Ginormous Space Interferometer, China's Mars Sample, Boring Interstellar Objects | Q&A 373

Can we just combine all the space telescopes into a giant interferometer with insane resolution? When will new interstellar objects become mundane? Which rock should China take from Mars to Earth? And Q&A plus what's going on with Ver Rubin's data? All in this question show. It's time for the question show. Your questions, my answers, as always, wherever you are across my channel. If a question popped into your brain, just write it down. I'll gather them up and I'll answer them here. All right, let's get to the questions. Montgomery Wood, what resolution would be possible if you combine the dozens of telescopes throughout the solar system into one? So, this is this incredible idea that if you separate telescopes by some distance and you align their observations down to the wavelength, right? If you think about visible light, it's going at, you know, hundreds of nanometers wavelengths, right? Every second that goes by, countless wavelengths are going past you. And if and if you in two locations you can line up those two wavelengths down to the specific nanometer then you create a telescope that has the resolution of the separation of those telescopes. So if the telescopes are 10 km apart and you're able to align their observations, the light that comes into them down to the specific wavelength, then you get an interferometer and now you have a telescope that is 10 kilometers across which is incredible. And this has been tested out uh there is a telescope here on earth called the Charara array. It's in the US and I think the telescopes were separated by 300 meters and it's a visible light telescope and some of the most detailed observations of the surface of stars have been taken with the charara array because they are separated by this enormous distance. They're acting like a telescope that is hundreds of meters across. But the downside with an interpherometer and there's like the first downside is that you get the resolution. You're able to pick out details on the surface of something, but you don't get the ability to see faint objects because really you're still, you know, if you've got two 1 m telescopes and they are separated by 300 m, they're only seeing with the amount of light gathering capacity of those two small telescopes. Yes, if something is incredibly bright, then you can reveal features on it. So, you can look at stars, you can look at the sun, but you can't look at faint things. You can't look at galaxies, things like that. can't look at nebula because they're very faint and you require very big telescopes to see faint things. So what you're asking is the equivalent of this question which is like okay so we we know that there are a bunch of telescopes that are around the solar system. We've got say a halfmeter telescope on the Mars reconnaissance orbiter which is tens of millions of kilometers away from the earth. uh you've got the Hubble Space Telescope. And so if you if you synchronized the Hubble Space Telescope and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, you would be able to build a telescope that is tens of millions of kilometers across. You would have the resolution of a telescope that was tens of millions of kilometers across. And yeah, maybe you can't look at lots of stuff out in space, but maybe you could look at bright you look at Beetlejuice and get some answers. Maybe you could look at really bright stars and try to get some answers. And so theoretically, the answer is yes, you could do that, right? You could record all of the light that came into the Hubble Space Telescope, record all the light that came into the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and then you would line up that light perfectly to the point where you get this interferometer forming between the two of them. Practically, it is impossible because you are getting, you know, five uh, you know, 500 nanometer wavelengths. you're getting so many photons that are going past. How do you know which is the photon, right? Which is the wavefront that you're going to try to line up. The only way this post process works is with the longest wavelengths. And that's why say the event horizon telescope, which is this worldwide telescope network on Earth where you've you've turned all of planet Earth into a giant telescope. It only works in the radio waves because the wavelengths are very long, right? It can be many centimeters long. And so you can just record all of the data coming into the telescope with an atomic clock and you can measure as the wavelengths are going past. And then you take all of those hard drives, you take them to to some place and people crunch all of the data and line up the time codes so that those wavelengths are lined up. And suddenly you're able to use telescopes that are really far apart to be able to image the shadow of a event horizon around a super massive black hole that is tens of millions of light years away from us. But once you move into the visible spectrum infrared, all of these then the only way that you can make this work is if the telescopes are relatively close to each other