The Limit of JWST, Solving Dark Matter, Lifetime of SLS | Q&A 232

[@davesatxify]

Even months later I enjoy listening to these vids

[@xitheris1758]

SLS was originally designed to be much cheaper, but Space Shuttle contractors lobbied Congress to force NASA to include them in the design. The cost issues are entirely the result of corruption in Congress. NASA never wanted the situation, but they couldn't do anything about it. So, they did what they were told -knowing that it wouldn't work - launched SLS, compiled the evidence of how expensive it was, complained to the GAO, and now have an independent report to reference during funding negotiations.

[@Mr.Anders0n_]

99.7% of the time, lobbying is detrimental to the country and the citizens, except of for elite few who have very deep pockets

[@charliem989]

What a complete mischaracterization of the program. It's an Apollo level program, it's going to be expensive, but it gives a massive return on investment.

[@xitheris1758]

@@charliem989 It's not a mischaracterization; it's literally what happened. Yes, Artemis was always going to be expensive, but it never had to be as expensive as it has become.

[@rulingmoss5599]

@@xitheris1758 Thing is, artemis isn't even expensive in the grand scheme of things, its only perceived as expensive because of the gross misallocation of the US GDP.

[@theCodyReeder]

~ 41:00 so I have a question about this: Wouldn't massive objects warp space making some paths to the edge of the observable universe physically different in length? That would mean the observable universe would be kinda lumpy, not spherical. Also it's shape would be affected by our motion through the universe too right?

[@mjmeans7983]

Q: Can gravitational lensing around multiple galaxies cause light to be completely bent back to the original source? And if it can, would it even be possible to recognize it if it happened and we were in fact observing our own galaxy's past?

[@yourguard4]

I think, in principle yes, butt you would need a lot of galaxies for that... The light from the gravitational lensing images is bend by a millionth of a degree or something like that? 😅

[@alfonsopayra]

Loved this question!!

[@agentdarkboote]

Black holes can return light back to their source that way, but it happens pretty close to the event horizon so I don't think a galaxy cluster could do it, I think once you're curving spacetime that much, you're pretty much guaranteed to collapse into a black hole. As far as I know, even neutron stars are unable to bend light enough. Galaxy clusters can bend light by on the order of an arc minute, or a sixtieth of a degree.

[@jnonymous]

The thought of moving moons, or even planets at a large enough time scale, is a fascinating idea I had never considered before. Furthermore, the concept of creating inhabitable stellar objects from uninhabitable stellar objects by adjusting their position relative to their star is incredibly inspiring.

[@faolitaruna]

Andoria My favorite explanation for us being early is the Grabby Aliens Model. Intergalactic civilizations have spread already.

[@jonathanhughes8679]

I lived in Titusville Florida for years and I could watch the launches from my balcony. I moved back home eventually to North Florida and when they do night launches on clear nights we can still see the launches. My Aunt and Uncle were employed at NASA until they retired so I’ve been watching the launches all my life.

[@Gravitacionimanevar]

Risa was the best one!

[@liviu-dantimar9492]

Risa prompted me to ask my first question. Since you mention millennial time scales, I was wondering for a long time, could use the 'organized cleanliness' of a stellar system as a techno-signature? I mean, even 'tho Mercury might prove more profitable on the long run (it is an oddball for a stellar system to have such a planet, I consider it a blessing), we'd still run through the asteroid belt pretty quickly just because of their accessibility...

[@ioresult]

I like what they did for the Foundation series. I love the actors and I like that they found a way of keeping them longer than their lifespan. A TV series is not a series of loosely interconnected novellas. I love Jared Harris and the Hari Seldon character. I like seeing him come alive again. And again. And again! haha!

[@ninatolfersheimer]

Omg a new Fraser Cain video! Can’t wait 😊

[@Djfmdotcom]

24:11 I once saw a statistic: NASA's yearly budgets - from inception to the present day - are roughly equal to the *2018* Defense budget in the United States. So people may complain about NASA's budget, but space exploration has pretty much been near the bottom of the heap since the early 1970s. They actually make incredible things happen with their budget!

