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Last night, the moon turned red and bled
0:18
across the sky for nearly an hour.
0:21
A spacecraft is being prepped for the most daring crude
0:24
mission in half a century and somewhere out there.
0:28
Four stars are dancing together in a space so tight
0:33
it would fit inside Mercury's orbit.
0:36
And apparently, no aliens are coming to visit.
0:40
Dot even a postcard.
0:42
This is Astronomy Daily.
0:47
Welcome to Astronomy Daily, the podcast bringing you
0:51
the universe's best stories six days a week.
0:55
It is Wednesday, March the 4th, 2026.
0:58
And we have a genuinely stellar episode for you today.
1:02
Pun absolutely intended.
1:04
We have the aftermath of what many of you
1:06
stayed up all night to see, the Blood Moon Total Lunar Eclipse.
1:10
We have major Artemis 2 news, a star system that
1:13
honestly shouldn't exist.
1:15
The solution to one of Cosmology's biggest headaches,
1:18
the dawn of commercial space astronomy,
1:21
and the physics-based reality check on alien visitors.
1:26
Let's not waste a second.
1:28
OK, first things first.
1:29
Yesterday morning or the early hours of yesterday,
1:32
depending on where you were, the moon turned blood red.
1:36
And I need to know, Anna, did you watch it?
1:40
I dragged a blanket outside and watched the whole thing
1:45
And the moment totality hit, this deep rusty orange glow,
1:49
stars suddenly visible that had been washed out by moonlight,
1:53
it was genuinely one of those I love being alive
1:57
on a planet with the moon moments.
2:00
For those who missed it, here's what happened.
2:02
The moon passed completely through Earth's shadow.
2:05
That's what makes it a total lunar eclipse.
2:07
And the reason it turns red rather than just going dark
2:10
is this beautiful piece of physics.
2:12
Every sunrise and every sunset happening
2:15
on Earth at that moment projects its orange and red light
2:19
through our atmosphere and bends it onto the moon's surface.
2:22
So what you're seeing is the light of every dawn
2:24
and dusk on the planet all at once.
2:27
Which is one of the most romantic explanations
2:30
in all of astronomy, honestly.
2:32
Totality lasted just under an hour, 59 minutes to be precise.
2:36
And it was visible across the US, Canada, Mexico,
2:40
and parts of South America in the morning hours.
2:43
And from Australia, New Zealand, and Asia after sunset.
2:46
So pretty much anyone who wanted to see it had a shot.
2:49
The timing was great for observers
2:51
in the mountain and Pacific time zones in North America.
2:55
They got totality in fully dark skies.
2:58
Eastern time viewers had to contend with twilight creeping in,
3:01
but honestly still spectacular.
3:04
And here's the bittersweet part.
3:06
If you missed this one, you're going to be waiting a while.
3:09
This was the last total lunar eclipse visible
3:11
from North America until New Year's Eve, 2028.
3:15
So if you watched it, well done, you caught a rare treat.
3:19
And if you didn't, mark your calendars now.
3:22
New Year's Eve, 2028.
3:24
Great excuse for a party.
3:26
We'd love to hear from you.
3:28
Did you get clear skies?
3:30
Drop us a message at at Astro DailyPod.
3:33
All right, next up, huge news for human spaceflight.
3:37
NASA has confirmed that repairs to the Artemis II rocket
3:41
are complete, and an April launch is still very much
3:45
This is the one we've all been waiting for.
3:47
Artemis II would be the first crewed mission
3:50
to fly around the moon in over 50 years.
3:53
Not a landing, not yet, but a crewed flight
3:55
that will take four astronauts further from Earth
3:58
than any humans have ever been.
4:00
The crew is commander-read wise men, pilot Victor Glover,
4:05
mission specialist Christina Koch,
4:07
who would become the first woman to travel to the moon,
4:10
and Canadian space agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
4:14
The issue that needed fixing was a hydrogen leak
4:17
that showed up during fueling tests.
