Parker Solar Probe

hello humans so I thought we were going to be starting a lot later than we ended up being able to start um I'm currently getting shingles delivered they told me it would occur between 7:30 in the morning and 5:00 p.m. and it shows right now of course it does yeah yeah it always does of course it does yeah this is the this is the way it must happen is that uh I have somebody painting uh a busted seal in my house right now uhuh and he's coming in and out and using a vacuum cleaner so yeah no this is just this is you know this is just the way um but he's a he's a big fan of the show strangely that's cool yeah yeah yeah yeah so I told him yeah I know I know and so I told him that we're recording hisr because oh that's so great I can't wait yeah I'll be quiet so so at least my uh you know my interruptor is H is a fan of what we do knows and knows yeah yeah you know here you are whatever uh life is pain okay yeah um let's uh adting is so weird yeah it's it's funny I you know I think I was a good parent but I regret not forcing my children into uncomfortable adult type tasks when they were young you know strangers on the phone and things like that talking to strangers on the phone yeah troubleshooting a problem uh getting a busted part fixed dealing with warranty um uh filing your taxes you know these are the kinds of things that I think I would like to have a child have done for me uh just because no nobody ever teaches you how to do any of this no it's always a pain and it just it always requires a certain amount of just emotional fortitude to just go okay I can't can't let this problem Fester anymore I've got to deal with X canc gym membership canceling a gym member yeah exactly right and you're just like I know I could and then and the whole industry is designed to work on on you just not having the will to force your way through this this thing and so um anyway dealing with this kind of stuff is uh is and yet this is this is adulting this is part of the course this is humanity and so I think if I like I came across this idea sort of my parenting philosophy is that like a lot of people say that you know if they had difficult childhoods then it created trauma but also gave them lots of skills that they're then able to learn and in many cases it makes them better later on and so the question is like can you give a child that kind of a young childhood without the trauma right right right so so that's the thing that um that you that you instead you provide them with hard jobs and coaching and you're watching their back but yeah they are booking their own um uh Taekwondo yeah uh you know sessions through the local uh community group right like that's that's tough and they have to go down and they have to bring your credit card and they have to pay for it so that was one the thing that I actually did and uh it actually worked really well in the end the the kid was was I got the email you know I got the email that the thing was up for Renewal or they found out the thing was up for Renewal and they had to they went down to the community center and renewed it and everything went great and so yeah I wish i' had done more of that so if you're a young if you're a parent now with young children and you're wondering like how do I strengthen my children without giving them trauma that they're going to have to unpack with a therapist you you you give them you you give them weird one-time adult type jobs so they can learn to adult right adult now one thing you did that I loved because because we got to travel enough together with your kids that I saw random is is you would make your kids explain what advertisements were doing so that they could see through all the propaganda and and I just loved that like and it wasn't just like straight up ads he'd basically be like so why do you think they did this and and so your kids knew when they were being psychologically manipulated by the media and this was like before social media was what it is today it was I still remember that and it was glorious yeah they're quite skeptical which is good um and and then the other thing is just when people are manipulating you yeah so whenever I saw somebody acting manipulative perhaps to me and and they saw it happen you know we would talk about it later on just so like what like what is that oh that's a guilt trip exactly what's that that is passive aggression perfect right so um uh yeah yeah it's it's interesting those are the kinds of things that I wish you know like like I'm teaching my kids now how to invest and it's really simple you just invest in in worldwide index funds and you just take advantage of the entire Market worldwide and and you don't have to think about it ever again like it's just it's done you've you've solved your retirement and nobody ever deposit money is Cash yeah yeah you know you have to set aside 10% of your income you put it into a into whatever is the tax the best tax type account that you have you put it into a worldwide index fund that essentially captures the market of the entire planet and then you just don't think about it ever again you just keep adding to it over time and it just builds with the and so if you're account goes to zero that means that literally Human Society has failed yeah yeah and nobody ever explained this to me and nobody ever explain this to anybody and so with my kids I'm like let's put a couple thousand dollars in your in your account now here's how you sign up here's how you do this every month and now they're retiring they're saving for their retirement which is great like no 20-year-old has done this in the past and yet your 20year Olds are doing this exactly yeah yeah and and I'm saying like if you do this yeah then you'll be multi-millionaires by the time you retire and I have a friend who just retired and and yeah it's because he had this lecture from his parents and he was an engineer and compound interest is the thing yeah exactly so yeah yep um okay so anyway let's do our job all right so hold on I've I had to find my notebook that was hiding on my desk