#403: Stellar Synthesis & Quasar Quests: Crafting Cosmic Particles & Unveiling the Universe's Brightest Beacon

[00:00:00] Hello there, Andrew Dunkley here, the host of Space Nuts and it's great to have your company on the latest episode.

[00:00:07] And coming up we're going to be looking at a couple of things, very scientific show today.

[00:00:13] Scientists have done something that only colliding neutron stars can do.

[00:00:18] They synthesized new isotopes. I had to practice a lot to say synthesized new isotopes and I've said it twice without stuffing it up so I'm very happy.

[00:00:28] We're also going to talk about a discovery recently we talked about something that's the biggest of its kind.

[00:00:35] We've ever found, we've found the oldest of its kind recently.

[00:00:39] Now we seem to have found something that is defined as the fastest growing and brightest of its kind.

[00:00:46] What is it? We will tell you very, very soon that's coming up on this episode of Space Nuts.

[00:00:54] And joining me as always is the Goanna Hunter himself, Professor Fred Watson.

[00:01:15] You've got a visitor in your backyard as we speak.

[00:01:18] Yes, we do. Yes, about one and a half meters long, something in the region of five feet.

[00:01:25] The Goanna which is lizard-like creature on four legs with a long face and a big belly and a tongue that's coming in and out all the time.

[00:01:35] And very sharp claws actually you don't want to mess with Goanna because they can do a lot of damage.

[00:01:43] So this one's posturing around the backyard at the moment.

[00:01:47] How does we speak? In fact, I'm a lot excited everyone, not sure what happened.

[00:01:51] I'm not sure which way they have gone but there were a minute ago. Quite extraordinary.

[00:01:56] They've got the pet food and they're gone. That's right.

[00:01:59] That's what it is. It's the leftover pet food.

[00:02:02] They can grow to be quite enormous and you're right, they can do a lot of damage and they very, very...

[00:02:10] They look harmless enough but you don't really want to get too close.

[00:02:14] I've seen a couple of Goanna's at my parents place in the years gone by and...

[00:02:19] Yeah, even the smaller ones can be a little intimidating close up in the background.

[00:02:24] That's right. Quite amazing and ancient creatures.

[00:02:28] I don't even take it to the end.

[00:02:31] Oh, I can never try that.

[00:02:35] Now, we've got a couple of stories that we've got to talk about Fred and some exciting news in science

[00:02:43] with the synthesization of isotopes which was done in a lab using a laser.

[00:02:53] But this is sort of a replication of something only colliding neutron stars can do.

[00:03:00] We better sort of work out what this means because the scientists involved are very excited about this.

[00:03:08] But there are, that's right.

[00:03:10] Just very briefly, the backstory, what do we mean by isotopes?

[00:03:14] Yes.

[00:03:15] It starts off with our understanding of how chemical elements differ from one another.

[00:03:23] And so there's the chemical elements are actually sort of defined by the number of protons in the nucleus, the atomic nucleus.

[00:03:34] And so hydrogen for example has one proton and it always has one proton.

[00:03:39] Helium always has two.

[00:03:41] Iron has 26 just to jump to another number.

[00:03:46] And so you can't have hydrogen with two protons and you can't have iron with 25.

[00:03:52] And I'm quoting here from our all friend the space dot com website.

[00:03:57] But in their atomic nuclei, the atomic centers, protons are joined by neutrons.

[00:04:06] And so the number of neutrons essentially contributes, can vary in a way that the number of protons can't.

[00:04:17] Proton to charge particles neutrons aren't positively charged particles neutrons are neutral hence the name.

[00:04:23] So if you've got hydrogen atom with one proton and one neutron, that bless you.

[00:04:32] Then there'll be another ten of those.

[00:04:35] Okay.

[00:04:36] She sneezes once a week, her record is 25.

[00:04:40] Oh my goodness me.

[00:04:42] That's almost sounds like I'm ready for condition.

[00:04:45] You just said sorry.

[00:04:46] That's right.

[00:04:48] Not only to apologize you can't help sneezing.

[00:04:51] So so the bottom line is that adding neutrons doesn't change the the element that it is.

[00:04:58] But it changes the isotope of the element.

[00:05:01] And so isotopes can vary and once again space dot com has a nice example.

[00:05:09] One of the isotopes of iron is iron 54, which has 26 protons and 28 neutrons.

[00:05:17] There is also something called iron 56, which has 26 protons and 13 neutrons, etc.

[00:05:24] And so it goes on.

[00:05:25] So that's what we mean by isotopes.

