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Speaker 1: Hey, Orge, you work with a lot of scientists. Who
Speaker 1: is the brightest one you've ever interviewed?
Speaker 4: Well, I have made a lot of Nobel Prize winners.
Speaker 4: They're all pretty humble, but yeah, generally they're pretty uh
Speaker 4: sharp at that level, you know, Beams of light or
Speaker 4: shooting out of their eyes. They have an ore of genius.
Speaker 1: So do you think when you're talking to a scientists
Speaker 1: you can predict if they're going to be a future
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize winner?
Speaker 4: If I could, that would be awesome. I could probably
Speaker 4: make a lot of money that way. Aren't there betting
Speaker 4: pools for Nobel Prize winners?
Speaker 1: If there are, you probably qualify as insider information.
Speaker 4: Well, good thing, I'm not a betting person. Hi am
Speaker 4: Jorhemaker Tudas and the author of Oliver's Great Big Universe.
Speaker 1: Hi Daniel, I'm a particle physicist, a professor at you
Speaker 1: see Irvine, and I actually do have a tiny slice
Speaker 1: of a Nobel Prize.
Speaker 4: Ooh, what does that mean? Like they shaved off a
Speaker 4: piece of the metal or something.
Speaker 1: No, I'm one of a large group of collective winners
Speaker 1: of the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 1: Several years ago they gave the Nobel Peace Prize to
Speaker 1: the European Union, and that's back when Britain was a member.
Speaker 1: And I'm a citizen of the UK, so I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if i lost it during Brexit, but I was
Speaker 1: briefly one five hundred millionth of a Nobel Prize winner.
Speaker 4: Oh, I see you and all Europeans have won the
Speaker 4: Nobel Prize. Well, technically you're not a part of Europe,
Speaker 4: so yeah, I think you did lose it.
Speaker 1: I used to round that up to one Nobel Prize.
Speaker 1: Now I guess I got to round it down to zero.
Speaker 4: Zero. Yeah, I think you could have rounded it down
Speaker 4: to zero before. You know, one fortieth million probably maybe
Speaker 4: count to zero.
Speaker 1: Well to me, one five hundred millionth was pretty different
Speaker 1: from zero, but I take your point.
Speaker 4: But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jora Explain
Speaker 4: the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: In which we think everybody deserves a prize for their
Speaker 1: curiosity about the universe. We're here to stimulate that curiosity,
Speaker 1: to encourage it, and to go with you on the
Speaker 1: journey of exploration of understanding the universe. We think, we hope,
Speaker 1: we believe that the universe out there can be understood
Speaker 1: and deserves to be understood, and that everything that scientists
Speaker 1: have figured out so far and that they're puzzling over
Speaker 1: currently deserves to be explained to you.
Speaker 4: That's right. We're here to illuminate the darkest corners of
Speaker 4: science and take you on a trip to the bright
Speaker 4: future of our understanding of how things work and why
Speaker 4: things are the way they are.
Speaker 1: We want to understand everything here on Earth, how water flows,
Speaker 1: how mountains form the history of life, but we also
Speaker 1: want to understand our vast cosmos, what's happening in the
Speaker 1: dark deep reaches of space. How did the universe get
Speaker 1: to look the way that it does. What are the
Speaker 1: most powerful forces on galaxies and stars and galactic clusters
Speaker 1: out there shaping the entire structure of space, time, and
Speaker 1: the universe. And to do that we have to look
Speaker 1: out into the night sky and gather messages that are
Speaker 1: coming here from the rest of the universe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because the cosmos is vast and mostly dark, with
Speaker 4: lots of empty space, But there are some bright spots
Speaker 4: out there making the universe visible to us and giving
Speaker 4: us information about what's out there in the farthest reaches
Speaker 4: of existence.
Speaker 1: Though very few humans have actually left the surface of
Speaker 1: the Earth for significant periods of time and entered even
Speaker 1: our space neighborhood, we have a pretty good understanding of
Speaker 1: what's going on in the rest of our galaxy, the
Speaker 1: structure of galaxies beyond that, and all of that comes
Speaker 1: from gathering that information that's beamed to us from the
Speaker 1: rest of the universe. Imagine if instead the universe was
Speaker 1: totally dark, we would have no idea what was out there.
Speaker 1: We're grateful that at least some little fraction of it
Speaker 1: is shining brightly and letting us know, oh what it's
Speaker 1: up to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there are things happening all over the universe creating light,
Speaker 4: blasting it out into the universe, but some of them
Speaker 4: are maybe a little bit stronger than others.
Speaker 1: That's right. We have a whole series of episodes about
Speaker 1: the darkest things in the universe, dark matter, and the
Speaker 1: mysteries of the missing gravity. But today in the podcast,
Speaker 1: we're going to go in exactly the opposite direction.
Speaker 4: So to On the podcast, we'll be tackling the question
Speaker 4: what was the brightest explosion ever seen?
Speaker 1: And was it that moment when Jorge finally understood particle physics? Boom,
Speaker 1: mind a blown as it happened. I'm anticipating it, man,
Speaker 1: we're building up to it.
Speaker 4: Has that even happened for you?
Speaker 1: You know, there's that old quote, if you think you
Speaker 1: understand quantum field theory, then you don't understand quantum field theory.
Speaker 1: So it's a matter of degrees, I think.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's a dimmer setting a light bulb of
Speaker 4: quantum physics. But yeah, there are explosions happening all over
Speaker 4: the universe, and some of them are incredibly bright, and
Speaker 4: some of them are less bright. But maybe we haven't
Speaker 4: seen all of them. Maybe there are some that we
Speaker 4: have managed to see out there.
Speaker 1: Something that's wonderful about exploring the universe is being shocked
Speaker 1: by the scale of it. Learning how deep the history
Speaker 1: of time is, not thousands of years, not millions of years,
Speaker 1: but billions of years, Learning how large the universe is,
Speaker 1: how many billions of light years across stuff has spread out.
Speaker 1: These enormous scales that shock our understanding also serve to
Speaker 1: give us a better context for our existence. Turns out
Speaker 1: the Earth and the Milky Way are a tiny little
Speaker 1: speck of dust in the vast cosmos. But there are
Speaker 1: other dimensions to be shocked. In the sun you think
Speaker 1: is quite bright, it turns out the universe gets much much,
Speaker 1: much brighter than that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the universe never sees this to make us all
Speaker 4: feel tiny and insignificant and short lived compared to the
Speaker 4: scale of the cosmos. And its existence. As you said,
Speaker 4: there are things that maybe would even shock of physicists
Speaker 4: about how bright they are.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and today we're going to be learning about the
Speaker 1: brightest of all time what physicists called the boat the
Speaker 1: boat boat.
Speaker 4: The biggest of all time, the brightest of.
Speaker 1: All time, not the banana East of all time.
Speaker 5: The.
Speaker 4: Amazing of all time. So, as usual, we were wondering
Speaker 4: how many people out there had thought about this question
Speaker 4: about what is the brightest explosion ever seen in the universe.
Speaker 4: So Daniel went out there as usual to ask people
Speaker 4: this question.
