Blood Moon, Broken Records & the Hubble Mystery

0:00 Speaker 1: Last night, the moon turned red and bled across the

0:03 Speaker 1: sky for nearly an hour. A spacecraft is being prepped

0:08 Speaker 1: for the most daring crude mission in half a century.

0:12 Speaker 1: And somewhere out there, four stars are dancing together in

0:16 Speaker 1: a space so tight it would fit inside Mercury's orbit.

0:20 Speaker 2: And apparently no aliens are coming to visit physiccesso.

0:25 Speaker 1: Dot even a postcard. This is Astronomy Daily.

0:29 Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery. Let's get into it.

0:32 Speaker 1: Welcome to Astronomy Daily, the podcast bringing you the universe's

0:37 Speaker 1: best stories, six days a week. It is Wednesday, March fourth,

0:41 Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, and we have a genuinely stellar episode

0:46 Speaker 1: for you today, pun absolutely intended.

0:49 Speaker 2: We have the aftermath of what many of you stayed

0:51 Speaker 2: up all night to see, the blood moon, total lunary clips.

0:55 Speaker 2: We have major Artemis two news, a star system that

0:58 Speaker 2: honestly shouldn't exist, the solution to one of cosmology's biggest headaches,

1:03 Speaker 2: the dawn of commercial space astronomy, and the physics based

1:07 Speaker 2: reality check on alien visitors.

1:09 Speaker 1: It's a lot. Let's not waste a second.

1:12 Speaker 2: Okay, First things first, Yesterday morning or the early hours

1:16 Speaker 2: of yesterday, depending on where you were. The moon turned

1:20 Speaker 2: blood red, and I need to know, Anna, did you

1:23 Speaker 2: watch it?

1:24 Speaker 1: I absolutely did. I dragged a blanket outside and watched

1:28 Speaker 1: the whole thing from my garden and the moment totality

1:31 Speaker 1: hit this deep, rusty orange glow, stars suddenly visible that

1:36 Speaker 1: had been washed out by moonlight. It was genuinely one

1:40 Speaker 1: of those I love being alive on a planet with

1:42 Speaker 1: the moon moments right.

1:45 Speaker 2: For those who missed it, here's what happened. The Moon

1:47 Speaker 2: passed completely through Earth's shadow. That's what makes it a

1:51 Speaker 2: total lunar eclipse, and the reason it turns red rather

1:54 Speaker 2: than just going dark is this beautiful piece of physics.

1:57 Speaker 2: Every sunrise and every sunset had happening on Earth at

2:01 Speaker 2: that moment, projects its orange and red light through our

2:04 Speaker 2: atmosphere and bends it onto the Moon's surface. So what

2:07 Speaker 2: you're seeing is the light of every dawn and dusk

2:10 Speaker 2: on the planet, all at once.

2:12 Speaker 1: Which is one of the most romantic explanations in all

2:16 Speaker 1: of astronomy.

2:16 Speaker 2: Honestly, Totality lasted just under an hour fifty nine minutes

2:21 Speaker 2: to be precise, and it was visible across a US, Canada, Mexico,

2:25 Speaker 2: and parts of South America in the morning hours and

2:28 Speaker 2: from Australia, New Zealand and Asia after sunset, so pretty

2:31 Speaker 2: much anyone who wanted to see it had a shot.

2:34 Speaker 1: The timing was great for observers in the Mountain and

2:37 Speaker 1: Pacific time zones. In North America they got totality in

2:41 Speaker 1: fully dark skies. Eastern time viewers had to contend with

2:45 Speaker 1: twilight creeping in, but honestly, still spectacular.

2:49 Speaker 2: And here's the bittersweet part. If you missed this one,

2:52 Speaker 2: you're going to be waiting a while. This was the

2:54 Speaker 2: last total lunaric clips visible from North America until New

2:58 Speaker 2: Year's Eve twenty twenty eight.

3:00 Speaker 1: So if you watched it, well done. You caught a

3:03 Speaker 1: rare treat. And if you didn't, mark your calendars now

3:07 Speaker 1: New Year's Eve twenty twenty eight, great excuse for a party.

