SOS from Betelgeuse, Taste in Space, Nearby Black Hole Telescope | Q&A 363

Why do astronauts taste food differently? Do we actively look for an SOS signal for Betal Juice? Can we use a nearby black hole as a telescope and Q&A plus? What shape will milk be and why? All this and more 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 pops in your brain, just write it down. I'll gather them up and I will answer them here. All right, let's get into the questions. Meathead 76. Does food taste differently in no gravity? Yes, it does. So, what happens when you are in microgravity or in weightlessness is that you no longer have gravity pulling your body, pulling your juices, your blood, your very, you know, your spinal fluid, your your sinus fluid uh down, your eyeball juice down. And so these fluids will redistribute in your body. And often astronauts get these very puffy faces and that comes from sort of blood starting to kind of pack in around and they feel like they have a head cold all the time and it affects their sense of taste. It makes them very congested and so things don't taste very good um when they're in space and they compensate by spicing things like crazy. And so they found that astronauts were going through their spice much more quickly because they just couldn't get any flavor out of everything that they were eating. So yeah, it does change what you taste because you just you feel congested. And you've experienced this, right? You have a head cold, food just tastes like cardboard and then finally the head cold clears up and now food you can taste food again. I know like a lot of people got that with CO that you lost your sense of taste when you had CO. Ian Salter, if planet 9 turns out to be a primordial black hole, will we be able to use it as a gravitational lens? Huh, that's an interesting question. So, you know, one really out there theory is that planet 9 is a primordial black hole um left over from the big bang and black holes can be used as gravitational lenses. And normally the gravitational lens like people always ask me if you know if it's so far to use the sun as a gravitational lens why don't we use Jupiter but the problem is that the actual gravitational lensing of Jupiter is not very good and so you would actually have to go dramatically farther away from from Jupiter to use it as a lens instead of uh the sun. The sun is the best lens that we have access to. But a black hole gives a very tight lens. But it's the event horizon of a black hole that has the mass of a dwarf planet is not very big, right? Like if you turned Earth into a black hole, you would have an event horizon of a centimeter across, right? It would not be a very big black hole. And so you would be able to use as a gravitational lens, but you're not going to get the kind of gravity that you're hoping for. So you want to use the sun or you want to use like a real black hole, a stellar mass black hole. Now you're talking. So yes, theoretically you could use planet 9 as a gravitational lens, but it wouldn't be a great one. Emily Carver, what is something that the public doesn't realize about what it takes to report on space news? I want to sort of more generalize your question which is that it's not necessarily about space news, it's about science news in general because it's a very tricky field to report on because you know we're all quite experienced with say health news. You see some TV news where people say turns out caffeine is bad for you increases your chance of getting a heart attack and then a couple years later someone says no no no caffeine is good for you. It actually reduces the chances of you having a heart attack. And now you're like, what am I supposed to do? Right? Am I supposed to drink coffee or not drink coffee? Drink a Coke or not drink a Coke? I don't know what to do. And that's because of all of the fields that are out there, science is the one that is attempting sort of is trying to change its mind, that is trying to constantly update its perspective to match the the experiments to match reality. And that you know when you hold a certain belief and then you are updated with new information about reality you have to change your beliefs to match reality. And that is not a thing that people do. It's not a thing that people are comfortable doing. Right? When you think about people's religion for example and you say to them well what evidence would it take to prove to you that your religion is incorrect or some facet of your religion is you know that you're interpreting this incorrectly. and they will say like nothing, right? Like I have faith. This is this thing is true, right? And yet if you ask a scientist, you say like what would it take for you to um to change your perspective on this theory, you'd be like evidence, just some new piece of evidence, you know, if if we found a fossil of a squirrel in the Cambrian explosion, right? Then that would cause you to severely question the the way we understand the theory of evolution that okay this is really weird and so new evidence has come along and now this shakes my belief in the state of science and and so a lot of the times and and you see this where for example people who are arguing about say climate science and somebody will say well back in the 1980s people thought there was going to be global cooling therefore or I can't trust anything that you scientists ever say, right? And yet the whole point is like one group of scientists made a study that other scientists were skeptical about and yet that's used to kind of tarnish the entire field