somewhere and I am loving your new setup I'm just going to keep saying that for a few weeks because I continue to love your setup I'm just farther from the camera that is the setup it brings me joy thank you Bill Nash for the sub over on Twitch and Veronica kir everything you said is entirely true uh she was pointing out make them sign up for insur getting an insurance quote and nice yeah yeah yeah and then having to go through all like what's the square footage and what's the blah blah blah and what's the manufacturer of the sprinkler system system yeah yes yeah exactly these are the jobs for children and then you wash the dishes in front of them like you're like okay your sweet reward is I am going to do the most mundane tasks that you hate I will clean your room and I will wash the dishes and you get to just kick back in a easy chair and watch me do it this is your sweet reward for learning to adult I I love this and one of one of my greatest failures as a manager is failing to make sure I always have one person on staff who doesn't mind cold calls yeah yes that's a that's a that's a rough job that pays dividends yeah yeah yeah so okay we should do this thing I'm looking for that record button and I'm hitting that record button and I'm failing there we go okay we are now actually recording on my ant astronomy cast episode 727 the Parker solar probe welcome to astronomy cast our weekly facts based Journey Through the cosmos we help you understand not only what we know but how we know what we know I'm frer Kane I'm the publisher of universe today with me as always is Dr Pamela gay a senior scientist for the planetary Science Institute and the director of cosmoquest hey Pamela how you doing I I am doing well um I'm really hoping we don't head into a government shutdown I am really hope yeah we're heading towards that again is this a thing again okay yeah yeah I'm really hoping that Hara and and Europa Clipper make it off the ground next month and uh yeah there's so much going on and and the next month we're going to have so much stuff to share out and I just want to say if you're not subscribed to escape velocity space news which I put out and you're not subscribed to all the things that Fraser puts out through Universe today and on his Fraser Kane YouTube channel you are going to be missing a ton of news so go subscribe to both yeah of expected and unexpected news that is coming down the pike the sun it's that ongoing thermonuclear explosion that's happening right over there and although the sun is necessary for life on Earth we still have questions so NASA has sent the Parker solar probe to visit the Sun up close to get us some answers and we will talk about it in a second but it's time for a break and we're back the Parker solar probe yes is one of like several spacecraft and groundbased observatories the sun is really getting the business now we're really focusing our efforts on on the sun well um there's this little thing called solar Max coming up and it turned out a whole bunch of Nations simultaneously got the realization we should be watching this we should see Lear more happens yeah so they're doing exactly yeah um so let's talk about the Parker solar probe then what is this spacecraft designed to do its primary mission is to go into the sun's outer Corona and try and understand why it's so hot from Super up close it's looking to measure the position and it has succeeded in doing this where the sun stops being the Sun and starts being the solar wind so there's this place where particles stop being directly connected to the sun through gravity and electromagnetic forces and actually fly free and out into space to cause beautiful things like the solar Aurora that you'll probably be able to see tonight where you are in Canada and I'm very jealous yeah we've got a couple of announcements yeah and we've got clear skies we didn't have clear skies for the last couple of days but we have clear skies tonight and probably for the next three or four nights so um yeah I mean this mystery this is one of the greatest mysteries in solar astronomy is that if you measure the surface of the Sun it is whatever 5800 Kelvin and then if you just go out into space sever several 100,000 kilometers off the surface of the Sun the temperatures rise to millions of degrees Yeah and that's weird right that that that hot gas that's in this sort of outer atmosphere around the Sun is millions of degrees hotter than the surface how is that possible and and yeah according to the second law of Thermodynamics it is not heat should not flow from the cold place to the hot place this is just to give you a sense of what's going on like imagining a scenario where your light bulb is able to heat that hamburger what in whatever cheesy Grill you've gone to to a temperature hotter than the surface of the glass on the light bulb that hamburger does not exist and and so to explain what's going on we have to look for some other means some force that is moving stuff that is able to release energy and it's that release of energy from something that must be doing the superheating yeah so the Parker solar probe was designed and built to try to answer this and other questions in the Solar environment so now being close to the Sun sounds dangerous is it just might be in fact this this Mission has a uh 4 and 1/2 in carbon foam core in its heat shield with two panels of reinforced carbon carbon composite on either side of that Shield that is used to to basically uh Shield the mission every time it gets close to the Sun and one of the things it does that absolutely floors me is the mission has two different solar panel sets setups and it uses the small one when it's getting super close to the sun and it actually has to pull in its other one to keep it out of the sunlight because the sun is too powerful for the solar panel wow it's like I know sunglasses I'm I'm not sure but but yeah so it has a small set when it's close to just deal with the intense light and then when it's far enough away it can then deploy its its bigger panels uh but even they