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BONUS QUESTION STARTS AT 17:37
Watch the video here (with no ads) or on YouTube: https://youtu.be/olJR9OPYXbo
What are the plans for the next space station? What type of Europan life could Europa Clipper detect? Could we spot the rotation of our supercluster? And in Q&A+, is the Moon necessary for life?
00:00 Intro
00:25 [@meesalikeu] What are plans for the next ISS?
02:36 [@wainr777able] Which life Europa Clipper could find?
07:10 [@doogle4144] Could we see the rotation of our supercluster?
09:45 [@willstack6188] Antimatter engines for interstellar travel
13:28 [@nitstyles13] How will the SGL telescope work?
16:12 [@hangmann747tinmann8] Would systems like Jupiter survive the heat death of the Universe?
17:37 [@shashilwow] How crucial is the Moon for life?
19:30 Outro
What are the plans for the next space station? What type of your rope in life could your rope and clipper detect?
Could we spot the rotation of our supercluster and in Q&A plus is the moon necessary for life all this and more in this question show?
It's time for the question show your questions
My answers as always wherever you are cross my channel if a question pops in your brain
Just write it down look gather them up, and I'll answer them here. All right. Let's give the questions
We select you what are the plans for the next international space station will it be private only?
Yeah, so the international space station is due for deorbit before 2030 probably 2028
But you know maybe 2030 even if it doesn't get deorbitated the Russians are expecting to
Detach their chunk of the station away from the main international space station
So what ever happens by the end of the decade the ISS is going to come down
The plan is to launch the deep space gateway the lunar gateway as the replacement for the international space station
So astronauts will fly up to the moon essentially be in orbit near the moon and then be able to transfer from the lunar gateway
Down to the source of the moon and back the trumpet administration has been trying to cancel the gateway
Congress has continued its funding and so that is the plan so right now
Artemis 2 is going to be the fly by around the moon
Artemis 3 is going to be people landing on the moon the construction of the deep space gateway will probably start around
Artemis 4 so probably
Nearing the end of the decade 2830. We should see the first module of the deep space gateway become operational
But the United States will have no
working
Space station in lower-thorough it so the only one is going to be the Chinese space station that said
There are a bunch of private companies the one that seems furthest along is a company called vast
And they've got a really cool design. They've got this sort of modular design where where they can just kind of add more modules
And grow the the space station kind of indefinitely just sort of like this big disc that just gets bigger and bigger with more modules
So hopefully we'll see the vast station launch before the international space station comes down
But right now, you know, I always say that private space exploration is a very expensive business and there's not a lot of return on investment
And so any company that goes into this could lose everything it could go bankrupt and so really
launching a large space station requires the resources of a country or a collaboration and international collaboration of countries
When are 7777able? What type of proliferation of life would we need to be present on Europa for the Europa Clipper to make a positive confirmation discovery?
So Europa Clipper isn't designed
Specifically to detect the presence of life on Europa and
You know its job is to map the surface of Europa to search for
geysers on Europa and
Specifically to measure the depth of the ice under the surface of Europa
Try and find pockets of water deep down
When does the ice end if there is a subsurface ocean when does that ocean begin and
Europa Clipper has the tools to be able to do that to measure the magnetosphere understand its interactions with Jupiter
But there are a couple of ideas that would get you some kind of stronger proof that there is life
One is the presence of various chemicals on the surface of Europa and actually we saw some evidence of this from the Galileo spacecraft
That went to Jupiter and it was able to image the surface of Europa and gave us a lot of the sort of modern thinking showed us
The very complex surface of Europa. This seems very fresh
We don't see a lot of impact creators on Europa and
Recently astronomers detected the presence of various chemicals on the surface of Europa
That could go hand in hand with life organic molecules
They don't necessarily mean life. We see organic molecules everywhere
But that there is some kind of process that is making them fresh on the surface of Europa that these chemicals should
Be blasted away by the radiation of space and therefore
If you see them on the surface then it has to be relatively fresh
The even better thing would be if Europa has geysers in the same way that in celilus has geysers now
There's no evidence of this that we know of today. There's hints of geysers on Europa, but nobody has actually seen them
But if there are geysers on Europa, then we would probably see Europa Clipper doing the same thing that
Cassini did with
Incelitis which is that it would fly through the plumes and
Then astronomers would be looking for specific kinds of chemicals in the plumes of Europa
So you'd be looking for not only water
Coming from down below you'd be looking for dissolved hydrogen in the water
Which is essentially food for bacteria and then you'd be looking for the kinds of
Chemicals that are associated with life organic chemicals things like that
But Europa Clipper does not have anyway to really detect the presence of life beyond
You know
Helping them figure out these chemicals are there
But people have proposed missions that would do exactly what you're talking about
More to Encelitis though not to Europa
So people are proposing a spacecraft that would fly to Encelitis would fly through the plumes at Encelitis and
Would collect samples of the plumes and then would have a lab on board the spacecraft that would digest
The samples and search for any kind of evidence of life and you might not find like
You know life can come in all kinds in different ways and so this is a sort of an ongoing discussion among
Astrobiologists is what is a good
Agnostic way of detecting the presence of life. How do you know life when you see it especially?