Speaker 1: Thanks very much to everybody who plays for this segment
Speaker 1: of the podcast, and if you'd like to hear your
Speaker 1: voice for future episodes, please don't be shy. We would
Speaker 1: love to add you to our group. Write to me
Speaker 1: two questions at Danielanjorge dot com to volunteer, or send
Speaker 1: me questions, or send me ideas or pictures of your cats. Whatever.
Speaker 1: We love to hear from listeners.
Speaker 4: And today, Daniel, what are our players playing for?
Speaker 1: They're playing for the recognition of having their voice on
Speaker 1: the podcast. Their friends and relatives.
Speaker 4: Will all be jealous, They'll be brightly jealous.
Speaker 1: They're playing for the biggest banana of all time.
Speaker 4: So think about it for a second. What do you
Speaker 4: think is the brightest explosion ever seen? Here's what people
Speaker 4: had to say.
Speaker 5: I am going to say that is a supernova explosion,
Speaker 5: either that or the source of whatever gamma ray bursts are.
Speaker 6: The biggest explosion ever seen would have to be the
Speaker 6: Big Bang, although there was nobody around to see it.
Speaker 6: We can still see the cosmic microwave background radiation, so
Speaker 6: we still can see it. But that's not really bright anymore.
Speaker 1: So I don't know.
Speaker 6: You got me in a quandary here, So it's probably
Speaker 6: a supernova.
Speaker 7: I would imagine the Big Bang was pretty bright, maybe
Speaker 7: gamma ray burse but maybe something to do with merging
Speaker 7: black holes or merging neutron stars. I guess bright doesn't
Speaker 7: necessarily have to be in our visible spectrum.
Speaker 4: All right, A couple of answers. Kind of a trick
Speaker 4: answers here. The Big Bang was maybe the biggest explosion.
Speaker 4: Can't argue with that.
Speaker 1: You can't actually argue with that. I don't think of
Speaker 1: the Big Bang as an explosion. I think of it
Speaker 1: as an expansion.
Speaker 4: Oh, I see, you're gonna use grammar to disqualify their answer.
Speaker 1: I know, words meanings, words having meanings are so annoying.
Speaker 4: I know it should just all be bath right, But
Speaker 4: I mean, you do call it the Big Bang? I
Speaker 4: mean yourself are saying it's a bang.
Speaker 1: Well, you know there's that famous story about how the
Speaker 1: Big Bang was not named by anybody who actually believed
Speaker 1: in the Big Bang, but by proponents of the steady
Speaker 1: state theory.
Speaker 4: Physicis still call it the Big Bang?
Speaker 1: Right, they do still call it the Big Bang?
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely, they don't call it the Big Stretch or
Speaker 4: the Big Expansion.
Speaker 1: I think we should call it the Big Stretch. I
Speaker 1: think that's a much better name. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Maybe we should amend the title of this episode
Speaker 4: to what was the biggest explosion besides the Big Bang?
Speaker 1: The brightest explosion? Though? Yeah, good question. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how you measure the brightness of the Big Bang.
Speaker 4: Now, the way we phrased this question, what was the
Speaker 4: brightest explosion ever seen? Are we only counting the ones
Speaker 4: that we've seen or that we think happened, or is
Speaker 4: that the same?
Speaker 1: Well, we're only going to talk about the ones that
Speaker 1: we've seen. But as soon as you've seen something extraordinarily bright,
Speaker 1: it means that there's something out there capable of making
Speaker 1: very very bright explosions, and it's very unlikely you've seen
Speaker 1: the brightest one. So it's like discovering a unicorn. You figure, ooh,
Speaker 1: there are probably other unicorns in the forest, maybe even
Speaker 1: with longer horns. So we could only talk about the
Speaker 1: brightest one we've seen. That suggests that there are very
Speaker 1: likely even brighter explosions out there we haven't seen.
Speaker 4: But that's an assumption, right, I mean, there could just
Speaker 4: be one unicorn out there in the universe.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, it's a statistical statement. But yes, as soon
Speaker 1: as you discover one unicorn, you figure, like, well, probably
Speaker 1: had parents, maybe it had siblings. You know, there are
Speaker 1: probably other unicorns out there, but it could be the
Speaker 1: sole unicorn, you know, created by a random collection of
Speaker 1: quantum fluctuations. That's also a possibility, even if it's unlikely.
Speaker 4: It could be the unicorn of unicorn spotting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we could sell it for a billion dollars. That
Speaker 1: should be our startup. My start idea is, give me
Speaker 1: a billion dollars, I will make you a unicorn, and
Speaker 1: then it'll be a unicorn startup.
Speaker 4: You would only make one unicorn otherwise, it's not worth much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but if you only have one, you can set
Speaker 1: the price, right. I Mean, I'm not an economist.
Speaker 4: But I think that's how economy worries. Sure, well, that's
Speaker 4: our problem.
Speaker 1: We're selling shares in our unicorns, folks, Unicorn singular.
Speaker 4: But anyways, it's an interesting question. Well, what's the brightest
Speaker 4: explosion ever seen? And so Daniel steps through, what are
Speaker 4: some things that can cause explosions in the universe?
Speaker 1: Well, first, I think it's useful to think about brightness, Like,
Speaker 1: what do we mean by brightness? Obviously, you're very bright,
Speaker 1: All of our listeners are very bright, our children are
Speaker 1: very bright. But when we talk about brightness in an
Speaker 1: astronomical setting, what we mean is like how many photons
Speaker 1: are arriving from it to Earth. And it used to
Speaker 1: be that astronomy only really dealt with photons. We had
Speaker 1: telescopes that could see photons. We used our eyeballs. These days, though,
Speaker 1: we have other devices like particle detectors and gravitational wave
Speaker 1: detectors that can see other kinds of messengers from astronomical events.
Speaker 4: Now, would brightness and photons be the best way to
Speaker 4: measure the energy of an explosion like could there be
Speaker 4: an explosion that maybe you know, throws up part other
Speaker 4: kinds of particles more than photons or neutrinos or something
Speaker 4: like that that might have more energy but be less bright,
Speaker 4: or there's like a pretty good indication of the energy.
Speaker 1: No, different astronomical events have a different fraction their energy
Speaker 1: produced in photons, in neutrinos, or in gravitational waves. So
Speaker 1: the best way to do astronomy they call these days
Speaker 1: multi messenger astronomy, where you're looking for photons and you're
Speaker 1: looking for particles, and you're looking for gravitational waves. It's
Speaker 1: the best way to get a handle on what happened.
Speaker 1: For example, when we look at neutrons star collisions, you
Speaker 1: can sometimes see a gravitational wave and also see light
Speaker 1: from the collision. But sometimes like supernova can release huge
Speaker 1: amounts of energy just in neutrinos, because when the neutrinos
Speaker 1: are produced in the supernova, they're not reabsorbed, they just
Speaker 1: fly right out because the supernova itself, though it's super dense,
Speaker 1: is also transparent to those neutrinos, whereas photons get reabsorbed.
Speaker 1: So definitely there are things that are brighter in neutrinos
Speaker 1: than in photons, so that makes it very, very complicated.
Speaker 1: I think today, let's just focus on the photons.
Speaker 4: Okay, let's just focus on the photons, because my eyeballs
Speaker 4: can't see neutrinos yet.
Speaker 1: You'd have to have eyeballs the size of swimming pools.
