Ep. 688: What’s Next? Looking Ahead to Season 17

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Once again, we’ve reached the end of a season here on Astronomy Cast, and it’s time for the summer hiatus. But the Universe never takes a break. What can we expect to happen over the summer while we’re catching up on our reading, building our gardens and planning for Season 17?

Transcript

(This is an automatically generated transcript)

Fraser Cain [00:01:34] Astronomy Cast episode 688 What’s Next? Looking ahead to season 17. Welcome to Astronomy Cast for weekly facts based journey through the cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know. I’m Fraser Cain, I’m the publisher of Universe Today. With me, as always, is Doctor Pamela Guay, senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the director of Cosmic Quest. Hey, Pamela. How you doing?

Pamela Gay [00:01:58] I am doing well, and I feel like we are morally required to let our audience know that this is our last episode of the season, but we’re still going to be working our butts off all summer to make sure that, well, next season is even better than this season. So from picking stories to we’re going to do a complete upgrade of the Astronomy Cast website and just generally getting are learning more about everything going on in the universe.

Fraser Cain [00:02:32] Hats on you are hilarious. Like you feel guilty for taking two months away from producing episodes of Astronomy Cast and need to justify with an enormous amount of work. I am going to be going for hikes in the forest. I’m going to be working on my garden, and I am going to be generally goofing off.

Pamela Gay [00:02:53] All right, so I don’t know how to do any of this.

Fraser Cain [00:02:57] I know, I know. So, I mean, of course, of course I can’t help myself, but work as well. But but yeah, I mean, the the key with the, the hiatus is that we take a break off of the live streams, which are this constant tether to high speed internet in a safe, comfortable recording studio. And instead we get to keep things sort of fast and loose and mobile and, and visit our friends and attend conferences and travel and not worry. Oh, I’ve got to get to high speed internet on Monday and Thursday and Friday and, you know, on and on.

Pamela Gay [00:03:35] And I’m putting a soundproof roof in. Last summer was the removal of the roof. This summer is the replacement of the roof. Right? But but the reason I’m bringing this up is every single summer, a large chunk of you are like, well, there’s no new episodes. I’m not going to support them on Patreon anymore. Yes. And this is devastating because like, we have humans that we do pay in the summer to help us get things caught up and do things. And and so I want to remind all of you that you get an ad free back catalog of our episodes if you’re a patron and if you want ad free versions of our show for your road trips and you know you do, please become a patron to get those ad free versions, or stay a patron to keep getting those ad free versions at Patreon.com slash Astronomy Cast. And while he’s out hiking, I’m going to be soundproofing the roof of my studio.

Fraser Cain [00:04:42] Making improvements in the studio. That makes sense. Well, once again, we’ve reached the end of a season here at Astronomy Cast and it’s time for the summer hiatus. But the universe never takes a break. So what can we expect to happen over the summer while we’re catching up on reading and building our gardens and planning for season 17? All right, so how do you want to. How do you want to approach this? I mean, we’ve got some astronomical events we want people to think about. There are some spaceflight things and planetary science, interesting flybys, things that are happening, as well as some improvements that we’re going to be making to Astronomy Cast, where you want to start.

Pamela Gay [00:05:16] I actually start with a kvetch. Sure. I, I have been looking forward for years to this coming season would be the season of Lsst and view of an observatory turning on and the I can’t pronounce it any longer telescope doing its thing. And it’s delayed until August. So this time next year I will be celebrating Lsst. He beginning the survey.

Fraser Cain [00:05:52] Yeah, I just did an interview, with James Davenport who’s, who’s on the various committees with Lsst. He if you’re Rubin and we got a chance to sort of talk about what the upcoming schedule is and they figure final mirror installation, everything should be ready to go later on in 23. First light early 24 survey begins mid 24. So we are about a year away. So next year, just as we wrap up season 17, we will be able to and I know we’ve both been saying. Vera Rubin.

Pamela Gay [00:06:31] Yeah.

Fraser Cain [00:06:32] 23. Everything changes. Get ready.

Pamela Gay [00:06:35] Yeah.

Fraser Cain [00:06:36] And. Nope. So. So that one. We definitely have to push back a year.

