How is a brown dwarf different from our sun? And why is it such a useful place for studying distant weather?

So, yeah, brown dwarfs are what we term substellar objects.

That means they're not quite a star.

They're also not quite a planet.

And so what even are they? You know, so our sun is actually kind of on the bigger end of stars.

Most stars are smaller.

And you might have heard M stars.

Is this an interesting frame for which to examine these objects?

How is a brown dwarf different from our sun? And why is it such a useful place for studying distant weather?

So yeah, brown dwarfs are what we term substellar objects.

That means they're not quite a star.

They're also not quite a planet.

And so what even are they? So our sun is actually kind of on the bigger end of stars.

Most stars are smaller.

And you might have heard M stars.

Is this an interesting frame for which to examine these objects?

People don't realize this, that supernovas are how we kind of measure intergalactic distances.

The main way, and it's the way we found out things like the accelerating universe, so that not only we're expanding, but we're accelerating, it's by using these Type Ia supernovas.

So they're really cool.

This is not that, though.

This story is a different type of supernova that has similarities to that.

but not the same, and it's not really like a supernova in the same way.

But basically if you have this a little bit bigger of a white dwarf, so most white dwarfs, like our sun is gonna become a white dwarf, and we will not do this because we have no nearby stars to feed on.

What if we could make fuel on Mars once we got there so we wouldn't have to lug gasoline? I know they don't use gasoline, but we don't have to lug the basically fuel there to get home.

People don't realize this, that supernovas are how we kind of measure intergalactic distances.

The main way, and it's the way we found out things like the accelerating universe, so that not only we're expanding, but we're accelerating, it's by using these Type Ia supernovas.

So they're really cool.

This is not that, though.

This story is a different type of supernova that has similarities to that.

but not the same, and it's not really like a supernova in the same way, but basically if you have this a little bit bigger of a white dwarf, so most white dwarfs, like our sun is gonna become a white dwarf, and we will not do this because we have no nearby stars to feed on, but you have this white dwarf, it's formed of carbon and oxygen.

If it's a little bit more massive, it also has neon and magnesium, and that's the trick.

What if we could make fuel on Mars once we got there so we wouldn't have to lug gasoline? I know they don't use gasoline, but we don't have to lug the basically fuel there to get home.

Yeah.

And it's also interesting because there is even been research on just the effect of the full moon, right, on hormones and the impact in kind of mania, right, like how it can not having even the darkness effect.

just naturally, now we're just talking in absence of cities, but just from the moon's light itself, can correlate with people's hormonal disruption, sleep disruption, and can cause some more periods of emotional disruption.

So you're saying light pollution can exacerbate that? Of course.

So, you know, for people who say struggle with bipolar, you know, which is so impacted strongly on circadian rhythms and good sleep, you add to this, you know, just a massive amount of light pollution.

Not great.

And I think it's interesting that the full moon aspect where we get these, you know, the myths of werewolves and stuff comes from seeing that pattern of people being a little more, you know, not with it when we have a full moon.

What originally sparked your passion and love for looking up at the stars?

And it's also interesting

because there is even been research on just the effect of the full moon, right, on hormones and the impact in kind of mania, right, like how it can not having even the darkness effect.

just naturally, now we're just talking in absence of cities, but just from the moon's light itself, can correlate with people's hormonal disruption, sleep disruption, and can cause some more periods of emotional disruption.

So you're saying light pollution can exacerbate that? Of course.

So, you know, for people who say struggle with bipolar, you know, which is so impacted strongly on circadian rhythms and good sleep, you add to this, you know, just a massive amount of light pollution.

Not great.

And I think it's interesting that the full moon aspect where we get these, you know, the myths of werewolves and stuff comes from seeing that pattern of people being a little more, you know, not with it when we have a full moon.

What originally sparked your passion and love for looking up at the stars?

So tell us about what you believe we can do or what more we should know to do something.

Well, these are bringing together so many complicated issues, right? So there's the issue of light pollution and astronomy images from streaking satellites from SpaceX satellites, for example, that causes a lot of disruption to ground-based astronomy.

And then on the other side, you know, the SpaceX is the reason why we have Internet in places that previously didn't or like the Ukraine conflict where Ukraine was able to.

Starlink is brilliant for people.

Understood.

So so there's these tradeoffs.

I would say it's a series of tradeoffs.

What originally sparked your passion and love for looking up at the stars?

Talk to me like I'm the idiot that I am.

It's a lot of stuff happening.

So planets form at first kind of like the dust bunnies under your bed that you haven't cleaned in a while.

So it's just like electrostatic dust that coagulates together.

And then as it gets bigger and bigger, then it starts getting more pebbly.

And then when they start to collide, you have gravity keep things together.

So over these millions of years that planets form, You go from literally dust bunnies by electrostatic forces up to planets the size of Jupiter from gravity.

Exactly.

Talk to me like I'm the idiot that I am.

It's a lot of stuff happening.

So planets form at first kind of like the dust bunnies under your bed that you haven't cleaned in a while.

So it's just like electrostatic dust that coagulates together.

And then as it gets bigger and bigger, then it starts getting more pebbly.

And then when they start to collide, you have gravity keep things together.

So over these millions of years that planets form, you go from literally dust bunnies by electrostatic forces up to planets the size of Jupiter from gravity.

Exactly.

In the next hundred years, is the Moon's surface gonna be littered with our trash? Maybe, maybe

maybeThere's gonna be some trash on the moon, certainly.

I mean, the US government has already left things on the moon.

Um, and you know, of course, these are a different set of hazards that future astronauts might need to worry about.