and they are connected with a fiber optic cable and you are watching very carefully for anything that is going to change. like if a truck rolls by that's going to subtly change the length of the cable and now your interferometer's busted. So um there have been like it's an incredibly powerful technology and there's some really interesting ideas. You know people are suggesting uh quantum telescopes so that you could theoretically uh just automatically collapse the wavefronts down and pull out the data without having to do this time code thing. Um, and I'm researching this right now. We'll probably have an interview about this soon. But just like in general, unfortunately, it's just practically too difficult to do. But, you know, some of the best ideas that I like are these space-based interferometers that if you did this on purpose, like you you take two telescopes, you take them to space, you set them up so they're firing a laser towards each other, and then they're aligning their distance down to the nanometer so that they're able to be perfectly aligned. They're gathering their data. they are acting like a telescope as big as the separation in between them. Uh this is the kind of work that's being done with the LISA experiment which is going to be maintaining this space-based interferometer to detect gravitational waves. People have suggested you can do this physically on the moon that you can set up multiple telescopes, separate them by however many meters, hundreds of meters that you want and you will suddenly create the most powerful uh you know highest resolution, highest sensitivity interferometer visible light telescope that's ever been built. Um these are all great ideas and they should all be done and you know if there's more funding for space and astronomy and for space science and for upcoming missions I think we would see this. You know people have been trying to build interferometers and propose space-based intererometers for decades and they just end up being too expensive too complicated. Nobody's able to do them. So uh for now uh even though you could create a telescope like if you put a telescope on either side of Earth's orbit, you would have a telescope that is 300 million kilometers across. That would be amazing. That's a very big telescope compared to the you know 10 m telescopes that we have down here on Earth. That would be incredible. And if you made put lots of them around the orbit, you could create this big ring around the Earth's orbit and you could work combine all their light and you could uh see with a you know event horizon telescope the size of Earth's orbit. That would be great. Uh but it's just you know when you think about all of the gravitational interactions between all the objects in the solar system moving the telescopes around you know you move them a couple of nanometers they're out of alignment and they no longer work as an inverometer. 10,00 dots. If we're expecting to discover thousands of interstellar objects every year, at what point do they stop being newsworthy? Pretty quickly, I think, you know, we're not going to discover thousands, but we will discover dozens. You know, 6 to 12, maybe more uh interstellar objects will be found every year. So, I think we're going to get pretty excited about the first few and then after a while, we'll stop talking about it unless something really interesting is found. Uh it's the same way with exoplanets. Like, I don't announce every new exoplanet that has been discovered. I talk about some really interesting ones, the ones that are at the edge, but I don't talk about all of them. I don't announce SpaceX Starlink launches. You know, this is like more satellites going into space thing we've seen. You know, I don't report on airplanes flying either, right? You know like at a certain point when this becomes common place then we shift from announcing each individual object and obsessing about it into the larger meta understanding of the phenomenon in general which is what we're doing with exoplanets. You know we've classified exoplanets. We talk about about concepts in in astrophysics. We don't report on every single supernova that astronomers are found. We don't report on every gravitational wave. Like there are gravitational wave events now happening about once a week that LIGO, Virgo, Kagra, they are detecting colliding black holes about every week. We don't talk about it anymore because now the deeper question is like what are we seeing from all of the gravitational wave events? What is that telling us about the nature of colliding black holes, about the evolution of black holes? Those are the questions that we shift into uh that we will still be reporting on. So there will be this time when an interstellar object will be discovered and I won't tell you because it's just not news anymore and that's just natural. And then we'll move on to other weird things that we find for the first time cuz that's news. It's time to shout out all the new $5 patrons and above. Husk Carl, Larry Watson, Marson, Ernesto, Sakri Style, Harvey Kelber, Adman, Derek, Andreas, Listy, John Scott, and Jeff Walling. Join the club at patreon.com/universe