are very small when we think about say the Europa Clipper that has solar panels that are 20 what what a uh 33 M long they are the size of like a football field and the Parker solar probe is so close it doesn't need a lot of solar panels in fact cooling is part of the issue and so this this trajectory that the park solar probe takes around the Sun this is special as well yes so the the mission got taken off from Earth back in 2018 it launched in 2018 and it has made multiple Rendevous with the planet Venus and it keeps changing its orbit to keep it essentially in a lowkey resonance with Venus so it keeps reencountering the planet and with each encounter with Venus it gets a kick that allows it to get closer to the Sun as it goes around and shortens its orbit it's it's going to be making its seventh rendevu this November it's final in its primary Mission and it's it's going to be 317 kilometers from the surface of Venus which is no not you may want to say that again you said 317 kilometers which is really close yes and that's what it is it's going to be 3177 kilm from the surface of Venus when it makes us ven oh sorry sorry about the sun yeah no that would be devastating yeah I why you say that again before I incorrectly edited you that's all right so in November it's going to be making its closest approach to Venus it's going to reach just 3177 kilometers from the surface of Venus which is its other science Target it's it's absolutely amazing and it's going to allow it to drop into an orbit that is just 6.9 million miles from the surface of the sun it's going to be on an 88 day period and right with every orbit it is setting new fastest human moving object in the solar system records and um we we still so so the next approach is going to be right after this episode comes out so September 30th it's it's going to be making its last approach on the current orbit then November 6th it does this amazing flyby of Venus and then it's on its final five trips around the sign in its primary Mission there's no reason to think it won't get extended um but what I'm kind of loving is its final planned approach is on my birthday in 2025 on December 12th oh that's really cool all right we're going to talk about this some more but it is time for another break and we're back did I break the first time yes yes oh well okay all right um sorry Rich uh right and so I it's kind of amazing to me and you know like this is just time accelerating that as you say it's been since 2018 it's done a ton of flybys getting closer and closer already and really just has a handful left until it reaches the end of its primary Mission but as you said it can last for a long time and and we should not anticipate that the prim like it's going to just Screech to Halt at the end of the primary Mission it's going to keep on going as long as it's still in good condition we'll get a lot more SS out of it so let's talk about the signs so what has Parker solar probe helped us understand about that big mystery that we talked about at the beginning of the episode and just like other mysteries in general so the the Parker solar probe is named after Eugene Parker who we're going to be talking about in detail in our next episode and he is someone who postulated that nanof flares are what are transferring energy into the solar Corona uh since then we've also seen discussions of Alvin waves uh and this is one of those episodes where I have to say I have read more solar science than I have listened to so please be gentle if I'm mispronouncing this word of many scary letters coni combined um so so Parker solar probe has also looked at Alon waves and it has found the what's called Alon surface of the sun which is the point where uh energy being transmitted stops being associated with the sun and able to transfer energy back to the surface of the Sun and in instead is part of the solar wind at that point it was projected to be somewhere between uh 10 and 20 uh solar radi away from the surface they found it at 18.8 it's always great when things we think are true actually turn out to work with the sun which we are so wrong about so often and you mentioned nanof so what are nanof flares so nanof flares are small points where I mean I'm holding my hand up as though that were realistic but so so we're used to seeing these massive flares that you can actually see in a 4-in telescope in your backyard what with an appropriate solar filter with an appropriate solar filter or project it onto a piece of paper pick one yeah um with with nanof flares you really need a spacecraft to be able to see them they were able to see them with Parker solar probe and these are smaller places where magnetic field lines are reconnecting and releasing energy when they do this so the question becomes in what way are solar waves are waves propagating through solar magnetic fields able to release that energy into the solar Corona this is really what is coming down to right Alvin waves are where you have a magnetic field line that for whatever reason gets a wave propagating and it's a standing wave so it's moving in Mass down the the magnetic field line as it propagates down it's carrying energy with it and it has the ability to release that energy into the outskirts nanoes are reconnections of field lines all these different things we're trying to figure out what is the dominant way of releasing energy out into the solar Corona that allows that energy to not be heating low lower levels um right right yeah and and is it like is it end up being one or the other or is it really just looking like a mix of these various features on the surface of the Sun that are contributing to this coronal heating we're still trying to figure out what the dominant [Music] causes but we do know it's a multi-prong dancer it's expected there's going to be one thing that is like the most big reason for this happening the largest cause behind this Heating but what's interesting is like Parker isn't just finding things that that we knew should exist which is magnificent that is so awesome for all the scientists whose