Sun’s Pole Revealed // Sun Shade vs Climate Change // Source of Cosmic Rays

Have we finally found the source of ultra high energy cosmic rays? Our first look at the sun's south pole. New Glenn slips again. What kind of damage would rockets do to the ozone layer? And in Space Bites Plus, a pair of quazars that dominated cosmic noon. All this and more in this week's space bites. Classic rays are particles that are zipping through space at close to the speed of light. Now, most of these are protons, but some of these are much heavier elements. You could have iron cosmic rays that are blasting through space. And there's an enormous amount of energy packed into this because of their high velocity. Uh, the most powerful cosmic ray ever detected. It's called the Oh my god particle and it had the equivalent of you dropping a 1 kilogram book off of a 5 meter building. So imagine how much energy, how much potential energy there is there, how much kinetic energy there is when it hits the ground. And yet it's packed into a particle that is a billion billion times smaller. And these are concerning especially when you're away from the Earth's magnetosphere. You're away from the Earth's atmosphere to block most of these particles. They can go right through, shatter your DNA. We know that they cause damage to spacecraft. They flip bits. Often like if a spacecraft goes down or there's a problem with it or a software failure, blame a cosmic ray. But they have always been a mystery, which is that just like how do you get that much energy into a particle? And so astronomers looked for the most extreme events in the universe. Supernova, kilanova, hypernova, super massive black holes with accretion discs around them. But the various simulations have failed to show that they're actually producing this level of particles. And so astronomers are looking for a specific kind of thing in space called a peetron. Pvetron. Peetron. Astronomers are looking for a certain kind of thing in space called a pevetron. And this is a some kind of source that is capable of producing cosmic rays with the pa electron volt range and above. And now astronomers have been able to dial in the Chandra X-ray Observatory to find one of these pevatrons. And it is located in a nebula that is surrounding a pulsar. So a pulsar is a recently dead star. It was a very massive star. It detonated as a supernova and then you're left with the neutron star. It's spinning very quickly and it's putting out these regular pulses of radio energy and that's why they're called pulsars. But they're also putting out just enormous amounts of energy into their environment through what's called pulsar winds. And the astronomers detected that these pulsar winds are colliding with this nebula material around the pulsar. Essentially, when it was a star, it was shedding off all this material. This is the the debris from the supernova explosion as well. The pulsar winds are striking this nebula material and charging it up, giving it more energy. And then this is actually firing out these ultra high energy cosmic rays. And so astronomers think that maybe this is the source or one of the sources. You you never rule out supernovas or gammaray bursts, but still that this is one of the key sources of ultra high energy cosmic rays. Here on Earth, we are trapped in the plane of the ecliptic. And this is very close to the equator of the sun where all of the planets in the solar system are arranged. And so every view that we've ever had of the sun is of its equator. Now, there's one spacecraft that flew above the sun's poles, the Ulysi spacecraft, but it didn't have a camera on board, so it wasn't able to actually take a look just just like smell what the sun was cooking. Wasn't really smelling. it was detecting the solar wind. But anyway, but the dream has always been to take an actual look at the poles of the sun. Now, the sun is this incredibly magnetic object. We know that the solar activity rises and falls over this 11-year cycle, and the sun's poles flip. And as this process is happening, then you get a lot of magnetic field lines that are piercing the poles of the sun. And then things get more jumbled. And then things start to get more jumbled around the equator. and then the actual polarity of the sun flips. But we haven't been able to watch as the first moments of this process is starting to happen cuz it's at the pole and we can't see the pole. But the European Space Ay's Solar Orbiter spacecraft has been slowly tilting its orbit, getting a better and better view of the poles of the sun. And on March of this year, it was able to take a picture of the south pole of the sun at an inclination of 17°. And this is beyond any has ever been seen before. And so you're looking at a picture of the south pole of the sun, a region that has never been seen before. And this is just the beginning. Solar orbiter will continue tilting its orbit, getting a better and better view of the south pole and the north pole of the sun. If you want to learn more, check out the story from Evan Gooff on Universe Today. And speaking of the sun, check out this ludicrous image of the sun. And this was taken by the Daniel K. Inaway solar telescope. This is a giant solar telescope on Halakla which is in Maui in Hawaii. And the resolution of this solar telescope allows it to see features on the surface of the sun which is like 150 million kilometers away at a resolution of 20 kilometers across. And so in this picture you're