Spacewalks, Supernovas, and the Mysteries of Super Jupiters

0:00 Avery: Welcome to Astronomy Daily, the podcast that

0:03 brings you the biggest news from across the

0:05 cosmos. I'm Avery.

0:06 Anna: And I'm Anna. It's great to be with you.

0:09 Today we're talking about a dramatic

0:11 spacewalk outside the Tiangong Space

0:14 Station. Plus the James Webb Telescope spots

0:17 the oldest supernova ever seen. And we'll

0:20 find out why giant planets known as Super

0:22 Jupiters might look nothing like our own

0:25 Jupiter.

0:26 Avery: And we'll finish with a black hole that's

0:28 whipping up winds at a fraction of the speed

0:30 of light.

0:30 Let's get first up.

0:32 Anna: Let's head to low Earth orbit. There's been

0:35 some serious activity outside the Tiangong

0:37 Space station.

0:38 Avery: That's right. Two Chinese astronauts from the

0:40 Shenshou 21 mission conducted a

0:43 marathon eight hour spacewalk. The primary

0:46 goal was to get a close look at the Shenshou

0:48 20 return capsule.

0:50 Anna: Mhm. And what they were looking for was

0:52 damage, Right?

0:53 Avery: Exactly. The capsule was likely struck by a

0:56 piece of space junk, and the damage was

0:58 serious enough that the Shenzhou 20 crew

1:01 couldn't use it to return home. They had

1:04 to come back to Earth on a different vehicle

1:06 as a precaution.

1:07 Anna: Wow. That really highlights the dangers of

1:09 space debris. So this spacewalk was

1:12 essentially a, ah, forensic investigation in

1:15 orbit.

1:16 Avery: It was. They were meticulously inspecting

1:18 and photographing the damage to understand

1:21 exactly what happened. But that wasn't all

1:24 they did. They also took the opportunity to

1:26 install new space debris protection systems

1:29 on the station itself.

1:30 Anna: Uh, a necessary upgrade, it seems. It's a

1:33 growing problem that isn't going away. Every

1:36 piece of junk, big or small, is a

1:39 potential threat to current and future

1:41 missions.

1:42 Avery: And speaking of China's space program,

1:44 they've been busy on the launch pad as well.

1:46 Incredibly busy, in fact.

1:48 Anna: You can say that again. They just set a new

1:51 national record by launching three separate

1:54 Long March rockets in less than 19

1:57 hours.

1:58 Avery: 19 hours, that's an astonishing pace.

2:01 It brings their total for 20, 25 up to

2:04 83 orbital launches already.

2:07 Anna: So what were these missions carrying?

2:09 Avery: A couple of different payloads. The launches

2:11 deployed more broadband satellites for their

2:14 Guang Mega Constellation, which is their

2:17 competitor to systems like Starlink.

2:19 Anna: Right.

2:20 Avery: And they also sent up two classified military

2:22 satellites. The details on those, as you'd

2:25 expect, are pretty sparse.

2:27 Anna: It just shows the sheer scale and speed of

2:29 their operations. Right now they're not just

2:32 launching frequently, they're launching with

2:34 incredible efficiency.

2:36 Avery: And, uh, they seem to be getting better at it

2:37 with every launch.

2:39 Anna: Okay, let's shift our focus from Earth orbit

2:42 to the Red planet. A major new report from

2:45 the U.S. national Academies of Sciences,

2:47 Engineering and Medicine has just been

2:50 released and it's making some bold

2:52 recommendations for the future of Mars

2:54 exploration.

2:56 Avery: It really is. The headline recommendation is

2:59 that the primary scientific objective for the

3:02 first crewed missions to Mars should be the

3:04 search for life, either past or present.

3:07 Anna: That's a significant statement. For a long

3:10 time, the focus has been on geology and

3:12 paving the way for colonization. This report

3:15 puts astrobiology front and center.

3:18 Avery: Exactly. It outlines 11 specific

3:21 science objectives and proposes two main

3:23 science mission campaigns to achieve them.

3:26 The the first campaign would target near.

3:28 Anna: Surface glacier ice, which could preserve

3:31 biosignatures.

3:32 Avery: Precisely. The second, even more ambitious

3:34 campaign would involve exploring the deep

3:37 subsurface of Mars. They're talking about

3:39 drilling deep down to where liquid water

3:41 might still exist, Protected from the harsh

3:44 surface radiation.

3:46 Anna: That would be an incredible undertaking.

3:48 The technical challenges alone are immense.

3:52 But the potential payoff for finding evidence

3:54 of life on another planet is arguably

3:57 the greatest prize in science.

3:59 Avery: It completely reframes the why of sending

4:02 humans to Mars. It's not just about planting

4:05 a flag. It's about answering one of

4:07 humanity's biggest questions.

4:09 Anna: It would be nice if we could get a definitive

4:11 answer one day.