3:11 Speaker 2: We'd love to hear from you. Did you get clear skies?

3:15 Speaker 2: Drop us a message at Astro Daily Pod.

3:18 Speaker 1: All right. Next up, huge news for human spaceflight. DASA

3:23 Speaker 1: has confirmed that repairs to the Artemis two rocket are

3:26 Speaker 1: complete and in April, launch is still very much on

3:29 Speaker 1: the table.

3:30 Speaker 2: This is the one we've all been waiting for. Artemis

3:33 Speaker 2: two would be the first crude mission to fly around

3:36 Speaker 2: the Moon in over fifty years. Not a landing, not yet,

3:39 Speaker 2: but a crude flight that will take four astronauts further

3:42 Speaker 2: from Earth than any humans have ever been.

3:45 Speaker 1: The crew is Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission

3:50 Speaker 1: specialist Christina Koch, who would become the first woman to

3:53 Speaker 1: travel to the Moon, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

3:59 Speaker 2: The issue that need fixing was a hydrogen leak that

4:02 Speaker 2: showed up during fueling tests. NASA took it seriously, worked

4:05 Speaker 2: through it methodically, and they're now satisfied its resolved. The

4:09 Speaker 2: vehicle is back in the Vehicle Assembly building at Kennedy

4:12 Speaker 2: Space Center and the teams are working towards an April target.

4:16 Speaker 1: No exact launch date has been confirmed yet. NASA is

4:19 Speaker 1: still working through its checklist, but the fact that repairs

4:22 Speaker 1: are complete and they're still talking April is genuinely encouraging.

4:27 Speaker 2: To put it in perspective, the last time humans flew

4:30 Speaker 2: to the Moon was Apollo seventeen in December nineteen seventy two.

4:34 Speaker 2: That's fifty three years and if Artemis two launches as planned,

4:39 Speaker 2: we'll be back in lunar space before the spring is out.

4:42 Speaker 1: We'll keep tracking this one closely as the launch date

4:45 Speaker 1: firms up. Exciting times.

4:48 Speaker 2: Okay, I need everyone to picture something. Take our entire

4:52 Speaker 2: Solar system from the Sun to Mercury. That tiny sliver

4:55 Speaker 2: of space roughly seventy seven million kilometers now cram three

5:00 Speaker 2: stars into it. Three stars.

5:04 Speaker 1: That's I mean, that's insane. Stars are enormous.

5:09 Speaker 2: They are, And yet astronomers have just confirmed a system

5:13 Speaker 2: called TIC one two zero three six two one three seven,

5:18 Speaker 2: where exactly that is happening. Three stars, all bigger and

5:22 Speaker 2: hotter than our Sun, packed into a volume smaller than

5:26 Speaker 2: Mercury's orbit around our star. And then, as if that

5:30 Speaker 2: weren't enough, there's a fourth star orbiting all three of

5:34 Speaker 2: them at a distance comparable to where Jupiter sits in

5:37 Speaker 2: our solar system.

5:38 Speaker 1: So it's a triple star system with a chaperone.

5:42 Speaker 2: That's genuinely the best way I've heard it described. The

5:45 Speaker 2: research was published in Nature Communications and led by astronomer

5:49 Speaker 2: to Maas Borkowitz at the University of Seged in Hungary.

5:52 Speaker 2: His team used data from NASA's test satellite, originally designed

5:56 Speaker 2: to hunt four exoplanets alongside ground based telescopes in Hungary, Arizona,

6:02 Speaker 2: the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Seventy three spectra from the

6:06 Speaker 2: Fred Whipple Observatory in Arizona alone.

6:09 Speaker 1: How do you even spot something like this?

6:12 Speaker 2: It starts with dips in starlight. The stars eclipse each

6:15 Speaker 2: other as a orbit, causing tiny periodic drops in brightness.