work is getting proven true it's also out there going nope this doesn't work so so one of the things that that Parker solar probe discovered in its very first pass was there are switchbacks in the magnetic field lines of the Sun where where the lines literally coil back on themselves making s shapes wow and and so Parker is flying through and it's able to detect all these wild switchbacks in the magnetic field and there was this moment in time of how how do these form how does this work and are they what's tearing this energy out well it's been figured out that the way they appear to form is you have magnetic field lines that are rising up from the convection cells in the Sun and as those convection cells are doing their thing motions in the convection cell can essentially whip these lines around creating these switchbacks in the magnetic fields but it appears as of a paper back in July 2024 that there's not enough energy in these switchbacks to be what's heating the corona so we have this super cool thing it was super promising for a hot minute and then uh it turned out that heat was insufficient to heat the solar Corona right right it it's amazing that the sun is as complicated as it is I mean when you really just think about it is a blob of hydrogen and helium with a few other metals mixed in but they are a fraction of of the hydrogen and the helium it's held together by the mutual gravity of all of the stuff that's there and yet you get layers with the core and the radiative zone and the convective zone you get Blobs of material rising and falling like a lava lamp you get these magnetic fields that get twisted up and and and switch places polarity every 11 years you get these Nan flares on the surface you get the the granules which are the points where the convective blobs are rising up uh these magnetic field lines Twist and Turn you get sunspots which are areas of relative cooler where the the field lines are are breaking through the surface of the Sun and then these things are are combining with waves passing propagating down the magnetic field lines that are bunching up and heating up material in the in the Solar atmosphere and then this material is being driven energetically at in some cases hundreds of kilometers per second out into the solar system where it interacts and creates this bubble around the solar system and it's not like there's external random inputs that are going into this I mean when you think about I don't know just like most stuff like even orbits like say orbits of the Moon around the earth like the tides come because of this this weird interaction but you know the gravitational interaction between the Earth and the moon and if the moon didn't exist then we wouldn't have tides and if we had a bigger moon or the moon was closer we'd have different tides and point the ground would be heaving and if got too close it would break up like all these interactions but the sun is just a blob just sitting there doing its thing yep and yet it leads to all of this complicated emergent process that has baffled astronomers for a century and we keep finding new ways that it's comp licated so like the Voyager probes have finally both made it past the helops they have left that outer bubble but then Parker solar probe discovered a new inner bubble where the first 3.5 million miles or 5.6 million kilometers from the Sun is a no dust Zone because the sun it its radiative powers have blasted out of existence any dust that tried to exist in that inner layer so now we know that there's this inner sphere that is dust free thanks to the the sun's heat and power we know that there's the the inner parts of our solar system that are safe from a whole lot of cosmic rays that would otherwise be bombarding us and so we just keep encountering these different transition zones in what the sun is able to do as it influences its en environment yeah all right we're going to Rave enthusiastically about the Parker solar probe and the Sun or more or Venus but it's time for another break and we're back all right you mentioned Venus yes so what has Parker taught us about Venus that it can actually be seen from outer space like its surface can be seen from outer space this was one of those things that was just like how that can't be possible what are you talking about what I read about it it turns out the surface of Venus is so hot that it radiates light in the furthest red of visual and the nearest infrared light and the Parker solar probe has on multiple passes now used its Widefield camera to observe the nighttime side of Venus and it can make out the the geology of the surface and what temperatures are being radiated and and the geography of the Surface by being able to make out where the plateaus and the PLS are and what's amazing is seeing these visual light night time because the planet is glowing images side by side with with the mellin radar images and it's like oh I can match these up I am actually looking through the cloud yeah it it's a hot world it's a very very hot world it is amazing when we think about the images of Venus we're very familiar with that orange ball picture that has been and that was H by the Mel and spacecraft but with radar right and so that's not like the real color the spacecraft was equipped with a with a with a radar system it was sending pulses down watching as the pulses bounced off the surface of the you know and and back up to the spacecraft and it detected the distances and they were able to measure with pretty low resolution the surface features like I think they're down to like a kilometer yeah that's that's about right it depend on the surface it is yeah yeah and so they don't know a lot about the surface of Venus and that's it as you said no other we can't detect the surface from Earth we can't detect the surface with the various Mariner spacecraft the all of the the vanera probes that felt like it was only when they got down to the surface could they actually see the surface until then it had been this mystery was until mellan told us that a surface even existed at any