Are We Living in a Simulation? Physics Says No | Asteroid Buzzes Earth TODAY | Starship V3 Tomorrow

0:00 Anna: Right now, as you listen to this, a chunk of space rock the size of a blue whale is hurtling past Earth at, uh, 20,000 miles per hour, Avery: closer than some of our own satellites. And nobody knew it existed eight days ago. Anna: Plus tomorrow, the most powerful rocket ever built takes its biggest leap forward yet. Avery: And later today, we find out whether the entire universe might just be a very elaborate computer program. Probably not. Anna: Bizik says. Definitely not. That conversation is coming.

0:34 You're listening to Astronomy Daily. Avery: I can hear the discussion starting now. Anna: Hello, and welcome to Astronomy Daily, your daily guide to what's happening in space and the science behind it. I'm Anna. Avery: And I'm, um, Avery. It is Monday, the 18th of May, 2026, and we have a seriously packed episode for you today. Anna: We've got the asteroid that's buzzing our planet right now, the Starship V3 launch that's just hours away. And NASA's Psyche spacecraft, fresh off a stunning, uh, Mars flyby.

1:08 Avery: Plus new science arriving at the space station, a fascinating physics challenge to one of the Internet's favorite thought experiments, and the latest chapter in the battle over NASA's future funding. Anna: Let's get into it. Avery: We're starting with something that is happening literally right now, today. As you listen to this, a newly discovered asteroid called 2026 JH AH2 is making a close pass of Earth. Anna: And when we say close, we mean genuinely close. This space rock is coming within about 90,000 kilometers of our planet.

1:41 To put that in perspective, the moon is roughly 380,000 kilometers away. We're talking about less than a quarter of the lunar distance. Avery: Now, before anyone starts worrying, astronomers have confirmed there is absolutely zero chance of impact, but the proximity is remarkable. It's actually closer than many of the satellites we rely on every day. Anna: What makes this even more striking is the timeline. 2026 JH2 was only first spotted on 10 May. Just eight days ago. It went from discovery to closest approach in under a fortnight.

2:17 Avery: So how big is this thing? Estimates put it somewhere around 35 meters across at most, roughly the length of a blue whale, which is the comparison everyone's been running with. And honestly, it's a pretty vivid one at that size. Anna: Even if it were headed our way, which, again, it is not, it would most likely burn up in the atmosphere before causing any real surface damage. NASA's general rule of thumb is that objects under about 25 meters usually disintegrate on entry. Avery: But this one is right at that interesting threshold.

2:49 And the close pass is actually fantastic for science Observatories around the world have been tracking it. The Virtual Telescope project is running a livestream today, so you can watch it in real time if you're near a computer. Anna: At its closest approach, 2026 JH2 is expected to reach a brightness of around magnitude 11.5, which means it's just within reach of decent amateur binoculars if you know exactly where to look. The orbit is a looping ellipse that takes it between Earth and Jupiter, swinging around The sun every 3.7 years.

3:23 Avery: It's a good reminder of just how dynamic the neighborhood is and how much we're still finding out there. Anna: Absolutely, the sky is never boring. Avery: Now to a story that has the entire space community watching. SpaceX is targeting tomorrow, Tuesday the 19th of May, for the debut launch of Starship version 3. This is flight 12 for the Starship program, and it is a genuinely major milestone. Anna: So just how different is V3 from what we've seen? Because SpaceX has been using the word sweeping a lot, and in this case, I think it's earned.

3:58 Avery: It really is. Let's go through the highlights. The super heavy booster has been redesigned with three grid fins instead of four, but each one is 50% larger and significantly stronger. They've also been repositioned lower on the booster to reduce heat exposure during the hot staging burn. Anna: And the engines themselves. These are Raptor 3 engines. Now, the sea level variants are producing 250 tons of force, up from 230. The vacuum variants are even more impressive. And the engines have shed about 100kg each, with sensors and controllers now integrated internally.

4:34 Avery: What SpaceX says about all of this is that the changes together, the new booster design, the new engines, the new pad, the new upper stage improvements are intended to unlock the vehicle's core functions. Full and rapid reuse in space, propellant transfer, starlink deployment, and eventually sending people and cargo to the moon and Mars. Anna: This flight is also the first launch from pad two, which is the updated launch infrastructure. And notably, SpaceX will not be attempting to catch the booster back at the tower this time.

5:09 Given how many new systems are being tested, they're opting for a, uh, controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, or if you prefer, the Gulf of America. Avery: Instead, the upper stage ship 39 will continue on a suborbital path and splash down in the Indian Ocean about 65 minutes after launch. Among its test objectives, deploying 22 Starlink simulator satellites, a Raptor engine relight in space, and heat shield assessments, including some intentionally painted white tiles for imaging the Anna: launch window opens at 6:30pm Eastern Time.