[00:05:27] It's elements in a different form, which is governed by the number of neutrons that are present in the in the atomic nucleus.

[00:05:35] Now to cut to the chase to cut to the story.

[00:05:39] There are facilities that can actually make isotopes.

[00:05:45] In fact, I think we've got one here in Australia at the madans to the Australian nuclear science and technology organization.

[00:05:53] But this particular one that we're talking about, which is a Michigan State University is a very fancy one.

[00:06:00] And it's called FRB.

[00:06:03] Frib.

[00:06:04] That's what the acronym spells.

[00:06:06] Frib.

[00:06:07] I like that actually.

[00:06:08] It's a bit like.

[00:06:09] It's just like, oh yeah, you're telling frips.

[00:06:11] It's the facility for rare earth isotope beams.

[00:06:15] That's what frips stands for.

[00:06:17] And it's basically an accelerator where they can synthesize isotopes.

[00:06:25] And what they've done is they've synthesized some of the isotopes that we think are created by, by colliding neutron stars.

[00:06:36] Now we can't go and test the insides of colliding neutron stars.

[00:06:40] We can see those their gravitational waves.

[00:06:43] And that's, you know, allows us to see some understanding of what's going on inside in that ultra turbulent environment when two neutron stars collide.

[00:06:53] A neutron stars, of course, are the remnants of massive stars which have got the end of their lives and collapsed.

[00:06:59] Usually a supernova explosion that blows off the outer outer envelope, the center collapses to form a neutron star where the collapse to a black hole is only stopped by.

[00:07:09] The outward pressure of neutrons against each other.

[00:07:12] So what the scientists at frib, the facility for rare isotope beams have done is created some isotopes which have never existed on earth.

[00:07:25] That's pretty, that's a pretty big, you know, pretty impressive.

[00:07:31] It's a bowling to find very bold plane exactly to be, to be specific.

[00:07:38] They are Thuleum 182, Thuleum 183, Eterbium 186, Eterbium 187 and Lutitium 190.

[00:07:49] I think it went to school with a Lutitium.

[00:07:52] Yeah.

[00:07:54] There's one in every school.

[00:07:56] I think I went, I went to school with a few Eterbiums, I can tell you.

[00:08:02] There were rough.

[00:08:04] Anyway, and the thing is that we think these isotopes are probably involved with the process where colliding neutron stars creates new elements.

[00:08:19] And we now know that the heavy elements, elements in particular gold and silver are created in these neutron star collisions.

[00:08:28] And so if you can understand the way the sort of intermediate isotopes behave, then you are going a long way to understanding what the processes are in as I said, the ultra turbulent environment of colliding neutron stars.

[00:08:45] I can, if I may quote one of the scientists involved with this Bradley Cheryl, who is the university distinguished professor in Michigan State University's College of Natural Science and Head of the Advanced Rare isotopes, separated department.

[00:09:00] It says, this is probably the first time these isotopes have existed on the surface of the earth.

[00:09:07] I like to draw the analogy of taking a journey.

[00:09:10] We've been looking forward to going somewhere we've never been before, and this is the first step we've left home and we're starting to explore.

[00:09:18] So that's really, you know, a very nice almost poetic way of putting it this journey to understand the nuclear processes that go on in some of these very exotic collisions.

[00:09:32] Is that the ultimate purpose to just try and understand a process or will there be applications that this might be able to be used for if they can, you know, take it to the next level.

[00:09:43] Yeah, I mean, you never know what the applications might be.

[00:09:46] And in fact, I think nuclear physics generally can get a can basically benefit by people understanding how these newly forged isotopes behave.

[00:10:00] So nuclear physics will be one of the benefactors in this work.

[00:10:07] One of the other scientists involved in this said it's not a big surprise that these isotopes exist, but now that we have them, we have colleagues who are very interested in what we can measure next.

[00:10:18] I'm already starting to think of what we can do next in terms of measuring their half lives, their masses and other properties.

[00:10:24] So it is, you know, setting an improved baseline in the whole science of nuclear physics.

[00:10:33] But it's motivated as we've just said by the idea of trying to understand these processes better that take place in collisions between neutron stars.

[00:10:46] I'm still a bit confused though. I mean, I've read through this and tried to absorb it and understand it and I've taken some headache tablets afterwards.

[00:10:56] What do they mean by synthesizing? I mean, they obviously didn't have any neutron stars lying around open to draw now not in there.

[00:11:04] So what does synthesizing mean?

[00:11:08] Well, so I'm not a nuclear physicist, but my guess is that it involves a particle accelerator that is colliding things together to smash them up and synthesize other things.