seeing these regions. Those are called granules. And they're like cells, convection cells on the surface of the sun. And now astronomers have been able to see even smaller striations on the sides of these convection cells which seem to be caused by sheets of magnetic fields. They're like stripes along the sides of these granules. And these are caused by different strengths of magnetic fields. So when the magnetic fields are relatively weak to their surroundings, then the striations are darker. And when the magnetic field is stronger, then they become brighter. And so like this is really interesting science. It helps us understand how this ties into the solar wind and helps try and figure out why the corona is hotter than the surface of the sun. But like just it's a crazy picture. So enjoy that. And if you want to learn more of that science, read this article from Mark Thompson. We've seen one test of Blue Origins New Glenn rocket. And we've been waiting for the second flight. And this is important because it is carrying NASA's Escapade mission. This is a couple of satellites that are going to be flying to Mars. And when you fly to Mars, you have to time things right. You have to wait for the Mars window to open up. And you remember when Mars was really big and bright in the sky back in, I don't know, November. Uh that's usually a good time to to launch to Mars when when it looks big and bright. But unfortunately, New Glenn wasn't ready to launch. And so the launch date got pushed back to I think spring 2025. Well, clearly that's passed. But they were sure that they were going to be able to still launch. There's enough power in that rocket to be able to make it. And now we've learned that the launch has probably been pushed to August 15th, although insiders say maybe even longer. And yet still the rocket should have the power to be able to launch these missions to Mars. But clearly this is not what Jeff Bezos has wanted. He said that he wanted to see eight launches a year. They should ramp up productivity. They've got to launch a bunch of their Kyper satellites. there's a bunch of other missions and clients waiting in the wings and they've got to get this rocket flying and beyond that one test and also to see the full reusability. Now, apparently there are upper stages in the pipeline, eight upper stages. So, that should be able to fill that eight per year quota and then the first stage will be reused on future flights. But still, things have got to speed up and you know the competition from SpaceX is getting tougher and tougher. And if you want to read more about that, check out this reporting from Eric Burgerer over on RS Technica. Every week we do a vote on our channel where you tell us what you thought was the best space news story of the week and the winner last week was a possible solution for the Hubble tension. So thank you everybody who voted on the stories last week. We will post this week's poll into the post tab here on the channel. So while you're watching this video, go over there, give it a vote, and that way we will know and celebrate next week. Now, of course, the best chance, subscribe to the channel, click on the notifications bell, and then obey the algorithm and click all the polls. Even not anyone's polls, not even our polls, just any poll. And that'll teach the YouTube algorithm that you really like polls. That's very dirty. That you really like to vote, that you're a voter. There you go. That'll teach the YouTube algorithm that you're a voter. Vote early, vote often. People have wondered about the long-term effects of rocket launches on the environment. And you know, there's a bunch of concerns here. You've got the greenhouse gases that are coming out of the exhaust plume as the rocket is taking off. No matter what you've got, uh whether you've got water as the exhaust gas, whether you've got, you know, methane is putting out carbon dioxide and methane, uh you've got some kind of greenhouse gas. But then people are also concerned about the particles. As spacecraft and satellites re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, they break up. You're adding aluminum to the upper atmosphere, other chemicals in ratios that maybe are beyond what the atmosphere's carrying capacity would be, and you might see some kind of effect. But another issue is what kind of damage could rockets have on the ozone layer. Now, obviously the ozone layer, you know, we started to damage the ozone layer because of our use of chlorofluorocarbons. The world signed some laws, agreed to dial back the use of those chemicals, and the ozone layer has been recovering. But there are chemicals in solid rocket boosters that can also damage the ozone layer. You get chlorine, which can set off a cascade of chemical reactions that causes damage to the ozone layer, as well as black carbon that's coming out of these solid rocket boosters. And so a new paper has asked how many rocket launches would it take for us to start seeing damage to the ozone layer. Our current launch cadence is about 200 rockets a year, but that has been growing. And that if it just continues on this same path, then we will eventually get to 800 launches a year and 2,000 launches a year. And at a certain point, say at 2,000 launches a year, we would now be causing degradation of the ozone layer by about.3% according to the researchers. Now, they say that if you can keep the launch numbers down, say below 800 in the 700 range, then the amount of material