Stellar Surprises: Juno's Jupiter Insights, Psyche's Thruster Troubles, and the Mystery of Fleeing Stars

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to Astronomy Daily. I'm your host Anna. Today we're

0:04 Speaker 1: diving into some fascinating developments across our cosmic neighborhood that

0:08 Speaker 1: highlight just how dynamic and surprising our universe can be.

0:12 Speaker 1: We'll begin our journey at Jupiter, where NASA's Juno mission

0:15 Speaker 1: has been peering beneath the surface of both the gas

0:18 Speaker 1: giant and its volcanic moon Io. The spacecraft's instruments have

0:22 Speaker 1: revealed remarkable insights about Jupiter's massive polar cyclones and detected

0:27 Speaker 1: evidence of still warm magma flowing beneath Io's crust. Then

0:31 Speaker 1: we'll check in on NASA's Psyche mission, which is currently

0:34 Speaker 1: experiencing some unexpected issues with its electric propulsion system. Don't worry, though,

0:39 Speaker 1: engineers are on the case and have redundancy built in

0:42 Speaker 1: for precisely these kinds of challenges. We'll also take a

0:45 Speaker 1: fascinating historical detour to explore how scientists throughout the centuries

0:50 Speaker 1: imagined alien life. You might be surprised to learn that

0:53 Speaker 1: many prominent thinkers once believed every planet, star, and even

0:57 Speaker 1: the vacuum of space itself must be teeming with living creatures.

1:01 Speaker 1: Speaking of surprises, astronomers have discovered something truly puzzling, a

1:06 Speaker 1: young family of over one thousand stars that seem to

1:09 Speaker 1: be fleeing their birthplace in a tremendous hurry. This star cluster,

1:13 Speaker 1: nicknamed Ophion, is breaking all the rules about how stellar

1:17 Speaker 1: families typically behave. And finally, we'll explore an unexpected cosmic

1:22 Speaker 1: source of precious metals. It turns out that magnetars, incredibly

1:26 Speaker 1: powerful neutron stars with massive magnetic fields, may be responsible

1:31 Speaker 1: for creating up to ten percent of the heavy elements

1:33 Speaker 1: like gold in our galaxy. So settle in as we

1:37 Speaker 1: explore these cosmic mysteries and cutting edge discoveries that continue

1:41 Speaker 1: to reshape our understanding of the universe around us. Let's

1:45 Speaker 1: get started. NASA's junomission, launched in twenty eleven and orbiting

1:50 Speaker 1: Jupiter since twenty sixteen, continues to revolutionize our understanding of

1:54 Speaker 1: the Solar System's largest planet and its moons. Originally planned

1:58 Speaker 1: as a five year mission, UNO has been extended and

2:01 Speaker 1: is now scheduled to continue operations until September of this year,

2:05 Speaker 1: or until the spacecraft itself can no longer function. One

2:08 Speaker 1: of Juno's most fascinating recent discoveries comes from its microwave

2:12 Speaker 1: Radiometer MWR, an instrument initially designed to study Jupiter's clouds.

2:18 Speaker 1: Scientists cleverly repurposed this technology to examine Io, one of

2:22 Speaker 1: Jupiter's four Galilean moons, first observed by Galileo Galilei back

2:26 Speaker 1: in sixteen ten. What they found was surprising evidence of

2:30 Speaker 1: still warm magma flowing beneath Io's cooled surface crust. As

2:34 Speaker 1: Shannon Brown from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains, when we

2:38 Speaker 1: incorporated the MWR data with Jerum's infrared imagery, we were

2:42 Speaker 1: surprised by what we saw. This cooling magma appears to

2:46 Speaker 1: be present at virtually every latitude and longitude they examined,

2:50 Speaker 1: with approximately ten percent of the Moon's surface showing these remnants.

2:54 Speaker 1: These findings help explain Io's extraordinary volcanic activity. The Moon

2:59 Speaker 1: essentially funk like a car radiator, efficiently transferring heat from

3:03 Speaker 1: its interior to the surface, where it can dissipate into space.

3:06 Speaker 1: It's a remarkable cooling system that helps regulate the Moon's

3:10 Speaker 1: intense internal heat. Meanwhile, JUNO has been conducting groundbreaking measurements

3:15 Speaker 1: of Jupiter's atmospheric temperatures. Since twenty twenty three, for the

3:20 Speaker 1: first time ever, scientists have been able to measure the

3:23 Speaker 1: temperature of Jupiter's north polar cap, discovering its approximately eleven

3:27 Speaker 1: degrees celsius cooler than surrounding areas. This polar region is

3:32 Speaker 1: also encircled by powerful winds exceeding one hundred sixty kilometers

3:36 Speaker 1: per hour. Perhaps most spectacular are Jupiter's polar cyclones, which

3:41 Speaker 1: JUNO has been meticulously tracking. Unlike hurricanes on Earth, which

3:46 Speaker 1: form and move in isolation, Jupiter's cyclones operate quite differently.