How do you know life that isn't anything like earth life?
What if it doesn't use DNA and RNA all of our labs are designed to search for those kinds of things and so it appears to be
It's in the complexity of the chemicals that life tends to produce more complicated chemicals than non-life
And so if you
Flute the plumes at Encelitis with your spacecraft you then sort of examined all the chemicals that were found in this
If you seem to have a lot of complicated chemicals that is a good indication that life is producing this as opposed to
You know volcanoes or or geothermal vents under the surface on Encelitis so
We're still a long way and really to get to Encelitis to actually see if there's life on Europa
You want to go under the ice and that's going to require sinking down through the ice melting through
10 kilometers plus of ice down into the ocean underneath and then you swim around inside that and
Look for the European space whales
Do you go if the entire supercluster of galaxies that we are a participant of was rotating and we were rotating with it
Is there a way that we could tell there's a rotation? Yeah, absolutely
You know astronomers can tell the sort of independent movement of the Milky Way in the cosmos
The way you do that is you measure our movement compared to the cosmic microwave background radiation
We are moving at about 550 kilometers per second with respect to just the cosmic microwave background radiation
And you can also measure the rotation of the various things that we are a part of we are a part of the
Virgo supercluster we're part of a local group we're part of the Virgo supercluster
We're part of a land of case supercluster and these things are rotating, but it's really important to understand that
While these things might be rotating and they're going to take
Hundreds of millions billions of years to fully rotate
That the expansion of the universe is tearing them apart that really any structure that is bigger than the local group bigger than about say
5 million lighters apart
is just going to be
Pulled away by dark energy
Into more little groups. So you sort of imagine we are actually bound
gravitationally to indromeda and in the Triangulum galaxy and a bunch of dwarf galaxies around us and in the far far future
These galaxies will eventually merge together into one
giant elliptical galaxy although some people argue that and drama that is actually not going to join us in the local group
But anyway
You know some combination of galaxies will join into this larger
elliptical galaxy and then the galaxies that are about more than five million lighters
Away from us. They are just moving too quickly and they're going to be accelerated by dark energy and they will go away from us
So at a certain point it no longer makes sense to say things are part of an object like yes
We are gravitationally bound to nearby galaxies, but we are not gravitationally bound to
Galaxies that are tens of millions of lighters away from us. We are gravitationally influenced by them
right are the movement of the Milky Way is changed by the gravity of those other galaxies
But we are not bound to them and so eventually they will move farther and farther away
They will be hundreds of billions of lighters away
They will fall over the cosmic horizon and there will be no evidence that they ever existed to future astronomers
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Will stack we have to overcome the rocket equation to viably travel into solar space
Is there an antimatter equation that would show a specific impulse delta V for say a proposed visit to Proxima C?
stars are really far away and
We want to be able to travel to another star system in a human lifetime if possible in fact
We want to travel really quickly. I'm rewatching stargate right now
And you want to just walk through the gate and come out on the other side on this other planet
That would be ideal, but warp drives would be fine the hyperdrive in star wars also fine
But right now this incredible distance all we have are chemical rockets this sucks
Our current chemical propulsion systems can carry us to other stars the voyagers are on an escape
trajectory out of the solar system
It'll just take them about 50,000 years to reach the nearest our system say Proxima Centauri and
When engineers have looked at all of the options that we have available to us as
Ways of propulsion you look at Ion engines not fast enough you look at even fusion rockets
Fission rockets not fast enough that there's really only
two viable ways to be able to get to another star system one is
Is that you don't carry any propellant on-boarder spacecraft that you are hitting a solar sail with a powerful laser or a series of lasers that are
imparting
Energy momentum to the spacecraft that allow it across the distances
People have proposed that a laser sail could be accelerated within the solar system to say 10% speed of light
And then it would take 40 years to get to Proxima Centauri wouldn't be able to slow down so that's a whole other challenge
But it may be eventually you can imagine some far future where we've got a series of big lasers in this solar system
And then a series of big lasers and at Proxima Centauri and then
laser sails go down this shoot
Virtual shoot where the lasers speed them up and speed them up and speed them up and then they coast from the Sun
To Proxima Centauri and then the lasers on the other side
Shoot and shoot and shoot and slow these things down and put them into orbit around the planet at Proxima Centauri
That'd be cool. The other method is you carry propellant on board
But it is the most energy dense propellant that is really possible
Antimatter and so you take antimatter you take matter you combine them and you get pure
Gamma ray energy which you can then harness you can fire the photons out the back of the rocket you can
Use that to to heat up some kind of propellant and be able to fire that out the back of the rocket
antimatter is the way
But antimatter is incredibly expensive. So last time I looked it was like $65 trillion per gram for antimatter