4:19
NASA took it seriously, worked through it methodically,
4:21
and they're now satisfied it's resolved.
4:24
The vehicle is back in the vehicle assembly building
4:26
at Kennedy Space Center, and the teams are working
4:29
towards an April target.
4:31
No exact launch date has been confirmed yet.
4:34
NASA is still working through its checklist,
4:36
but the fact that repairs are complete
4:38
and they're still talking April is genuinely encouraging.
4:42
To put it in perspective, the last time humans flew
4:45
to the moon was Apollo 17 in December 1972.
4:52
And if Artemis too launches as planned,
4:54
we'll be back in lunar space before this spring is out.
4:58
We'll keep tracking this one closely
4:59
as the launch date firms up, exciting times.
5:03
Okay, I need everyone to picture something.
5:06
Take our entire solar system from the sun to mercury
5:09
that tiny sliver of space, roughly 77 million kilometers.
5:14
Now cram three stars into it.
5:19
That's, I mean, that's insane.
5:25
And yet astronomers have just confirmed a system
5:28
called TIC120362137,
5:33
where exactly that is happening.
5:35
Three stars all bigger and hotter than our sun,
5:39
packed into a volume smaller than Mercury's orbit
5:44
And then, as if that weren't enough,
5:46
there's a fourth star orbiting all three of them
5:49
at a distance comparable to where Jupiter sits
5:52
in our solar system.
5:53
So it's a triple star system with a shaperone.
5:57
That's genuinely the best way of her to describe it.
6:00
The research was published in Nature Communications
6:02
and led by astronomer Tamas Borkovitz
6:05
at the University of Seguid in Hungary.
6:07
His team used data from NASA's test satellite,
6:10
originally designed to hunt for exoplanets,
6:13
alongside ground-based telescopes in Hungary, Arizona,
6:17
the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.
6:19
73 spectra from the Fred Whipple Observatory
6:24
How do you even spot something like this?
6:27
It starts with dips in starlight.
6:29
The stars eclipse each other as a orbit
6:31
causing tiny periodic drops in brightness.
6:35
What initially looked like a simple pair of stars
6:37
eclipsing every 3.3 days turned out on closer inspection
6:41
to be hiding a third star, too.
6:44
And then the fourth was teased out
6:46
using a clever algorithm that isolated
6:48
each star's spectral fingerprints individually.
6:51
This system is in the constellation's sickness, the swan,
6:54
and its technical classification is a 3 plus 1 type quadruple.
6:59
Three interstars in a tight mutual orbit
7:02
with a fourth outer companion.
7:04
The outer star's orbital period is just 1046 days.
7:08
The shortest ever recorded for this type of system.
7:12
And the team was also able to model
7:13
the system's eventual fate.
7:16
Over billions of years, the heavyweight stars
7:18
will exhaust their fuel, swell into giants,
7:21
and shed their outer layers.
7:23
The whole thing will likely end up
7:24
as a pair of white dwarfs orbiting each other,
7:27
a slow, quiet fade into stellar retirement.
7:31
From cosmic chaos to cosmic peace,
7:34
I find that oddly comforting.
7:36
It's a reminder that our own son,
7:38
lone, solitary, planetarily well-behaved
7:42
might actually be the weird one.
7:45
Most stars in the galaxy have at least one companion.
7:48
Some apparently have three.
7:50
Right, this next one is for the cosmology nerds,
7:53
but we're going to make it make sense for everyone
7:56
because it is genuinely important.
8:00
It sounds like a minor bureaucratic disagreement,
8:03
but it's actually one of the biggest unsolved problems
8:08
So here's the setup.
8:09
We know the universe is expanding.
8:12
The question is how fast?
8:14
And when astronomers use two different methods
8:16
to measure that expansion rate called the Hubble constant,
8:19
they get two different answers that stubbornly refuse to agree.
8:24
One method uses the early universe,
8:26
the cosmic microwave background,
8:28
the leftover light from shortly after the Big Bang.
