Manti,

1001
00:48:59,840 --> 00:49:02,440
Speaker 1: that's because somebody has devoted their life to it. And

1002
00:49:02,480 --> 00:49:06,000
Speaker 1: so everything we learned requires some expert in that area.

1003
00:49:06,440 --> 00:49:09,560
Speaker 1: And you know, Brian May decided that zodiacal dust was

1004
00:49:09,600 --> 00:49:12,400
Speaker 1: going to be his career. Then again, he also abandoned

1005
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:15,279
Speaker 1: it to become the electric guitarist for Queen. But he

1006
00:49:15,320 --> 00:49:17,799
Speaker 1: came back right like he abandoned being a rock star

1007
00:49:18,000 --> 00:49:21,239
Speaker 1: to go into sign So you know he came back.

1008
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:24,120
Speaker 1: What's important. Yeah, well he didn't exactly come back when

1009
00:49:24,200 --> 00:49:27,000
Speaker 1: Queen was at its heyday or anything, but yeah, he

1010
00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:29,600
Speaker 1: stayed number two on his list for a long time. Well,

1011
00:49:29,640 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 1: I guess you know, again, it might you know the

1012
00:49:32,120 --> 00:49:35,160
Speaker 1: origin of this dust, and even though it just does,

1013
00:49:35,239 --> 00:49:36,880
Speaker 1: it might tell us a lot about sort of like

1014
00:49:36,880 --> 00:49:39,920
Speaker 1: how the Solar system works, and maybe how storms and

1015
00:49:39,960 --> 00:49:42,920
Speaker 1: Mars work, and also kind of about the origins of

1016
00:49:42,920 --> 00:49:45,000
Speaker 1: the Solar system, right, and it just gives us sort

1017
00:49:45,040 --> 00:49:47,600
Speaker 1: of a fuller picture of what's going on. We had

1018
00:49:47,640 --> 00:49:50,000
Speaker 1: a sort of simplistic model for the Solar system of

1019
00:49:50,080 --> 00:49:52,200
Speaker 1: mostly being the Sun and a few planets. Now we

1020
00:49:52,200 --> 00:49:54,399
Speaker 1: know there's a lot more going on out there. There's

1021
00:49:54,400 --> 00:49:57,160
Speaker 1: the or Cloud with these trillions of icy objects, and

1022
00:49:57,160 --> 00:50:00,239
Speaker 1: there's space dust and space weather and space wind, and

1023
00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:03,520
Speaker 1: it's really quite a vibrant and full system out There's

1024
00:50:03,520 --> 00:50:06,080
Speaker 1: lots of crazy stuff going on. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty

1025
00:50:06,120 --> 00:50:09,000
Speaker 1: interesting universe Solar system. I think it might be a

1026
00:50:09,040 --> 00:50:13,040
Speaker 1: Gemini the Solar system, which would explain everything. Man, do

1027
00:50:13,120 --> 00:50:15,960
Speaker 1: the constellations have their own zodiac signs, like as the

1028
00:50:16,000 --> 00:50:21,480
Speaker 1: Gemini constellation and aries or something. It sounds like another

1029
00:50:21,560 --> 00:50:24,600
Speaker 1: long PhD thesism to delve into that will take thirty

1030
00:50:24,600 --> 00:50:26,879
Speaker 1: seven years for sure. But yeah, So the next time

1031
00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:29,160
Speaker 1: you look at the sunrise or sunset, keep an eye

1032
00:50:29,200 --> 00:50:31,640
Speaker 1: out for this zodical light, right, you might see it

1033
00:50:31,640 --> 00:50:33,920
Speaker 1: with your naked eye, and you might be looking at

1034
00:50:33,960 --> 00:50:37,880
Speaker 1: a giant mystery that even physicists and rock stars are

1035
00:50:37,920 --> 00:50:40,359
Speaker 1: pondering about. And if you do happen to spot it,

1036
00:50:40,440 --> 00:50:43,000
Speaker 1: or if you see this gagenshine, you were looking at

1037
00:50:43,080 --> 00:50:47,040
Speaker 1: tiny little grains of dust, far far out into space

1038
00:50:47,160 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 1: beaming back their photons to you. Because in the universe,

1039
00:50:50,080 --> 00:50:52,919
Speaker 1: I guess little things add up. That's right. We have crowdsourced,

1040
00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:55,359
Speaker 1: we have dust sourced, a little bit of photons. Give

1041
00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:57,080
Speaker 1: them a little bit of a chore to each one.

1042
00:50:57,560 --> 00:50:59,719
Speaker 1: They'll get it done pretty soon. They're going to unionize,

1043
00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:01,920
Speaker 1: all right. Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for

1044
00:51:02,000 --> 00:51:12,360
Speaker 1: joining us, See you next time. Thanks for listening, and

1045
00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:15,160
Speaker 1: remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is a

1046
00:51:15,160 --> 00:51:18,560
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast for my

1047
00:51:18,719 --> 00:51:22,319
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

1048
00:51:22,400 --> 00:51:26,719
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H