that you're putting into the atmosphere won't overwhelm the ozone layer's ability to self-regenerate as long as we're not also producing chlorofluorocarbons. And so, there's going to be some kind of future numbers. We're going to have to keep an eye on that or change the kinds of rocket motors that we use if we want to minimize the effect on the ozone layer. And speaking of climate change, temperatures are continuing to rise and you know, obviously hopefully we can continue growing our use of renewable energy. We can finally solve carbon sequestration. But if that doesn't work, then countries might start taking this into their own hands, doing something called geoengineering. And this is where you start to change the planet itself in ways that could reduce the impact of climate change. Putting particles into the upper atmosphere that might block the sunlight. Putting chemicals into the oceans that will increase the rate of carbon absorption. So you can imagine all these things. But one idea that's kind of out there literally is that you could fly a spacecraft to the Earth's sun L1 Lrange point and deploy a giant sun shade and then it would cast a shadow on the Earth and you would dial that in to decrease the amount of total illumination that's falling on the earth and you would be able to counteract the effects of climate change. Now, that sounds difficult, you know, to fly a spacecraft, a giant spacecraft out to the L1 point. And, you know, there are potential side effects that we haven't even considered yet. This is always, you know, if you're going to try and change an entire planet, there are unforeseen consequences waiting for you. And so, a team of engineers have proposed a prototype mission that you would actually send to test out whether or not this is going to work. This would be a small spacecraft. It would fly out to the L1 point. It would deploy an 81 square meter solar sail that would then cast a shadow onto the Earth and they would be able to pinpoint this spacecraft, calculate how much illumination is being blocked by the shadow and then sort of figure out how many of these or how much of a bigger one you would require to be able to actually have a significant impact on climate change. We got a story about this by Mark Thompson. Now, I just did a really cool interview about the center of the Milky Way, and so you're definitely going to want to check that out. We'll put a link in the show notes. But now that we're on that topic, let's talk about star formation at the center of the Milky Way. And astronomers see a lot of these giant star forming regions, these molecular clouds that we see across the universe. And generally, you get with big clouds, the largest stars forming, smaller clouds, smaller stars forming. But in the center of the Milky Way, there are molecular clouds that are large. They can be hundreds of lightyears across. And they should be forming some of the most massive stars that you would see, just like you would be seeing them in other large regions of star formation. And yet, astronomers find the smaller stars, but something is stopping the growth of the largest stars. And why this is happening is a mystery. You're just not getting the big stars in these star forming regions like you do in other places. And one possibility is that it's we know that the center of the Milky Way is this highly radiative environment. There's a lot of stars packed close together blasting out radiation and this could be preventing essentially quenching additional star formation on these largest stars. And another possibility is that these aren't molecular clouds in the way we understand them in other star forming regions. That there's something different. they behave in a different way that there's magnetic fields surrounding them in ways that are sort of preventing star formation in the same way. So, it's a sort of interesting puzzle and it shows that still there's a lot of secrets to be revealed at the center of the Milky Way. And again, definitely check out the interview that I did with Dr. Cara Batterdsby about the research into the center of the Milky Way. We've got a story about this from Evan Gooff on Universe Today. We've got plenty of examples of interacting galaxies close to home. Giant galaxies that are tearing at each other with tidal tails, stripping each other's arms off, and eventually merging and becoming large elliptical galaxies. But this process has been happening right back to almost the beginning of the universe. Got an amazing image that shows two galaxies at a time when the universe was less than three billion years old. The galaxy on the right is a quazar. In other words, it contains an actively feeding super massive black hole and it is firing out an enormous jet of material at the galaxy that is to the left and this is causing damage that it is actually quenching star formation in this other galaxy and that this could have long-term consequences might shut down the amount of star formation and so later on the galaxy might not be able to form stars. And we've got a story about this by Carolyn Collins Peterson. All right. Often we're showing images that are artists impressions renditions. And that's because, you know, our telescopes are great, but they don't have the ability to actually show an exoplanet in high resolution. But this is a real picture. And this is a newly forming planetary system. The star is called 2 mass 1618. It's about 430 lighty years from Earth. And then look at