of science, which is ridiculous, right? You think about a lots of analogies where that wouldn't really hold. And so my challenge as a science journalist, and that's sort of like the more general term of what I am, is how do I communicate, the new discoveries, the new theories, the observations with the level of uncertainty that is required, right? That's why we have to use all these weasel words. Scientists have found evidence that there might be a new kind of thing with provisional maybe some agree others disagree you know so on and so forth right like it is this um really tricky kind of slippery way that you have to talk about these kinds of discoveries to do them service to not just say right this thing is absolutely sure right because you know that it might not be sure in the in the future. And people don't like that kind of uncertainty. And so they get very offended. And yet science is the thing that has given us so many of the wonders of our modern existence. That when we give in to the uncertainty and we are willing to let our beliefs match the bulk of the evidence, we're actually finally able to make progress in this world. that humanity spent millennia, you know, tens of thousands of years just going with their gut, right? That you know what are lightning bolts? They're they are uh gods throwing bolts at us. Gods are angry. What is a volcano? Gods are angry, right? And you move to this time where we actually have evidence. We build up evidence. We use the scientific method. We figured this stuff out bit by bit, piece by piece, and we change our minds. And I think that being able to communicate to people how it's a good thing to change your mind, to keep an open mind, to be flexible, to wait for new evidence, to adopt it, and hold your beliefs very loosely is a really tricky thing to do. And you know, for my field, it's relatively easy. You could say astronomers saw a black hole or astronomers think they saw something that looks like a black hole, took a picture of what they believe is the event horizon of a black hole. Like it doesn't impact our day-to-day experiences. And so the amount of grief that I get for being a space journalist is very low compared to the amount of grief that the climate uh reporters get or the grief that the health reporters get or nutrition reporters or any of that kind of stuff. And now it's been very much, you know, it's become a political thing. people are like right now some angry person is going to tell me that they're never going to watch my show again because I talk about climate reporting which is fine you know like this isn't for you but yeah I would say that is that is the challenge and and it is an you know it's like an art form and it is not a thing that I knew how to do by default and I've had to learn over time to be able to kind of walk that fine balance between here's all these cool things that people have found out and think they know and also Here is the uncertainty that we all have to embrace every single day as we want to be able to move forward in our understanding of the world. But on you know in general it works. Matthew Bronson, how does stars get so big once fusion starts and there's enough outflow of pressure to overcome gravity? It seems that new material could not be pulled in because the outward pressure is too great. That's not the limit on the size of stars. That the stars theoretically could just gather more and more material forever. They could just get bigger and bigger and bigger and then that would put more sort of temperature and pressure at their core and they would live shorter lives and then they would run through all of their material in their cores and then they would implode as as um and they'd explode a supernova and they'd form a black hole. The thing that is the limit to the size of a star is actually how hot the star becomes. So a star like our sun is about 6,000 Kelvin on its surface, 5,700 Kelvin on its surface, while the hottest stars can be millions of Kelvin on their surface. And so there's this incredible high energy radiation coming off of these stars. And so as new material is trying to fall down into the star, it heats up and you get all of this radiation that's pushing it back out. And you get this limit of about 100 times the mass of the sun. That stars can't get bigger than about 100 times the mass of the sun because of the outward heat and light pressure that's coming off of the star. And that's a limit. And so when we see stars that are bigger than that, then we assume that something weird happened, like maybe two stars collided to make a star that is 165 times the mass of the sun. And the same situation happens for for black holes. But for black holes, it's the rate that they can grow. So a black hole can only consume so much material and then it gets this accretion disc around the black hole and then the accretion disc puts out a lot of radiation and the radiation stops new material from being able to fall in. And that sets a limit on the speed that a black hole can grow. It's called the Edington limit. And yet, weirdly, astronomers have found examples of black holes that have beaten the Edington limit by several factors, which requires an explanation. It's kind of a mystery. It's time to shout out all the new $5 patrons and above. Paul Urban, Metroplex, Eddie Whistler, AJ Mchuan, Bill Burr, Super 327, John Fujett, MK01, Dave Croen, and David Louie Court. Join the club at patreon.com/universeto today. Alexandria Lasparance. If Earth is our cradle, must we humans conquer other planets to live on? Humanity