you know at any kind of resolution and yet here is Parker solar probe with this not being its primary objective passing by and going oh look I could see mountains moving on to be fair most missions that were flybys were like we shall look at the daytime side and that was their mistake it turns out you need to be looking at the nighttime side it's it's just one of those things that is is truly flooring and of course it it's looked at Venus's plasma tail and helped us map out the plasma tail and one of my other to switch topics to another planetary object one of my other favorite results is Parker solar probe has on board equipment to measure a electrons protons and alpha particles helium ions it has on board dust detectors and and because it can detect all these different particles they used it to try and figure out the cause of the Gemini meteor shower and and this this meteor shower which occurs every December again when my birthday is yeah uh and it's the best one it's the best one yeah and and it's caused by an asteroid which is not what is supposed to cause meteor showers and so the question has always been is is this asteroid actually just a dead comic core that's on an inner solar system orbit somehow and by looking at the kinds of particles and the speeds of the particles involved they were able to compare several different models to figure out what kind of activity would have jettisoned those particles creating the observed meteor shower and and they figured out something violent happened to the asteroid it wasn't just like a comet Outburst it was an asteroid got hit probably by something else probably a smaller asteroid and that Collision that violence is what generated the particles that cause every December the gemin meteor shower that's really cool um so how is this spacecraft doing I mean I think it's fine it's f in near the sun like flying through the up upper atmosphere of the Sun and how's it doing it's good you know nothing weird nothing no big disasters have happened my my only concern for the mission is the current NASA budget because there there is currently a lack of funding and a mandate to go to the moon and the Artemis program is the great vacuum in the administration at the moment but as as long as they can keep going the latest National Academy study that came out last week really gives me some hope because it called out NASA for uh apparently 83% of NASA's infrastructure has outlived its predicted Lifetime and it's some point that will catch up to NASA um so so there was a call to look to the Future to plan for the future so I am hoping that part of that plan will include let's keep lro going as long as we can let's keep mro going going as far long as we can and let's keep missions like Parker solar probe solar Dynamic Orbiter Soho looking at the sun helping us stay safe and working with us to understand solar weather yeah it is kind of ironic that NASA overb builds and and does such a good job a careful job with the missions that it builds that they last a lot longer than the original Mission was intended and so that requires ongoing maintenance and team to communicate and time on the deep space Network and and and we saw for example that they're shutting down Chandra not not because it's failing but just because they don't have the maintenance budget to be able to maintain the spacecraft and hubbles Bonkers at some cat at some major cuts and so the question becomes what does Congress allowed to happen though this is the other thing that everyone's keeping an eye on because while NASA can express their uh desires to cancel programs a mission's not over until Congress deallocates its funds and yeah and so right now there's there's notes coming from congressional committees that just might provide the grace needed to keep Viper going and to keep Chandra and Hubble going Chandra was given a brief reprieve we get to see how long it keeps that reprieve do we know what the final stage for Parker will be I mean I love the idea of them continuing to test out its resilience like maybe when they're when they're finally right at the end they go well let's see how close to the sun we can get before we die so it would have to have additional Venus encounters uh get those more gravitational assists to get it out of its current 88 day orbit um that's not impossible I don't know what mission planners have done that is The Unofficial at this point future of the mission should it be granted A continuing chance um but yeah in in order to get even closer to the Sun it will need to meet up with its good friend Venus yeah right right but then you know with a couple more flybys who knows how close we could get I mean couple of million kilometers above the solute I would love just as you know we saw the end of Galileo going into Jupiter saw the end of casino going into Saturn I would love to see the end of of Parker going into the Sun but you know that's just me it's always it's the hardest place to reach in the solar system it really it would show yeah it's muchy fling your enemies out of the solar system than to fling them into the sun just saying yeah yeah yeah when people ever say like oh we should just throw our garbage into the sun like that's the hardest place to reach in the solar system you're kind of like saying why don't we you know throw our garbage to the on the top put our garbage on the top of tops of mountains yeah please it's really hard yeah don't don't that's Mount Everest that's how we got Mount Everest anyway uh well so cool and I like I doubt this is the last conversation we're going to have about the Parker solar probe there is so much science to be done so many amazing discoveries and it is doing great and so hopefully we will do a follow on in a couple of years and just give you because we are all still in this in the middle of this time when we just don't know all the answers about how the Sun works it's true and yeah that's that's one of the most amazing things is we have a star right next door and it is still a mystery that we are learning about yeah thanks Pema and