0:00

Starship is ready for its fourth flight.

0:03

Webb finds the most distant

0:05

galaxy ever seen, a

0:07

new way to detect Hawking radiation

0:09

and fresh volcanoes on Venus. All

0:11

this and more in this

0:13

week's Space Bites. Well, are you ready

0:16

for the fourth attempt of

0:18

launching SpaceX Starship? We got

0:20

the news this week that

0:22

SpaceX is targeting June 5th,

0:25

at the earliest to take

0:27

another crack at launching Starship.

0:30

Once again, they're going to blast

0:32

off a Starship on top of

0:34

Super Heavy. It's going to separate.

0:37

Starship is going to fly to orbit. The

0:40

Super Heavy is then going to attempt to

0:42

return and land gently into the

0:44

water in the Gulf of Mexico, while

0:47

Starship is going to continue on to

0:49

orbit and then is going to attempt

0:51

to deorbit through the atmosphere and make

0:53

its own soft landing somewhere in the

0:56

Indian Ocean. And this is

0:58

sort of chosen because this is a way for

1:00

them to be able to have a trajectory where

1:02

they don't have any potential of getting your population

1:04

areas. That sounds safe

1:06

wise. Obviously, there's like a ton of

1:08

little changes that are going to make,

1:10

small lessons that were learned from the

1:12

previous launch attempts. One big change is

1:15

they're going to eject the hot fire

1:17

staging segments sort of in between the

1:19

top of the Super Heavy and the

1:21

bottom of Starship. And this is going

1:23

to be destroyed. And Anton, my

1:26

producer, really wants us to

1:28

sort of focus in that

1:30

this means that Starship is no longer going to

1:32

be fully 100% reusable if

1:34

they have to actually dispose of this

1:37

ring on every launch attempt. We'll see

1:39

whether they can figure

1:41

it out and bring that back

1:43

into the era of reusability. So

1:46

all eyes are on Starship for June

1:48

5th. Obviously, I'm going to be watching

1:50

the launch and if it whatever happens,

1:52

I'll try to provide you some coverage

1:55

after the launch is complete. Speaking of

1:57

human launches, even sooner than that, we

1:59

should. get a launch of

2:01

the Boeing Starliner carrying two astronauts

2:03

to the International Space Station. Now

2:05

we've been waiting a long time

2:07

for this launch there's a lot

2:09

of delays and we're finally there.

2:11

Now we're not entirely

2:14

out of the woods yet there

2:17

is an ongoing potential leak of helium

2:19

on the space craft but it's not

2:21

urgent enough that NASA thinks it's worth

2:23

canceling the launch so they're gonna keep

2:25

an eye on it and still launch.

2:27

The two astronauts Butch Wilmore

2:29

and Suni Williams have arrived in Florida and

2:32

they're getting ready to actually board the spacecraft.

2:34

If all goes well the rocket will blast

2:36

off on June 1st but we've

2:38

seen so many delays even just in the

2:40

last couple of months that I like don't

2:43

be surprised if it gets a

2:45

few more delays until they're finally ready to blast

2:47

off. Webb finds the most

2:49

distant galaxy ever seen. All right

2:52

here is a record that

2:54

I don't think it's gonna

2:56

last very long. James Webb's

2:58

Space Telescope has found the

3:00

most distant galaxy ever seen.

3:02

Now the galaxy is called

3:04

J's GSZ14-0 or J's Z14.

3:08

This is a galaxy that is

3:10

seen with a redshift number of

3:12

approximately 14 which

3:14

roughly correlates to about 290 million years

3:19

after the Big Bang and

3:21

we've heard a lot of announcements about

3:23

the most distant galaxy ever being seen. In

3:25

fact as soon as James Webb launched we

3:27

got some announcements of people seeing galaxies that

3:30

were potentially even less than that 250

3:33

million 230 million years after the Big

3:35

Bang but the big difference is that

3:37

this galaxy has been very heavily studied.

3:39

So back in January 2024 Webb stared

3:43

at this one galaxy for 10 hours

3:46

and that's the kind of length of

3:48

time that you need to be able

3:50

to do a really accurate spectroscopic analysis

3:52

of this Galaxy. You Stare

3:54

at this one galaxy long enough you can

3:56

start to see these chemical abundances.. You can

3:58

see the absorption line. The new mission

4:00

lines of different chemicals. You can detect

4:03

their current redshift and that tells you

4:05

how fast the gal he's moving away

4:07

from us and so what time in

4:10

the universe you are? See that? Only.