3:51 Speaker 1: The gas giant hosts a massive northern polar cyclone with

3:54 Speaker 1: a diameter of three thousand kilometers, nearly as large as

3:58 Speaker 1: Earth's moon, surrounded by eight smaller cyclones, each still larger

4:02 Speaker 1: than the dwarf planet Pluto. As these cyclones drift toward

4:05 Speaker 1: Jupiter's pole, they interact with each other in fascinating ways.

4:10 Speaker 1: JUNO co investigator Johai Casspi describes it as a mechanical

4:14 Speaker 1: system of springs, with the cyclones bouncing off one another

4:18 Speaker 1: while slowly drifting westward in a clockwise pattern around the pole.

4:22 Speaker 1: As Scott Bolton, juno's mission principal investigator puts it, everything

4:27 Speaker 1: about Jupiter is extreme, from its enormous polar cyclones to

4:31 Speaker 1: its fierce jet streams and the intense volcanic activity of Io.

4:35 Speaker 1: Jupiter's system continues to demonstrate the immense energies and complex

4:39 Speaker 1: dynamics at work in our Solar System's most massive planet.

4:44 Speaker 1: Next up today, NASA is currently investigating a concerning issue

4:48 Speaker 1: with the electric propulsion system on its Psyche spacecraft, which

4:51 Speaker 1: is on a mission to the Main Belt asteroid of

4:53 Speaker 1: the same name. On April first, the electric thrusters abruptly

4:57 Speaker 1: shut down when pressure fell in a line feeding b

5:00 Speaker 1: Zenon propellant to the system. According to a statement released

5:03 Speaker 1: by NASA in late April, the pressure dropped from thirty

5:06 Speaker 1: six pounds per square inch to twenty six pounds per

5:09 Speaker 1: square inch, triggering the shutdown. This information wasn't widely publicized

5:14 Speaker 1: until April thirty, when more details began to emerge about

5:18 Speaker 1: the situation. The Psyche spacecraft launched in October twenty twenty

5:22 Speaker 1: three and had just activated its Hall effect thrusters this

5:25 Speaker 1: past May. These thrusters, combined with a Mars gravity assist

5:29 Speaker 1: scheduled for May twenty twenty six are crucial for the

5:32 Speaker 1: spacecraft to reach its destination asteroid by August twenty twenty nine.

5:37 Speaker 1: Without properly functioning thrusters, the entire mission timeline could be jeopardized.

5:42 Speaker 1: Louise Proctor, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, addressed the

5:47 Speaker 1: issue at a recent meeting, saying that teams at JPL

5:49 Speaker 1: are working diligently to identify the specific problem. Both the

5:54 Speaker 1: electric propulsion system and the spacecraft bus were provided by

5:57 Speaker 1: Maxar Space Systems, formerly known under different name. Fortunately, NASA

6:02 Speaker 1: has stated that Psyche can continue to coast until mid

6:05 Speaker 1: June before there would be any significant impact on its trajectory.

6:09 Speaker 1: Engineers are exploring potential solutions, including switching to a backup

6:13 Speaker 1: propellant line that was wisely incorporated into the spacecraft's design.

6:17 Speaker 1: As Proctor reassuringly noted, this kind of thing happens, and

6:20 Speaker 1: that's why we build redundancy into our missions. We don't

6:23 Speaker 1: have any concerns at the moment about it, but we're

6:25 Speaker 1: obviously keeping tabs on it. Prior to this issue, Psyche

6:30 Speaker 1: had been performing well since its launch on a Falcon

6:32 Speaker 1: heavy rocket. However, the mission itself has faced challenges throughout

6:36 Speaker 1: its development, including software testing delays that pushed its launch

6:40 Speaker 1: back from August twenty twenty two to October twenty twenty

6:43 Speaker 1: three and increased the mission's cost from one billion dollars

6:47 Speaker 1: to one point two billion dollars. An investigation into these

6:51 Speaker 1: earlier problems revealed broader institutional issues at JPL, stemming from

6:55 Speaker 1: heavy workloads and communication problems within the laboratory. The current

7:00 Speaker 1: thruster issue appears to be unrelated to these previous challenges,

7:04 Speaker 1: but serves as another reminder of the inherent difficulties in

7:07 Speaker 1: deep space exploration. Okay, time now for a little history lesson.