5:45 That's on the 19th. That's early morning Wednesday for Australian listeners. We'll have full coverage in tomorrow's episode. Worth staying up for honestly, or setting an alarm? Avery: This is the rocket that's going to take people to the moon under Artemis 3. Tomorrow's test matters enormously. Anna: Let's check in with one of our favorite spacecraft on a very long journey. NASA Psyche probe has just completed a critical gravity assist maneuver at Mars and the results are in. It went perfectly. Avery: On May 15th.

6:15 At around 3:28 in the afternoon Eastern time, Psyche reached its closest point to Mars. Just 4,500 kilometers above the surface. It was traveling over 12,000 miles per hour relative to the planet. Anna: To put that proximity in perspective, Psyche flew closer to Mars than either of its two moons, Phobos and Deimos. It threaded right through the inner Martian neighborhood. Avery: And why does this matter so much? The entire six year mission trajectory was designed around this single gravitational exchange.

6:48 Mars orbital velocity did something the spacecraft's ion thruster simply couldn't do alone. It tilted Psyche's orbital plane and boosted it towards the main asteroid belt where its target, the metal asteroid 16 Psyche, is waiting. Anna: Mission controllers confirmed the success by monitoring the Doppler shift in Psyche's radio signals. Changes in frequency that revealed changes in speed. Everything matched the predictions precisely. Avery: The spacecraft was also busy doing science. During the flyby, the team used Psyche's multispectral imager to gather thousands of observations of Mars, their first real calibration opportunity with something larger than a few pixels.

7:28 Those images will be processed in the coming weeks. Anna: There was also a watch for a faint dusty ring thought to orbit Mars, produced by tiny micrometeorite impacts on Phobos and Deimos. We'll be watching for those results. Avery: Psyche is now on a direct confirmed course for arrival at 16 Psyche in July 2029. The asteroid is thought to be an ancient planetary core stripped of its rocky outer layers by billions of years of coll. Giving us a rare window into what the interior of a rocky planet actually looks like.

8:01 It's going to be extraordinary. Anna: Three years and counting. Great to see it on track. And it's time now for a quick sponsor mention. When you're ready to secure your online life, make sure you get NORDVPN just like we did. And make sure you use our special money saving link. That way you get the best in online protection for much less and help support the show. Uh, a win win I would say. Check out the link in the show notes for the details. Avery: Alright, back to today's space and astronomy news.

8:31 Closer to home than our last story, or at least closer to Earth's orbit. SpaceX's CRS 34 Dragon cargo capsule docked successfully at the International Space Station Yesterday morning, Sunday the 17th of May. Anna: This was the 34th Dragon mission under NASA's Commercial Resupply Contract and it delivered nearly 6,500 pounds of science equipment and supplies to the Expedition 74 crew. Avery: The Dragon docked autonomously to the Harmony Module's forward port at, uh, just after 6:30 in the morning Eastern, with NASA astronaut Jack Hathaway and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot monitoring the arrival from the cupola.

9:12 Anna: So what's in the cargo hold? Science wise, there are some genuinely interesting experiments. One project looks at how well Earth based microgravity simulators actually replicate conditions in space, important for developing experiments before we launch them. Avery: There's also a bone scaffold made from wood. Yes, wood that researchers hope could lead to new treatments for fragile bone conditions like osteoporosis. The idea is that the natural porous structure of wood creates a useful scaffold for bone tissue regeneration in microgravity.

9:47 Anna: And equipment to study how red blood cells and the spleen change during spaceflight, which is important for the longer missions we're planning. We know space does interesting and not always pleasant things to human physiology. The more we understand it, the better prepared we'll be. Avery: Dragon will stay attached to the station for about a month, then return to Earth in mid June, splashing down off the coast of California, bringing back time sensitive research results. It's worth remembering that Dragon is currently the only cargo ship that can bring significant mass back down from the station.

10:21 Anna: Routine mission by the numbers, but the science inside is anything but routine. Avery: Now here's a question for you, Anna. Um, are we living in a simulation? Anna: I mean, I've definitely had moments where the algorithm seemed a little too on the nose, but I'm guessing you're about to tell me that physics has something to say about this. Avery: Physics has quite a lot to say, as it turns out. A new paper published in the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics, co authored by physicists Mir Faisal at AH UBC Okanagan and Lawrence Krauss.

10:54 Yes, that Lawrence Krauss argues that the universe fundamentally cannot be simulated. Not it would be very hard to simulate. It cannot. Anna: That's a strong claim. What's the argument? Avery: It goes back to the foundations of mathematics. In the 1930s, the logician Kurt Godel proved something genuinely strange about formal that Any mathematical framework rich enough to include basic arithmetic will contain true statements that can never be proven from within that system. There are truths that are real but unreachable by proof.

11:29 Anna: Which is already a bit of a mind bender on its own. Avery: It is. And Feisal and his co authors apply that same logic to quantum gravity, the long sought theory that would unite Einstein's general relativity with quantum mechanics. They argue that any such theory by its nature would need to satisfy the conditions that trigger Godel's incompleteness theorems, which means it would inevitably leave some physical truths out. Anna: So the universe contains facts that no algorithm can ever fully capture.

