"WOW!" Signal Gets an Update // Starship IFT-10 // JWST Finds No Atmospheres

The wow signal was even more wow. Starship flight 10 makes to space and returns to Earth. More red dwarf planets get crossed off the list. They lack an atmosphere. A supernova spilled its guts into space. And in Space Bites Plus, finding supernova as quickly as possible. All this and more in this week's space bites. The WOW signal has been puzzling astronomers for decades. There was this survey done with the Big Ear Observatory and astronomers were looking through the data, the strength of the radio signals that were being picked up by the observatory and there was this huge spike and the astronomers were working on it, circled it and said, "Wow." And uh people have wondered what caused that signal. People went back to observe it. There was nothing there. Now, it's important first that the letters that you see in the WOW signal, they don't mean anything. They are just the strength of a signal. Normally you measure the strength 0 to9 and once you go past that then you start to cycle through the letters. And so they got way up into the letters which shows it was a very strong signal. But how strong? Well, the problem is that all of those data produced by the Big Observatory were printed out on dot matrix printers. So they had 75,000 pages of archived data from the Big Observatory but not in a database which is where you kind of want it. So astronomers went through all of the 75,000 pages to scan them into a database so that now researchers can compare just how strong the wow signal is compared to the background observations of what they were normally observing. And it turns out it was dramatically stronger than what astronomers had originally thought. So like maybe they should have had two exclamation marks on the WOW. We still don't know what caused the WOW signal. And there is a lot of speculation. Of course it's aliens. It's something coming from the moon. It's a reflection off of a satellite. But a couple of years ago, we got pretty good evidence for what it might be. And that is that there's some kind of cloud of gas in intergalactic space that some very bright object sent its radiation through like a gammaray burst or a fast radio burst or a supernova or something like that. And we got this spike of the signal. But because it passed through that cloud of gas, it didn't show up in other wavelengths. And the best evidence for this came from some observations from the Aerosibo Observatory. They saw similar mini wows and were able to figure out that they were caused by these flashes behind clouds of gas. And so it's assumed that it has the same kind of signature. And it just shows that the WOW signal was really special and really deserves like two or maybe even three exclamation marks. And we've got a story about this by Andy Thomas Wick if you want to learn more details about the signal itself. All right, it's been a while since we've talked about Starship here on the channel. Is is that still a thing? Well, apparently it is because earlier this week we saw the 10th launch of SpaceX Starship and the Superheavy booster. Now, it was originally supposed to launch on Sunday, but there was a problem with leaky hose. Then they were going to launch it on Monday, but the weather wasn't going to permit it. So they finally launched on Tuesday and no delays. It took off. We saw it launch with 33 of its Raptor engines and they lost one of the engines during the ascent. We saw the separation and then Superheavy returned to Earth. Now we've been seeing these great catches by the Mechazilla of the Super Heavy, but this time SpaceX decided they were going to try to push this booster to its envelope, test a bunch of ideas. They wanted to simulate what would happen if one of its engines went out and so they were able to test that and they had it soft land in the ocean off the coast of Bokhica. Then Starship continued on to space and this is the part where they seem to explode recently but this one made it all the way to space and the goal here was to test out the PEZ dispenser method of throwing Starlink satellites into space. There were eight dummy satellites that matched the size and dimensions of the next generation Starlink satellites. And so it had this PEZ dispenser and it was bringing the satellites down and throwing them out into space and bringing the next one down and throwing them out into space. And that worked great. So then once the satellites were deployed, it was on a ballistic trajectory as were the satellites. So they all burned up. But then Starship re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. And again, we got this beautiful air glow as the spaceship was returning through the Earth's atmosphere. And then one anomaly was there was some kind of explosion in the area where the engines are, and we kind of don't know what that was yet, so we're going to still have to wait to find out. But it didn't affect the re-entry. And again, we were able to see streaming video for the entire re-entry process, which is great because at the time where you have the most heating, the most damage is happening to the various exposed structures