today. Matt Hanky, if China does Mars sample return before NASA, will they take the Chiava Falls type rock or will they straight up take the Perseverance samples? Right now, we're talking about this really cool rock that the Perseverance rover studied, which has what appears to be ancient evidence of microbes in the, you know, mixed in with this sedimentary rock. Now, there are other possible abiotic explanations for it, but the researchers working on it have worked through every single possibility and have ruled them all out. So, they don't know how they could have formed, not with life. doesn't mean that life formed it, but the researchers haven't figured out a way to get there. And so, it is probably the most interesting rock that has ever been found on the surface of Mars. And it it would be absolutely incredible to bring that rock back to Earth. So, could the upcoming Chinese Mars sample return mission return that rock? Absolutely. Right? that they're going to have to pick some target on the surface of Mars. And you know, they're considering various candidates for their scientific utility. And the the Chinese version of the Mars sample return mission, the one that's going to be flying in 2028, is planned to be kind of more quick and dirty. It's going to fly to Mars, land on the surface, look around, pick up some interesting rocks, put it in a collection, and then blast off the surface of Mars, and bring those rocks home. And then researchers in China and around the world will get their hands on the first samples, fresh samples retrieved from Mars. But you have to land somewhere. Why not land uh right by that really interesting rock that Perseverance found? Now, China knows where that rock is. Uh NASA has been keeping a very detailed catalog of all of the motions across the surface of Mars. We know exactly where this rock is. Anyone who was able to navigate at the surface of Mars could land at this rock. Now, who knows if it is a very safe landing spot, right? It could be jumbly. There's lots of terrain around there. It's not safe to land on. So, you probably have to land close to it and then deploy some kind of rover that could retrieve the sample. That makes your mission more complicated, adds mass to it. They're, you know, they're really trying to dial down the mass and complexity of this mission. So, it's just grab and go. But the thing you're mentioning is could it grab one of the Perseverance samples? Again, those are tagged. They're on the surface of Mars. Now, those are the backups. So, Perseverance is carrying uh samples, its main samples inside of itself. It has a sample collection component that is carrying inside of it. And then it's also dropping backups of its samples across the surface of Mars. So if something ever happens to Perseverance, you could go and collect those backup samples. So theoretically, again, the Chinese mission could land right where the sample is that was dropped on the surface of Mars and pick it up and then that's what it brings home. Could it do that? Again, theoretically, yes. But you've got to land exactly on top of the sample, which is going to cause damage to the sample with your exhaust plume. So, you got to land near the sample and you got to send a rover, which you know, maybe the the Chinese Mars sample return mission is going to have a helicopter, but you know, we're still not entirely sure exactly what's going to be on board. Um, and then, you know, does it create an international incident? I don't think so. Um, I think that that scientists in general would like to get their hands on samples of Mars and especially the most interesting rock that's ever been found on Mars. They would like to have that brought back and I think American scientists, European scientists, the people who helped contribute to the funding of this of Perseverance ideally would like to have those samples in the hands first of American researchers and then share that knowledge with around the world which is like generally US research is more public more transparent than the research that comes out of China. But China is sharing their information with the public. They are sharing their lunar samples with other nations and they are sharing and publishing a lot of papers on the work that they're doing. So it's not like it's this completely closed scientific community and you only hear what they want you to hear. It's a more permeable boundary where some things it is kept very close to the chest like you know especially when it has military implications but other cases there's a lot of collaboration that goes on. uh the fast telescope which is you know 500 meter uh telescope in China a lot of foreign researchers go and do work on this telescope and get their information out uh there's a lot of interesting collaborations between China and other nations there's a telescope uh the Einstein probe which is a collaboration between Europe and China and so they could have various collaborations baked in to determining some of this research and from the the lunar samples that the Chinese have already brought back they have shared a lot of samples with other nations, other scientists that people