[@gerasolom6081]

Great phrasing. A lot of fun! Thanks for your work!

[@Eurotool]

Concerning the 3rd question, which moons or planets from our solar system would you move around?

[@richardanderson1988]

Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a story in the early 1940’s titled Beyond The Farthest Star in which the hero is transported to a star system that has several planets orbiting in a ring around their sun with enough atmosphere between them to allow airplanes to fly between them. This first story is very allegorical and at its end the hero is preparing to fly to the next planet in line. This was obviously going to be a series, but unfortunately, ERB passed before writing them.

[@charleslivingston2256]

Risa. Moving planets seems to make more sense than Dyson shells. (And i liked the Trappist system reference.)

[@robertmiller9735]

Well, you'd be limited to about 0.00000004% the living space, for one.

[@charleslivingston2256]

@@robertmiller9735 Dyson shells can come later, when more advanced

[@ZaphodHugzington]

This is the Zone of Give It A Try! Very positive.

[@Gravitacionimanevar]

Hello! Greetings from Serbia!

[@zapfanzapfan]

"Vulcan", just because 🖖

[@TanyaLairdCivil]

The funny thing is, by the time you have the ability to move Ganymede from Jupiter, there's going to be a lot of people living on Ganymede and around Jupiter that will have something to say about it. If there's a few million people living in buried colonies in the ice on Ganymede or in orbital colonies around Jupiter, they're not going to like idea of you hauling away their home and moving it somewhere. In fact, they'll probably be willing to fight to stop you. You may very well have a "you can have Ganymede when you pry it from my cold dead fingers" scenario.

[@camberdived6457]

Hey Fraser, as I was saying to my sister earlier on as she was watching foundation season 2. At least it's not going to ruin the books when you get round to reading them

[@DavidsDreamFactory]

If we mine water in space such as the moon or a comet will we need to have a proper desalination process or is fresh water readily available

[@ioresult]

Cait: I went camping near Titusville and watched the 3rd to last space shuttle launch in april 2010. Florida is very nice for camping in april!

[@nastropc]

Nimbus. Hey Fraser, will the next generation of stars after our Sun be even more metal-rich? And what implications may that have for life and civilisations that evolve with access to elements that are rare on Earth?

[@SPR8364-0]

I like the Vulcan question. Would moving a large moon like Enceladus into the orbit of Venus help to kick off plate tectonics and maybe help to start scrubbing its atmosphere? Also, then the ice shell would melt and maybe if it didn't already have existing life, we could maybe seed that with earth-based life. I'm guessing that would take a really long time and by the time Venus could host life, the expanding sun would swallow it up.

[@MistSoalar]

Cheleb - I wanted to vote to my question(Zalcon), but your insight of next gen astronauts (or people in space) made me think more.

[@clairehiggins7120]

As we don't know what existed before the big bang and we do know that star birth decreases over time, isn't it possible that life which existed before the big bang engineered the big bang to create our universe in order to make a hospital place for them to live?

[@pelewads]

My vote is Nimbus. Along with that question I have a question. Have we figured out why there is so much antimatter missing? And if not, could that be a source of micro black holes?

[@benjaminbeard3736]

I really like the rebrand of "the zone of give it a try". You may have missed your calling as an ad rep. We sure got lucky you are who you are.

[@pensidosyroconesyava]

40:20 i knew it!!!! About mining on asteroids for space sustainability, always believed that in some time space craft as a “StarDestroyer” or maybe an array for “Jupiters” or something like Dyson sphere for a tiny neutron star like “Cybertron” can only be possible from rich metal and other needly materials, asteroid mining

[@jamesgeckle489]

I remember watching men on the Moon on TV when I was in elementary school. I totally wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid!