on the spacecraft like the fins. And we could see that some of the fins were getting really fried and you could see chunks of metal burning off. Eventually, the temperatures cooled down. It got into the thicker parts of the atmosphere. And you could see like the metal rattling back and forth as it was continuing down through the atmosphere. And then it got down to its splashdown point, did its maneuver to fire its thrusters, and slowly landed on the ocean, fell over and exploded. And we saw this because there was a buoy placed in the ocean right where the landing was going to happen. And even better than that, SpaceX had a drone in the air watching the landing so we could see it from another angle. So they, you know, they knew where it was going to land and they were able to actually film the landing so that we could see it. There were a bunch of mysteries. It turned this strange orange color. It seems like it's some kind of special tile that was put there and you can see like some kind of rust on the outside of the spacecraft. So I'm sure we're going to learn more about this soon. So, with that test out of the way, uh there's still a gigantic checklist to get to the point that Starship is going to be the landing system for the upcoming Artemis 3 launch, as well as apparently Starships are going to go to Mars. Uh so, we'll keep you praised on that. Now, people are always asking me if I'm going to do another collaboration with Scott Manley and Marcus House. And yes, uh we're going to be recording that momentarily, and so you'll probably see that within the next couple of days as well. But we've got coverage on universe today so you can read more about how the launch went and that's written by Alan Bole. One of the great science goals of the James Webb Space Telescope is to study the atmospheres of exoplanets and before web this whole science was just in its nason stages. We saw just hints of atmospheres thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope as well as the Spitzer Space Telescope. But now web is measuring the atmospheres of exoplanets. And of course, the thing that we are very excited about is the discovery of atmospheres around Earth-sized worlds. Now, the problem is that even the mighty web can't see the atmospheres of an Earth-sized world orbiting around a sunlike star. The star is too bright, the planet's too dim, it can't distinguish them. But it can distinguish Earth-sized worlds orbiting around red door stars. And so, that has been the focus of the research. Now, we've talked a lot about the search for atmospheres at the Trappus One system, but there are a lot of other Earthsized worlds orbiting around red dwarf stars, and I've reported on a few of them so far. And this week, I'm going to give you two more reports. So, the first is GJ3929B. And this is a planet with about 43% of the mass of the Earth, but about 1.15 the Earth's radi. And it orbits very close to its star. It's definitely not in the habitable zone, but the hope is that we would see something similar to a Venus where you'd see this thick carbon dioxide atmosphere or something like that. And unfortunately, Web showed that the temperature of the planet is what you would see if it was bare rock and it didn't detect the presence of a thick atmosphere. So, let's move on to another Earth-sized world orbiting around a red dwarf star. And in this case, we've got GJ1132b. And again, this is another red dwarf star. It's about 41 lighty years away. This planet is about Earthsized and it orbits every 1.6 days. And that should be the trigger that again this is not a habitable planet. It is whipping around its star. And the same result, which is that they were unable to detect the presence of an atmosphere. And so it looks like it is also bare rock, a super Mercury. So the hunt continues for an Earth-sized world orbiting around a red dwarf star that has an atmosphere. We've seen uh hot Jupiters. We've seen other large planets which obviously have atmospheres, but we're looking for those terrestrial planets orbiting red dwarfs to have atmospheres. And so far, no luck. But, you know, the hunt continues. We've got stories on Universe Today about both of those planets. One by Evan Goth, the other by Andy Thomas Wick. So, if you want more details, check that out. Now, we'll move to another kind of dwarf star that could have planets, and these are white dwarfs. Now, white dwarf is the exposed core of a dead star like our sun. After it has puffed off all of its outer layers, you're left with the core where the fusion was happening. And then now this just proceeds to cool down to the background temperature of the universe. Takes a long time, billions of years, and yet it is thought to be this very smooth process. And so planets have been found around white dwarf stars. But the concern is that the star will continue to cool down. And while the planets might be habitable for a few hundred million years, eventually it's going to be too cold and they're not going to be habitable. But astronomers have realized that some white dwarf stars seem to stop cooling down. They go through some kind of bump that halts their cooling process. And now we understand