8:31
Other methods use nearby cosmic distance markers
8:34
like sephid variable stars and type 1a supernovae.
8:38
Both methods are solid,
8:39
both have been refined for decades,
8:42
and they still don't match.
8:44
The gap between them is only about eight or 9% numerically,
8:49
but that small discrepancy is a massive heavy
8:52
because it suggests either our measurements are wrong
8:55
or more excitingly, there's new physics we don't understand yet.
8:59
And now scientists are proposing a third,
9:02
completely independent method.
9:04
Gravitational waves.
9:06
When two massive objects like black holes
9:08
or neutron stars spiral together and merge,
9:11
they send ripples through the fabric of space time itself.
9:15
These gravitational waves carry precise information
9:18
about the distance to the event
9:19
and how fast a universe is expanding at that point.
9:23
The beautiful thing is gravitational wave detectors
9:25
like LIGO and Virgo don't rely on the same assumptions
9:29
as the other methods.
9:30
So if gravitational wave measurements
9:32
can pin down the Hubble constant independently,
9:35
we'll finally have a referee in this argument.
9:37
We don't have enough events yet to be definitive.
9:40
Gravitational wave astronomy is still young,
9:43
but as detectors improve and we observe more mergers,
9:47
this could be the key that unlocks
9:49
one of cosmology's greatest mysteries.
9:52
Physics, still keeping us humble since always.
9:55
A genuine milestone in the history of astronomy this week.
9:59
The MoV telescope, the world's first privately owned
10:02
commercial space telescope has captured its first observation
10:06
and it's the first star.
10:08
This is a big deal.
10:10
MoV is operated by a London-based startup
10:12
called Blue Sky's Space and it launched back in November
10:16
aboard a SpaceX ride-share mission.
10:18
It's a small satellite about the size of a suitcase,
10:21
weighing under 19 kilograms,
10:24
but what it can do is genuinely unique.
10:26
MoV is designed to observe stars in ultraviolet light,
10:30
wavelengths that are completely blocked by earth atmosphere,
10:33
so you simply cannot study them from the ground.
10:36
The last dedicated ultraviolet space observatory
10:38
was the International Ultraviolet Explorer,
10:41
which was retired back in 1996.
10:43
So there's been a three-decade gap in this kind of science.
10:47
And the science it's doing matters enormously
10:49
for the search for life.
10:51
Not every star is as well-behaved as our sun.
10:54
Many stars, especially the cooler, more common red dwarfs,
10:57
produce intense UV flares that could strip the atmospheres
11:01
off nearby planets, baking them uninhabitable
11:04
regardless of their distance from the star.
11:06
MoV will survey hundreds of stars
11:08
to figure out which ones are genuinely friendly to life.
11:12
The commercial model here is also interesting.
11:15
Data access is provided through annual subscriptions
11:17
to research teams, a sort of Netflix for UV astronomy data.
11:22
It's a new way of funding space science,
11:24
and if it works, Blue Sky Space plans a whole fleet of these.
11:28
The first star observed was one of the brightest stars
11:31
in the Ursa Major constellation, a calibration target
11:34
to check the instrument is working correctly, and it is.
11:37
First light achieved science operations underway.
11:40
The universe has its first commercial telescope.
11:43
I for one welcome our new private sector stargazers.
11:47
And finally, our lighter closer.
11:49
Although I'd argue there's nothing light
11:51
about the physics involved.
11:53
A new piece from the brighter side of news
11:55
has been making the rounds this week,
11:57
and it takes a long hard look at why,
11:59
despite the vastness of the universe
12:01
and the billions of potentially habitable worlds out there,
12:04
no alien civilization has ever shown up on our doorstep.
12:08
And the answer it turns out isn't conspiracy, it's physics.
12:12
Five barriers, that's the argument.
12:15
Five physical constraints that together
12:17
make interstellar contact essentially impossible.
12:20
Shall we run through them?