is doomed by the sun. That at some point between 500 million and a billion years, 1.5 billion years somewhere around there, the sun will have heated up to the point that Earth's oceans will boil. the radiation pressure in the solar wind from the sun will blow away the hydrogen and render life on the surface of the earth over impossible and then whatever 4 billion years after that the sun will blow it up as a red giant maybe consume the earth and then turn into a white dwarf. So there is a ticking clock and that yes the earth is our cradle and if we don't do anything and although it's a long time 500 million years a billion years it's a very long time eventually the planet will become inhospitable and so what do you do right um a a civilization has arisen today that has the ability to go to other worlds and so the question is should uh is that a good idea? You know, the first question you have to ask yourself is like, is there anything on those other worlds? You know, is there somebody already living there? Are there any indigenous uh species living on those worlds? Are there bacteria? Are there microscopic life forms or maybe something even larger? And we should be we should very carefully examine. And if we do find life, we should really consider how we plan to use those worlds because it might be that the life on those worlds, you know, it's the only example that life formed independently from Earth and we should learn about it instead of just setting up shop and taking over. But what if it turns out that we're alone? That if there is no life, there is no life in the solar system, there is no life on any other star system, that that the entire observable universe is just rocks. rocks going around balls of plasma, gas, dust, that's it. And that there is no intelligent life anywhere in the observable universe, maybe even no life at all. Then, you know, do we have a responsibility to continue the just the very concept of life, right? Is is the universe made better by life? Are trees better than rocks? I argue that they are. I think that life is special. Life is, you know, if we are alone, then the universe cooked up something pretty special with life here on Earth. And then put it into our hands and said, you know, put this this tiny little ember of life into our hands and said, "Spread this." And then hopefully we will do that that we will take life across the the universe and the universe will become this weird complex vibrant ecosystem into the future. And if we don't then life will end with us. Now obviously if we find evidence that their aliens are out there and they're in the process of doing what I'm talking about then then we're off scot-free. we can just kick back, enjoy, do whatever we want and know that the aliens are going to uh take care of the universe and we don't have it's not our responsibility. But um but yeah, I do think that that our future does lie in the stars. It's just it's you know always people always think that I'm so against space exploration or so against going to other worlds and I'm just not. I just am realistic about the time frames that's all. Dave Ibbitson, are there any scientists looking at the stars in the kill radius of Beetlejuice for an SOS message? I don't know if anybody has actually done a steady search at Betal Juice for a message. And the problem is that the explosion from Betal Juice will move at the speed of light. And so we will know that the explosion has happened or in fact the the people on a world that is very close to Betal Juice will know that the explosion has happened the moment the energy from the explosion is washing past their planet. You don't have any you don't get any notice really. So they won't get any warning. It'll just be hey look there's Betal Juice. Hey look our world's on fire. And that world will have already been destroyed by the time we see the light coming from Beetlejuice for the first time. But this I this kind of leads into something that I want to talk about which is kind of interesting which is that when we are trying to receive signals from other civilizations. The problem is is that the search pace of the universe is gigantic. That there's all of these different radio frequencies that we could be searching at. There's all these places that we could be looking in. There's too many variables and so we don't know where to look. But astronomers have proposed that that bright events that are visible across the entire galaxy across maybe even the entire universe are the perfect times to try to signal to each other. So when you think about say Betal Juice, right? Betal juice is going to go off, blow up as a supernova. Now, only if you're within 25 30 light years of Betal Juice is it really a problem for you. But the light that's going to come out of the supernova is going to be expanding at the speed of light. And so that can be used as a clock to say, okay, when a um that light has reached a star that has an advanced civilization on it, that civilization will send a signal towards us. you know, they'll send a signal to all of the stars they think might have life on them or specifically they know we're here and they're and so they know they're going to send a signal to us and so they send a signal the moment they can see betal just happen or the moment they can see a specific gammaray burst happen they send a signal towards us and then we can calculate right what is the what is the moment when then they would have sent us that signal into the future that when we see Betal Juice and we look at that star and we know when they're