Speaker 4: Oh, Daniel, that's very flattering. Thank you. You say my
Speaker 4: eyes are endless pools of of chlorinated water. Yeah, of
Speaker 4: physics detection technology.
Speaker 1: Yes, you're like an anime character with big eyes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: And the other issue with brightness is that it depends
Speaker 1: a little bit on where you are. Like you could
Speaker 1: have a really bright source, but it's really really far away,
Speaker 1: and so it appears quite dim. Like when quasars were
Speaker 1: first discovered, they were quite bright in the sky, and
Speaker 1: then we discovered, oh my gosh, they're also super dup
Speaker 1: far away, which means at their source they're extraordinarily bright.
Speaker 1: So what astronomers typically do is define brightness by how
Speaker 1: bright something would seem if you were one AU away
Speaker 1: from it, If you were like the distance the Earth
Speaker 1: is from the Sun away from that object, how bright
Speaker 1: would it be.
Speaker 4: That's what an AU is, right, It's like an Earth
Speaker 4: distance from the Sun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: All right, so step us through, like how bright are
Speaker 4: things in the night sky?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so if you define the Sun as brightness of one,
Speaker 1: then you can look at things like some of the
Speaker 1: biggest stars that are out there, Like the biggest brightest
Speaker 1: star ever discovered. It's three hundred and fifteen solar masses.
Speaker 1: It's got the amazing name of R one three six
Speaker 1: a one, and it's eight point three million times brighter
Speaker 1: than the Sun. Like if you took that star, what, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you took that star and put it in our solar
Speaker 1: system and looked up at the sky, it would be
Speaker 1: eight point three million times as intense as the Sun.
Speaker 4: Wow, you would need eight point three layers of sunblock
Speaker 4: just to walk out into the Sun.
Speaker 1: Eight point three million, Yes, it's ex million, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: So that's the brightest star in the universe already. That
Speaker 1: gives you a sense of like, Wow, this stuff in
Speaker 1: our neighborhood not really that bright. When we're talking about
Speaker 1: like Hall of Fame brightness.
Speaker 4: Wouldn't this star be huge or is it still a
Speaker 4: small star?
Speaker 1: No, it's very large. It's right up on the edge
Speaker 1: of the biggest star you can have around three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen solar masses. Because bigger stars have a higher
Speaker 1: temperature at their core, so they burn hotter and faster,
Speaker 1: they don't last very long typically, and they also produce
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of radiation which pulls the star apart.
Speaker 1: Stars are actually a delicate balance between the radiation pressure
Speaker 1: from fusion and the gravitational pressure inwards from all of
Speaker 1: that mass. So it's sort of incredible that so many
Speaker 1: stars are stable for millions and billions of years. These
Speaker 1: guys essentially tear themselves apart. Anything bigger than that can't
Speaker 1: really last very long. So this is the brightest star
Speaker 1: I ever seen.
Speaker 4: Could you even stand at one AU away from the star?
Speaker 4: Would you be inside the star?
Speaker 1: You wouldn't be inside the actual edge of the star.
Speaker 1: Its radius is like forty three times the radius of
Speaker 1: the Sun. So it's much much denser than our sun.
Speaker 1: But it's nowhere near an au for example.
Speaker 4: And why is it brighter? Is it just the more
Speaker 4: dense so there's more fusion going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fusion is very nonlinear, and so because you have
Speaker 1: so much more mass and it's more dense, then it's
Speaker 1: much hotter. The pressure and temperature at the core is
Speaker 1: much greater. And remember that while there's fusion happening at
Speaker 1: the core of our star, it's still pretty inefficient, Like
Speaker 1: most of the hydrogen in the star is not fusing,
Speaker 1: because fusion is a hard thing to make happen. You
Speaker 1: got these two protons, you're trying to squeeze them together.
Speaker 1: There are electromagnetic forces are trying to push them apart.
Speaker 1: Most of the time in the Sun, protons don't fuse.
Speaker 1: But the higher the temperature and the higher the pressure,
Speaker 1: the more often you do get fusion happening. And so
Speaker 1: the fusion is just much more efficient at the heart
Speaker 1: of this star, which heats the whole thing up and
Speaker 1: makes it brighter.
Speaker 4: WHOA, but you said they don't last pretty long.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these stars last for like millions of years, whereas
Speaker 1: smaller stars like hours less billions and red dwarfs can
Speaker 1: last even longer, maybe even up to trillions of years.
Speaker 1: We're not sure because the universe is kind of young
Speaker 1: compared to the expected lifetime of some of these stars.
Speaker 4: Now, is that as bright it gets out there in space?
Speaker 1: That's not even close to how bright things get. That's
Speaker 1: the brightest star we've seen. But stars are not bright
Speaker 1: compared to like the radiation emission at the hearts of galaxies.
Speaker 1: Big galaxies have big black holes at their centers, and
Speaker 1: their enormous gravity creates a lot of high temperature and
Speaker 1: high pressure in the accretion disk around the black hole.
Speaker 1: So the black hole, of course is black. Maybe this
Speaker 1: hawking radiation, but that would be very, very dim. But
Speaker 1: because it has so much gravitational energy, there's a big
Speaker 1: swirling mass of stuff around the black hole, and that
Speaker 1: is so hot it's emitting a lot of radiation. That
Speaker 1: radiation then gets guided by the magnetic field of the
Speaker 1: black hole up and down the poles, sort of the
Speaker 1: same way that like the Aurora borealis guides charged particles
Speaker 1: to the north pole and the south pole. Here, the
Speaker 1: magnetic field of the quasar creates two beams of particles
Speaker 1: when shooting up the north pole and when shooting down
Speaker 1: the south pole. And that's what a quasar is. That's
Speaker 1: also called an active galactic nucleus WHOA.
Speaker 4: So it creates a jet of particles or light for both.
Speaker 1: If you look at pictures of galaxies with jets, these
Speaker 1: jets can be enormous. They can be even much longer
Speaker 1: than the galaxy itself. The power of the hearts of
Speaker 1: these galaxies is really incredible. And there's an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of photons also emitted here because this is just like
Speaker 1: hot particles, and hot particles emit photons.
Speaker 4: Because I guess it can't guide the photons to the
Speaker 4: North pole and South poles, but it guides other particles,
Speaker 4: and in those particles are what emit the brightness the light.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And anytime you have charge particles changing direction,
Speaker 1: like an electron flies to a magnetic field and bends,
Speaker 1: how does it bend, It has to bend by emitting
Speaker 1: a photon. So you have accelerating charged particles, you're going
Speaker 1: to get lots and lots of photons, like in the
Speaker 1: particle colliders like the Large Hadron Collider or the Large
Speaker 1: Electron positron Collider. One of the biggest challenges is that
Speaker 1: these particles are bending with magnets and constantly losing energy
Speaker 1: to radiation, and so that's why you get so many photons.
Speaker 4: All right, I have more questions about this quasar and
Speaker 4: about maybe what could be even brighter than a quasar,
Speaker 4: So let's set the dimmer too high on those questions.
Speaker 4: But first, let's take a quick break.
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Speaker 1: irrigates the crops. How is US dairy tackling greenhouse gases?