Pamela Gay [00:06:40] I fact checked myself into sadness.

Fraser Cain [00:06:42] Oh, no. Like, were you, like, ready to talk about it? And then you can check the schedule one last time? Yeah. Oh, no.

Pamela Gay [00:06:50] I, in fact, checked myself and decided.

Fraser Cain [00:06:52] Yeah. All right, all right, so let’s not talk about the things that have been delayed. And I guess that’s it for the show. So we’ll see everyone you know. All right, well, let’s talk about a couple of things that are important. So I guess, you know, the big one that’s that’s definitely, definitely going to happen very soon is the Euclid mission. So it’s definitely talk about. Yes.

Pamela Gay [00:07:10] So, so I it’s a spaceship, which means you know more about it than I do at this point.

Fraser Cain [00:07:17] Sure. Yeah. So the Euclid this is a European Space Agency mission, and it is a, like it’s its primary goal is to measure and map the Dark Universe. And so it’s going to be specializing in looking for, trying to map out the existence of dark matter and dark energy. And they’re doing this through gravitational lensing around the universe. And this is like the first dedicated spacecraft that’s ever been launched to do this from the European Space Agency. So it’s due for launch on July the 1st, which is, of course, a fantastic Canadian holiday. Happy Canada Day to everybody who is going to be part of this mission. I’ll try to get the exact stats on the on the spacecraft, but it kind of looks like, like a mini Herschel. So it’s so it’s that it’s that it’s the non folding type of telescope. So it’s the one that sort of fits nicely inside the fairing. The size of the mirror will do the job. And so this is a you know near infrared telescope thinking of using the map of the universe and try to make these really precise measurements of dark matter, dark energy. And like there’s a bunch of big open questions about dark energy, like one of them is, is the expansion of the universe accelerating? Will the universe go on to eventually tear itself apart in the Big Rip? And so far, measurements have just been not done well enough to get us to the point where we can we can answer this question well, Euclid is going to be the instrument will probably give us that answer. And hopefully, you know, by measuring how dark energy is unfolding across the universe, we’ll get another clue or two about what the cause is, what could be actually generating and contributing to this. So so this is I think this is probably the big launch of the summer. And it’s, you know, we’re going to come right out the gate with that on July 1st.

Pamela Gay [00:09:30] That that is excellent. And there’s there’s already some theories that are primed and ready to be proven or just proven. One of the more intriguing ones is the idea that it is in how supermassive black holes and other black holes release energy, that dark energy is essentially put out into the universe, and that prior to the existence of black holes, there was no dark energy and that there should be a scaling factor. And and I’d love to see that particular theory proven or disproven, because it’s so weird and so clean cut and and so now I am far more excited than I should be about a mission that has not yet got off the planet.

Fraser Cain [00:10:20] And you know what? I think I just hacked your brain. I got a chance to talk about a mission that hasn’t even left the ground yet, because it’s a thing that’s about to happen as we talk about a mission in the future.

Pamela Gay [00:10:31] It’s true, it’s true.

Fraser Cain [00:10:32] So there’s a couple more things in space flight that I should probably cover before we move on to some of the other topics. So one is we’re going to get the next crew flying up to the International Space Station. This is going to be crew seven. They’re going to be flying to the space station. And that’s going to be in oh, let me at the date here. So that’s going to be sometime in mid-August.

Pamela Gay [00:10:55] And that’s something that happens on the regular.

Fraser Cain [00:10:58] Yes. Yeah. Yes. But but you know, of course people who listen to Astronomy Cast expect us to give regular updates of when crews are coming and going from the International Space Station. So, you know, hear me now, you know, crew seven will be heading off to space sometime over the summer.

Pamela Gay [00:11:15] And Artemis two got delayed until not this season coming up. But the season after that, everything I looked up was delayed. So we’re just going to keep going, keep watching.

Fraser Cain [00:11:26] Did you get some? Did you get the delay on Starliner? So that’s the other big one that I want to mention is. The delay on Starliner.

Pamela Gay [00:11:31] No. I up after seeing what had happened to Artemis do. I was like, I’m just stopping here.