thank you Fraser and thank you so much to everyone out there at every level in our patreon community this week we are going to thank on air our $10 and up patrons uh Adam andise Brown Andrew pesta AST Bob Bop apocalypse Bob zaty Brian Kagel Cammy r Cooper David Dean Dwight ilk father pra froto tanan ba oh wow you tried to give me pronunciations and I didn't see them fast enough sorry uh gal Schweitzer Greg Davis Harold bonh hogen Jarvis Earl Jeff Huna mortar welcome you're new your name is scary Jim schooler John Drake JP Sullivan Katie burn Kim Baron Kia pinano Lee harborne Mark Schneider uh uh Matthew horsman Michael Hartford Michelle Cullen Noah Albertson Pauline midlink Robert Cordova Ruben McCarthy Scott Briggs zy kemler Steven coffee Thomas gazetta toucher nikini zero chill Alex Cohen Andrew Stevenson Asos sets Benjamin carrier and I've started going into next week's name so I'm going to stop there all right thank you all so very much you make this show possible and it's why our podcast sounds so much better than our live version thank you yeah yeah thanks everyone we'll see you next week byebye and then they saved and then they saved I I was going through and looking something up in one of our old episodes and one of the questions asked was if Fraser ever inserts names into the list just to mess with me and the answer is no no he doesn't I sometimes wonder if some of our patrons do absolutely and uh yeah I am what happens when you learn to read more than you hear things and never learn phonics in school yeah and I'm so sorry everybody yeah the scooper MC Scoops a lot right for example people people yeah people definitely put ridiculous and it's funny because people will will put in like their YouTube names will be ridiculous yeah and I'll just read them with a straight face you have to yeah exactly if you're going to if you're going to make this your public Persona I'm going to acknowledge it I'm gonna and I'm not going to giggle about it I'm just gonna straight facedly say your YouTube name and uh yeah and move on so um questions hit us with your questions all right unless you unless you have perhaps a three body related uh tele show that you have feedback to give me no I still need to watch that I'm sorry I was coding last week I'll put it on this afternoon while I'm working on just some UI design stuff um have you played around with oh go ahead I did attempt to start watching while not only watching The Savage rain and determining yeah it it requires 100% of your attention yes yeah you can't you can't multitask watching scavengers rain you've got to watch it straight on yeah yeah so I will be and pause and go back and like wait what what just happened there yeah yeah um the the Terminator zero is one that is actually pretty good that just came out it's an anime version of Terminator um we've been watching that about halfway through I'm not a huge fan I said pretty good I didn't say quite yeah um it has interesting ideas in it um existential squee says that hard hit to the sun blows my mind wouldn't it be easier to to throw something down a gravity well so so the problem is you will often end up throwing it into a orbit around the sun and the question is how do you get rid of the angular momentum so that it actually falls the rest of the way into the sun yeah yeah so so the here on Earth we are traveling around the Sun at 30 kilometers per second we have this this angular momentum around the Sun and that the the only way to get to the sun is you have to cancel out 30 kilometers per second of momentum there's no other way to do this and so you know people think well if you just throw something at the sun then it's going to go towards the Sun but it's not it's it's kind of like if you're driving down a you know down a highway and you throw something out the side of your car U an apple core whatever um the yeah the wind will slow it down but there's no wind in space and so yeah the Apple corse starts it's going the same highway speed as you're going down the road and same thing if you throw something off the Earth towards the sun it will continue to orbit around the sun just like the Earth it'll be on a slightly different orbit depending on how much of a change of velocity that you give to it it's only when you have accumulated a complete and total 30 km/s of of Delta V of change in velocity that you actually reach the sun and the Delta V required to go to Mars like eight or five or something like that Delta V to leave the solar system from the Earth's orbit is about 16 kilometers per second so so much bigger there is a very cool video kicking around that Instagram decided I needed to see of someone bike riding a stunt course on the back of a moving train and what's cool is because they have the camera set up at railroad crossing you can see the bike's motion relative to both the train and the ground and the bicyclist is mostly staying in place relative to the ground and is doing all of these tricks that require significant velocity but that velocity is relative to the train not relative to the ground and it's this really cool lesson in moving frames and stuff like that that I just haven't seen before yeah yeah that's amazing um Zen asks how's it going with the probe that it's going to observe over the poles of the Sun so that's the solar Orbiter yes that that's fine it's fine that another episode it's not going into the kind of orbit so so way back earlier in the 2000s the plan was that Parker solar probe that at that point was the solar probe plus Mission would have a much longer orbit that would fling It Out by Jupiter that would be used to tilt its inclination to put it into a true polar orbit yeah that mission along with a couple of other outer planet missions all got cancelled under the Bush Administration so we got left with our inclined three degrees to the sun Parker solar probe the hod mission was H Hino day Mission again I read things the Hino day Mission um is in a polar orbit that started out inclined I think 24 degrees to the equator and is going to get inclined 30 something degrees