LIGO's Getting Its Upgrades. What's Next? | Q&A 426

What's going on with LIGO? Which fictional spaceship is the most realistic? How will astronauts protect themselves during long time flights? And in Q&A Plus, what evidence will remain if humanity vanishes tomorrow? 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. Alright, let's get into the questions. Who's won? LIGO upgrades? Yes. LIGO is the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory. There's two facilities in the United States. One is in Washington, and one is in Louisiana. And these are designed to measure gravitational waves as they pass through the Earth. And they finished their most recent observing run. And now they're taking a break to do upgrades on the optics. And originally, the plan was to keep LIGO offline, probably for the better part of a year, year and a half while they make all these upgrades and increase the sensitivity and make better mirrors and come up with new techniques for squeezing the light and the quantum information to get even more measurements of gravitational waves. But Vera Rubin came online. And so the plan now is to bring LIGO back operational relatively quickly within just a couple of months, so that it can then participate in Vera Rubin discoveries, either detect gravitational waves, so then Rubin can do follow-on observations, or vice versa, where Rubin detects some kind of event, and do we see the signal in the LIGO data. And so they're going to probably participate with Rubin into 2027. And then once they've got a baseline for that, they're going to shut the system down and make those upgrades. But I know that there was a recent video about LIGO. Oh, I forget her name. Anyway, there's a journalist who just did a tour of LIGO. And I would love to go to LIGO. That would be great. You know, I'm in British Columbia, Washington is just across the border. And I would love to see LIGO in person, or CERN, that'd be cool too. James McIntosh, aren't there a couple more LIGOs? So there's two other facilities. One is called Virgo, which is the European version of LIGO. And then there's Kaga, which is a Japanese observatory. Those aren't as sensitive as the LIGO, but between the four of them, you get this much better view of gravitational waves, because now you've got four different perspectives. And you can detect in three dimensions where the gravitational waves are coming from. Before when you just had LIGO, we just had two points of measurement, then you could know roughly which hemisphere the gravitational wave was coming from. Like it came from the left, or it came from the right. But once you add Kaga and Virgo, now we're getting perfect three dimensional view of the sky, we know that it came from this tiny little spot in the sky. Now, the Virgo and Kaga aren't as sensitive as LIGO. So there are gravitational waves that only LIGO can detect. But you've got this great collaboration between all of these big gravitational wave observatories, so that they're developing techniques in one and utilizing those techniques with the other observatories for them all to improve. And as new gravitational wave observatories are installed, it should just continue on this. There's the Einstein telescope, there's the Cosmic Explorer, which is going to be this 40 kilometer arm version of a gravitational wave observatory. So like the LIGO ones are 10 kilometers long. And so the Cosmic Explorer will be 40, I think. And so there's a bunch more gravitational wave observatories, they just keep adding to the network as they get built. Ted Krause, what is the astronaut protection for long term use like to Mars or the moon long time habitation? So there is no protection for astronauts on a long duration spaceflight. If you're going to send astronauts to the moon, you check the weather, you try to go to the moon at a time when there isn't a lot of activity on the sun. You know, we're still just a little bit past solar maximum. So the Artemis two missions a little, you know, little dicey, but it was fine. Once you're at the moon, then you put your base in a place where you are protected from space radiation, you can either just like go into a lava tube, you can dig underground, cover your inflatable base with a meter of regolith, and that'll protect you from all the radiation in space. And then astronauts will just have to spend their time as much of their time as possible, protected by this radiation shield. But if you're going to go to Mars, then it's a big problem. You know, because you're always trying to balance the weight of your spacecraft, the lighter your spacecraft, the less propellant is required to get you to your destination. And if you're going to put a meter of ice or regolith around your spaceship, you're adding 1000s of tons to the weight of your spaceship, and then you're going to need more propellant and then that's going to require more shielding. So the Orion capsule, they had policies had plans for if there was a solar storm, which is that the astronauts would build a fort inside the Orion capsule that they would gather together all of their supplies, all of their water, all of their equipment, their electronics, everything they've got. And they would go and hide out in the best protected component of the capsule and they would have this igloo, this fort built of their densest supplies to try and protect them from the radiation. That works if it's a one time event, if it's a solar storm, solar storm is passing through, you just want to make sure you're okay for an hour while the solar storm is passing through and then you dismantle your fort and then go back to what you're doing. But if you're going to Mars, it's not just the risks of solar storms. I mean, you you are at you know, you have nine months that you are on your way to Mars, and there's a chance that a solar storm is going to come through. But there is just the ongoing radiation that comes from cosmic rays, they're going to pass right through your fort. And so on average, astronauts on this long term journey will receive about 200 times as much radiation as a person who's down on the surface of the Earth. And the consequence is that you will experience higher rates of cancer down the road. As these cosmic rays pass through your body, they are liberating atoms out of your DNA. And then those DNA can go on to mutate. When as they split, and you can you can have cancer, there just is no strategy for this, we have no way. Like you can have a little bit more shielding, but a little bit more shielding doesn't require weight. There are some really interesting research that's being done. There was a paper that we reported on Universe Today about crystals that can be used to maybe direct cosmic rays. So there's different ideas. But so far none of these are at the point where you can reduce the risk entirely of a deep space mission. Astronauts going to Mars are going to have higher rates of cancer when they come home. And that's just the reality. It's time to shout out our new patrons of the $5 level and above Benson Walker, Andrea Pedretti, Heidels Beck, Bill Anderson, Oscar Gonzalez, SrSpacer, Travis, Abraka Daniel, Jeff Koston and Gary Shock. Join our community at patreon.com slash universe today. HalMG, do we have a spacecraft in deep space watching the Earth as it transits in front of the sun so we can learn how to remove the noise when checking exoplanet atmospheres? So very close. There's actually a new telescope