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

Regarding moving planets and moons, if entangled particles are connected together we could place billions of entangled particles on one planet and the other part on a moon etc, and the particles will pull the objects together, someone should check if there is some "stringy" connection between entangled particles, then we have a solution

[@chadbaptiste4227]

Hey there, Fraser! With regard to your response to the CMB, I've always wondered: whenever we see that map, is that a 2D representation of a "shell" of light expanding outward in all directions? Or is the CMB more like being at the center of a cup of coffee observing cream settling in around you?

[@ChemEDan]

Shell - represents the point in time when recombination occurred.

[@WizardofoOZeAU]

Got so caught up in the answers I forgot about the Star Trek star system names that I guess I will have to go for the entire Neutral Zone.

[@feralfoods]

when you consider how many times we self-sabotge ourselves with war and other such crimes to humanity, we probably would have been in space hundreds of years ago... -thank you fraser for all you do.

[@ben30705]

Fraser Cain. Would our cell phones be one of our devices at risk during a geomagnetic storm triggered by a burst of solar energy? If so how could we protect these devices which we unfortunately need on a daily bases? What about other necessary technologies that affect the individual like our cars or home appliances? Do you have knowledge that is worth a mention? Planning ahead. Thanking you.

[@lyledal]

If you haven't signed up for the Universe Today newsletter, why not? It's awesome! Go get you some! Also, Janus.

[@Pat19997]

I don’t find it weird at all that we are alive and believe we found it all and can perceive the beginning of the universe. After all there was a time we thought this planet was all there was and we didn’t even know it was round.

[@glennmiller5772]

You have a gift for talking in a way that is understandable to the avg person. Ive always been really interested in this stuff but most ppl that speak to it Are pretty difficult to understand.

[@frasercain]

I'm glad you're enjoying it

[@dmondot]

Regarding naming exoplanets: I would agree that it would be cool, however, I don't think this is the time to do it yet. What if, for instance, we name a planet Tatooine, and find out later that it is not at all like the one describe in science fiction. But another planet named Vulcan would be a better match. That can get very confusing. I would suggest to wait until we know more about not just temperature and atmospheric composition, but also ground composition. Is it a very dry (desertic) very wet (oceanic) planet? What is the mineral composition of its surface? Is the ratio of light to heavy elements similar to that of earth? Let's find out first before starting to name them. And I realize that we have started to decode atmospheric composition of various planets, but from what I can tell the margin of error is so large that I would call that a somewhat-informed guess at best.

[@WendellBroadwell]

I vote for the RISA question

[@joeyhoser]

We've heard many times how billions of years from now, that because of dark energy and the expansion of the universe, galaxies will be far enough apart that future civilizations will won't be able to see any galaxies other than their own, and their knowledge of the universe will be limited because of it. Now, obviously we couldn't know for sure, but are there any ideas or theories out there about things that WE could possibly be missing in a similar context?

[@Mr.Anders0n_]

As far as I know, the "full" size of the universe is predicted to be much larger than what we can see, but at the same time, there's no reason to expect the region beyond our horizon to be any different than what we can see. By the way, most of the universe that we CAN SEE is already beyond our reach even if we travel at the speed of light 🐢

[@alexanderreintzsch5315]

Question(s): If there are those Primordial Black Holes, that have been created right at the beginning of the universe could this explain why there is only normal matter and no antimatter in the visible universe? This happened by pure chance so that more antimatter vanished to build these primordial black holes than normal matter did. And how do we know how much matter and antimatter particles existed at the beginning? Could it be that some of the particles were annihilated by matter-antimatter collision and other particles "fell" into a black hole before canceling each other out? So some matter canceled out, other matter (more antimatter) formed Primordial Black Holes and the rest of the matter is normal matter and became what we can see today. Also when would be the time the smallest Primordial Black Holes would vanish by Hawking Radiation? Would there be traces of this process that we could find?

[@googogler]

proper name for k218b is: kay-too-ate-teen-bees

[@ioresult]

Vendikar: well akshually it was Fritz Zwicky observing galaxy movement in the Coma cluster who was the first to say "mmh that's interesting". Incidentally, he also proposed we move planets around to get more habitable space in the solar system.