4:12

When you take that time and do

4:15

that spectroscopic data analysis can you get

4:17

that accurate number and Web just hasn't

4:19

had the time to analyze all these

4:21

galaxies. Who's probably other galaxies that he

4:24

has seen that are farther. It's just

4:26

that nobody is put in the time

4:28

to actually confirmed. But so far this

4:30

is the record breaker two hundred ninety

4:32

million years after the Big Bang. And

4:35

what's interesting is this is in a

4:37

time that astronomers referred to as cosmic

4:39

dawns. This is when those first galaxies

4:41

were coming together. To form the

4:43

larger structures, the more mature galaxies like

4:46

the Milky Way that we see today

4:48

this is one of the mean sign

4:50

schools of James Webb was to identify

4:52

these galaxies and try and figure out

4:54

that merger process to see how we

4:57

get these larger structures. A new way

4:59

to measure the rotational black holes. We

5:02

don't know much about the black

5:04

holes. really. We can know their

5:06

mass. And. their rotation maybe we

5:08

can other electrical charge and so there

5:11

are ways to measure the bass a

5:13

black holes and there are few ways

5:15

to measure the rotational black holes but

5:17

astronomers are always looking for new ways

5:19

to figure out how fast is that

5:22

black hole spinning as a researchers had

5:24

a wonderful event happened recently that they're

5:26

able to use to be able to

5:28

calculate the rotation speed of a black

5:30

hole hold the title disruption event and

5:33

this is where a star is consumed

5:35

torn apart by a black hole some

5:37

of the material is ejected off into

5:39

space and some of the imperial falls

5:41

down in joins the accretion disks that

5:44

is surrounding the black hole so couple

5:46

of years ago sonorous detected one of

5:48

these title disruption events around a supermassive

5:50

black hole and are able to observe

5:52

it for hundreds of days watching as

5:55

the light was changing overtime as the

5:57

black hole was adding this new stars

5:59

too it's accretion disk and they

6:01

were able to detect a wobble in

6:04

the accretion disk as this new material

6:06

was being added and from that wobble

6:08

they were able to calculate the

6:10

rotation speed of the black hole. What

6:13

they found was that the black hole

6:15

turning at 25% the speed of light

6:18

which sounds like a lot but in

6:20

fact that's relatively slow for black holes.

6:22

Black holes can spin much faster than

6:24

that really approaching the speed of light

6:26

itself essentially the maximum speed that is

6:29

predicted by Einstein. Many black holes

6:31

reach that maximum speed limit and then they

6:33

just can't spin any faster than that. So

6:35

it's exciting astronomers have a new way to

6:37

be able to measure the rotation speed of

6:39

black holes. They just need to watch stars

6:42

get sacrificed to be able to make that

6:44

speed calculation. A way to

6:46

detect Hawking radiation. The late great

6:48

Stephen Hawking an astrophysicist did a

6:50

lot of work thinking about a

6:53

black hole and one of his

6:55

best known predictions is that black

6:57

holes should evaporate over time. They

7:00

should release radiation other particles called Hawking

7:02

radiation and then as the black hole

7:04

does this it is decreasing in mass.

7:07

But the problem is that this happens

7:09

on an incredibly slow scale longer

7:12

than a human lifetime to be able

7:14

to detect these particles coming from individual

7:16

black holes and so we need a

7:18

place where black holes are evaporating more

7:21

rapidly. And so the amount

7:23

of Hawking radiations coming off from a black hole

7:25

is dependent on the mass of the black hole.

7:27

If you have something that is say the mass

7:29

of a small asteroid it's going to evaporate very

7:32

quickly. It's going to be releasing a pot

7:34

flash of gamma radiation and then it's going

7:36

to disappear but we don't have any black

7:38

holes like that. But maybe there's a way

7:40

to make them. Astronomers publish

7:43

a new paper where they propose

7:45

that if you had merging supermassive

7:47

black holes as these

7:49

black holes are coming together they might

7:51

release what they call morsels of

7:54

smaller black holes essentially the remnants

7:56

that are coming out of this

7:58

merger process. way

8:00

to get tiny black holes out of the

8:02

two black holes as they come together. And

8:05

then these morsels can have all kinds of

8:07

different masses and it might be that it's

8:09

small enough that they can then evaporate and

8:12

release a blast of gamma radiation. And so

8:14

the astronomers propose that if you watch the

8:16

mergers between various black holes you might be

8:18

able to detect the gamma radiation coming from

8:21

the morsel black holes that are being thrown

8:23

out and they're evaporating around this merger process.