But I think the relative risk is very, very small.

You're still more likely to get hit by an incoming asteroid that, you know, hits the surface or something like that.

So, um, the chance of space debris hitting the moon is still very small.

Yeah, yeah.

This is the first, like, corporate lunar junk, uh, kind of thing that i- in the next hundred years, is the moon's surface gonna be littered with our trash? Uh, maybe, maybe.

There's gonna be some trash on the moon, certainly.

I mean, the US government has already left things on the moon.

Um, and, you know, of course, these are a different set of hazards that future astronauts might need to worry about.

But I think the relative risk is very, very small.

You're still more likely to get hit by an incoming asteroid that, you know, hits the surface or something like that.

So, um, the chance of space debris hitting the moon is still very small.

Yeah, yeah.

Is that, is that the story? A sausage hit us and tilted us on its side? I feel like if you threw a sausage fast enough at my head, I'd fall over 90 degrees, so.

Exactly.

That's all the simulation instinct that you need to have.

I think you've really, uh, did the sausage on the head there.

But yeah, so the u- the sausage galaxy came in, and then the reorientation of the disc, basically our, our galaxy is composed of 100 billion stars.

Um, and when you have a collision of galaxies, it kinda merges, right? And you get, you collect these more stars.

So we've gobbled up a bunch of galaxies.

And we should've known that by now.

Is that, is that the story? A sausage hit us and tilted us on its side? I feel like if you threw a sausage fast enough at my head, I'd fall over 90 degrees, so.

Exactly.

That's all the simulation instinct that you need to have.

I think you've really, uh, did the sausage on the head there.

But yeah, so the, the sausage galaxy came in and then the reorientation of the disc, basically our, our galaxy is composed of 100 billion stars, um, and when you have a collision of galaxies, it kinda merges, right? And you get, you collect these more stars.

So we've gobbled up a bunch of galaxies.

The Milky Way has gobbled up a bunch of galaxies over its time.

And we should've known that by now.

It's

never aliens.

I mean, it's not aliens yet, you know.

Okay.

It's just the first step maybe towards getting to understand more about this planet.

But it's an exciting find.

We've detected helium.

And what would like the average temperature be on this planet? What is this Goldilocks zone? Is this planet in it or am I understanding this correctly?

It's

never aliens.

I mean, it's not aliens yet.

Okay.

It's just the first step maybe towards getting to understand more about this planet.

But it's an exciting find.

We've detected helium.

And what would like the average temperature be on this planet? What is this Goldilocks zone? Is this planet in it or am I understanding this correctly?

So is that impairing us? Do we have to have a definition of life in order to look for life? Or can we still believe that we can make this claim in the absence of such a consensual agreement about what life even is?

I mean, there's a lot of great topic points there.

I want to roll back one point to the dimethyl sulfide result on K218b because I think that's yet another great example of how this molecule was claimed with detection.

There's some controversy about how robust that detection is.

That'll get played out in the literature.

And then even if it does exist, the question is, well, K218b is a very different planet from Earth.

If it is habitable, if it does have an ocean, which we're not even sure if it does, it has a lot of hydrogen.

times.

Give me a planet which you think is an interesting one.

Of those planets, so most of the planets we found have been things that are much bigger than Earth because that's what we're most easily able to see first.

They leave a bigger imprint in our detection.

So, you know, when we're looking for things that are smaller, rocky, maybe Earth temperature, things that we think could have life as we know it on Earth, but on this distant world, then you're talking about, you know, maybe 30 to 70 planets, depending on where you're make your boundaries as to what you're considering habitable.

So there's a few dozen.

And of that, my favorite system to first look at is the TRAPPIST system, which has, of course, been in the news a lot, because that's a system where you have seven Earth-sized planets around a single star.

i talk a lot about the james webb space telescope which seems to have been a pretty big deal in terms of looking at these exoplanets but is it good enough on its own to say oh yeah we have found something with life

No, I mean, yes and no.

But does it surprise you even to see some of these things unfold in real time?

Yeah, I

think what's

most impressive to me is just that we're able to bring back in the human exploration of space.

So, I mean, robots can do this better.

Let's be clear.

Robots can do this better and cheaper.

Is that exciting? Yeah.

So how does that happen?

Yeah, so, I mean, it's incredible that we have the technology to do this, first off.

You know, I think it just shows how far we've come with telescopes to be able to look at these things from light years away.

And there's different observatories have different advantages.

And for this molecule, they were looking at some of the vibrational and rotational modes of the molecule.

And this is where I would say also, though, we always have to interject some caution.

A lot of, quote unquote, molecular detections in astronomy have been overturned or pushed back on or other researchers have said, wait a second, are we sure it's this molecule? Because sometimes other things can also rotate in those same frequencies sometimes.

Yeah.

But is Boeing still in the game, though, with the Starliner?

It is.

It's still in the game, but it's going to have to send an unmanned one with cargo to dock and come back and see how that goes before they're going to try it again with humans.

For those that might have followed the news, it was in 2024, I guess, that Boeing launched the Starliner with Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, two astronauts together.

to the space station, and they were supposed to be there for eight days, and they ended up being stranded for nine months, and it was quite the space news.

They ended up needing to come down on SpaceX's Dragon capsule, so that was not one of Boeing's happy moments.

times in their company but they um they're uh the boeing starliner actually did return fine no problems um so it was safe in the end but they you know in this abundance of caution some of the thrusters weren't working and they did not want to send humans back on it so they're going to try to um continue this program and uh maybe we will see humans fly on the starliner again but not this year

Is that something that we're going to get to see more of? Or this year, do we get any good spacey events?