to the Equator so it's not truly a polar orbit but it's allowing us to see further than we've ever seen before and if you think about it 30 + 90 which gives you the field of view does allow you to see over the pole of the sun it's just not looking down on the pole of the sun like one might wish for so solar Orbiter is going to get to 25° which is the European space agency's mission and then in it extended Mission it's supposed to go to 30 something and and with that's right with additional Venus flybys it could get to 34 degrees and who knows like that's the extended mission who knows if it just keeps going but that's a long way from 90 degrees now there was one mission that was measuring the poles of the Sun that was the ulses spacecraft back in the 90s but it didn't have a camera yeah so so it's amazing to think that the poles of the Sun have never been photographed yeah just ever so Veronica kir over on Twitch asks voyagers had to do so much to get going fast enough to leave the solar system would we be able to do that easier today yes the New Horizon's mission is its demonstration of that they haven't got there yet but it will be going faster no it won't it won't I thought it was no no Voyager one is is the fastest spacecraft that Humanity has ever sent out of the solar system and it's still going to be faster than Parker is the fastest not Parker sorry uh New Horizons was it fastest at some point and then drop speed maybe but but yeah no so it it doesn't have the total the same escaping velocity that Voyager One does so Voyager one is continuing to to make more ground than New Horizons and there's really only New Horizon's Voyager 1 and two that are the the the only three spacecraft on Escape velocities they're still functional right now the Pioneers are but they're dead um and the Parker solar probe when it goes through its aelon it is the fastest spacecraft that Humanity has ever built and then it goes out to parhelion and then it's not anymore so New Horizons was launched in 2006 with the fastest launch speed speed that's what confused yes me yeah but it had less it only had one gravitational assist it only used Jupiter it didn't use Saturn it didn't use uh Uranus and Neptune the way Voyer 2 did my bad thank you [Music] um Raj Luther is asking will there be plans for a Parker solar probe to the rep parking yeah so so no not so much um I mean money is there's always a huge collection of proposed solar missions yeah that live in this solar Mission asphere yeah and that people will bring out and discuss at various conferences and they'll provide updates and they'll tweak their math and they're you know they're always looking to make their mission more appropriate for the needs and the demands of the scientific community and eventually something crosses the finish line and and actually becomes a real proper Mission but but right now um you know right now NASA has said that their primary goal is maintaining missions that are flight ready so like Europa Clipper isn't in danger um but and things already launched aren't so much in danger but everything else can count its count its days as possibly being numbered uh and then Raj Luther also asked can the knowledge gained from the Parker solar probe help develop Fusion reactors no no no I mean like I'm sure understanding magnetic fields was what is it Hydro Magneto Hydro hydrodynamics except they're not looking they're not looking at magnetic confinement as much as you're looking at magnetic field structures in uh convective uh environments and right we're not building magnetically confined confection environments but watching how plasma moves along magnetic fields and interacts and heats up with in solar Corona like I'm sure a lot of this is applicable but the but the heart of it is that the sun produces its Fusion through its mass yeah crunching down at the center of the of the sun yeah creating this level of pressure and and mass but the temperature is relatively cool yeah compared to a fusion reactor they have to get the the they have to increase the temperature to make up for the lack of pressure that they can do to produce Fusion so so really at the end of the day they're they're they're vastly different processes I love that like the hottest place in the universe might be in a fusion reactor here on Earth it's true it's true yeah and the coldest place in the universe is almost certainly on Earth yes because we keep making them in Laboratories yeah yeah um but not like the fastest moving particles we still can't match what Supernova can do no we cannot uh are there any more questions over on Twitch um uh there's a cool comment Veronica comments uh Voyager one two and New Horizons are our ambassadors and yes I saw something scary star Star Trek motion picture is 25 years old no no it's 25 it's sorry from 79 so 7 35 years old no I'm still not M good Lord yeah in many layers 45 I'm in yes I'm in denial 45 years old yeah yeah yeah watch how much I can't math when my own age is being shown it's 45 yeah Star Trek the motion picture is 45 years old and William shner is still around um yeah yeah um so in we we did the the summer Hiatus question shows I kept running my question shows over the summer and so you know people ask like pretty weird questions and someone asked me in one of the episodes can we could we go and bring the voyagers back home and I answered it and people were mad like that's clickbait like like obviously it's not a good idea yeah someone asked a question and that like if a person ask a question it means that they don't understand the orbital mechanics the how difficult it is to bring something back but but a thing that I had failed to bring up was just to reference the verer in Ser the motion picture yes and also that idea that the the Voyages are ambassadors why would we bring our ambassadors home with the gold plate and all the effort and everything else yeah we sent them out to visit the universe so we don't need to bring them home but um but yeah uh any other questions any any one although null denominator is commenting that the