8:25

And the cool thing is is that we

8:28

have the kinds of telescopes today that

8:30

could be able to detect this

8:32

radiation. Proof that massive stars are

8:34

disappearing. Over the last

8:37

decades astronomers are coming to

8:39

the conclusion that very massive

8:41

stars are just disappearing.

8:44

The traditional idea of what happens at the

8:46

end of a massive star, like something with

8:49

more than eight times the mass of the

8:51

Sun, is that it uses up all the

8:53

fuel in its core, it

8:55

then implodes, produces a supernova

8:57

and forms a black

8:59

hole or neutron star at the

9:01

heart. But astronomers have found that

9:03

a lot of the kinds of

9:05

stars that should be detonating as

9:07

a supernova are just disappearing. They

9:09

call them annovas as

9:11

opposed to a supernova. But the problem is

9:14

they're really hard to find. I mean you've got

9:16

a star and then you do a survey a

9:18

decade later and you notice that star is missing.

9:20

Now it could be that it's just dust in

9:23

the way or that there

9:25

was dust in the beginning or there was

9:27

some mistake in the observations. So there's lots

9:30

of reasons to explain why a star might

9:32

have disappeared. But in a recent study

9:34

astronomers looked at a binary star system that has

9:36

a star with about 25 times

9:38

the mass of the Sun and a

9:40

black hole with 10 times the mass

9:42

of the Sun. And the two stars

9:45

are orbiting a common center of

9:47

gravity. But what they found is

9:49

that the orbit is too perfect,

9:51

too circular. In other words, that

9:55

you could have a star with that kind of mass and

9:57

a black hole with that kind of mass. So obviously the

9:59

black hole was the result of

10:01

a star that went supernova, you

10:03

could get that if the

10:05

star didn't die violently, if

10:08

it just was a star

10:10

and then it was a black hole and

10:12

just collapsed in on itself and just kept

10:14

going in the exact same orbit that it

10:16

was going before. It

10:18

wouldn't be the exact same orbit because it would have lost some mass,

10:20

but I guess it didn't explode as a supernova. Okay, I'm gonna go

10:22

with that. And so

10:25

this very perfect star system gives

10:27

an evidence that you can get

10:30

giant stars collapsing into black

10:33

holes without that pesky supernova

10:35

in between. So hopefully

10:37

we will find more and more examples of

10:39

this and it gives us another way that

10:41

stars can die. Every week we do a

10:43

vote on our channel where you tell us

10:45

what you thought was the best space news

10:48

of the week, the most intriguing space news

10:50

of the week. And the winner

10:52

this week was that Voyager 1 is back

10:54

online. So thank you everybody who took the

10:56

time to vote in last week's poll. Now

10:59

we will post the new poll onto

11:01

our community tab on our YouTube channel, but if

11:03

you're just scrolling on YouTube, you shouldn't see the

11:05

votes. Go ahead, take a second, give us a

11:07

vote, tell us what you thought. The best chance

11:09

to be able to see this vote is to

11:11

subscribe to the channel and then watch a bunch

11:14

of our videos to tell the algorithm that you

11:16

want more of our sweet space news. Chang'e

11:18