Fraser Cain [00:11:37] So of course, like the Boeing’s Starliner is the alternative way that NASA has prepared to send astronauts to the International Space Station. They gave two commercial contracts, one to Space-x to deliver astronauts to the space station and then one to Boeing for the CST 100 Starliner. But while the Crew Dragon will be up to like ten flights with crew by this summer, the Starliner has yet to launch with people on board. They had a couple of, problematic flights. They finally did one launch last year where they were able to make it up to the space station dock return, but there was some problems with the parachute system that NASA wasn’t quite happy with. And so they did this kind of exhaustive list through. And the plan was that they would do the first flight, the first prototype flight with people on board in July 23rd. So smack dab in the middle of hiatus. But it turned out that there are still a bunch of outstanding issues. And now mission controllers at NASA aren’t sure they’re going to be able to get this thing with crew on board to fly before the end of 23. So maybe we’ll be talking about its flight upcoming in the next year’s hiatus in VR. Rubin will be celebrated at around the same time.

Pamela Gay [00:12:55] And are breaking my heart.

Fraser Cain [00:12:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there’s like one more space I think that I should definitely go into. Sorry. I’m just. I’m capitalizing the.

Pamela Gay [00:13:04] Starship.

Fraser Cain [00:13:04] Yes. Starship.

Pamela Gay [00:13:06] So they’re saying six weeks as of last night. I don’t believe them, but they’re saying six weeks. That’s his last night, right?

Fraser Cain [00:13:12] Yeah, but you know me. You know, Elon Musk claims he came in at ten. So that gets you 12, 22 weeks. So that might fall outside of hiatus. But you know, we saw the last launch of Starship where it made it off the pad, but it also destroyed the pad and then came apart on its way up to space. So there are clearly some fixes involved for both the pad and the spacecraft to get it operational. So hopefully, yeah, we will see within the next 22 weeks. Another launch attempt of the SpaceX Starship. But if you know, if everything goes amazingly well, we could very much see a successful attempt to orbit that could happen completely within our hiatus. And and we won’t have anything to say about it. All right. I’m going to finish all. That’s all the spaceflight stuff that I’ll. You know, I’ve been ranting about. All right, so what sky events should people be watching out for?

Pamela Gay [00:14:10] So so it’s not going to happen while we’re on hiatus, but you need to make your travel arrangements while we’re on hiatus. So one of the big things that’s going to be happening is the 2023 annular eclipse of the sun. It’s going to be visible kind of on an east west ish path across the United States. These are cool to photograph, but less cool to experience solar eclipses because you have the the bright light of the sun, but it’s only getting sort of eclipsed by the moon. The moon is just a little too far away from the Earth to completely cover the disk of the sun. So you end up with a ring of fire and Johnny Cash stuck in your head. Right. So I.

Fraser Cain [00:15:07] Make plans.

Pamela Gay [00:15:08] Yeah. Make your plans. One of the places that’s going to be visible from is Roswell, New Mexico. If you happen to be there, I really want a picture of the eclipse over one of the really cool Roswell, New Mexico alien signs. This is one of my dreams. Please, somebody fulfill it for me.

Fraser Cain [00:15:25] Oh, let me.

Pamela Gay [00:15:26] Make your plans this summer.

Fraser Cain [00:15:29] Yeah, I love it.

Pamela Gay [00:15:31] So. So beyond that, we’re going to have our normal thing of. There’s an amazing meteor shower in August. The Perseids. This, I have to admit, is the first major meteor shower I remember being able to watch as a small child, and this occurs peak on August 12th, and there can be as many as as 90 meteors per minute. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. I think you have to be somewhere. Like.

Fraser Cain [00:16:03] Not the.

Pamela Gay [00:16:03] Dark.

Fraser Cain [00:16:04] Yeah, not with the Perseus. I mean, I’ve seen that with the Leonids, but not the Perseids.

Pamela Gay [00:16:08] Yeah, but but that’s what they say. You have the potential of seeing, and it has exploded once.

Fraser Cain [00:16:17] Here’s what’s important, right, is that we’ve got a thin crescent moon this year.

Pamela Gay [00:16:20] Yeah.