6:19 Speaker 2: What initially looked like a simple pair of stars eclipsing

6:23 Speaker 2: every three point three days turned out on closer inspection

6:26 Speaker 2: to be hiding a third star. Two and then the

6:29 Speaker 2: fourth was teased out using a clever algorithm that isolated

6:33 Speaker 2: each star spectral fingerprints individually.

6:36 Speaker 1: This system is in the Constellations signess the Swan, and

6:40 Speaker 1: its technical classification is a three plus one type quadruple

6:44 Speaker 1: three inner stars in a tight mutual orbit with a

6:47 Speaker 1: fourth outer companion. The outer stars orbital period is just

6:51 Speaker 1: one thousand, forty six days, the shortest ever recorded for

6:55 Speaker 1: this type of system.

6:56 Speaker 2: And the team was also able to model the system's

6:59 Speaker 2: eventual fad over billions of years. The heavyweight stars will

7:03 Speaker 2: exhaust their fuel, swell into giants, and shed their outer layers.

7:08 Speaker 2: The whole thing will likely end up as a pair

7:10 Speaker 2: of white dwarfs orbiting each other, a slow, quiet fade

7:14 Speaker 2: into stellar retirement.

7:16 Speaker 1: From cosmic chaos to cosmic peace. I find that oddly comforting.

7:21 Speaker 2: It's a reminder that our own sun, lone solitary planetarily

7:26 Speaker 2: well behaved, might actually be the weird one. Most stars

7:30 Speaker 2: in the galaxy have at least one companion, some apparently

7:34 Speaker 2: have three.

7:35 Speaker 1: Right. This next one is for the cosmology nerds, but

7:38 Speaker 1: we're going to make it make sense for everyone because

7:41 Speaker 1: it is genuinely important.

7:43 Speaker 2: The Hubble tension. It sounds like a minor bureaucratic disagreement,

7:48 Speaker 2: but it's actually one of the biggest unsolved problems in

7:51 Speaker 2: modern physics.

7:53 Speaker 1: So here's the setup. We know the universe is expanding,

7:56 Speaker 1: the question is how fast, and when astronomers use two

8:00 Speaker 1: different methods to measure that expansion rate, called the Hubble constant,

8:04 Speaker 1: they get two different answers that stubbornly refuse to agree.

8:08 Speaker 2: One method uses the early universe the cosmic microwave background,

8:13 Speaker 2: the leftover light from shortly after the Big Bang. Other

8:16 Speaker 2: methods use nearby cosmic distance markers like cepheed variable stars

8:21 Speaker 2: and Type ONEA supernovae. Both methods are solid. Both have

8:25 Speaker 2: been refined for decades, and they still don't match.

8:29 Speaker 1: The gap between them is only about eight or nine

8:32 Speaker 1: percent numerically, but that's small. Discrepancy is a massive headache

8:37 Speaker 1: because it suggests either our measurements are wrong, or more excitingly,

8:41 Speaker 1: there's new physics we don't understand yet.

8:44 Speaker 2: And now scientists are proposing a third, completely independent method,

8:49 Speaker 2: gravitational waves. When two massive objects like black holes or

8:53 Speaker 2: neutron stars spiral together and merge, they send ripples through

8:57 Speaker 2: the fabric of space time itself. These gravitational waves carry

9:01 Speaker 2: precise information about the distance to the event and how

9:05 Speaker 2: fast the universe is expanding at that point.

9:07 Speaker 1: The beautiful thing is gravitational wave detectors like LIGO and

9:11 Speaker 1: virgo don't rely on the same assumptions as the other methods.

9:15 Speaker 1: So if gravitational wave measurements can pin down the hubble

9:18 Speaker 1: constant independently, we'll finally have a referee in this argument.

9:22 Speaker 2: We don't have enough events yet to be definitive. Gravitational

9:26 Speaker 2: wave astronomy is still young, but as detectors improve and

9:30 Speaker 2: we observe more mergers, this could be the key that

9:34 Speaker 2: unlocks one of cosmology's greatest mysteries.

9:37 Speaker 1: Physics still keeping us humble since always.