Speaker 1: Many farms use anaerobic digestors that turn the methane from
Speaker 1: maneure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and
Speaker 1: electric cars. So the next time you grab a slice
Speaker 1: of pizza or lick an ice cream cone, know that
Speaker 1: dairy farmers and processors around the country are using the
Speaker 1: latest practices and innovations to provide the nutrient dense dairy
Speaker 1: products we love with less of an impact. Visit usdairy
Speaker 1: dot com slash sustainability to learn more.
Speaker 9: There are children, friends, and families walking, riding on paths
Speaker 9: and roads every day. Remember they're real people with loved
Speaker 9: ones who need them to get home safely. Protect our
Speaker 9: cyclists and pedestrians because they're people too, Go safely. California
Speaker 9: from the California Office of Traffic Safety and Caltrans.
Speaker 4: All right, we're talking about the brightest explosion ever seen.
Speaker 4: And Dan, you were saying, a quasar has many times
Speaker 4: more brightness than the brightest star that we know about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, quasars in the sky are like bafflingly bright. It
Speaker 1: was a huge mystery for a long time before we
Speaker 1: even knew that there were black holes at the hearts
Speaker 1: of galaxies. People saw these sources in the sky and
Speaker 1: they calculated the distance and then they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: my gosh, it's already brightened the sky and it's super
Speaker 1: duper far away because quasars tend to be formed in
Speaker 1: the early universe and not recently, so all the quasars
Speaker 1: we see are like really far across the universe. And
Speaker 1: so you do that calculation, you discover that, like, wow,
Speaker 1: quasars are trillions of times brighter than the Sun. Trillions trillions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's one called three C two seven threes, the brightest
Speaker 1: quasar we know officially, and it's four trillion times brighter
Speaker 1: than the Sun. Like, if you were one a you
Speaker 1: away from it, it would be equivalent to having four trillion suns.
Speaker 4: But only if you're one au at the north or
Speaker 4: south poles.
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, exactly, if you're at the horizontal or you're
Speaker 1: a little bit tilted away from it, then it's less bright.
Speaker 4: Now does that technically count as an explosion?
Speaker 5: Though?
Speaker 1: I don't think it counts as an explosion because it's constant,
Speaker 1: but it is super duper bright, and.
Speaker 4: It's super directed too, right, Like you said, it's not
Speaker 4: like it's not an explosion going in all directions. It's
Speaker 4: like more like a laser.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's more like a laser, like a pencil beam,
Speaker 1: which is actually really useful, and we can use these
Speaker 1: quasars not just to understand the early universe, but also
Speaker 1: to understand what's between us and the quasars. There's lots
Speaker 1: of studies where people examine the light from quasars and
Speaker 1: they use as a probe of all like the material
Speaker 1: between us and the quasar, for example, the dark matter
Speaker 1: density and the gravitational lensing that happens along the way.
Speaker 1: They're really useful. Sometimes a quaser can get even brighter
Speaker 1: due to relativistic effects. These quasars are called blazars. If
Speaker 1: the quasar is moving towards us, then its light is
Speaker 1: enhanced by relativistic effects and it can seem even brighter
Speaker 1: than a quasar.
Speaker 4: Wait, a blazar is a quasar that's moving towards us.
Speaker 4: It's not just a quasar with a nice jacket on.
Speaker 4: Is that what you mean? Like, it's a quasar moving
Speaker 4: towards us.
Speaker 1: Well, a blazar is a quasar, it's not doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be just moving towards us, but it's pointed like
Speaker 1: directly at the Earth. We can see these quasars even
Speaker 1: if they're not directly at us, because we can see
Speaker 1: their jets and the light emitted. But if they are
Speaker 1: actually pointed directly at us, then we call them a blazar.
Speaker 4: Wait, that's the only difference is that it's pointing at us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, blazars are quasars that are basically pointing right at
Speaker 1: the Earth.
Speaker 4: And you need a whole new name for that.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's historical. People see these things in
Speaker 1: the sky. They don't always understand the connections between them.
Speaker 1: It's like, why do we even have constellations? You could say, hey,
Speaker 1: now we know that like stars and constellations, some of
Speaker 1: them are super close and some of them are across
Speaker 1: the galaxy. Why don't we group them together? It's historical.
Speaker 1: You know, people have called that ursa minor for a
Speaker 1: long time, so we're gonna keep doing it.
Speaker 4: So blazar, then, is a quasar that's pointing at us.
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 4: Is it brighter than four trillion times brighter than the sun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the brightest blazar is three hundred trillion times brighter
Speaker 1: than the sun. So we're talking about a factor of
Speaker 1: one hundred boost when a quasar is pointed right at us.
Speaker 4: So this is if we're one au at the north
Speaker 4: and south pole of a quasar, it's three hundred trillion
Speaker 4: times more brighter than the sun. But if we're not
Speaker 4: in the north and south pole, you're saying it's more
Speaker 4: like four trillion times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And so not recommended to do any sunbathing
Speaker 1: on the north or south pole of a.
Speaker 4: Blazar unless you have three hundred trillion layers of sunblock.
Speaker 1: Also known as like three light years of lead, still
Speaker 1: might not be enough.
Speaker 4: Now that sounds pretty intense. But if we're counting beams,
Speaker 4: I wonder like, is it brighter than the brightest laser
Speaker 4: we've made here on Earth.
Speaker 1: It's much brighter than the brightest laser. Yes, I mean
Speaker 1: if you were one AU from the brightest laser, you
Speaker 1: would not think it's very bright. Even a laser is
Speaker 1: pretty colimated. It's going to spread out, and an au
Speaker 1: is a large distance.
Speaker 4: But in terms of intensity per you know area, is
Speaker 4: it as intense or more intense?
Speaker 1: These blazars are much more intense than any source on
Speaker 1: Earth at one AU. Yes, but these are constant things, right,
Speaker 1: blazer is key pumping out, so I don't know if
Speaker 1: it really counts as explosions. And the brightest thing in
Speaker 1: the universe is actually not something that's constant.
Speaker 4: So then we are disqualifying quasars and blazers from being
Speaker 4: the boats.
Speaker 1: We don't even need to disqualify them. They don't even qualify.
Speaker 4: We're seeking their chances of being the boat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to torpedo them. But even if we didn't,
Speaker 1: they still wouldn't qualify because the brightest thing in the
Speaker 1: universe is an explosion, and it's also much brighter than
Speaker 1: the most constant thing in the universe, which are blazers.
Speaker 4: WHOA all right, what are these things that are brighter
Speaker 4: than a blazer? Is it a dinner jacket? R?
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's white tie or black time?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 1: Which is brighter?
Speaker 10: Right?
Speaker 4: It's a glittery disco jackets.
Speaker 1: Ooh, sparkle tie. Yeah. The brightest explosion in the universe,
Speaker 1: and also the brightest thing we've ever seen is a
Speaker 1: gamma ray burst. These are sort of mysterious and enormous
Speaker 1: bursts of gamma rays. Gamma rays are just very high
Speaker 1: energy photons that we see sometimes in the night sky.
Speaker 4: Well, meaning like we have gamma ray antenna and gamma
Speaker 4: rays are just a kind of light, right, like it's
Speaker 4: a high frequency light.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Gamma rays are very very high energy. You know,
Speaker 1: Photons exist all across the electromagnetic spectrum. Some of them
Speaker 1: we call in the visible range. Some are very long
Speaker 1: wavelength and infrared or radio waves. But these are just
Speaker 1: artificial divisions. Above the visible we have ultraviolet and then
Speaker 1: X rays and then gamma rays. But again these are
Speaker 1: just like historic dotted lines we've put on the electromagnetic spectrum.