7:13 Speaker 1: Long before we began searching for biosignatures on distant exoplanets,

7:17 Speaker 1: scientists and philosophers were convinced that intelligent life must exist

7:21 Speaker 1: throughout the cosmos. It's fascinating to look back at how

7:25 Speaker 1: certain many thinkers were that aliens not only existed, but

7:28 Speaker 1: populated virtually every surface in the universe. This conviction began

7:33 Speaker 1: taking shape in the early fifteen hundreds, when scholars like

7:36 Speaker 1: Nicolas Cusanus argued that countless stars and planets must exist

7:40 Speaker 1: beyond our own. Remarkably, Cusanus even believed the Sun itself

7:46 Speaker 1: was inhabited by what he called bright and enlightened intellectual denizens.

7:51 Speaker 1: He wasn't alone in this thinking. The Italian philosopher Giordano

7:54 Speaker 1: Bruno similarly reasoned in fifteen eighty four that it would

7:58 Speaker 1: be ill if the whole of space were not filled

8:00 Speaker 1: with life. These early speculators operated on a simple but

8:04 Speaker 1: compelling logic, Why would so much cosmic real estate exist

8:08 Speaker 1: if not to be occupied. The belief that everything in

8:11 Speaker 1: existence must serve a purpose led to the conclusion that

8:14 Speaker 1: uninhabited worlds would represent a cosmic waste. This thinking became

8:19 Speaker 1: remarkably mainstream over subsequent centuries. The conviction that every cosmic

8:23 Speaker 1: surface must host life led to some extraordinary claims. The

8:27 Speaker 1: English astronomer Edmund Halley suggested in sixteen ninety two that

8:30 Speaker 1: Earth itself must be hollow and filled with nested spheres

8:34 Speaker 1: to maximize living space. Others proposed that even the void

8:38 Speaker 1: of space itself teemed with microorganisms, with the French diplomat

8:42 Speaker 1: Benois de Mayet theorizing in the seventeen twenties that seeds

8:46 Speaker 1: of living creatures circulate throughout the cosmos. Perhaps most amusing

8:52 Speaker 1: to our modern sensibilities were the cosmic censuses conducted in

8:55 Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. Thomas Dick, a British theologian and astronomer,

9:00 Speaker 1: used England's population density to calculate that our solar system

9:04 Speaker 1: must house nearly twenty two trillion inhabitants. He later expanded

9:09 Speaker 1: his estimate to the visible universe, arriving at the specific

9:13 Speaker 1: figure of sixty sextilion, five hundred seventy three quintilian living beings.

9:18 Speaker 1: Dick confidently declared that there is but one religion throughout

9:21 Speaker 1: the universe, conveniently his own. As late as the eighteen nineties,

9:27 Speaker 1: some scholars still maintained that the Sun was inhabited. A

9:31 Speaker 1: German named Karl Gutzy published a book in eighteen ninety

9:34 Speaker 1: six insisting that dinosaurs and mammoths roamed the Sun's clement

9:38 Speaker 1: polar regions alongside humans. Even mainstream scientists, like biochemist William

9:44 Speaker 1: Theory Prayer, speculated that suns might be glowing organisms whose

9:48 Speaker 1: breath may perhaps be shining vapor. This assumption of cosmic

9:53 Speaker 1: abundance finally began to crumble in the early twentieth century.

9:56 Speaker 1: The discovery of radioactivity revealed that space is filled with

10:00 Speaker 1: harmful radiation, while advancing science clarified the stringent conditions required

10:05 Speaker 1: for life to exist. By nineteen twenty six, English cosmologist

10:09 Speaker 1: James Genes concluded that the physical conditions under which life

10:13 Speaker 1: is possible form only a tiny fraction of the range

10:15 Speaker 1: of physical conditions which prevail in the universe. Our modern,

10:20 Speaker 1: more cautious approach to extraterrestrial life represents a profound shift

10:24 Speaker 1: from centuries of wishful thinking. Perhaps this historical perspective should

10:29 Speaker 1: remind us to be equally careful with today's tantalizing biosignature discoveries.

10:35 Speaker 1: Next up. As you should know by now, I love

10:37 Speaker 1: a good mystery in a cosmic puzzle that's leaving astronomers

10:41 Speaker 1: scratching their heads. Over one thousand stars are breaking up

10:44 Speaker 1: their family reunion far sooner than expected. This newly discovered

10:48 Speaker 1: star cluster, nicknamed Ophian after its home constellation Ophiucus, is

10:52 Speaker 1: behaving in ways that defy our understanding of stellar families. Typically,

10:57 Speaker 1: stars born together from the same molecular cloud stile clustered

11:00 Speaker 1: for hundreds of millions of years before gradually drifting apart.