entirety of the '90s was still only 10 years years ago and I have to agree the entirety of the '90s was 10 years ago what it it's a joke it's it's oh I see yeah like like it feels like the 90s just happened or or it's it's just the the like mental history of when did things happen like internally I am not as old as I I actually am and and totally therefore I keep being deeply confused with when things like appeared a I remember my grandma being that age number of years ago um yeah do you do that I I will like watch a television show an older show movie with an older actor uhhuh and then I'll like a like Butch casting the Sundance Kid and you're watching in the 1960s and yeah and you know and he's 33 you're like God oh no and then watch yeah someone who is in their early 50s in the in the TV show you I'm like I'm I'm his age uhhuh right when he shot that movie uhhuh or I'm way older when he shot this famous person who's now seen is very old I was you know like I was I'm older than Anthony Hopkins was when he was in Silence of the Lambs right he like oh my God so old the cast of Friends is now older than the cast of Golden Girls was when they filmed yeah exactly that kind of thing uh yeah yeah it's yeah and and I sort of do this this mental check where you're for a while there I'm like I'm the youngest person in the room I'm the now I'm not the youngest person in the room be the oldest person in the room field that I'm in is going to astronomy conferences and planetary science conferences the Apollo generation refuses to retire and is I'm still the youngest person in the room right it's just like what the hell happened so so there's like all the babies all the people who have just finished their phds and then there's this Gap because there's no jobs and then there's like a few of us gen xers going we're still here we're still here and then the Apollo generation just they're going to die in those jobs or they're going to all retire after the first Artemis Landing I think they're all going to retire after the first Artemis Landing you watch the uh the Fall Guy no I hav yeah it's on Prime and it was good it was you know it was the stunts were just unbelievable like it was absolutely a um like a love letter to the stunt industry because they just did ridiculous stunts and they did them all practically like they did as many of them as they could just just just all out um and that was a TV show back in the 80s okay with the guy who was the $6 million doll man name that's right yeah and then he was the Fall Guy where he was a stunt man but he got he had you know various episodes where he was helping solve crimes and yeah exactly yeah as St men do every day right right right and there are some cameos and you're just like wait these people are still alive wait am am I older than than them so yeah yeah I'm I'm not but it's you know in some cases it's not that much far apart but anyway um yeah good movie I like that actually movie that we watched that I didn't think I was gonna I didn't realize what it was so there's a movie on Netflix called The Hitman oh okay and we watched this last night and it was really good it's a it's it's a Richard linklater movie he did da to confused he did um uh uh oh man the Philip K dick movie electronic sheet no not to Android's dream but the other one people are going to mention in the chat but anyway no no but I really like link later um I had never watched Dazed and Confused until like six months ago and it been sort of sitting on my watch list and I finally watched it and I loved it just loved it yeah Carlo was like n you know I'm not a big fan of this and it just it C it just captured being a stupid teenager post graduation in such a beautiful way and I've watched a bunch of his stuff and I just I love his his directing style so anyway um uh yeah anyway so if you're looking for a movie that the Hitman it's surprisingly good like it looks weird you think it's like some kind of weird it's one I meant to see but I didn't get a chance to yeah yeah yeah and it's and and the gist is that it's a it's about a a high school teacher or college teacher who does some freelance work for the police and it's it's based on a true story and it turns out he's a really good um in fake Hitman and helps them sort of uh catch people who are trying to conspire to murder their you know friends co-workers Partners uh children mothers Etc and uh and how complicated it turns into so yeah I really it was actually a really good movie I I saw Bal juice Bal juice last night and it's like that's the sequel yeah and like I it was good it was good it was terrible oh no and it was just like I don't know if you've ever been in a movie and been like I should have got up and left five minutes ago and I would have loved this movie and I did not do that and now I have regrets yes and that's a that's a ball move to go I've had enough I don't want to watch any more of this movie going out and getting your money back yeah but but but it works you can do it people will do it I have a season pass to the Alamo Draft House so they have my money no matter what but yeah that's cool how much does the season pass costume it's it's like 20s something a month and we go to three or four different movies and they have older movies that like we got to to see all sorts of things on the big screen that I remember seeing when I was a little kid and it's just cool to get to see the older movies and all the stuff that just came out and and they have a pub so I yeah it just brings me joy yeah that's great they have what they call a 4D theater it's one with like a killer sound system and um yeah so I have started going to a lot of movies and regret what I did last night greatly right right all right well we've reached the end of our hour so thank you everyone for hanging out with us thanks Pamela as always for bringing the sweet knowledge um thank you in advance to Rich and the various people who are going to have to edit this nonsense uh we're sorry we're sorry we try better all right thanks everyone and we will see you next week bye-bye