Speaker 1: There's nothing above gamma rays. So gamma rays include everything
Speaker 1: above X rays and then out to infinite energy.
Speaker 4: Whoa. So we have these antennas out there on Earth
Speaker 4: like in the tech gamma rays and sometimes we get
Speaker 4: these birds coming from space like these huge kind of
Speaker 4: waves of gamma rays.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And it's fascinating history because this is something
Speaker 1: that really benefits from the Cold War. Like in the
Speaker 1: second half of last century, the United States military was
Speaker 1: really curious whether the Soviet Union was doing atmospheric nuclear
Speaker 1: testings before it was ruled out. So they built satellites
Speaker 1: and all sorts of technology to try to detect nuclear testing,
Speaker 1: and sure they found some, I guess, but they also
Speaker 1: spotted these weird bursts in the sky of gamma rays
Speaker 1: that they didn't understand that were not coming from below,
Speaker 1: they were coming from above. That's how gamma ray bursts
Speaker 1: were first discovered. I love when we spend money on
Speaker 1: the military we accidentally end up doing science.
Speaker 4: Are you making a case for more military spending.
Speaker 1: I don't think military spending is a very efficient way
Speaker 1: to do science. I'm just grateful when sometimes that money
Speaker 1: turns out to be useful for science as well.
Speaker 4: See, I see, it's a win. It's a win for everyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll take it. I mean, the military budget totally
Speaker 1: dwarfs the SIGNS budget. But anyway, that's a topic for
Speaker 1: another time.
Speaker 4: How bright are these gamma ray bursts?
Speaker 1: Some of them are crazy, crazy bright. Like we've seen
Speaker 1: gamma ray bursts that are a million trillion times brighter
Speaker 1: than the sun, like a quadrillion times brighter than the sun.
Speaker 4: So yeah, in terms of how brid we think they
Speaker 4: are at the source you're on Earth. We don't get
Speaker 4: a million trillion times more gamma rays than the sun.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right. We were all killed several years ago
Speaker 1: due to gamma ray burst. We're just now catching up. No,
Speaker 1: this is at the source absolutely. Fortunately for us, they're
Speaker 1: quite distant, so when they get here on Earth, there's
Speaker 1: a few very high energy gamma rays. But we're not
Speaker 1: all fried.
Speaker 4: But so, how do we know how far they are?
Speaker 4: Like we're just getting a blip on our antennas, Like,
Speaker 4: how do we know, like how far away they came from?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question. We're not exactly sure because
Speaker 1: for many of them, you look in the night sky
Speaker 1: where they came from, and there's like nothing there. It's
Speaker 1: not like you can point to say, oh, it came
Speaker 1: from this star that went supernova, or it came from
Speaker 1: that galaxy. Like you look at the sky, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's a huge source of gamma rays. There's nothing in
Speaker 1: the night sky there that we can see. It must
Speaker 1: mean that there's something extraordinarily distant. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of uncertainty on the inherent brightness of these things.
Speaker 4: A huge amount of uncertainty, right, Like it could be
Speaker 4: something closed that's dim, or it'd be something really far
Speaker 4: that's super duper bright. How do you tell the difference, Well.
Speaker 1: It's definitely not something close and dim. Right, If it
Speaker 1: was something close, we would see it. Because these things
Speaker 1: are very very bright. It could be something close that's
Speaker 1: dim most of the time and occasionally bright. But yet
Speaker 1: there is uncertainty on the distance to these.
Speaker 4: Things, meaning like the range goes from sixty what to
Speaker 4: a million trillion times brighter than the Sun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't know exactly how far there are. All
Speaker 1: of the gamma ray bursts that we've seen have originated
Speaker 1: from outside the Milky Way galaxy, which means that they're
Speaker 1: very far away, but there's a huge range there, right,
Speaker 1: there could be a neighboring galaxy that could be a
Speaker 1: very very distant galaxy at the edge of the universe.
Speaker 4: And we think they came from outside the Milky Way
Speaker 4: because when we pinpoint where they came from, we don't
Speaker 4: see anything that we think is in the Milky Way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And we think these things are extraordinarily bright,
Speaker 1: and any gamma ray burst in the Milky Way that's
Speaker 1: actually pointed towards Earth will probably fry the Earth. And
Speaker 1: there are some theories about how like some mass extinctions
Speaker 1: might have occurred due to gamma ray bursts in the
Speaker 1: Milky Way, for example. But yeah, these things we think
Speaker 1: are extraordinarily bright. I mean, it's hard to get your
Speaker 1: mind around these numbers. It's easier if you express it,
Speaker 1: like in terms of how much energy the Sun puts out.
Speaker 1: So for example, our Sun in its entire lifetime will
Speaker 1: put out as much energy as is in one of
Speaker 1: these gamma ray bursts for one second, So like a
Speaker 1: second of gamma ray bursts is ten billion years of
Speaker 1: the sun.
Speaker 4: Whoa we think, Yeah.
Speaker 1: We think there is definitely a lot of uncertainty here.
Speaker 4: I mean it sounds like a huge amount of unsertainty, right,
Speaker 4: How do we know how far away it is?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't know. We consist sort of like lower
Speaker 1: limits because we know the nearest neighborhood and we can
Speaker 1: tell that there's nothing there that's generating these things. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of fuzziness in some general arguments there.
Speaker 1: But you take these numbers definitely with a big grain
Speaker 1: of salt.
Speaker 4: And you said it was a mystery for a long time,
Speaker 4: meaning that we still don't know what makes these bursts.
Speaker 1: We still don't really understand it. Yeah, we have some theories.
Speaker 1: It turns out the gamma ray bursts come in two categories,
Speaker 1: is like shorter ones and longer ones. The shorter ones
Speaker 1: last for like seconds or tens of seconds, and the
Speaker 1: longer ones last for like minutes. So that seems like
Speaker 1: probably there are two different things going on there, and
Speaker 1: there are theories. The leading theory is that short gamma
Speaker 1: ray bursts might come from merging neutron stars, like we
Speaker 1: talked about. You know, Neutron stars are these very dense
Speaker 1: objects that the end of life of large stars, not
Speaker 1: so big that they become a black hole and not
Speaker 1: so small they become a white dwarf, but having enough
Speaker 1: mass to become very dense neutron stars. And often these
Speaker 1: stars are in binary systems and then at the end
Speaker 1: of their life they're orbiting and eventually collapse and fall
Speaker 1: into each other. And these are incredibly powerful events. They
Speaker 1: generate gravitational waves, they generate the conditions needed to make
Speaker 1: like gold and platinum and all the heavy nuclei in
Speaker 1: the universe, just like supernova, and also generate very high
Speaker 1: energy gamma rays.
Speaker 4: Would they also generate regular light like visible light, or
Speaker 4: would they maybe only generate gamma rays, and that's why
Speaker 4: we don't see them with the naked eye.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we definitely see neutron star collisions, and we've seen some.