And you would need a few kilograms to get to rapid velocities more
So we just don't have the antimatter production on earth to be able to handle it
Could it work? Yeah, absolutely
You know antimatter is the thing that if we put a huge amount of the world's
Energy production into making antimatter and then storing that antimatter and then putting that onto a spacecraft
We could accelerate a spacecraft to
Relativistic speeds and and then slow it back down again
And that's the key to be able to slow it back down again
And so if you haven't already read project hell marry that's kind of what they did in project hell marry
But the movie's coming out in March so you'd be able to watch sort of what what it would be like
For the world to be throwing a huge amount of its energy
Into something like antimatter production to be able to allow a mission to be able to fly turn of their source system
So I can't do the math, but is there a specific impulse? Delta V. Yes
You can calculate the power of an antimatter rocket
Nits styles I get confused with gravitational lensing if we were to reach the gravitational lensing point of the Sun
What would we see would we only see objects directly behind the Sun magnified?
Right, so this is the solar gravitational lens which is located about
550 astronomical units away from the Sun so you've got the Sun
The Sun's gravity is acting like a natural telescope lens
You know, we know that gravity distorts space time and so as photons are
Going around the Sun and they would be heading off into space
The gravity of the Sun bends them back and focuses them at that point
550 AU. So what would you see? Well, it would look very similar to
Traditional gravitational lenses where you have a foreground galaxy cluster
That is lensing some background galaxy and the galaxy has been turned into this kind of mushed arc
That is around the galaxy and sort of the most perfect ones are called an Einstein ring
where you actually get the central galaxy cluster that's providing their gravity
And then you get this ring that is around the galaxies there aren't a lot of them
But they're really cool and they're very useful when astronomers find them and so the light from this
This galaxy that would be pretty much invisible
Has been magnified by by thousands if not tens of thousands of times you get this
This bright ring around the foreground galaxy and that's kind of what you would see with the solar gravitational lens
Except the Sun is essentially a perfect looking sphere
And so while the galaxy clusters this weird blobby thing made up of a whole bunch of different galaxies all orbiting around each other
The Sun is this sort of sphere and so you would see an Einstein ring around the
The Sun of the thing that is being lensed
But will you only see objects that are directly behind the Sun? Yes, you have to think have lined up your
Telescope perfectly with the thing that you're trying to observe so it can't be off
By any amount and so that's why the solar gravitational lens mission when it finally does launch and oh it did better launch
It will only be able to have one target that it will fly
Pass the Sun
Or fly on the sort of you know on the opposite side of the Sun at the solar gravitational lens
And it has to stay in this tiny little cone
As it moves farther and farther away from the Sun and as long as it stays in that little cone
Then it will be able to use the Sun as a telescope to see one target one exoplanet for example
Is all that the solar gravitational lens will see and there's like an infinite number of things that you could use the Sun to lens
You just have to put an infinite number of spacecraft at different locations
And they're all looking using the solar gravitational lens to observe them
Hey man tin man
Even at the heat death of the universe with systems like Jupiter and its moon ios still exist and their gravity interaction still generate heat
So eventually
Like when you think about the heat is being generated on iO. It's a gravitational interaction between Jupiter and iO and the other
European moons and so over time like vast periods of time
All of the orbital differences between all of the moons around Jupiter will eventually even out
That they will end up in a way that they're no longer causing these resonances with each other
That will no longer cause these perturbations that is leading to the tidal flexing that's happening with iO
Even that will settle down over vast periods of time and then in addition
The gravitational interactions will peel away the moons from Jupiter one at a time
You know interactions with Saturn interaction there orbits will get farther their interactions will get more complicated
Moons will be peeled away and eventually even Jupiter will no longer have moons and the Sun will have no planets
Like i think it's like a five trillion years
All of the planets will be stripped away from the white dwarf that was once the Sun
Just through interactions with the Milky Way and that over hundreds of trillions of years all of the stars in the galaxy will be stripped away
So just nothing can hold
Over long periods of time
Shoshil wow why are we still certain that we need a moon around a planet to create life can't there be aliens
That are so alien-like that they were born on their planet's far away in some other mysterious way
I don't think anyone says that we absolutely need a moon to be able to have life on a planet
You know there are
Proposed many ways that having a large moon around the earth has helped out the evolution of life on our planet
I'll give you a couple examples one is that it creates stability for the axial tilt of the earth
And so Mars it looks like has rolled over in the past there's evidence
That the whole planet has rolled around and we look at Venus Venus has no moon and it is
177 degrees it is upside down rotating backwards compared to all of the other planets
Earth has this large moon that acts like a stability and keeps our axial tilt within a very tight range
Which is good, but not in like that's not a death blow to life, right?