can study this independently. So my guess is it'll be a blend of that. Like it's a huge bragging rights to say we brought samples of Mars back. We brought that specific rock back to Earth so that people can study. You don't own that rock. Nobody owns that rock, right? That anyone is free. If you can get there and you can dig a little chunk out of it and bring it home, then that's fair, right? So, uh I think it would be I think for the US they would feel, you know, a little frustrated because they found that the rock u and would love to get those samples, but at the same time they've they're cancelling the sample return mission. And so I think in general, if you asked most uh US planetary scientists, would it be all right with you if China went and grabbed that rock and brought it home, they would be like, yes, that would be fine with me. and I hope they share. Did you know that you can watch the same video with no ads and get a bonus question over on Patreon completely for free? We call it Q&A Plus. And this week's bonus question, what's going on with Ver Rubin's data? I'll put a link in the show notes. All right, those are all the questions that we had this week. Thank you everyone who asked your questions in the YouTube comments, everybody who joined me for the live show. Now, we didn't do a live show this week. I'm not sure if we're going to do one next week. Uh we're still trying to sort of sort out my internet and and we've got a lot of temples to go and see. So, uh, but we've got a lot of backlog questions that we are packaging up and that's what you're watching. Now, I'm going to, uh, sort of follow up on last week's rant. But first, I'd like to thank our patrons. Thanks to Abe Kingson, Bailey Griffin, Brian Bod, Carwin, Chuck Hoggins, Commander Block, S Nielson, Darkfinger, Dave Veroff, David Gilin, David Matz, Evan Pro, Greg Phy, James Clark, Jeremy Matter, Jim Burke, Jordan Young, Josh Schultz, Marcel Smith, Michael Purcell, Nordspace, Onesepan.org, or Paul Robach, Rkaidu, Richard Williams, Sean Sergeant, Steven Fam, Munley, Team49, Telescopes Canada, 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 last week, uh, someone asked a question about, you know, why I always say that I'm a a journalist and I don't have an opinion. And it was interesting, like it really set off quite a response in the comments. Now, mostly it was it was really good. There was a few people who sort of questioned my perspective on trusting the scientific consensus. And so I want to just emphasize that this week, which is that if there is a question where the answer requires expertise, then the person who is best qualified to answer that question is the person who has studied it for as long as possible. The more years the better. And we've gotten to this really strange place in our modern society where a person with expertise, a person who has dedicated their life to studying a subject is seen to be less reliable, less trustworthy than a person who just is making stuff up. And that is bonkers to me. Now, scientists are just people. And so obviously you're going to have situations where someone's going to have uh theories that are out there and are unsubstantiated and they're pushing a narrative and all kinds of stuff. But the scientific consensus is designed to deal with that where you have hundreds if not thousands of scientists who are scrutinizing each other's work in this kind of thunderdome cage match of science. And if anyone has put their neck out too far, then they're going to get it cut off by other scientists who are reanalyzing their data, questioning their hypotheses, questioning their outcomes, checking to see if they they're they're studying their data incorrectly. Like it just it goes on and on and on. And the more people you have involved in this process, this very transparent process, the better things go. And so, you know, there's going to be a bunch of you watching this and you're like, "Yeah, yeah, Fraser. get that for this and that and this and this other thing over here, but for this thing that I really care about that is kind of charged politically, that's not true. That you can't trust the experts. You can't trust the scientists that people are and and I want to propose to you that you're wrong. That in fact there is a larger culture war that is going on. There are people with money who are attempting to discredit the whole role of expertise in our modern society because it benefits them. And when you look at things like people attacking Wikipedia or people attacking climate change researchers or people attacking infectious disease scientists that there is a larger agenda to do that. And so you know who are the people who have an alternative agenda? Is it the scientists who really don't make very much money or is it the oil manufacturers? Is it the automotive companies? Right? Like there is billions of dollars to be made if people will distrust experts. So I know I'm not going to convince you but I want to at least have you just question just like in your mind go hm is somebody trying to make me not trust experts and what do they get out of it? So just think about that. All right, we'll see you next