the mechanism better that's doing this. It's caused by an isotope of neon, neon22. And this material crystallizes inside a white dwarf star and then floats to the surface and is able to release heat and it's able to counteract the change in temperature that's happening as the star is cooling down as it's gravitationally contracting. And what it appears to do is put a pause on the cooling rate of the white dwarf. And so astronomers did some simulations and they found that about 6% of white dwarfs have this mechanism going on. And if it does, then they can remain at the same temperature for about 10 billion years, which is long enough for life to form to reach the space age and go off to explore the cosmos. It looks like, you know, 5% 6% of star systems get a second chance at life for a long period of time. It's really interesting research. Uh check out the story by Andy Thomas Wick. Stars have layers, you know, onions, ogres, layers. And we know that, you know, with the sun, you've got the core, which is where the fusion is happening. You've got the radiative zone that's around that. And then you've got the convective zone that's around that. But we can't see anything below the photosphere, the surface of the sun. Astronomers have to use other methods to detect what's going on inside the sun, which is a whole other story. But when stars reach the end of their life, they start to form layers inside the core, which is essentially the different layers of material that had gone through the fusion process. And then eventually the most massive stars explode as supernova. Some will form black holes at the center, but the whole process is very messy. You don't get a really good chance to look at what was going on inside the star. But now astronomers have found a supernova that has revealed the secrets of what's inside the star. Astronomers have seen the presence of ionized silicon, argon, and sulfur for the first time in a supernova. And this is highly unusual. Like I said, the first time it's ever been seen. It's as if the star spilled its guts out into space as it was going through this supernova. And so, what could do this? Well, one possibility is that there is a companion star that was pulling material off of the star and as it was going through its supernova essentially unwinding it so that we could see what was inside of it. Another possibility is that there was just really powerful stellar winds, it continued to erode the star and got down into some of those layers so that when it went supernova, we were able to see them. But I like the idea that just cracked itself open like an egg and spilled its guts into space. We've got a story about this by Evan Gooff. 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 star that ate a black hole and instantly regretted it. So, thank you everybody who voted. Now, we're going to put the vote for this week's stories into the post tab here on our channel. So, if you are scrolling YouTube and you see the vote, just take a second, let us know what you thought was the best story. Of course, the best chance is to subscribe to the channel, click on the notifications bell, and then just train the algorithm. vote on everything. So, do you remember how Ver Rubin accidentally discovered comet 3i Atlas? You remember the interstellar comet just when it was in its provisioning phase? You know, oh, it turned up thousands of asteroids. It gave us some incredible views and it just happened to accidentally discover the third interstellar object that we've seen passing through the solar system. Well, now it turns out that NASA's test mission also accidentally discovered comet 3i Atlas about 2 months earlier than the comet was announced. TESS is a mission that is searching for exoplanets. It's not looking for comets, but astronomers looking at the test data realized that TESS just happened to be looking in the exact place where three eye atlas was when it was doing its observations. And so they went back through the archival data and realized that on May 7th they were seeing the comet at 6.35 astronomical units away and then again on June 2nd at 5.47 astronomical units. One interesting scientific note that they found was that the flux of the comet increased by a factor of five during that period. The comet is getting closer and so you would expect the flux to have increased by about 1.5 but it increased by five which means that there was some other factor that was increasing the brightness. This much more active coma that we've seen around this asteroid and the comet was actually moving very quickly. So it was actually a very tricky observation to pull out of the data. It's not designed for this. And so if you want to learn how they did that, there's a great story by Andy Thomasick. One question we get a lot is whether you could walk on the surface of Jupiter, not on the cloud tops, but if you could go down to the very center, the rocky core of Jupiter, could you walk around on that? What would it feel like? Well, no, because the pressure is intense. The temperature is insane. It would be very uncomfortable, deadly uncomfortable. But that is sort of this assumption that there is this