Fraser Cain [00:16:21] We don’t have a stupid full moon the way we always seem to. Every year this year we have a crescent moon. This is a good, good year for the Percy. It’s the summer.

Pamela Gay [00:16:31] And it’s in the evening, so a lot of them require you to stay up until that particular constellation starts to rise. No, this is an evening event for us. Stay up all night. It’s worth it. So go book your campground now. Yeah. A lot of the national parks. Actually really good astronomy programs now. But one of the things I found out is happening is a lot of the national parks are actually hitting capacity. So you have to book in advance to go visit a national park now. I for one, depending on the temperatures, am likely to go to a lake where I have a nice, beach to set up on a large sky. And lightning bugs are the bane of meteor showers. So if you can pick someplace without lightning bugs, your experience will be better.

Fraser Cain [00:17:29] Yeah, we don’t have them here, so my backyard is going to be the way.

Pamela Gay [00:17:32] That’s awesome.

Fraser Cain [00:17:33] Yeah. But, yeah, like, this is it. The. Every year we always talk about the proceeds as a really good meteor shower for people in the northern hemisphere. We remember you in the southern hemisphere, but for the northerners, this is the one. And. And this year with the crescent moon means you’re going to have pretty dark skies. And the moon will go down within an hour or two. And then you have completely dark skies for the rest of the night. So this is it. This is the time.

Pamela Gay [00:18:02] Yes, entirely. And if you’re someone who’s like, I don’t do outside. I understand that I’m married to someone who’s like that. And this is where I just want to point out that the Juno mission out at Jupiter is every month pretty much doing its a little bit over every month doing a pass by Jupiter’s moon io, getting closer and closer. It will make its closest approach at the end of the year, but there’s a JunoCam project that allows everyday people to download the images and process them in a way that your brain says these worlds should look. And IO is starting to be the kind of thing that is on the list of stuff that you can see get involved in the Juno project start or Juno can start learning how you two can reduce the data, make beautiful images, and be all set for that closest approach. And it’s going to appear at the end of the year.

Fraser Cain [00:19:08] All right. I want to talk about gravitational waves for a second.

Pamela Gay [00:19:11] You beat me to it. Okay. So there are two.

Fraser Cain [00:19:14] You can then find them. Then I will.

Pamela Gay [00:19:16] Go there together.

Fraser Cain [00:19:17] We’ll glue together. So, you know, as people have been aware, the new observing run of LIGO has come back online, and now they have improved the sensitivity of every part of the system. Better mirrors, better lasers, quantum squeezing. And so they’re now detecting multiple gravitational wave events every single day. And you can actually go and see the live feed of all of the gravitational wave events. And, and they’re so raw that now the, the folks LIGO they just make a, they make an estimation of whether this is a terrestrial source or whether this is a gravitational, a proper gravitational wave, just. And so they’re like, it could be a truck, might be an earthquake, could be a gravitational wave. Scientists this is a you probably not us. And so and so if you look back in the list it’s you see there are colliding neutron stars and potential weight of neutron star collisions and, and black hole black holes and every flavor in between. And you’re seeing multiples of these a day. And so it’s gone from woo hoo. We found a gravitational wave to now it’s just this firehose of gravitational wave detections that now scientists are having to go through each one and try and get a sense. But I would say we are seeing of on the confirmed side for a week. Plus, like you said, you want a week. Now we’re seeing probably for a week at this point. And so with all these upgrades, we’re seeing a larger volume of space. We’re seeing better, more sensitivity for the the scale and size of what is out there. And a lot of things that used that were considered impossible for white dwarf, white dwarf collisions, maybe asymmetric supernova explosions, are now in the running. And so we could see some of these things with the next one. And just there’s one story that we’re just working on with Universe Today. The Japanese version is the camera. Instrument has has come online and it’s in the same place where you’ve probably seen the, the pictures of this really cool giant. Dark matter detector. Place where people are.

Pamela Gay [00:21:33] Like all the photomultiplier.

Fraser Cain [00:21:35] People are like robots in the middle of this time. Yeah. Hank. Yeah. So it’s at the same location, and they were detecting noise, terrestrial noise. And they were able to simulate the noise by measuring wave waves hitting 13 different coastlines on Japan. And from that, they were able to effectively figure out what is introducing all of this, this noise into the system. So, so waves hitting the Japanese coastline are being detected by the gravitational wave observatory. As I love this, the gravitational wave observatory is detecting real waves, in some cases hundreds and hundreds of kilometers away.