12:23
Number one, distance.
12:24
The nearest star to us, Proxima Centari,
12:27
is 4.24 light years away.
12:29
The Parker Solar Probe, the fastest human-made object
12:33
ever built, would take around 6,600 years to reach it.
12:37
And that's our closest neighbor.
12:39
The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across.
12:43
Number two, the speed of light.
12:45
This is not an engineering problem, it's a law of reality.
12:49
Einstein's special relativity tells us
12:50
that as you accelerate anything with mass
12:53
toward the speed of light, it takes ever more energy
12:56
for ever smaller gains in speed.
12:58
To actually reach light speed would take infinite energy,
13:02
not a lot of energy, infinite.
13:03
Number three, propulsion.
13:06
Even if you accept a much lower target,
13:08
say 1% of light speed, you run straight into what's called
13:12
the rocket equation.
13:13
To accelerate, you need fuel, but fuel has mass,
13:17
which means you need more fuel to push the fuel,
13:20
which adds more mass.
13:21
It grows exponentially.
13:23
The fuel required for even a modest interstellar trip
13:27
would be staggering.
13:28
Number four, biology.
13:30
The human body evolved on Earth under Earth's magnetic field
13:34
under Earth's gravity.
13:36
Deep space is brutal.
13:38
Cosmic radiation shreds DNA.
13:41
Microgravity degrades bones and cardiovascular systems.
13:45
And we still haven't solved cryogenic preservation.
13:48
Even robots aren't immune.
13:50
Radiation degrades electronics
13:52
and over the time skills involved, entropy wins.
13:55
And number five, and this is my favorite one, timing.
13:59
Our civilization has been broadcasting radio signals
14:02
for about 100 years.
14:04
That creates a bubble roughly 100 light years across.
14:08
The Milky Way is 1,000 times wider than that.
14:11
The universe is 13.8 billion years old.
14:15
Civilizations might rise, transmit, and fall,
14:18
all before their signals even reach anyone
14:21
capable of receiving them.
14:23
The physicist Richard Feynman apparently compared it
14:25
to Fireflies blinking on different nights
14:29
They never overlap.
14:31
And what about UFOs?
14:33
The piece applies physics to claims of craft
14:35
performing impossible maneuvers.
14:38
Instant acceleration to extreme speeds,
14:41
sharp turns with no sonic signature.
14:43
The forces involved would be tens of thousands of times
14:48
Occupants would be pulped.
14:49
Materials would fail.
14:51
The physics doesn't work.
14:53
Now, is this depressing?
14:55
I actually don't think so.
14:57
The piece ends on something beautiful.
14:59
The same laws of physics that prevent easy interstellar travel
15:03
also make the universe stable, ordered,
15:06
and ultimately life-friendly.
15:08
Light speed preserves causality.
15:10
Without it, cause and effect would unravel.
15:13
Dable atoms permit chemistry.
15:15
Stars forge the elements that build planets and people.
15:19
We might be alone in our cosmic neighborhood,
15:21
but we're made of the same star stuff
15:23
as every galaxy in the observable universe.
15:26
We're not separate from the cosmos.
15:28
We're the universe looking at itself.
15:31
That's astronomy daily for Wednesday March the 4th, 2026.
15:36
Blood moons, crude moon missions, cosmic star huddles,
15:39
the universe's expansion mystery,
15:42
the dawn of private space telescopes,
15:44
and why the aliens aren't coming.
15:46
Honestly, one of my favorite episodes in a while.
15:49
If you enjoyed it, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
15:54
It genuinely helps us reach more space enthusiasts
15:57
and find us on social media at AstroDailyPod.
16:01
New episodes every weekday and Saturday.
16:04
We'll see you tomorrow for more from the universe.
16:08
Gluir skies, everyone.
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AstroDaily day, the star is the toe.
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AstroDaily day, the star is the toe.
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AstroDaily day, the star is the toe.
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AstroDaily day, the star is the toe.
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