[@oritoyacuanelosimus4209]

You talked about moving very massive objects around in our solar system in some distant future, but what about a more accessible challenge. For example, what if we wanted to land the international space station on the moon?

[@NoPulseForRussians]

If light and gravity are tied together by the fabric of spacetime, then why can't we manipulate gravity like we can light? I understand light is a wave function and gravity is a force but if they are both influenced the same way across spacetime, then shouldn't we be able to manipulate both light and gravity? If gravity is a function of mass and energy, it would make sense to be able to turn it off as we do light.

[@toddablett4493]

So what technology you see that is not being used in astronomy right now do you think that will affect astronomical science in the near future?

[@microschandran]

Hi Fraser, How long does red dwarfs calm down in flares to allow atmospheres on orbiting planets to be retained. This is an important aspect of habitability of this type of planets.

[@DavidTremblay]

[andoria] the fact we are early is one reason we don't see aliens. We have the responsibility to teach others that will come after us what we know about the beginning. Also I'm happy with the star trek planets

[@Eurotool]

It is often said we are very early in the history of the universe, but how true is that? Won't the number of sun-like stars be dramatically lower in say, 30 billion years from now? How about cosmic inflation?

[@djblackprincecdn]

Asking again for any insights on improving the interplanetary internet. Are there projects planned to put more communication satellites in non-Earth orbit to allow better bandwidth and speed back to Earth?

[@solsystem1342]

I get not wanting to disassemble the whole solarsystem. It seems a little bit overkill but like, if you're going to go through all the effort of moving planetary bodies we could just make some space mirrors to light the worlds. As an added bonus you can use the energy they capture for terraforming as you're getting them ready. Like, for instance you need mirrors to (practically) teraform venus. So you might as well use them to shielt the planet from sunlight where it is rather than move it (from an energy spent and time tull ready perspective). I definitely think the inner solarsystem will become some sort of hybrid of partial dyson swarm, a few megastructures, and traditional worlds people live on. It would be super awesome to migrate inwards a lot of the mass of the solar system and build a interplanetary humanity that can all talk to eachother in less time than it took to watch this video.

[@blackhole-q2x]

What's up with euklid telescope? There are no news 😢 Could you make an interview with some ESA person on that project?

[@ninatolfersheimer]

For the next round of questions: If the CMB radiation was emitted as gamma rays and has since been redshifted to the microwave regime that means there once was a time where it could have been observed as visible light, right? But I assume it would have been way to dim to be picked up by the human eye, if humans would have been around that time, correct?

[@oopskapootz7276]

Yes, we can barely see Andromeda right next to us.

[@hive_indicator318]

Janus, because I didn't know about them flipping it around

[@truecrony]

With M-Theory in mind why would it result in a single point/Singularity/Universe? Could the 2 membranes colliding result in a procedurally drawn Universe that chases off into infinity? Perhaps this is why JWST is finding overly developed distant Galaxies? What would the membranes be made of?

[@richardvanasse9287]

Now you have to do Stargate planet names also.

[@frasercain]

Maybe next year.

[@mki1104]

hello,it's expending into what?? taking the place of what?

[@MarkAllen1]

Question: Theoretically if dark matter does turn out to be primordial black holes, what issues would this cause for space travel? We wouldn’t want to accidentally fly into one! Thanks.

[@iancooper8777]

Q: Is the next "crisis" in cosmology the matter/antimatter problem? It was recently shown that created antimatter particles fall under gravity like normal matter. Could it still exist in quantity today in the universe, perhaps as antimatter galaxies? Could we even tell?

[@cavetroll666]

Cheers thanks Fraser 🙃

[@stephenkiely9244]

Hey Fraser, is there any plans to seed a planet for the future? Is there a mission that will seed bomb a planet and hope that future generations could observe and learn from it?