Pamela Gay [00:22:17] And and the preciseness of these systems is really something that. I like. I know all the words, I understand all the science, and my brain is just like, no. I refuse to conceptualize that they have 40 kilogram mirrors that they are using to detect the interference of light bouncing between the mirrors on kilometer scales, where they’re looking for these mirrors to move, atomic sizes to create that interference. And and it’s so precise that the thermal noise in the mirrors creating quantum variability is a problem.

Fraser Cain [00:23:12] Yeah.

Pamela Gay [00:23:13] And and so like they’re already planning the next upgrade where they’re going to be using new thin films to try and reduce that thermal noise. More in quantum. Do you know how to explain quantum squeezing? I don’t know how to explain quantum squeezing. Yeah, I mean barely.

Fraser Cain [00:23:28] The gist is that it’s sort of based on the on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, right. That you can’t measure the position in the velocity of a particle at the same time. And so in this world, what but what you can do is you can, if you’re willing to give up accuracy on one side of the equation, you can you can gain advantage on the other side of the equation. And so they’re taking advantage of and I forget exactly. But but essentially one half of the equation as it relates to what they need the they abandon. And so they’re like we don’t care about the and.

Pamela Gay [00:24:02] Obviously.

Fraser Cain [00:24:03] The velocities. Yeah. Yeah. But we want the other part. We want the accuracy. And so they’re able to by by pushing the uncertainty principle in the direction that they want, by willing to abandon the other part of it, they’re able to get a more accurate measurement. And I apologize that I’m being very vague about it. And I will do a much better job in the future because it’s come up quite a bit. And so I need to come up with like the perfect because we’ve covered it quite a bit, a universe today. But I need to come up with like the perfect explanation that I can then roll out when people have me have questions.

Pamela Gay [00:24:32] Yeah, I need to do the same thing. And and this isn’t the only like I already know, our first episode next season is going to be on gravitational waves. And, and this is because we have, we have this new technology coming online to do yet another run. There’s certain to be major discoveries made along the way. And there’s also there’s currently shrouded in Enigma, a press conference. Yes, in the works for for folks that, study gravitational waves using pulsars. And and this is something that started a couple of years ago, where the idea is you measure the arrival times of pulses from pulsars. And the the spinning of these things is more accurate than your standard atomic clock in a lot of cases. So if you see variations in the arrival time of pulses from pulsars that can be cross correlated over large distances in space, you can actually see gravitational waves propagating through space and changing the distance over time between us and these different pulsars. And this is sensitive to a completely different kind and size of gravitational wave, wavelength to wavelength kind of size, not amplitude.

Fraser Cain [00:26:06] So I don’t know what the announcement is going to be.

Pamela Gay [00:26:10] I don’t either, right.

Fraser Cain [00:26:11] But there was a paper on archive that we reported on, this week about the nano grav experiment, and the results were that they had not detected any supermassive black hole collisions with the end of 1 billion solar masses within 300 million light years, but in the future, small volume. It is a small volume, but and they are very massive. There aren’t a lot of billion mass supermassive black holes within that volume and that then. But that’s 12.5 years of of near of pulsar timing events. And the expectation is that then over the next years, as the years go on, the masses of the supermassive black holes will come down and the volume will increase. And eventually when we get to a point where they mean so, so if they are going to make an announcement that they have detected colliding supermassive black holes, this will run counter to this paper that we found about a week ago that says that they got a null result within this fairly large volume. So I don’t know what it’s going to be, but I am, but I feel. Like. Like if it’s just like, they don’t have to contradict what this paper said or different people.

Pamela Gay [00:27:28] Or it doesn’t have to contradict. It could be a discovery of something entirely different. Yes. And I don’t know what that entirely different could be, but I am intrigued that they have caught my attention. And yeah, yeah, our first episode of next season. Unless this all turns out to be completely boring and mute. So.

Fraser Cain [00:27:51] So is that what the first episode is is is what happened while we were on hiatus?