[00:11:24] That's essentially what happens at the Large Hadron Collider, for example, on the Swiss French border, Surns Large Hadron Collider.

[00:11:33] So it's all about colliding things together in the Large Hadron Collider. It's generally protons, although they also collide lead atoms, the nuclei of lead atoms and learn different things from that.

[00:11:53] So not only when you smash atoms together, you don't just break things apart. You also get reactions taking place that create new things so you can synthesize them often though those elements that you've synthesized only last for a very short fraction of a second.

[00:12:10] I don't know in this particular work just how long these newly synthesized isotopes are so I can actually just say a little bit more once again quoting from space.com.

[00:12:22] Talking about those isotopes, theoleum 182, etc. These isotopes formed by firing a beam of platinum ions, that's platinum without its electrons, a target of carbon at the frame of the rare isotope, manufacturing.

[00:12:41] The isotopes, they say, might not be present in the wreckage of neutron star collisions, but their existence on Earth is definitely a step towards creating those briefly lived transitional super heavy elements on our planet to see if there is an element like gold.

[00:13:00] In other words, these are temporary things that only exist temporarily and then might themselves decay to form something recognizable and stable like the nucleus of the gold atom.

[00:13:11] It's really exciting stuff I think, tinkering around with Maserati is most rudimentary.

[00:13:18] Indeed. I think it was also fascinating to try and understand that you talk about stars being the furnaces of all these elements.

[00:13:28] Yes, I think most stars can't do anything more significant than create ion.

[00:13:33] You need a neutron star to smash into another neutron star to get these...

[00:13:39] Sorry, you're up this.

[00:13:43] That's okay. My furnace is ignoring what I'm saying.

[00:13:50] Sorry about that Andrew.

[00:13:53] You need a neutron star smashing into a neutron star to start creating heavier elements like silver and gold.

[00:14:00] That's correct.

[00:14:02] How often do neutron stars hit each other?

[00:14:06] I wouldn't expect it to be an everyday event or is it?

[00:14:11] Well, given the size of the universe and the number of objects in the universe and the fact that we can now detect these by the gravitational wave signals, I think they are pretty frequent actually.

[00:14:23] So I wouldn't like to put a number on it but I don't think you're talking about events that are essentially very rare.

[00:14:32] And so it's now thought, whereas not very long ago we used to think that all the gold and silver were created in supernova explosions.

[00:14:43] The evidence that apparently has been uncovered really by the James Webb Space Telescope and other recent facilities have suggested that all of the Earth's gold was actually made in neutron star collisions.

[00:15:00] And in fact, I think that story was also covered by space.com not very long ago actually but essentially in recent weeks.

[00:15:12] So yes, it's exciting stuff. What our thinking is moving along if I can put it that way from perhaps a simplistic viewpoint that every neutron star collapse produces gold from a supernova explosion.

[00:15:28] But that is possibly not the case. It might need colliding neutron stars to do it.

[00:15:33] So all of this happened before Earth was formed and as the planet was created, all of this stuff was just floating around and accreted into the crust.

[00:15:43] That's right for floating around, read interstellar medium.

[00:15:48] That's the technical term.

[00:15:50] Interstellar medium means floating around. Yeah, it's the you know the debris between the stars and a lot of that debris is the result of supernova explosions and we're now seeing a nuclear sorry neutron star collisions.

[00:16:04] Fantastic.

[00:16:05] Alright, you know, it's a really fascinating discovery and a major achievement.

[00:16:12] And if you would like to chase that story up as Fred mentioned, it's the space.com website.

[00:16:18] This is Space Nuts. Andrew Duncan here with Professor Fred Watson.

[00:16:23] Three, two, one. Space Nuts.

[00:16:30] Our second story, Fred looks at something just as spectacular if not more spectacular.

[00:16:37] And we talked recently about finding the biggest, what was it?

[00:16:41] The biggest black hole ever or it might have been the oldest, the oldest.

[00:16:47] We found the oldest one ever.

[00:16:49] We found, we found all the brightest cosmic explosion ever.

[00:16:55] Now we've found the brightest quasar and this is also conjunction with a huge black hole that the enormity of this is hard to comprehend.

[00:17:08] That's correct it is.

[00:17:09] The statistics are extraordinary.

[00:17:13] So let's do the statistics. This is an object with a very memorable name J zero five two nine minus four three five one.

[00:17:23] Don't forget that.

[00:17:24] It is.

[00:17:26] It's intrinsically the brightest object in the universe.