11:04 Speaker 1: The Pleiades cluster, visible to the Naked Eye, and Taurus

11:08 Speaker 1: is still tightly grouped after one hundred million years. The

11:11 Speaker 1: more dispersed Beehive cluster in Cancer has been together for

11:15 Speaker 1: around six hundred million years. But Ophion, located about six

11:19 Speaker 1: hundred fifty light years away, is essentially a stellar family

11:23 Speaker 1: in the midst of a dramatic breakup, despite being just

11:26 Speaker 1: twenty million years old. As Dylan Houston of Western Washington University,

11:31 Speaker 1: who led the discovery team, explained, Opion is filled with

11:34 Speaker 1: stars that are set to rush out across the galaxy

11:37 Speaker 1: in a totally haphazard, uncoordinated way, which is far from

11:41 Speaker 1: what we'd expect for a family so big. What makes

11:44 Speaker 1: this cluster unique is its unusually high velocity dispersion. In

11:47 Speaker 1: normal star clusters, the difference between the fastest and slowest

11:50 Speaker 1: moving stars is just a few kilometers per second. In Opion,

11:55 Speaker 1: that difference is a whopping twenty kilometers per second, meaning

11:58 Speaker 1: these stars are moving far too fast to stay together

12:01 Speaker 1: for long. The only reason we currently see these stars

12:03 Speaker 1: as a group is that they're so young they haven't

12:06 Speaker 1: had time to completely separate yet. We're essentially witnessing a

12:10 Speaker 1: stellar family. Portrait taken just before the children leave home forever.

12:15 Speaker 1: This discovery wasn't immediately obvious. Whusson and his colleague Marina

12:19 Speaker 1: Conkle of the University of North Florida, spotted Opeon while

12:22 Speaker 1: testing a new model called Gaya net. This tool can

12:26 Speaker 1: simultaneously analyze the spectra of millions of stars using data

12:29 Speaker 1: from the European Space Agencies GAYA mission, which has measured

12:33 Speaker 1: the position, velocity, distance, and spectra of approximately two billion stars.

12:39 Speaker 1: So what caused this premature stellar scattering? Examining the GAYA

12:43 Speaker 1: data more closely, the team noticed several superbubbles, large voids

12:48 Speaker 1: created when supernova shockwaves blow away interstellar gas. It's possible

12:53 Speaker 1: that after Opion's stars formed, much of the remaining gas

12:56 Speaker 1: was blown away by these stellar blast waves. Losing all

13:00 Speaker 1: this mass could have loosened the cluster's gravitational hold on

13:04 Speaker 1: its stars. Alternatively, gravitational tidal effects from neighboring star forming

13:10 Speaker 1: regions might have given Ophion's stars an extra push. As

13:15 Speaker 1: Councl noted, without the huge, high quality data sets from

13:19 Speaker 1: GAIA and the new models we can now use to

13:21 Speaker 1: dig into these, we may have been missing a big

13:24 Speaker 1: piece of the stellar puzzle. This discovery suggests there may

13:27 Speaker 1: be other young families of stars racing apart that we

13:30 Speaker 1: simply haven't recognized yet, challenging our understanding of how stellar

13:34 Speaker 1: nurseries function and evolve. And finally, today, have you ever

13:39 Speaker 1: wondered where the gold in your jewelry comes from? Most

13:42 Speaker 1: of us know its mind from the Earth, but where

13:43 Speaker 1: did the Earth get it? The cosmic origins of heavy

13:47 Speaker 1: elements like gold have long fascinated astronomers, with supernovae and

13:51 Speaker 1: neutron star collisions typically given credit for forging these precious metals.

13:56 Speaker 1: Now an unexpected cosmic goldsmith has entered the scene. Magnetars.

14:01 Speaker 1: Magnetars are perhaps the most extreme objects in our universe.