[@BMichaelNeal]

There was question show? The one I went to never started.

[@frasercain]

This is the one from last week. I had to reschedule Monday's episode for family issues.

[@BMichaelNeal]

Roger that. Hope all is well!@@frasercain

[@frasercain]

It was a rough week, we lost our dog, and other stuff. But we continue on.

[@bigianh]

Q. Talking about moving moons would it be possible to move 16-Psyche by passing electricity through it and using the Lorentz Force to crash it into Mars and give Mars a magnetic field (Well a more significant one)

[@scotthenneberry5381]

What is the minimum size of a black hole? You said primordial black holes might be pretty small but I thought Hawking radiation put some minimum size on black holes.

[@idodekkers9165]

Hey Fraser any way we can know how much of the universe is already too far to see? is the CMB imprinted with the total size/content of the universe?

[@dustman96]

I think the way to do it is to put the comet in orbit, then break off chunks and send them into the atmosphere, they would evaporate and contribute moisture to the atmosphere which would then fall as rain.

[@BoyKissBoy]

Water vapor is a greenhouse gas though. More of it in the atmosphere could make the earth warmer, which would make many parts a lot drier… But again, we've got plenty of water. It's desalination and distribution that are the problems, and I don't think catching a comet is going to be the cheapest way to solve them… 😕 It would very likely be the coolest though, I'll give you that!

[@ChrisBrown-iu8ii]

Foundation and Dune, Sci-Fi epics.

[@NicholasNerios]

Gattaca, what a great movie.

[@Raz.C]

re - Betazed I once played a space-type game online, where every new planet that I colonised and developed, I named after a Lovecraftian God. This gave me an AWESOME catalogue of planet names. Perhaps, because of the vast numbers of exo-planets being discovered, they might have to look beyond mythology for names of such planets. They might have to delve into fiction. I EAGERLY await the day that exo-planets are named after Lovecraftian Elder Gods, etc... And not just the Gods, either, but places and notable figures, such as R'lyeh and Nyarlathotep and so on...

[@marknovak6498]

We will be able to see the CMB for at least the next eight billion years. After that, the cone of expansion made it beyond the observable universe as I recall.

[@cobloaf1]

Q: Are there colours throughout the whole electromagnetic spectrum?

[@deltalima6703]

Only visible light has colors unless you change the definition of what a color is.

[@portugueseeagle8851]

Vendikar for me!

[@seditt5146]

Even weirder in my opinion is on top of that we are here exactly in a period of technological explosion. IDK how to feel about simulation hypothesis but I know something is amiss, this is beyond probable for us to be having this convo right now at this point in history of humans and the universe as a whole.

[@JohnSmith-kf1fc]

could we have satellite shields protecting JWST?

[@marknovak6498]

Saw a rocket launch at White Sands New Mexico.

[@robertmiller9735]

About Foundation: in the books, the first three crises are in fact solved by individual leadership, so it could be said Asimov himself failed to make the story consistently about collective social forces (though the fourth crisis did do that well).

[@frasercain]

Each of the leaders in foundation found that the outcome was inevitable and all they had to do was do the obvious thing and history would continue on or at least that's how I interpret it

[@snivla4]

The moon moving asteroid idea that is what I was thinking when you replied to my SpaceX Mars Folly comment ... Asteroids are the best natural space ship or a great place to get energy and material ...

[@MarcoRoepers]

I am in trouble with orbital mechanics. If something is in orbit around a celestial body and accelerates, it will go in a larger orbit. But if something is in a larger orbit the force of gravity of the celestial body acting on it, is smaller. So I can´t explain it to myself.

[@Anonymous-yp7zt]

Why does faster than light travel imply going back in time?

[@MarkAllen1]

Question: How long until we see Space Hotels in earth orbit? I see headlines saying they are only a few years away and you’ve interviewed companies working on this technology… so, when can I book my ‘over-earth stay’? 😉

[@logicbug]

At 12:43 you say you don't want Ganymede to be a moon of Mars ... ?