Pamela Gay [00:27:57] Basically. Probably gravitational waves. Yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s one of these things that I’m just super excited about. And, and I mean, we’re also going to see what other missions have been delayed. So there’s been like will Starship go. Probably not. Will the Russian Lunar 25 mission go? Probably not. Will Chandra and three go? Probably. I think that one has a good chance. Yeah. We will see. We will say.

Fraser Cain [00:28:32] All right. Well, was there anything else that you wanted to mention before we wrap up this week’s episode? Okay.

Pamela Gay [00:28:38] The most important announcement for our livelihood of all, or at least mine. The cosmic quest to come and hang out. Atheism is going to be the weekend of July 1516. Our. We’re doing something slightly different this year. We have realized that us hanging out on the internet and interviewing guest after guest after guest is fun, but not the best way to raise funding because we get distracted from asking for money by talking to our guests who are amazing. So we’re going to do a Lego versus Minecraft Moon base built wow, where we are setting up the exact same footprints and quarter of a crater, in a in a friend’s basement. Miss Britt Kitten, you may know her from the Cosmic Quest community. Tanya Cazares. She’s been one of our guests before she does robotics. And then, of course, Minecraft, because Minecraft and, so in the interim, a bunch of us are going to probably appear on Cosmic Quest Stream, building up the blank palette of a crater for teams in both the real world with Lego and in the Minecraft world to then build these bases. And we’re going to spend 36 hours doing this and trying to raise funding so that, we can essentially keep everyone who needs health insurance on the Cosmic Quest Astronomy Cast team, with health insurance and, give them pay raises that at least keep up with inflation. I, I understand at a very fundamental level why companies fire their most senior people, and I will never be that human. But I need your help.

Fraser Cain [00:30:43] Right. So that sounds like fun. All right, well, Pamela, if I don’t see you before, I know, I’m sure I will. Yeah. Have a great summer. Everybody who’s watching have a great summer. We will be with you in spirit, and, we will be here in two months to celebrate all of the amazing things that happened this summer in space and astronomy. Thanks, everyone, and we will see you next season.

Pamela Gay [00:31:11] But first, but first, I have to thank our patrons. So this week I just want to say thank you to Amazing Hall. But I can share some Dwight Ilke brace. Amazing. Abraham Cottrell, Alex Rain, Andrew Stevenson, Paul Hayden, planetary, Steven coffee, Glenn McDavid. Szymanski, David. James. Roger, Cami Ross, Ian Gabriel. Galvin, Sean. Matz, Sam Brooks and his mom, the lonely sand person, Nola Benjamin Carrier. Nate Detwiler, the air major. Bart Flaherty, Lu Zealand, Philip Walker, Dean Brian Kilby, Benjamin Davies, John Drake, Jordan Turner, Robert. Huddle, humble. Not sure. Kim. Barron, Paul. Esposito, Bob. Tzatziki. Arthur. Latz. Hall, Ron. Thorsen, Hal. McKinney, Ruben. McCarthy. Timelord. IRA. Daniel. Donaldson, Frank. Stewart, Christian. Gold, Golden wheel. Hamilton, Simeon. Thorsten. Ayanna. Abdullah. Jeff McDonald. Aloha. Born. Thank you. Thank you all so much for being here.

Fraser Cain [00:32:25] Thanks, everyone.

Pamela Gay [00:32:26] Bye bye.

Fraser Cain [00:32:27] All right now, we’ll see you next season.

Pamela Gay [00:32:35] Astronomy cast is a joint product of Universe Today and the Planetary Science Institute. Astronomy cast is released under a Creative Commons Attribution license. So love it, share it, and remix it. But please credit it to our hosts, Fraser Cain and Doctor Pamela Gay. You can get more information on today’s show topic on our website. Astronomy. Cars.com. This episode was brought to you. Thanks to our generous patrons on Patreon. If you want to help keep the show going, please consider joining our community at Patreon.com Slash Astronomy Cast. Not only do you help us pay our producers a fair wage, you will also get special access to content right in your inbox and invites to online events. We are so grateful to all of you who have joined our Patreon community already. Anyways, keep looking up. This has been Astronomy Cast.