4:12 Avery: Well, from the search for life to the death

4:15 of stars, the James Webb Space Telescope has

4:18 done it again. It's given us a glimpse into

4:21 the cosmic dawn by finding the oldest

4:23 supernova ever seen.

4:25 Anna: This story is just mind boggling.

4:28 JWST detected light from a star

4:30 that exploded 13 billion years ago.

4:34 Avery: Let that sink in. The universe itself is

4:36 about 13.7 billion years old.

4:39 So this event happened just 730

4:42 million years after the Big Bang.

4:45 Anna: Incredible. So what do we know about this

4:47 event?

4:48 Avery: It's been designated GRB

4:51 250314A.

4:54 The GRB stands for Gamma ray

4:57 burst, which was detected first.

5:00 That burst is the telltale sign of a

5:03 massive star collapsing into a black hole

5:05 or neutron star. The

5:08 supernova is the explosion that follows.

5:11 Anna: So this breaks the previous record for the

5:14 most distant supernova by a long

5:16 shot.

5:17 Avery: Observing an event like this from the very

5:19 early universe gives astronomers a direct

5:22 look at at the life cycle of the first

5:24 generations of stars, which were much more

5:27 massive and short lived than stars like our

5:29 Sun. It's a crucial piece of the puzzle for

5:32 understanding how the universe evolved from.

5:35 Anna: The most distant to some of the most massive.

5:38 Let's talk about exoplanets. A new study

5:41 is challenging. What we thought we knew about

5:44 super Jupiters, right?

5:46 Avery: These are gas giants that are significantly

5:48 more massive than our own Jupiter. This

5:51 new research focused on an exoplanet called

5:54 VHS 1256 b,

5:57 it has a mass of about 20 jupiters,

6:00 20 times.

6:01 Anna: The mass of Jupiter. That's almost in the

6:04 territory of a brown dwarf, a failed

6:07 star.

6:07 Avery: It's right on that line. And the study

6:10 suggests that planets this massive might not

6:12 look like Jupiter at all. We picture Jupiter

6:15 with its beautiful stable, banded cloud

6:18 patterns.

6:19 Anna: Mhm. Mm. The Great Red Spot. The distinct

6:22 zones and belts.

6:23 Avery: Exactly. But on a world like VHS

6:26 1256 B, the internal heat and

6:29 higher temperatures could drive a much more

6:32 turbulent and chaotic atmosphere. The

6:34 model suggests that instead of stable bands,

6:37 you'd see large, dusty silicate

6:40 storms swirling chaotically.

6:42 Anna: So less organized beauty, more

6:45 violent chaos.

6:47 Avery: That's a good way to put it. It reminds us

6:49 that our own solar system is just one

6:51 example. And the diversity of planets out

6:53 there is far greater than we can imagine.

6:56 Anna: Well said.

6:57 And from voyages within our solar system,

7:00 let's take a leap to the truly cosmic scale.

7:03 For our final story, we're heading to the

7:05 center of galaxy NGC 378

7:08 3, where a supermassive black hole

7:11 is putting on a spectacle spectacular and

7:13 very windy show.

7:15 Avery: And this was a coordinated effort between two

7:17 powerful space telescopes, the XMM M Newton M

7:21 and the new Xrism M Observatory.

7:24 Anna: That's right. They observed the black hole's

7:27 active galactic nucleus, or agn,

7:30 as it let out a massive X ray flare.

7:33 Avery: So similar to a solar flare from our sun,

7:35 but on an unimaginable scale.

7:38 Anna: Precisely. And this flare had a dramatic

7:41 effect. It triggered powerful winds of

7:43 superheated gas being blasted away from the

7:46 black hole at an incredible 1/5

7:49 the speed of.

7:49 Avery: Light, 20% of the speed of

7:52 light. That's just phenomenal speed.

7:55 Anna: It really is. And observing this process

7:58 helps astronomers understand how these

8:00 central black holes influence their entire

8:03 host galaxies. These winds are so

8:06 powerful that they can clear out gas from the

8:09 galaxy's center, which can shut down star

8:11 formation and fundamentally shape how a, uh,

8:14 galaxy evolves over billions of years.

8:17 Avery: It's a direct link between the very

8:20 small, the accretion disk of a black

8:22 hole, and the very large, the

8:25 entire galaxy. A

8:28 fantastic discovery to end on.

8:30 Anna: And that's all the time we have for today on

8:33 Astronomy Daily. We covered everything from

8:36 spacewalks and launch records to the hunt for

8:38 life on Mars.

8:40 Avery: And we peered back to the dawn of time

8:43 with the oldest supernova and questioned

8:46 what a super Jupiter really looks like.

8:49 Thanks so much for joining us.

8:51 Anna: You can find us wherever you get your

8:53 podcasts or our website, which can be found

8:55 at astronomydaily.io we'll be back tomorrow

8:58 with another roundup of the latest news from

9:01 the final frontier.

9:03 Avery: Until then, keep looking up. This is

9:06 Avery and Anna signing off.