Speaker 1: We've also correlated some with gravitational waves. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's lots of different varieties of these things, different masses
Speaker 1: of neutron stars, and the collision themselves can happen in
Speaker 1: lots of different ways. So we've seen neutron star collisions
Speaker 1: that haven't caused huge gamma ray bursts, but there's a
Speaker 1: speculation that sometimes neutron star collisions might cause these incredibly
Speaker 1: bright gamma ray bursts, but it's not something we understand
Speaker 1: very well. Even the heart of a single neutron star
Speaker 1: is not something we understand. Like, what is the state
Speaker 1: of matter under these incredible densities? Is it a cork
Speaker 1: gluon plasma? Is it some other state of matter? Is
Speaker 1: it nuclear pasta all episode about this question, or really
Speaker 1: just the very beginning of the ability to think about
Speaker 1: these things coherently. And then take two neutron stars that
Speaker 1: are swirling around each other and the dynamics of that
Speaker 1: and the relativity. It's really just sort of beyond our
Speaker 1: ability to calculate in a robust manner, and so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of sort of theoretical questions about whether those
Speaker 1: even could cause gamma ray.
Speaker 4: Bursts, meaning they might not even be bright enough, or
Speaker 4: they might not be enough to generate the kinds of
Speaker 4: bursts we think we're seeing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the leading theory, but it's definitely far from proven.
Speaker 4: All right, let's digain more into what could be causing
Speaker 4: these gamma y bursts, and then we'll get to the
Speaker 4: boat the brightest of all time. But first, let's take
Speaker 4: another quick break.
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Speaker 1: for example, most dairy farms reuse water up to four
Speaker 1: times the same water cools the milk, cleans equipment, washes
Speaker 1: the barn and irrigates the crops. How is US dairy
Speaker 1: tackling greenhouse gases. Many farms use anaerobic digestors that turn
Speaker 1: the methane from maneure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns,
Speaker 1: and electric cars. So the next time you grab a
Speaker 1: slice of pizza or lick an ice cream cone, know
Speaker 1: that dairy farmers and processors around the country are using
Speaker 1: the latest practices and innovations to provide the nutrient dense
Speaker 1: dairy products we love with less of an impact. Visit
Speaker 1: us dairy dot com slash sustainability to learn more.
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Speaker 4: All right, we're hopping on a boat here, Daniel, trying
Speaker 4: to find the brightest of all time, the brightest explosion
Speaker 4: of all time.
Speaker 1: Right, yes, exactly.
Speaker 4: It's the biggest exploding boat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's really wonderful. I love the experience of
Speaker 1: just being overwhelmed by stuff that happens in the universe.
Speaker 1: Really stretches your mind even try to conceive of these
Speaker 1: incredible events. You know, it makes everything that happens here
Speaker 1: on Earth just seem incomes quench.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean for it to have been so bright
Speaker 4: that even though it's super duper duper far away, we're
Speaker 4: still seeing it here on Earth. It's pretty amazing, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm sure the rest of the universe is
Speaker 4: also seen it.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. And unless this is the unicorn of unicorns,
Speaker 1: it means it's probably even brighter stuff out there that
Speaker 1: we're missing.
Speaker 4: Oh, maybe it is a unicorn making this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Maybe it's the collision of two unicorns when they
Speaker 1: cross their horns. Maybe that's what happens.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Or it's a unicorn farting.
Speaker 1: Let's keep it clean for the families out there.
Speaker 4: It's something wrong with farts. Everybody farts, even unicorns.
Speaker 1: This is not a fart podcast, folks. We're talking about
Speaker 1: bright explosions, not stinky ones.
Speaker 4: But you did say these things are really far away.
Speaker 1: They are mind blowingly far away exactly. So we have
Speaker 1: the short Cama ray bursts that are probably emerging neutron stars,
Speaker 1: and then we have these longer Cama ray bursts, which
Speaker 1: just means that we see photons for longer, like a
Speaker 1: last four minutes instead of seconds. And the leading theory
Speaker 1: here is supernova collapse that when supernova's collapse sometimes they
Speaker 1: create these very bright bursts of photons, not always like
Speaker 1: we see supernovas that don't cause gamma ray bursts, but
Speaker 1: sometimes we think like there's a jet of matter ejected
Speaker 1: from the supernova, Like the collapse isn't completely symmetric, and
Speaker 1: this jet of matter sort of like a blazar or
Speaker 1: a quasar, can accelerate particles and generate enormous bursts of
Speaker 1: very very intense light.
Speaker 4: M Does that mean we have to disqualify supernova from
Speaker 4: our category here because a burst is not sort of
Speaker 4: going in all directions.
Speaker 1: No, I think it's fine. I don't think there's a
Speaker 1: reason to disqualify it just because it's focused. You know,
Speaker 1: I think it's still it's bright and it's an explosion,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I think it qualifies as one of the
Speaker 1: brightest explosions.
Speaker 4: It's more of a float, like the focused, focusedly bright
Speaker 4: of all time. All right, So those are leading theories,
Speaker 4: but we're not sure. It seems you're saying maybe even
Speaker 4: a supernova or emerging neutron stars might not be powerful
Speaker 4: enough to generate the kinds of gamma ray burst we're seeing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And you know, this is the exciting edge
Speaker 1: of astronomy when we see stuff in the night sky
Speaker 1: we can't quite explain. We're not sure if it's like
Speaker 1: a weird, extreme version of something we've already seen, or
Speaker 1: if it's something totally new kind of thing out there
Speaker 1: in the universe we've never considered. And that's definitely happened, right,
Speaker 1: I think about the first time we discovered supernova or
Speaker 1: black holes or quasars, all these things. We're discoveries of
Speaker 1: something new out there in the universe, a whole new
Speaker 1: category of things the universe can do. So we don't
Speaker 1: really know if gamma ray bursts represent that or if
Speaker 1: they represent like the extreme edge of some kind of
Speaker 1: thing we're familiar with.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty exciting. So is that then the brightest
Speaker 4: thing we've seen explode out there in the universe.
Speaker 1: So the brightest thing we've ever seen in the universe
Speaker 1: is a gamma ray burst, and it's one that just
Speaker 1: happened last year. Like the record was set in October
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4: Ooh, was there a celebration? Was Thickinness World Record official
Speaker 4: there at the telescope.
Speaker 1: I think that everybody was too stunned, Like this is
Speaker 1: something just crazy bright, brighter than anything we've ever seen
Speaker 1: by like a big factor. This is one hundred times
Speaker 1: brighter than any other gamma ray burst we've ever seen,
Speaker 1: which remember is already like quadrillions of times brighter than
Speaker 1: the sun.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's incredible. But then do we know how far
Speaker 4: away this one was? Like maybe it was dimmer than
Speaker 4: the ones before, it was just closer.
Speaker 1: They think this one might just be closer. They actually
Speaker 1: have a candidate to where it might have come from,
Speaker 1: which is a galaxy only two and a half billion
Speaker 1: light years from Earth, and so it might be why
Speaker 1: it seemed brighter here, and it seemed like the jet
Speaker 1: might be like pointed right at us. That's sort of
Speaker 1: one theory for why this one was so bright. But
Speaker 1: you know, we have this telescope orbiting the Earth. It's
Speaker 1: called the Fermi Lat and it's excellent and finding gamma
Speaker 1: rays really high energy photons. It's kind of like a
Speaker 1: particle detector in space. So I think it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Like photons enter the telescope and it's not like a
Speaker 1: telescope like Hubble where you have lenses and optics. Instead,
Speaker 1: it converts the photon into electron and positron then attracts
Speaker 1: those particles. So it's sort of like a very high
Speaker 1: energy particle detector. And this thing was totally overwhelmed, Like
Speaker 1: it was just flooded with higher energy photons than it
Speaker 1: had ever seen before.