[00:17:30] It has a luminosity equal to 17 billion times the sun's luminosity.

[00:17:37] I beg you, that's the mass. The luminosity is even more it's even more dramatic.

[00:17:42] Sorry, I've given you the wrong statistic.

[00:17:44] It's mass is 17 billion times the soul of us so that makes a supermassive black hole.

[00:17:51] It's luminosity is 500 trillion times the luminosity of the sun.

[00:17:56] Forget the billions 500 trillion times the sun's luminosity.

[00:18:01] And all of this is taking place at a great distance in the universe.

[00:18:07] In fact, to the look back time of about 12 billion years.

[00:18:11] Wow.

[00:18:12] That's really long time.

[00:18:13] It is so we're seeing this as it was when the universe was less than two billion years old and the work has been led by Christian Wolfhus and astronomer

[00:18:22] of the Australian National University here in Australia.

[00:18:25] And as you said, the story kind of starts at a Siding Spring Observatory where I used to work as the astronomer in charge of the

[00:18:35] Anglo-Australian telescope.

[00:18:37] Yeah, other than Australian astronomical observatory.

[00:18:41] So they started with basically it's story starts before that with a with an analysis of data from the

[00:18:51] Gaia spacecraft that we've talked about before European Space Agency's Gaia satellite which measured billions and think it's still doing it billions of stars.

[00:19:01] So it's essentially in automatic mode, analyze this object as being a star because they thought it was too bright to be anything else.

[00:19:12] And the only real alternative to a star is a quasar.

[00:19:16] But then observations, yes, Siding Spring Observatory with the Australian National Universities 2.3 meter telescope there.

[00:19:26] So it allowed astronomers to recognize that this was not a star, but it was a quasar.

[00:19:34] And that it was bright and that meant and quasars are all seen at great distances.

[00:19:40] But the fact that it was bright meant that this might be a very special object.

[00:19:44] Applications were made to the European Southern Observatory for time on their marvelous facility in Northern Chile, the VLT.

[00:19:55] They're very large telescope which is actually four telescopes that can be used either together or single each one with a mirror 8.2 meters in diameter.

[00:20:04] And the only reason that these Australian astronomers could do that could apply for time on this facility was because of the strategic partnership forged between the Australian government and the European Southern Observatory back in 2017.

[00:20:21] They gave astronomers in Australia 10 years of access to the VLT as well as access to the sort of governance of the European Southern Observatory and the ability to build instruments for them as well, things of that sort.

[00:20:33] So this strategic partnership which is knowing about it is a big part of my job, Andrew, which is why I'm waxing lyrical about it at the moment.

[00:20:42] And it's not the first time we've seen classic examples of astronomers being able to capitalize on a combination of Australian instruments and the VLT, the very large telescope.

[00:20:53] Only last year we saw reports of the most distant fast radio burst ever discovered the one.

[00:21:01] Yes, that was from a discovered by a radio telescope in Western Australia but identified as being the most distant fast radio burst an 8 billion light years away or look back time of 8 billion years by the VLT, the very large telescope in the Chilean andes, the European Southern Observatory's facility.

[00:21:20] So that's the sort of backstory of the observations but yeah, what a what a claim to fame that this object is the brightest, the most luminous object known in the universe.

[00:21:31] We we've talked about boats for some time before.

[00:21:36] Yeah, it's brought us to all time, brightest of all time and I think this one might be I think this is the new boat.

[00:21:41] Yeah, the new boat.

[00:21:43] You mentioned the statistics, I don't know if you mentioned the size of the event horizon, this is just unthinkably huge.

[00:21:52] I don't think there's a word big enough to describe the size of this event horizon.

[00:21:58] This thing stretches seven light years, which is 15,000 times the distance from the sun to the orbit of Neptune.

[00:22:08] That's right.

[00:22:09] 15,000 times bigger than that.

[00:22:11] That's that's unbelievable.

[00:22:16] You can't get your head around it.

[00:22:18] It is, that's right and that's the kind of inner dimension of the accretion disk which probably corresponds to the event horizon exactly as you've said.

[00:22:27] And that accretion disk is of course what let's what makes this thing bright because this is all stuffs whirling around the black hole.

[00:22:36] Some of it being sucked in, some of it being redirected magnetically into the jets to the north and south poles of the black hole if I put it that way.

[00:22:46] But all of that highly energetic and emitting, emitting well light as well as x rays and radio waves so very, very energetic object.

[00:22:56] And I'm not sure whether I mentioned, I may have said this already.

[00:22:59] But it gobbles up the equivalent of one sun every day, one solar mass per day is what it's actually accreting.