6 is about to land on the moon. In

11:21

addition to Starliner blasting off on June

11:23

1st, we should get a landing on

11:25

the moon on June 1st. And

11:28

that is the Chinese space agency Chang'e 6

11:30

mission, which is going to be landing at

11:32

the South Pole of the moon in

11:35

the Apollo crater in the South

11:37

Pole Econ Basin. If

11:39

Chang'e 6 lands safely, its

11:42

job is to scoop up two kilograms

11:44

of lunar regolith. It's then going

11:46

to package that up and put it into an

11:48

ascent module that's going to fly up into lunar

11:50

orbit. It's going to meet with an orbital

11:53

spacecraft, which will then bring that capsule

11:55

back down to Earth so that scientists can

11:57

analyze this. And this is scientifically

11:59

fascinating. I mean you're seeing samples that are coming

12:01

from the South Pole of the Moon Near

12:04

to the permanently shadowed craters at the Moon

12:06

and so we can learn about how much

12:08

water Ice is mixed in with the regolith

12:10

in those southern regions Scientifically the far side

12:13

of the Moon the South Pole of the

12:15

Moon I mean these are regions that geologists

12:17

would love to get their hands on to

12:19

be able to analyze these samples, but also

12:22

Think about like what this is I

12:25

mean you've got a spacecraft that is

12:27

launching to the Moon It is separating

12:29

part of it is going into orbit around

12:31

the Moon It is then sending a lander

12:33

down to the surface of the Moon. It is

12:35

collecting samples It's sending an ascent module back up

12:37

to space and that is returning so if you

12:39

the earth That sounds like

12:42

the Apollo missions, right? These are all the

12:44

pieces of the technology that you would master

12:46

in order to be able to send humans

12:48

to the moon And of course this is

12:50

China's goal This is them demonstrating that they

12:53

have the various technology pieces figured out to

12:55

be able to send astronauts eventually to the

12:57

surface of the moon of course it will

12:59

be hundreds of kilograms of astronauts and

13:01

not two kilograms of Lunar

13:04

samples, but you know this

13:06

is how it starts Vulcan isn't a

13:08

planet after all It looks like Spock

13:11

is homeless again back in

13:13

2018 astronomers found evidence that there is

13:15

a super earth exoplanet in the system

13:17

40 Eridani and According

13:19

to science fiction lore to Star Trek lore This

13:22

is the whole world for Spock

13:25

and so plenty of news outlets

13:27

Possibly even us reported that Spock's

13:29

home world had been found of

13:31

course You couldn't last

13:33

and so researchers did a

13:35

bunch of double-checking and some

13:37

very intensive Observations using

13:39

the radial velocity method to observe

13:41

the star they found

13:44

that the evidence of an exoplanet passing

13:46

in front of 40

13:48

Eridani was perfectly explained by a

13:50

large group of sunspots on the

13:52

surface of the star which matches

13:54

its 42 day Rotation

13:58

period in other words What

14:00

looked like a planet was actually a bunch

14:02

of sunspots on the surface of the star

14:05

and as it was turning Those

14:07

sunspots were coming back into view every 42 days.

14:09

So Spock's

14:12

homeworld has disappeared again.