9:40 Speaker 2: A genuine milestone in the history of astronomy. This week,

9:44 Speaker 2: the MAV telescope, the world's first privately owned commercial space telescope,

9:49 Speaker 2: has captured its first observation and it's the first star.

9:53 Speaker 1: This is a big deal. MAV is operated by a

9:56 Speaker 1: London based startup called Blue Sky's Space, launched back in

10:00 Speaker 1: November aboard a SpaceX ride share mission. It's a small satellite,

10:05 Speaker 1: about the size of a suitcase, weighing under nineteen kilograms,

10:08 Speaker 1: but what it can do is genuinely unique.

10:11 Speaker 2: BOV is designed to observe stars in ultraviolet light wavelengths

10:15 Speaker 2: that are completely blocked by earth atmosphere, so you simply

10:19 Speaker 2: cannot study them from the ground. The last dedicated ultraviolet

10:22 Speaker 2: space observatory was the International Ultraviolet Explorer, which was retired

10:27 Speaker 2: back in nineteen ninety six, so there's been a three

10:29 Speaker 2: decade gap in this kind of science.

10:32 Speaker 1: And this science it's doing matters enormously for the search

10:35 Speaker 1: for life. Not every star is as well behaved as

10:38 Speaker 1: our Sun. Many stars, especially the cooler, more common red dwarfs,

10:42 Speaker 1: produce intense UV flares that could strip the atmospheres off

10:46 Speaker 1: nearby planets, making them uninhabitable regardless of their distance from

10:50 Speaker 1: the star. MOV will survey hundreds of stars to figure

10:54 Speaker 1: out which ones are genuinely friendly to life.

10:57 Speaker 2: The commercial model here is also interesting. Data access is

11:01 Speaker 2: provided through annual subscriptions to research teams, a sort of

11:04 Speaker 2: Netflix for UV astronomy data. It's a new way of

11:07 Speaker 2: funding space science, and if it works, Blue Sky Space

11:11 Speaker 2: plans a whole fleet of these.

11:13 Speaker 1: The first star observed was one of the brightest stars

11:16 Speaker 1: in the ursa major constellation. A calibration target to check

11:19 Speaker 1: the instrument is working correctly, and it is first light achieved.

11:23 Speaker 1: Science operations underway.

11:25 Speaker 2: The universe has its first commercial telescope. I for one,

11:29 Speaker 2: welcome our new private sector stargazers.

11:32 Speaker 1: And finally our lighter closer, although I'd argue there's nothing

11:36 Speaker 1: light about the physics involved.

11:37 Speaker 2: A new piece from the Brighter side of News has

11:40 Speaker 2: been making the rounds this week, and it takes a

11:43 Speaker 2: long hard look at why, despite the vastness of the

11:46 Speaker 2: universe and the billions of potentially habitable worlds out there,

11:49 Speaker 2: no alien civilization has ever shown up on our doorstep

11:53 Speaker 2: and The answer, it turns out, isn't conspiracy. It's physics.

11:57 Speaker 1: Five barriers, that's the argument, Five physical constraints that together

12:02 Speaker 1: make interstellar contact essentially impossible. Shall we run through them?

12:07 Speaker 2: Let's do it.

12:07 Speaker 1: Number one distance The nearest star to us, Proxima Centauri,

12:12 Speaker 1: is four point two four light years away. The Parker

12:15 Speaker 1: Solar Probe, the fastest human made object ever built, would

12:19 Speaker 1: take around sixty six hundred years to reach it, And

12:22 Speaker 1: that's our closest neighbor. The Milky Way is one hundred

12:26 Speaker 1: thousand light years across.

12:28 Speaker 2: Number two, the speed of light. This is not an

12:31 Speaker 2: engineering problem, it's a law of reality. Einstein's special relativity

12:35 Speaker 2: tells us that as you accelerate anything with mass toward

12:38 Speaker 2: the speed of light, it takes ever more energy, forever

12:41 Speaker 2: smaller gains and speed. To actually reach light speed would

12:45 Speaker 2: take infinite energy, not a lot of energy, infinite.