12:02 Avery: Exactly. And, and here's where the simulation hypothesis comes in. Any simulation runs on algorithms. If reality is fundamentally non algorithmic, if truths built into the fabric of the universe that no computation can reproduce, then a simulation by definition could never be complete. It would always be missing something real. Anna: Lawrence Krauss puts it pretty starkly in the paper, doesn't he? Avery: He does. He says the fundamental laws of physics don't exist inside space and time, they create it.

12:34 And any simulation would have to run within a computational framework, which means it could never express the true structure of reality. The laws would always be outside the box you're trying to put them in. Anna: There's also an interesting thread in the paper about consciousness, isn't there? Echoing Roger Penrose. Avery: Right. The authors do gesture toward the idea that human thought itself might be non algorithmic in some sense. That perhaps our ability to recognize certain truths goes beyond what formal computation can do.

13:04 That part is more speculative, and the authors themselves flag it as such. Anna: So how solid is this as a debunking? It does feel like strong headline language for a theoretical paper. Avery: That's a fair point and worth flagging for our listeners. This is a theoretical argument, not an experimental result. The authors themselves acknowledge that no complete theory of quantum gravity even exists. Yet what they've shown is that if such a theory exists and has certain properties, which seems very likely, then it cannot be purely algorithmic, rhythmic.

13:36 Anna: So it's less we've proven the universe isn't a simulation and more we've shown that the conditions for, uh, a complete simulation can never be met. Avery: In principle, that's probably the most accurate framing. Fiesel himself puts it beautifully. He says that understanding these limits doesn't end science, it gives it a new direction. Nature, he says, is larger than any equation. Anna: I love that. And honestly, whether or not the simulation hypothesis is your thing, the underlying ideas could Goddell's incompleteness, the limits of formal systems, what it even means for something to be true in physics.

14:11 That's genuinely fascinating territory. Avery: Drop your thoughts on this one in the comments. We have a feeling people will have opinions. Anna: And finally, back to the ongoing Saga of, uh, NASA's budget. If you've been following this story, the headline is Congress has done it again. Avery: The White House's proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 asked for $18.8 billion for NASA, a 23% cut from current funding. The House Appropriations Committee has now responded by approving 24.4 billion instead, the same level as FY2026.

14:45 Anna: This is essentially an exact replay of what happened last year when the administration proposed similarly deep cuts and Congress rejected them. Avery: The proposed cuts would have been particularly severe for NASA's science dimensional, facing a, uh, 46% reduction that the Planetary Society described as. And um, I'm paraphrasing here, an extinction level event for space Science. More than 50 missions could have been terminated. Anna: Congress, though, seems to have a different view. The House bill specifically protects science funding, mandates continued support for the Habitable Worlds Observatory and pushes back on the proposed elimination of NASA's STEM education office, which received bipartisan criticism across the aisle.

15:26 Avery: Now, to be clear, this is the House appropriations markup. It still needs to go through the Senate and ultimately be reconciled and signed into law. And so this is a positive signal, not a done deal. Anna: But it does suggest that the political Appetite to gut NASA's science programs is not there, at least in Congress. Human exploration, Artemis Moon missions, the Mars trajectory has strong support on both sides. The science programs appear to have strong support as well. Avery: Well, keep watching this one.

15:55 The decisions made in the next few months will shape the scientific agenda for the rest of this decade. Anna: Before we go, a uh, quick look up at the sky because tonight is genuinely worth stepping outside for. Avery: Tonight, Monday the 18th of May, look west just after sunset and you'll find a beautiful pairing. A slim crescent moon sitting very close to brilliant Venus in the sky. Anna: Venus is one of the brightest objects visible to the naked eye, often the first star you see after the sun goes down.

16:24 Tonight, the crescent Moon is acting as a natural pointer, making Venus very easy to find. Even if you're new to sky watching Avery: through binoculars, the view should be especially striking. Look for earthshine. That's the faint glow on the dark portion of the Moon's disk caused by sunlight reflecting off Earth onto the lunar surface. It gives to crescent a beautiful three dimensional look. Anna: For our listeners in Australia and New Zealand, look to the west northwest shortly after local sunset, the pair will be relatively low on the horizon, so you'll want a clear western view.

16:57 Best viewing window is probably the first hour after sunset before they drop too low. Avery: A great night to grab the binoculars or just step outside with a cup of tea. Anna: That is Astronomy Daily for Monday 18 May 2026 what a lineup. An asteroid flyby, a rocket on the pad, a spacecraft slung around Mars, and a genuine philosophical challenge from the world of physics. Avery: Make sure you're back tomorrow. Starship V3 is targeting its launch window Tuesday evening US time, which means Wednesday morning for many of our Southern Hemisphere listeners.

17:33 We'll have the updates and let us Anna: know what you think about the simulation hypothesis discussion. Find us on socials, leave a comment or leave us a review. Wherever you listen, we genuinely love hearing your take. Avery: Until tomorrow, keep looking up clear skies everyone. Astronomy Day Stories we told Love.