rocky core at the center of Jupiter. And thanks to NASA's Juno spacecraft, the observations show that it's not this single distinct rocky core that it's actually a very dilute process that you don't just get rock and then other ices and metallic hydrogen and stuff around that. You get this mixture that goes from the center of Jupiter out all the way out to the atmosphere. And there's no clear delineation. And this is a surprise. This is not what you would expect. You would expect that the heaviest elements would fall down into Jupiter and they would collect at the center thanks to gravity and density. So why is this happening? Well, the traditional idea is that Jupiter went through some kind of dramatic collision. It smashed into some other giant planet early on, got its internals mixed up, and it still hasn't settled down from whenever that collision happened. Well, astronomers ran simulations to find out what would happen. They smashed giant planets into giant planets and they found that no, the heavy elements should collect back down into a sphere at the center of the planet on fairly short time scales. So that doesn't explain it. And so their alternative explanation, we're still in the early days of this, is that it was caused by a constant rain of material falling into Jupiter throughout its entire history. That it didn't gain its rocky material very quickly. that it was a lot more slow throughout the billions of years that it's been around. And that would explain why it's all kind of turbulent and dilute. And in fact, we see something very similar at Saturn as well. And so maybe this is the common interior structure of giant planets. And we've got a story by Mark Thompson that goes into more detail. I hope you're enjoying all of the space news that we've got for you this week. But of course, this is just a fraction of all of the news that we are covering over at Universe Today. For example, researchers have found a non-re repeating fast radio burst within just a few light years. Story by Andy Thomas Wake. There's a parabolic flight to test an electrolyer for future moon and Mars missions. Story by Lawrence Tugni. James Webb tries its hardest but doesn't find any planets at Epsilon Aerodani. Story by Andy Thomas Wick. And so if you want more of that news, you should subscribe to my weekly email newsletter. It is a collection of all of the stories. It's got nice pictures, a write up that I write every week. There's no ads. It's completely free. You can go to univertoday.com/newsletter to sign up. And if you want even more news, we've got another version of this exact video called Space Bites Plus, and it has one additional story about a new technique for finding supernova really quickly, just in time for the Ver Rubin telescope. This version is over on Patreon. It has no ads. It's completely free. You can watch it right now. and I'll put a link in the show notes so you can watch that episode. I'm going to talk about the upcoming Starship collaboration. But first, I'd like to thank our patrons. Thanks to Abe Kingston, Andrew M. Gross, Bailey Griffin, Brian Bod, Keredwin, Chuck Hopkins, Commander Belton, David Gilson, David Mats, Evan Pro, Greg Phy, Hudson Moore, James Clark, Jeremy Madden, Jim Burke, Jordan Young, Josh Schultz, Marcelitz, Michael Purcell, Monzo, Nick Borquez, Nick Solari, Paul Robot, Raidu, Richard Williams, Sean Sergeant, Steven Fowler, Munley, Vlad Chiplin, and Wolf Gang Claus who support us at the master of the universe level and all our patrons. All your support means the universe to us. So, after the recent Starship flights, people have been asking me, "When are you going to do another collaboration with Scott Manley and Marcus House and I just like I haven't felt like we've seen a lot of really big progress and I didn't want to waste their time and so we I didn't reach out and we didn't do a collaboration and both of them were busy." But then we got the news that Scott is retired from his day job and so now can focus on YouTube full-time, which means he's got lots of time for collaborations. Marcus is always game and we saw a lot of progress with ship 10 and so I figured let's get the band back together and so I reached out to both of them and they agreed to do a collaboration which we then recorded uh a few hours after I recorded this episode of Space Bites. But Anton, our producer editor has put it all together and so when will you be able to watch it? You can watch it right now and I will put a link in the show notes. You can go watch that collaboration. It was a lot of fun. Uh, you can tell Scott is very relaxed. Uh, it was a really good time. So, check that out. Now, here's the deal. The YouTube algorithm punishes us if we release multiple videos on the same day. If we release Space Bites and the Flight 10 analysis on the same day, YouTube doesn't like that. But you need to show YouTube that this is all right and that you appreciate it. And so, if you can watch both, that would be great. Give them thumbs up. Put in comments. Show the algorithm that yes, releasing both of these videos on the same day was the right move. And to not punish us for doing this. All right, we'll see you next