[@russellwarren9595]

is this the first episode that you have used Star Trek planets instead of those from Star Wars? it could be fun if in the future you use other popular fictional universes but keep us guessing which franchise/mythos until the end and see how many knew what one you were using that particular week

[@frasercain]

We'll use Star Trek this season.

[@russellwarren9595]

@@frasercain will you take suggestions on what to use for next season? My vote is for Dune or Warhammer 40k

[@ioresult]

@@russellwarren9595 I love the planet names in the Hyperion Cantos

[@jmcnicol94]

When using a solar sail, since the photons are transferring their energy to the sail, are they absorbed by it or reflected. And if they are reflected, since they are giving some of their energy to the sail, does it change the color of the light that's reflected because the photons lose some energy?

[@deltalima6703]

Put up a mirror, reflect it back, and hit the sail again. Lol

[@bbbenj]

Thanks a lot 👍

[@badnewswade]

Q: Re the evidence for dark matter: How do we know how fast galaxies are rotating? Doesn't it take hundreds of thousands of years? Many thanks, I love listening to your show👍

[@mariusdienel5765]

Question: From your videos I know there is the CMB and also the gravitational background. Are there any other "backgrounds" at different wavelengths for example, that are interesting? There should be a neutrino background too, right (or would this one probably not be detectable because there is too much noise from other objects)?

[@Chamuzi]

YAY! Star Trek planets (exciting)

[@cedrichunter9759]

Did earths water come from Jupiter's inner sol transit? Outgassing hydrogen as it was more affected by the solar wind?

[@Noam-Bahar]

What are the names at the top right?

[@eljcd]

About the SLS racket, remember that SLS 3 and next will need a new tower... that is yet to be built. SLS is in heart a healthcare system to the all the companies involved(and congressists abd senators, of course)

[@Raz.C]

re - Nimbus That makes sense, especially if we keep in mind that the pre-inflation singularity was essentially one GIANT, universe-sized black hole. One with 'gazillions' of solar masses... If we envisage this black-hole-matter expanding into space and 'congealing' into matter and energy, here and there, we should also be able to envisage places where the black-hole-matter remained as black-hole-matter. In such a case, it doesn't need to BECOME a black hole, since it already is one. Its density of billions of solar masses could be completely normal for black-hole-matter and that other black holes with lower densities are the result of this black-hole-matter being 'deflated' by the inflating universe. That's entirely suppositional, of course, but it makes perfect sense and more importantly, it appears to fit all available (layman's) evidence.

[@KGTiberius]

Move the Pluto-Charon system to Mars. Roche limit and rain down water, add mass, and leave Charon (and Gandamine) as moons of Mars to give it a tide.

[@lionelmessisburner7393]

Paulo costa is a patron? He has a fight coming up

[@michaelgian2649]

Risa, think big!

[@richardanderson1988]

If I may plug another podcast, there is one called Apogee that really dives deep in comparing the costs of different alternatives to Artemis as a way to build cheaper, much more useable bases on the moon. The capabilities that Starships even with also using Falcon/Dragon crew capsules to transfer people to Earth orbit before transferring to them is so much cheaper than Artemis/Orion that surely demand for scientific missions will force a change. NASA is a technology investigator and being forced by Congress to continue promoting an obsolete vehicle is not their purpose.

[@marcocambray7725]

Background music one knot to high 😊

[@petevenuti7355]

This is not a vote but just saying I appreciate picking Vulcan for looking to the other side of the Galaxy just like the fictional planet on the other side of the sun. In Star Trek it's by eridonni or however you spell it

[@MightyMuffins]

As the Sun's luminosity increases and as it gets to it's red giant phase and stuff becomes more and more hostile to life here, what are the processes one could do to move Earth's orbit as a whole further away, IF future Earthlings wanted to save the planet?

[@bbbnuy3945]

same process as mentioned for moving moons - hurl asteroids near the earth to slowly over time pull earth’s orbit further outward