Speaker 4: Wow, Like it maxed out the sensor.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, it saturated that eyeball in space. It was
Speaker 1: totally overwhelmed, and not just our sensors, like the ionosphere,
Speaker 1: this part of the atmosphere of the Earth. The whole
Speaker 1: thing swelled up for several hours. This is the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that happens when like we get a big
Speaker 1: solar flare, like when the sun burps out an enormous
Speaker 1: number of particles towards the Earth that the ionosphere responds.
Speaker 1: But this is something that happened like billions of light
Speaker 1: years away and it's still made the Earth like a
Speaker 1: little swollen and inflamed.
Speaker 4: WHOA, Now, how do we know where it came from?
Speaker 1: We don't know exactly, but there's sort of a candidate
Speaker 1: galaxy in that direction to people think maybe it came
Speaker 1: from there. But you know, this is all very speculative.
Speaker 1: You can't really tell me.
Speaker 4: Like, how do we triangulate where it came from?
Speaker 1: Oh, we can measure the direction of these photons, Like
Speaker 1: Fermilat is a detector, and so we can see the
Speaker 1: trajectory of the particles that come from the photon. So
Speaker 1: we can reconstruct the direction of these photons.
Speaker 4: What do you mean we can see the direction? How
Speaker 4: do we do that?
Speaker 1: Well, the photon turns into an electron and positron pair,
Speaker 1: and those carry the momentum of the original photon, and
Speaker 1: then we have layers of detector, So we have like
Speaker 1: ten or one hundred layers that detect the motion of
Speaker 1: the particles that come from the photon, and then we
Speaker 1: can reconstruct that track and it points back to where
Speaker 1: it came from.
Speaker 4: Oh, I see, It's like a sort of like a cake.
Speaker 4: You know, like if you stick your finger in a cake,
Speaker 4: you can sort of trace which direction the finger was poking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine like a hundred layer cake and you you
Speaker 1: like shoot a bullet through it, and then you'll take
Speaker 1: slices of that cake and you traced where that bullet
Speaker 1: hole was. You could figure out what direction the bullet
Speaker 1: came from.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there you go. Just don't eat the bullet.
Speaker 1: I was going to go with a JFK analogy, but
Speaker 1: I decided to go with cakes.
Speaker 4: We got GfK, We got the boat.
Speaker 1: The mystery gamma ray burst came from the direction of
Speaker 1: the Texas school Book Depository. It's all a big conspiracy theory.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's a cosmic conspiracy theory. All right. So
Speaker 4: this was detected just last year and who detected it?
Speaker 1: So it was detected all over the Earth. It was
Speaker 1: seen by Fermi Laugh which is a big collaboration of
Speaker 1: scientists from across the world. It was also seen by
Speaker 1: the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory in China, and
Speaker 1: then there was a Russian facility that saw it also,
Speaker 1: and this observatory in China is only for very very
Speaker 1: high energy photons, and they only ever seen a few
Speaker 1: photons very high energy, and this time they saw five
Speaker 1: thousand photons just from this one gamma ray burst. It's
Speaker 1: like ten times as many as they've ever seen in
Speaker 1: the entire history of the entire detector. They saw in
Speaker 1: this one day. This one period lasted about seven minutes.
Speaker 4: Long wait weaning that it was visible to the naked eye,
Speaker 4: or you could only see it in gamma rays.
Speaker 1: You could only see it in gamm rays. You cannot
Speaker 1: see gamma rays with the naked eye. They're way too
Speaker 1: high energy. And one of the most interesting and weird
Speaker 1: things about this gamma ray burst if not just the intensity,
Speaker 1: like the number of photons, but the energy of each
Speaker 1: individual photon. So this thing also set a record as
Speaker 1: sending the highest energy photon ever seen. This one photon
Speaker 1: had eighteen terra electron volts, which is like much more
Speaker 1: energy than protons have the Large Hadron collider. And yes,
Speaker 1: it means it's a very very high frequency, very short wavelength.
Speaker 1: This is the highest energy photon ever seen by a
Speaker 1: factor of four. So like this thing is really far
Speaker 1: out there on the tails.
Speaker 4: Wouldn't it mean that it's really close, right, because then
Speaker 4: don't photons kind of get stretched out as they go
Speaker 4: further out in space.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's very weird for us super high energy photon
Speaker 1: to come from really far away for two reasons. One
Speaker 1: is you're right, if it's coming from really far away,
Speaker 1: then as the universe expands, those photons get stretched out,
Speaker 1: they get red shifted, right, so they get lower energy,
Speaker 1: which means originally it had even more energy. The other
Speaker 1: reason is that the universe is actually not very transparent
Speaker 1: to super high energy photons. As particles get really really
Speaker 1: high energy, they start to interact with the cosmic microwave
Speaker 1: background radiation like protons and other cosmic ray particles. If
Speaker 1: they're super high energy, they'll collide with the photons from
Speaker 1: the cosmic microwave background, the remnants of the Big Bang,
Speaker 1: and interact and disappear. The same thing is true with
Speaker 1: super duper high energy photons interact with those photons from
Speaker 1: the CMB. So we shouldn't be able to see photons
Speaker 1: from really really far away because they should get absorbed
Speaker 1: by the universe. So here we're seeing a super high
Speaker 1: energy photon from what seems like really really far away.
Speaker 1: It's very weird.
Speaker 4: So we can trace where the burst came from. And
Speaker 4: when we look in that direction, we see some galaxy
Speaker 4: where maybe it came from. That's why you think it
Speaker 4: came from that galaxy.
Speaker 1: But that's you know, very speculative. It's like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: in the same direction in the sky, right, and that's
Speaker 1: the first thing we see there. That doesn't mean it
Speaker 1: came from that. I could have come from behind that.
Speaker 1: There could be something else between us and there. Right,
Speaker 1: we're really limited by our vantage point.
Speaker 4: Like it could be an alien in between us and
Speaker 4: this galaxy with like a laser pointer that SHOs lighting
Speaker 4: the gama right direction and they're just messing with us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, it could be or you know, it could
Speaker 1: be that it just came from something else and it
Speaker 1: happened to land here on Earth. This one special photon
Speaker 1: happened to land here on Earth at the same time
Speaker 1: as this gamma ray burst. Right. That could have been random, or.
Speaker 4: Maybe it's not random. What if it's like a phone.
Speaker 1: Call, it's like a voicemail. It's like in your hotel
Speaker 1: room when you ignore that.
Speaker 4: Play like it's an emoji. It's a text message that
Speaker 4: says you up.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 1: It's a late night booty call from aliens.
Speaker 4: Hopefully not a booty call hopefully to science.
Speaker 1: Call family friendly. But you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: really interesting science that could be done with this, because again,
Speaker 1: people don't understand how a photon with that much energy
Speaker 1: could travel that far across space. One fun paper I
Speaker 1: read suggests that maybe it wasn't a photon the whole time.