It just means life has a harder time
The other thing is is that having a large moon
Creates tides and the tides create this intertidal zone where the water goes in
And the water goes out and when the water is in then you've got life forms that we're sitting in that
Tidal area that have to evolve to be able to handle
varying amounts of being out in the air right outside of the water
And it's a sort of a really smooth
Way for them to be able to evolve from living in the water to living on land
Without a moon then you wouldn't have tides
But it's still that doesn't feel like it is a
Total showstopper that life would find a way
So it appears that a large moon makes a planet more habitable
But not having a large moon
Doesn't make a planet uninhabitable just moons are better big moons are better
All right, those are the questions that we had in this episode
Thank you everyone who put your questions into the YouTube comments
Everybody who joined me for the two-hour live stream that I do every Monday
Said some time zone around the world and it's complicated. There'll be the next event here on the channel
All right, I'm gonna bring you up to speed with some new media
But first I'd like to thank your patrons
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So last time I brought you up to date on some of the media that I have been consuming
I was reading the book Children of Time by Adrian Chakowski
I finished that and it's excellent right to the very end
I really enjoyed that book and I can't even explain why I liked it because then it will spoil it
But trust me, it's a great series
Or I think because I'm now reading the second book of the series which is called Children of Ruin
I'll let you know that goes but I think it's already really good. So what a great series
Next up we've been watching the series Monarch Legacy of Monsters which is on Apple TV
And actually we had sort of just passed on it the first time it came around season one
And so we were able to just binge all of season one and season two just came out
And so we watched the first episode of season two and now we have to wait week by week
To watch these episodes come out. I liked it. I like season one anyway
Now my wife keeps complaining there's too much talking and not out of monsters
And I can see that that we need more monsters rampaging around and less people being moody about thinking about monsters
But still it's a pretty good show. I like it
And to be honest, I'm kind of into this new
Godzilla cinematic universe, you know this sort of reboot of the of the monster verse
The first movie came out in 2014 and I really liked it
The sequel came out Godzilla king of the monsters and it was fine
Uh, I didn't make a lot of money at the box office, but I enjoyed it
More than I thought I was going to I had some problems with the science like how do you have a whole other world inside the world
Like how does that work? But anyway, uh, yeah, but the series is good. So if you're looking for something you can watch
That's another series
We're pretty deep into Starfleet Academy at this point and
I don't love it
I don't even kind of like it which is too bad because
The premise was great
Like imagine, you know, you've had the burn all of the different planets of the federation have been torn apart
And now they're having to kind of come together and learn to
Uh, follow this sort of general spirit of the federation and yet these people have been living in who knows what kinds of civilizations and
There's all this chance for drama and and sort of these feral
Uh, cadets who grew up in these different worlds having to learn to try and work together with people who are ideologically different from them
And to reestablish the ideals of the federation
But that's not what we get like we got what does feel like sort of Star Trek
CW and
That is disappointing to me and it just it just feels like the show just doesn't have teeth and
You know, like I think a lot of people have concerns about those this is sort of like its wokeness and like I have
Like I wish it was more woke or less woke or whatever like I just wish it confronted me and challenged me and got weird and
and you know because Star Trek always
Like holds a lens up to society at the time
And because a lot of the conversations that we need to have are too uncomfortable and we've gone into our own styles
We're not having these conversations science fiction is a way that we can be presented with these ideas
Except that people have you know, funny makeup and so you don't
Sort of see it. It's it's sort of like more palatable for you to then consider these ideas
And I think Star Trek could be taking on and a lot of the most challenging
Issues that are confronting humanity right now and dealing with in a way that shows paths forward the federation way and
That's how deep space now I'm worked and that's how you know a little bit the original show worked
And so it would be great if Star Trek Academy did that but they're not doing that
I mean, I'm obviously I'm contractually obligated to watch everything Star Trek ever made
We all are but still I wish I liked it more
Finally a new path of exile league starts on Friday and so I couldn't be more excited
It looks just like it's gonna be a banger and so if I just fall off the face of the earth
That is why all right. We'll see you next time
Universe Today Podcast