that was installed at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. And this is one of the sites for the European Southern Observatory. And they have this solar telescope that is watching the sun and is measuring the variability of the sun, all of the little flares and all the little granules and trying to understand how that influences the observations of exoplanets going around their stars. So what you're proposing is essentially exactly a new telescope that just saw first light like a month ago for this exact job. So the idea that occurred to you has occurred to astronomers and they actually built the telescope to do this. And so after a couple of years of doing all these observations of the sun, they'll have a much better understanding of what our star does, and how it would pollute observations of planetary transits. The other thing that's great is there's this spacecraft called the Proba 3 satellite. This is by the European Space Agency, and it produces artificial eclipses. So you've got this satellite, and then you've got this occulter that they fly in formation. And then the occulter goes in front of the sun and perfectly blocks it much better than when the moon blocks the sun during an eclipse, like there's no mountains on the side of this occulter. And so it perfectly blocks the sun. And then astronomers can view the corona around the sun. And it does like one of these every single day or two of them every single day. And the eclipses last for much longer than real eclipses last. And so there is a spacecraft right now out in space, that is producing hours and hours of eclipse footage that we just can't get from the Earth, which is really cool. And so that will also feed into to not just what we see on the surface of the sun, but the environment, the atmosphere around the sun and how that will influence our observations of exoplanets. So like in general, when astronomers go into one of these new fields, they sort of, they don't realize, I mean, all scientists really, they don't realize how complicated, how difficult, how many variables are going to be, they only reveal themselves, once you're neck deep in the work. And so now turns out, solar pollution, huge problem. And now they're coming up with the solutions. Observations of the sun, it's called the poet instrument, observations of the corona with the proba three satellite, trying to tease out what is the influence of the star compared to the what you'll be seeing with the exoplanet atmospheres. Page Potter, what fictional spaceship design feels the most realistic? Probably the Russinante from the Expanse. You know, the Expanse, we actually just did a four part series on astronomy cast about different the science of different franchises. And so we did Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, and the Expanse. And with all of the others, it was very much like, here's the magical hand waving technology that allows you to go faster than the speed of light. And here's the magical hand waving technology allows you to teleport. Here's the magical hand waving technology allows you to have deflector shields around your spacecraft. But in the Expanse was like, here's the science. Here's the science of of why this thing works. And, and, like the one MacGuffin, the one thing that they did in the Expanse, is they just assumed that there was going to be some kind of compact fusion reactor that allow you to accelerate and get at 1g to experience gravity while your spacecraft is accelerating. And then you flip your spacecraft around and you decelerate at 1g. Like that's a ludicrous amount of propulsion. We don't have spacecraft that can do that. We can't even wrap our minds around spacecraft that are capable of producing that kind of thrust. But once you do that, like once you are willing to see that, then everything else is seems very realistic. You know, the way the missiles fire little mini fusion rockets on them, they go after their targets, that all of the battles are done in this sort of Newtonian physics way that you've got point defense weapons that are firing at missiles as they're getting close to you. Everything in the Expanse just feels really solid that there are no shields, right? Yeah, it's such a great show. And it just feels all so realistic and great. I love the Expanse. I mean, before I would have said like the Expanse and for all mankind, but for all mankind is kind of slipping. So the Expanse is the finest space science fiction show ever made. And it breaks my heart that they stopped at season six, whatever, and they haven't done the full series of books like Bezos finish this. This is ridiculous. Finish the Expanse. 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. This week's bonus question. What evidence will remain if humanity vanishes tomorrow? 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. I am still on the road, although this is the last week. I'm recording right in front of the Science Centre in Nagoya. We're going to do another shot deeper in for the next question show. But people have been asking why don't I film outside anymore? And so I'm about to explain that in a second. But first, I'd like to thank our patrons. Thanks to Abe Kingston, Andrea Beaudretti, Brian Bode, Cara Dunn, Chuck Hawkins, Commander Baylock, Darkfinger, David Gilted, David Matz, Enthraller Reading and Math for Toddlers, Eric Lindstrom, Evan Dot Pro, James Clark, Jerry Madden, Jim Burke, Jordan Young, Josh Schultz, Marcellsis, Michael Purcell, Nordspace, OneStepAnimals.org. Please follow my nephew at vbrick6994, Ren Keide, Richard Williams, Sean Sargent, Stephen Foundley-Munley, Team49, Telescopes Canada, Vlad Shiplin, Wolfgang Klotz, and Zeldaborg Galactic Defender who support us at the Master of the Universe level, and all our patrons. All your support means the universe to us. So here's that question. James FC Russell asks, are you ever going to go back into that forest or was it really just green screen all along? So old school followers of the channel remember a time when we used to record all of our episodes out in the Vancouver Island forest. And that was great. And it was sort of very cool background, very different, made our channel very different from other stuff. But the problem is, and you're probably experiencing it right now as I'm standing out in the street in Japan, how there's a lot of ambient noise. And so we would have to stop as airplanes and leaf blowers and chainsaws and trucks were going by, that it was sort of a big production. Every time we wanted to just go out into the forest and set up and be able to record. And we just wanted something more streamlined. And so when we built our new house, we put a room for a studio in the house. And so now I could just click a switch, lights are on, the walls are insulated. I can control all the lighting, the sound, the video. And so I can make a lot more content. And that was really the thing you're most interested in. You can either have two, three minute videos a week or hours and hours of the kind of content that I'm now producing. And so like, that's the price. Now I still want to be able to go back into the forest and I've got plans on ways to sort of make it more convenient, maybe like build a studio in the forest that I can go and set up in. That would be really cool. That's still sort of in my dream, but for now, unless I'm on the road, you'll probably see me in my standard studio. All right. We'll see you next time.