Speaker 1: Maybe it converted to this weird theoretical particle called an axion.
Speaker 1: There's this idea that maybe axion particles are the dark matter,
Speaker 1: and they couple a little bit to photons, and so
Speaker 1: photons can sometimes turn into axions. There's a set of
Speaker 1: experiments called light shining through walls where people look for
Speaker 1: photons penetrating stuff that photons shouldn't be able to penetrate
Speaker 1: by turning briefly or for a while into axions and
Speaker 1: then converting back into photons when they come near the Earth,
Speaker 1: for example, and hit our magnetic field. So some people
Speaker 1: argue that this might be evidence that this photon turned
Speaker 1: into an axion, flew across the universe, and then came
Speaker 1: back into photon. Modes so we could see it.
Speaker 6: WHOA.
Speaker 4: That's a little too convenient though, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's just hard to explain that we have no actual
Speaker 1: explanation for this photon, like there is no way we
Speaker 1: should see It's like an impossible photon. I mean, the
Speaker 1: most boring explanation for this crazy photon is that it's
Speaker 1: a mistake that we don't know how to measure the
Speaker 1: energy of particles with super duper high energy, because remember,
Speaker 1: we're always reconstructing these things. This is an air shower observatory,
Speaker 1: which means you're not seeing the original photon. You're seeing
Speaker 1: the particles that turned into when it's slammed into the
Speaker 1: atmosphere and created this cascade of particles that are shining
Speaker 1: and flashing light.
Speaker 4: Meaning it could have been something else not a photon.
Speaker 1: It could have been something else not a photon, or
Speaker 1: it could have been something with lower energy. You know,
Speaker 1: the uncertainty on this resolution is significant. We should also
Speaker 1: say the Russian observatory reported an even higher energy photon
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty et terra electron bolts, like more
Speaker 1: than ten times the energy of this one scene in China.
Speaker 1: But the truth is nobody believes them. They're like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you guys messed up.
Speaker 4: Let me get this straight. We don't know what cost
Speaker 4: this burst. We don't know where it is exactly. We
Speaker 4: don't even know if it is a burst.
Speaker 1: We know it's a gamma y burst. It was very,
Speaker 1: very intense, but it has these special photons in it
Speaker 1: that really raise some questions. Maybe we've mismeasured them, or
Speaker 1: maybe they're evidence of axion, dark matter, or something else happening.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of uncertainty in these things, and
Speaker 1: you know, the frustrating thing in astronomy is you can't
Speaker 1: control these experiments. Like if this was something you were
Speaker 1: doing in your lab, in your basement, or even if
Speaker 1: a large hadron collider, you could say, let's do it
Speaker 1: again and check. But these are just things we're lucky
Speaker 1: or unlucky enough to see in the sky and have
Speaker 1: to wait for it to happen again before we can
Speaker 1: convince ourselves it's real.
Speaker 4: I wonder then we should maybe retitle the episode, because
Speaker 4: really we're just talking about the brightest flash we've ever seen.
Speaker 4: We don't even know if it came from an explosion
Speaker 4: or an alien laser or an alien phone.
Speaker 1: Call right, yeah, or space unicorn farts yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a very focused space unicorn part.
Speaker 1: Maybe they are the aliens woo, I'm unifying the theories.
Speaker 4: That's how they make phone calls to their fart network,
Speaker 4: in which case it is sort of technically a booty call.
Speaker 1: People are doing a lot of work to try to
Speaker 1: understand this better. They're trying to see, like was there
Speaker 1: a jet of material that was emitted. By looking at
Speaker 1: the spectrum of light that comes in the gamma ray burst,
Speaker 1: they can try to get a sense for like what
Speaker 1: was in that jet. Was it wide, was it narrow?
Speaker 1: Did they have the kind of material we expect from
Speaker 1: a collapsing star. What can we learn about the origin star?
Speaker 1: Maybe there was something weird about the star that collapsed
Speaker 1: that generated this incredibly bright source of light. And so
Speaker 1: there's a lot of sort of conflicting studies still about this.
Speaker 1: Some people say the jet was really really narrow, that's
Speaker 1: why I was bright. Another study said, no, actually the
Speaker 1: jet looks like it was wide. But you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of questions. This is early days in understanding this.
Speaker 1: But unless we're lucky to have to see a brighter one,
Speaker 1: this is going to be a boat for a while.
Speaker 4: Is it possible also that maybe it was like focus somehow, right,
Speaker 4: because isn't there a sort of lensing out there by
Speaker 4: dark matter or maybe other things? Could something have lensed
Speaker 4: this light to make it seem more intense?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, Yeah, that's certainly a possibility. There's some really
Speaker 1: cool studies to try to understand how much dark matter
Speaker 1: there is between us and any point in the sky
Speaker 1: by looking for evidence of lensing. We don't see lensing
Speaker 1: evidence in this distribution, but it's certainly possible. We don't
Speaker 1: have a great map of where the dark matter is
Speaker 1: in the universe, and you know that's fundamental limitation to
Speaker 1: looking at the universe only from the surface of one planet.
Speaker 1: Anytime you get a photon, you don't exactly know where
Speaker 1: it came from, what happened to it along the way,
Speaker 1: And you have to try to untangle all of these
Speaker 1: mysteries simultaneously, Right, how much dust is there between us
Speaker 1: and there? How much dark matter is there? How much
Speaker 1: is the universe stretching? Is that even? Is that isotro
Speaker 1: because there's other weird stuff going on simultaneously. We have
Speaker 1: to try to unravel these mysteries to explain this incredible
Speaker 1: mosaic we see in the night sky.
Speaker 4: Amazing, But I guess maybe the overall message is that
Speaker 4: we've seen something that is brighter than what we thought
Speaker 4: was possible, and it's pretty incredible that we're still doing that, right,
Speaker 4: We're seeing things we didn't think could exist before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's stunned astronomers. I mean, astronomers are used
Speaker 1: to big numbers about the universe, but even this one
Speaker 1: sort of like you can tell, it rocked them back
Speaker 1: on their heels.
Speaker 4: Well, wait, it shocked even the bright ones exactly.
Speaker 1: Eric Urns is an astronomer who studies this kind of stuff, said, quote,
Speaker 1: the energy of this thing is so extreme that if
Speaker 1: you took the entire Sun and you converted all of
Speaker 1: it into pure energy, it still wouldn't match this event.
Speaker 1: There's just nothing comparable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, unless you consider farting unicorns in
Speaker 4: this case, anything's possible. All right, Well, an interesting exploration
Speaker 4: of an you universal or at least local world record
Speaker 4: of the brightest flash we've seen. And it's mysteries.
Speaker 1: And one thing we do know is that the universe
Speaker 1: contains enduring mysteries. And the more we look out there
Speaker 1: in the universe, the more we understand, and the more
Speaker 1: we are shocked by what's out there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the more that we need bright people like
Speaker 4: maybe you out there to figure out the mystery.
Speaker 1: He's talking to you, folks, guys, not to me.
Speaker 4: We hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, See
Speaker 4: you next time.
Speaker 1: For more science and curiosity, come find us on social
Speaker 1: media where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, This, Org, Insta,
Speaker 1: and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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