12:48 Speaker 1: Number three propulsion. Even if you accept a much lower target,

12:53 Speaker 1: say one percent of light speed, you run straight into

12:56 Speaker 1: what's called the rocket equation. To accelerate, you need fuel,

13:00 Speaker 1: But fuel has mass, which means you need more fuel

13:03 Speaker 1: to push the fuel, which adds more mass. It grows

13:07 Speaker 1: exponentially the fuel required for even a modest interstellar trip

13:11 Speaker 1: would be staggering.

13:13 Speaker 2: Number four. Biology, The human body evolved on Earth under

13:18 Speaker 2: Earth's magnetic field, under Earth's gravity, Deep space is brutal.

13:23 Speaker 2: Cosmic radiation shreds DNA, microgravity degrades bones and cardiovascular systems,

13:30 Speaker 2: and we still haven't solved cryogenic preservation. Even robots aren't immune.

13:35 Speaker 2: Radiation degrades electronics and over the time skills involved entropy wins.

13:40 Speaker 1: And number five and this is my favorite one. Timing

13:44 Speaker 1: our civilization has been broadcasting radio signals for about one

13:48 Speaker 1: hundred years. That creates a bubble roughly one hundred light

13:51 Speaker 1: years across. The Milky Way is a thousand times wider

13:55 Speaker 1: than that The universe is thirteen point eight billion years old.

14:00 Speaker 1: Civilizations might rise, transmit, and fall all before their signals

14:05 Speaker 1: even reach anyone capable of receiving them. The physicist Richard

14:09 Speaker 1: Feynman apparently compared it to fireflies blinking on different nights

14:13 Speaker 1: in a dark forest. They never overlap.

14:16 Speaker 2: And what about UFOs. The piece applies physics to claims

14:20 Speaker 2: of craft performing impossible maneuvers, instant acceleration to extreme speeds,

14:25 Speaker 2: sharp turns with no sonic signature. The forces involved would

14:29 Speaker 2: be tens of thousands of times Earth's gravity. Occupants would

14:33 Speaker 2: be pulped, materials would fail. The physics doesn't work.

14:38 Speaker 1: Now Is this depressing? I actually don't think so. The

14:42 Speaker 1: piece ends on something beautiful. The same laws of physics

14:46 Speaker 1: that prevent easy interstellar travel also make the universe stable, ordered,

14:51 Speaker 1: and ultimately life friendly. Light speed preserves causality. Without it,

14:56 Speaker 1: cause and effect would unravel. Stable atoms permit chemt stars

15:01 Speaker 1: forge the elements that build planets and people.

15:04 Speaker 2: We might be alone in our cosmic neighborhood, but we're

15:07 Speaker 2: made of the same star stuff as every galaxy in

15:09 Speaker 2: the observable universe. We're not separate from the cosmos. We're

15:13 Speaker 2: the universe looking at itself.

15:15 Speaker 1: I'll take that.

15:16 Speaker 2: That's Astronomy Daily for Wednesday, March the fourth, twenty twenty six.

15:21 Speaker 2: Blood Moons, Crude Moon Missions, Cosmic star Huddles, the Universe's

15:25 Speaker 2: expansion mystery, the dawn of private space telescopes, and why

15:30 Speaker 2: the Aliens Aren't coming.

15:31 Speaker 1: Honestly, one of my favorite episodes in a while. If

15:34 Speaker 1: you enjoyed it, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

15:38 Speaker 1: Leave us a review, It genuinely helps us reach more

15:41 Speaker 1: space enthusiasts and find us on social media. At Astro

15:44 Speaker 1: Daily Pod.

15:46 Speaker 2: Few episodes every Weekday and Saturday. We'll see you Tomorrow.

15:50 Speaker 1: For more from the universe, Blear Skys Everyone.

15:54 Speaker 3: Sunday Stars The Stars.

16:05 Speaker 2: The Soul

16:13 Speaker 3: Store is control