14:05 Speaker 1: These rare neutron stars possess magnetic fields up to a

14:09 Speaker 1: thousand trillion times stronger than Earth's, Formed from the collapsed

14:13 Speaker 1: cores of massive stars after supernovae. They're essentially the ultra dense,

14:18 Speaker 1: city sized remnants of stellar deaths, with magnetic fields that

14:22 Speaker 1: boggle the mind. What makes this recent discovery so exciting

14:26 Speaker 1: is that these cosmic powerhouses may be responsible for creating

14:30 Speaker 1: up to ten percent of all the heavy elements like

14:32 Speaker 1: gold and platinum in our galaxy. The breakthrough comes from

14:36 Speaker 1: Anirud Patel, a doctoral student at Columbia University, who let

14:40 Speaker 1: a team analyzing twenty year old archival data from NASA

14:43 Speaker 1: and ESA telescopes. Occasionally, magnetars undergo dramatic starquakes that release

14:50 Speaker 1: astonishing amounts of energy through giant flares. These flares, visible

14:54 Speaker 1: even from other galaxies, create the perfect extreme conditions for

14:58 Speaker 1: something called rapid neutron capture, essentially the fusion of neutrons

15:03 Speaker 1: into heavier atomic nuclei. This process is precisely what's needed

15:07 Speaker 1: to create elements like gold. The discovery solves a persistent

15:10 Speaker 1: cosmic mystery. Back in twenty seventeen, astronomers confirmed that collisions

15:15 Speaker 1: between two neutron stars could create gold and platinum. This

15:19 Speaker 1: was a major breakthrough observed through both NASA telescopes and

15:23 Speaker 1: LIGO gravitational wave detectors. However, these mergers occurred too late

15:28 Speaker 1: in the universe's history to explain the earliest heavy elements

15:31 Speaker 1: we observe. That's where magnetars come in. As Eric Burns,

15:35 Speaker 1: a co author of the study published in the Astrophysical

15:38 Speaker 1: Journal Letters, explains, this finding represents a breakthrough that solves

15:43 Speaker 1: a major cosmic mystery using nearly forgotten data. Since magnetars

15:48 Speaker 1: appeared early in the universe's history, they could have been

15:51 Speaker 1: responsible for creating the first gold. The research team initially

15:55 Speaker 1: predicted that heavy elements from magnetars would appear invisible and

15:59 Speaker 1: ultraviolet light, and possibly in gamma ray signals too. After

16:03 Speaker 1: reviewing gamma ray data from two thousand and four captured

16:06 Speaker 1: by NASA's RESSI and Wind satellites, they found an unexplained

16:10 Speaker 1: signal that matched their prediction, likely evidence of heavy element

16:13 Speaker 1: creation during magnet or giant flares. Looking ahead, NASA's upcoming

16:18 Speaker 1: Compton Spectrometer and Imager mission, launching in twenty twenty seven,

16:22 Speaker 1: will study high energy cosmic events, including magnetar flares, in

16:26 Speaker 1: greater detail. As a wide field Gamma ray telescope SOSI

16:30 Speaker 1: will be able to identify individual elements created in these

16:33 Speaker 1: powerful events, advancing our understanding of their cosmic origins. So

16:38 Speaker 1: the next time you admire a gold ring or necklace,

16:41 Speaker 1: remember that you're wearing the products of some of the

16:43 Speaker 1: most violent and extreme events in our universe, including perhaps

16:48 Speaker 1: the cataclysmic flares of magnetors that occurred billions of years

16:52 Speaker 1: before our solar system even formed. What an incredible journey

16:57 Speaker 1: we've taken through our cosmic neighborhood today. Quitter's swirling storms

17:01 Speaker 1: to stars fleeing their birth clusters, and from historical perspectives

17:05 Speaker 1: on alien life to the violent magnetor flares forging gold,

17:08 Speaker 1: our universe continues to reveal its secrets in the most

17:11 Speaker 1: unexpected ways. These discoveries remind us of how interconnected cosmic

17:15 Speaker 1: phenomena truly are. Jupiter's cyclones and Io's cooling magma teach

17:20 Speaker 1: us about planetary evolution. The Psyche missions Thruster troubles highlight

17:24 Speaker 1: the challenges of space exploration even as we reach farther

17:28 Speaker 1: into the cosmos. Our changing views on extraterrestrial life demonstrate

17:32 Speaker 1: how science evolves with new evidence, while the mystery of

17:36 Speaker 1: ophians dispersing stars shows there's still so much we don't

17:39 Speaker 1: understand about stellar life cycles, and perhaps most poetically, learning

17:44 Speaker 1: that the gold we cherish comes from the most violent

17:46 Speaker 1: cosmic events connects us directly to the stars in a

17:49 Speaker 1: tangible way. The atoms in our jewelry are electronics, and

17:54 Speaker 1: even our bodies have journeyed across space and time to

17:56 Speaker 1: be here. This has been astronomy Daily with me Anna.

18:00 Speaker 1: If you've enjoyed today's cosmic tour, I invite you to

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18:25 Speaker 1: next time, keep looking up. The cosmos awaits with countless

18:28 Speaker 1: more stories to tell.

18:29 Speaker 2: Sunday Stars starz

18:48 Speaker 1: S