going to see the the explosion then they're going to send us a signal and we can look at that are at the moment that we would expect them to have received that signal. And so people have proposed that these these bright events that happen, their shared viewing experience for various civilizations in the universe, that is the time to align your viewing habits to be able to see each other and that you can just completely narrow down the search space. We only have to look at one system across a bunch of different wavelengths, but still only one system. And then the next system that will see the light of Betal Juice is over there. And so we look at them and then the next one's over there. And so we look at them and we slowly look at each star system at the moment that they're going to be seeing the light from Beetlejuice go off, waiting for one of them to send us a signal. It's a pretty cool idea and a way to kind of narrow down where to look for aliens. Did you know that you can watch the same video with no ads to get a bonus question over on Patreon completely for free? And we call it Q&A Plus. And this week's bonus question, what shape will milk drama be and why? and I will put a link in the show notes. All right, those are all the questions that we had this week. Thank you everyone who put your questions into the YouTube comments, everybody who uh joined me for the live show, the 2hour live question show that I record every Monday. The next recording is going to be on Monday, October the 20th at 5:00 p.m. Pacific. So, uh we've got a event here on the calendar. You can subscribe, click on the notifications bell so that you will be informed when that live stream is about to happen and then you can join. Now I'm going to talk about the telescopes that I'm operating with right now and sort of what the results are. But first I'd like to thank our patrons. Thanks to Abe Kingston, Barely Griffin, Brian Bod, Carwin, Chuck Hawkins, Commander Bail, Sin Nelson, David Verb, David Gilton, and David Mats, Evan Pro, Greg Phy, Hudson, James Clark, Jeremy Matter, Jim Burke, Jordan Young, Josh Schultz, Marcel Smiths, Michael Barcel, Monzo, One Step for Animals.org, Paul Robbach, Rank Hyu, Richard Williams, Sean Sergeant, Steven Father, Munley, Team49, Telescopes Canada, Vlad Chiplin, and Wolfgang 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 I let you know that I have got my hands on a Vesper 2 telescope, smart telescope from Veyonus, and the weather has been really bad. And so, finally, I got a break in the clouds and I've had a couple of clear nights and I've had a chance to test the telescopes headto-head. So, what do I think? Um, now while I'm talking, we're going to be showing you some pictures. Some from the pictures from my Sea Star S50, which is about a 500 or 600 US telescope, and then a bunch of pictures from the Vesper 2, which is about a $2500 US telescope. And you can sort of see the differences and compare and contrast. So, from a sort of usage standpoint, I like the Sea Star better. Uh, it's very quick to set up. You can put it out, open the arm, and be taking pictures within about a minute, maybe two minutes. I found that the Vesper takes a lot longer. That it takes time to do its plate solving, to be able to find its location in the sky, to be able to do its autofocus. Takes about 5 minutes, maybe closer to 10 minutes to actually get fully ready. And, you know, maybe I just didn't have it set up in the right location so it could see as much of the sky that it wanted. Uh, but it was just a lot slower to get it operational. My other big complaint so far with the Vesper is that it doesn't have the ability to just connect to your Wi-Fi network in the way that the Sea Star does. So, with the Sea Star, you connect to it as its own Wi-Fi hotspot once and then in your app, you put it into a station mode where it's now automat whenever you turn it on, it just automatically connects to your Wi-Fi network and then you can control it when you're within the Wi-Fi network. And that's perfect because then you can use your phone to look stuff up or check your email or check the weather or whatever you need to do. It doesn't lock down your internet to that one specific location. The Vesper still sets up its own Wi-Fi hotspot and then you have to connect to the hotspot and so then you can't use your phone like anything else. It's just has to be a controller for your telescope. And and the Sea Star method is so much better. And so I really hope that Vesper is going to be able to catch up on that. But the biggest thing are the pictures and the Vesper is a bigger telescope. It is a bigger sensor. It is kind of amazing how those pictures look compared to the ones with the Sea Star. Uh and so if you're like purely looking for like what takes a better picture, it's going to be the Vesper. But it's a more expensive telescope and I am just shocked every day when I use the Sea Star how good the pictures are for how affordable that telescope is and how sort of well-developed the software is and how usable the telescope is. So uh you know you can decide which way you want to go right now but I think if you have more money go for the smarter more expensive telescope if you're willing to be patient and you know deal with some of the issues that I mentioned to get better pictures. But if you want something that's small and you can take anywhere and and is easy to use and very quick, I still really love the Sea Star. Uh I'm going to continue giving you updates as I use these telescopes some more. Uh, all right. We'll see you next