But as a whole, what are they?

So there's like 51 fundamental constants in nature that define what reality is.

Some of them are really interesting.

For example, the speed of light, the absolute speed limit for anything that carries energy or information in a vacuum.

It's like 186,262 miles per second.

That's a fundamental constant, right? So that's an important one.

There's also something called Planck's constant, which sets the scale of quantum effects, determining how energy is absorbed and emitted in discrete packets of quanta.

So why is it important for scientists to define these constants?

Why is it in the news right now?

The thing that makes this particular planet so interesting is that the star that the planet orbits is a lot smaller in size than the sun and a lot less massive, and therefore...

It's a much longer lived star than the sun is.

So that gives life a chance to develop on a planet that happens to be at the right distance from that star.

OK, this planet happens to sit at an interesting distance called within the habitable zone of this star.

The habitable zone is the region around a star where if a planet orbited there and if the planet had water, it could be liquid.

Now, why this planet is in the news is because researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope have found two very interesting molecules, dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide.

So what does that mean?

So the sun emits a wind of high-energy charged particles, mainly electrons and protons.

And it's been doing that ever since the sun formed, you know, four and a half billion years ago.

So that's blowing about 400 kilometers per second.

And it changes.

It ebbs and flows depending on what's happening at the sun.

That wind blows outward.

That sounds pretty cool, but why is that something we need to measure?

Did you hear it at all?

I did not hear it.

I was really mad that I didn't.

I spent a few days last week on Nantucket Island.

Would have been a great place to listen and maybe even hear this on Saturday.

But I was here in Durham near campus and I didn't hear it.

You know, these things aren't that rare, but they're rare around where you live, right? You know, the earth is big, has a lot of surface area.

Can you learn something from the chemistry, from the iron that's within these meteorites?