[00:23:08] So I think it is also the most voracious known of all the black supermassive black holes.

[00:23:14] Now correct me if I'm wrong.

[00:23:16] I have this distant memory that suggests that at this point in the age of the universe quasars are all extinct or am I thinking of something else.

[00:23:26] By this point, what we're seeing now, yeah.

[00:23:30] Yes, that's correct.

[00:23:32] So what we're seeing is quite historical data because of the time it takes for the light to reach us.

[00:23:39] Yes, 12 billion years.

[00:23:41] This all happened 12 billion years ago.

[00:23:43] No, you're right. The nearest, the nearest quite are which is caused by a very active black hole.

[00:23:51] It's actually less than a billion light years away.

[00:23:54] But there are very few within that distance in fact, perhaps even only one maybe even two perhaps.

[00:24:02] But most of them are more than a billion light years away, which means we're seeing them as there were before a billion years ago.

[00:24:09] And so today they're extinct that's right.

[00:24:13] So if we were go, if we were able to just sort of flash over to this boat now, what would we see?

[00:24:22] If the quasar is extinct, brightest of all time, what would be happening there now?

[00:24:29] So it probably will be yes, in today's universe.

[00:24:33] It's probably a fairly quiet and galaxy bit like ours is.

[00:24:40] I mean, we think our own galaxy comfortable warm and cozy place that it is for stars like the sun and its planets like ours.

[00:24:50] We think that that may in its history have also been a quasar.

[00:24:54] There is actually evidence of outbreaks out sorry outbursts from the center of our galaxy from the supermassive light call there, which probably caused by debris falling into it quite significant amounts of debris.

[00:25:08] There's evidence of their having been jets because there's there's fluorescence of some of the gas above and below the center of our galaxy, which has probably been excited to floresque by.

[00:25:23] Basically by jets of material which are now long gone from the center of our galaxy jets of material that excited that stuff to fluoresce the jets of material have gone but the fluorescence is still there.

[00:25:37] So so yes, maybe we think all galaxies might go through a quasar phase.

[00:25:44] I've always described quasars as delinquent galaxies and it's not quite true because the quasar itself is the is the thing that's in the middle of the galaxy.

[00:25:53] The galaxy is just hosting the quasar so it's more parasitic perhaps than than delinquent.

[00:25:59] So they think this is the brightest in the universe.

[00:26:04] Do you think anything could top it? I mean, this thing just is gargantuan in size and brighter than anything like the numbers are just staggering.

[00:26:14] Is there any chance we'll find anything?

[00:26:18] Well, I think in astronomy like many other things never say never.

[00:26:24] You know, there might be another discovery. This is a serendipitous discovery because this thing is said was thought by the guy a survey to be a star and it was only because it was followed up as being an objective some interest by astronomers at the A and U Australian national university that it was discovered to be a quasar and then found to be particularly interesting one.

[00:26:46] Yes, most definitely and well worth reading about if you'd like to have a look.

[00:26:52] You can go to the ESO website that's ESO dot org and just do a search for brightest and fastest growing.

[00:27:02] And you'll definitely find it. It's a great story and a nice pickup from I mean, the things been hiding in plain sight basically.

[00:27:11] Yes, yes. So we're just now we've pieced it all together. It's fascinating.

[00:27:16] Fred, just about to the end of this need to remind people that if you're following us on YouTube don't forget to hit the subscribe button below.

[00:27:25] If you would like to go to our website and learn about supporting us financially, you can do that.

[00:27:31] There's all sorts of options there under support space. I think what does it say? And now I can't remember.

[00:27:39] But anyway, it's there somewhere. Oh look, support space nuts. That's what I say. So there you go. I was right. I should have stuck them again.

[00:27:46] So yeah, just have a look around and see what you can see. And if you want to support us great if you just want to be a listener that's fine too. The more the merrier that's we've got to keep the family growing.

[00:27:58] And Fred, that brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you so much.

[00:28:03] Great pleasure. I'll talk to you again soon, I hope. Yes indeed. And good luck with your go in a hunt and yeah.

[00:28:13] What was the pictures? Yeah, what was me is the garden might be hunting us. Yeah, yeah, don't let the cat out.

[00:28:20] Exactly. I didn't get to write. Yeah, thanks for it. See you soon. See you later. Cheers.

[00:28:27] Fred, what's an astronomer at large and thanks to you not in the studio today when I wore and from me, Andrew Dungley always great to have your company looking forward to joining you again.

[00:28:38] On the very next episode of space nuts. See you then. Bye bye.