this picture. You're seeing this giant disc, this protolanetary disc that is around the star and it's about 130 astronomical units across. It's like you could fit the entire solar system inside that region and then there's this bright disc at about the 50 AU mark and inside that there is a gap and inside that gap there are swirls of material like little spiral arms that are feeding into a newly forming planet. And so this is how it was believed that planets formed here in the solar system that you had, you know, small amounts of rock, come together, grow its gravity, start to draw in material from this these rings of material that are around this new star until it grew large enough that it cleared out the disc and then that became the planet. And then the planets crashed into each other. You know, mayhem continued, but still that's how you get planets. And now like here's a picture of one forming 430 lighty years away. Like this is what our telescopes can do. I've got a story about that from Mark Thompson. You're watching Space Bites. That means you like space news. But this is just a fraction of the space news stories that I've got my eye on and the entire Universe Today team is reporting on. And if you want to get all of the stories that I'm thinking about this week, you should sign up to my weekly email newsletter. For example, we've got a really cool picture of one of the Martian super volcanoes peaking above the cloud tops on Mars. That's a story by Matt Williams. Web is directly observing an exoplanet. Another direct image of an exoplanet. The story was by Mark Thompson. And then another story about how when geomagnetic storms get really bad, they can bring satellites down more quickly and that we have to be able to account for that. We've got a story by Evan Gooff. Now, I write my newsletter on Friday. It goes out by email to 72,000 of my closest friends. It's completely free. We don't put any ads in it. So, if you want, go to universe.com/newsletter to sign up. If you hate ads and you want more content totally for free, good news. We've got a longer version of this exact same video over on Patreon. That's Space Bites Plus, and you can watch it right now without joining our Patreon or anything. The story is about how a super massive black hole was the life of the party at Cosmic Noon. So, I'm going to talk about a shakeup to NASA's social media feeds. But first, I'd like to thank our patrons. Thanks to Abe Kingston, Barely Griffin, Brian Bod, Kedwin, Chuck Hawkins, Commander Bay, Sai Nelson, David Guilton, David Mats, Dustin Cable, Evan Pro, Great Phye, Hudson Board, James Clark, Jamie Matter, Jim Burke, Jordan Young, Marcel, Michael Purcell, Modzo, Paul Robbuk, Ring Kaido, Rob, Sean Sergeant, Steven Fam, Munley, Vlad Shiplin, and Wolf Gang Clots who support us at the master of the universe level and all our patrons. All your support means the universe to us. So, a story came across my desk a couple of days ago, and that was that NASA is going to be merging, reducing, shutting down, suns setting many of its social media feeds. And when I first saw that, I was very sad. And I went and looked at the page where they announced it. And you know, NASA is zeroing out their STEM budget as you know, this is the request from the White House administration. uh unless something happens, uh it's probably going away. And part of this education process is communicating stuff out onto the internet through these social media feeds. And so you're going to see all of this these efforts of communication by NASA go away. And like when I first heard that like I'm really sad because you know these are very active fees. people have, you know, someone at some small group within NASA, say people working on the Voyagers or people working on on specific missions, they use this as a way to communicate the work that they're doing directly with the public. And so you don't have to wait for things to move through this giant bureaucracy. People blog and post new pictures and can be kind of whimsical and yet reach out to an audience that just can't get enough space. Um, and it's going to be really sad to see a whole bunch of these feeds go down. At the same time, I didn't realize how many feeds NASA was managing. If you actually go to the social media feeds page and you scroll and you scroll and you scroll, um, and they just keep going on and on and on. And this is just the kind of example of the practical losses that we're now going to be experiencing with all of these cuts. you know, they're going to be cutting the lunar gateway, but also they're going to be cutting a lot of the ways that they communicate the work that NASA does to the public. And I I can't think of a more inspiring story for innovation and exploration and adventure than what's happening with NASA. And I'm like most excited by when the people who are actually working on the missions have the ability to just talk about what they're doing. And it's going to really suck to see a lot of the stuff go. Same time, these should be RSS feeds. Like I'm a stick in the mud. I really like my old technology, but I really wish that that a lot of the stuff would just be transitioned over to RSS feeds. Still communicate. I'll watch them all. Um, and then they can just focus on just a couple of feeds. So, we don't know what what the final phase of this is going to be. I will definitely report on what that's going to turn into down the road. But for now, enjoy these feeds while you still can.