14:15

Didn't that happen in the movie? Wasn't

14:18

Wasn't Vulcan destroyed? Was it Romulus

14:20

was destroyed? Yeah, Vulcan was also

14:22

destroyed Yeah,

14:25

it's canon. Yeah, so this is how

14:27

it happens. Their active volcano's on Venus

14:29

Now it's long believed that the surface

14:31

of Venus isn't volcanically active. We got

14:33

NASA's Magellan mission that went to Venus

14:36

it used Radar to

14:38

scan the surface of Venus and

14:40

it didn't find any active volcanoes,

14:42

but not so fast researchers

14:44

have been looking through the data returned

14:47

by the Magellan spacecraft very carefully and

14:50

Fortunately, it took a bunch of images

14:52

over the course of several years from

14:54

1990 to 1992 and

14:56

an image many places on the surface

14:59

of Venus multiple times and so if

15:01

there was some kind of volcanic eruption

15:03

then they would be able to see

15:05

the changes and Upon

15:07

careful inspection and by comparing the data

15:09

sets over those multiple years Scientists

15:12

have actually found evidence of active volcanism

15:14

on the surface of Venus So there's

15:16

two regions where they found that vents

15:18

were releasing lava out onto the surface

15:20

of Venus and it was creating

15:23

lava flows between 3 and

15:25

20 meters deep across dozens

15:27

of hectares on the surface of

15:29

Venus and So

15:32

actually it turns out Venus is a lot

15:34

more active than we thought I'm gonna talk

15:36

some more about Venus at the end of

15:38

this Episode so stay tuned for that and

15:40

speaking of Venus We've learned

15:42

that the Japanese Space Agency has lost

15:44

contact with their Akatsuki mission This was

15:46

the only operational mission that we had

15:49

at Venus right now It was a

15:51

300 million dollar mission that

15:53

the Japanese Space Agency sent to explore and

15:55

understand the cloud tops of Venus and Unfortunately,

15:58

it failed to be able

16:00

to make its original orbital insertion. But then the

16:03

folks at JAXA were able to use a

16:05

bunch of gravitational sling shots and five years

16:07

later it was able to limp

16:10

finally into the orbit of Venus and perform

16:12

a lot of observations and send home what

16:14

I think are some of the most beautiful

16:16

images of the cloud tops

16:18

of Venus. And unfortunately this week JAXA

16:21

told that they have lost contact with the

16:23

spacecraft. They're gonna attempt to restore contact but

16:25

don't be surprised if this is the last

16:27

week year of it. But like I said

16:30

I'm gonna check some more about this at the

16:32

end of this episode. Now I try to

16:35

wrap up these episodes with a really cool

16:37

picture or video and today I'm able to

16:39

give you both. So first let's take a

16:41

look at a really cool image that comes

16:43

from James Webb. This is of the dwarf

16:45

galaxy NGC 4449 and this is an example

16:49

of a starburst galaxy. In other

16:51

words it's a galaxy that is

16:53

undergoing an intense amount of star

16:55

formation. You can see that at

16:57

the center you've got all of the

16:59

stars and then surrounding that just these

17:01

giant clouds of gas and dust which

17:04

are the fuel for this galaxy. And

17:06

you don't normally get a starburst galaxy

17:08

without some kind of event happening. So

17:10

it's believed that this galaxy either merged

17:12

with another one or came too close

17:14

in some kind of tidal interaction with

17:16

another galaxy and that kicked off this

17:18

era of star formation. And then a

17:21

video of flying

17:23

over the Niele-Fosse region

17:25

on Mars. And

17:27

this was made based on orbital

17:29

imagery from Esa's Mars

17:32

Express mission which has been there forever

17:34

and has taken a lot of really

17:36

high resolution images of the surface of

17:38

Mars. And. Then they were able to

17:41

turn that into this sort of virtual

17:43

flyover above Mars. The region is called

17:45

Niele-Fosse and it comprises parallel trenches that

17:48

are hundreds of meters deep across the

17:50

surface beside a massive impact crater.. And

17:52

In fact, these trenches are known as

17:54

Grabbin where you've got the ground in

17:57

between two faults fractures up and breaks

17:59

apart. Hard and you get these

18:01

your slumping and trenches and really

18:03

interesting terrain and so to shows

18:05

you that more as a lot

18:07

of really fascinating place is it

18:09

need to explore Now you're watching

18:11

this video. But right now I'm

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go ahead, go to Universe to the

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the com sessions or two hundred smell.

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Like I said, I want a couple

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Venus some more. But first or think

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Patriot. When. i think about

19:35

the work that's being done on

19:37

venus this other reporting on this

19:39

week about potential active volcanism i

19:41

think about that fleet of spacecraft

19:43

that are on their way to

19:45

venus over the next decade we've

19:47

got two missions coming from nasa

19:49

de vinci plus in their tests

19:51

and so for example when you

19:53

had that ground radar scan the

19:55

came from the magellan missions or

19:57

have a much higher resolution version

20:00

of that from one of those missions. And

20:02

when you think about that scanning of the

20:04

surface of Venus from the Magellan mission, we're

20:06

going to get a much higher resolution version

20:09

of that. And so we're also going to

20:11

be able to compare the original surface features

20:13

back in 1990, 1992 to

20:17

the surface today. And so hopefully with

20:19

artificial intelligence, with various techniques, they should

20:21

be able to spot all of the

20:23

weird new stuff that's appeared on the

20:25

surface of Venus. We're getting a much

20:27

better understanding of the atmosphere of Venus.

20:29

We're going to search for the

20:31

conditions of life in

20:33

the atmosphere of Venus. So

20:36

many missions, two missions from NASA, one mission

20:38

from the European Space Agency, the Indians are

20:40

sending a mission and there's going to be

20:43

a private mission going to Venus in probably

20:45

first compared to all of the other missions. And

20:48

so Venus is going to go from

20:50

this world that has just been chronically,

20:53

tragically, underexplored to a place that's going

20:55

to feel as vibrant and scientifically exciting

20:58

as what we've seen on

21:00

Mars. So stay tuned, get

21:02

ready for just an avalanche

21:04

of cool new space science that's

21:06

going to be coming from Venus over

21:09

the next decade or so.

21:11

All right, we'll see you next week.