¶ Astronomy Adventures and Eclipse Experiences
Cheers , cheers .
Welcome to the Afternoon Pint . I'm Mike Tobin , I am Matt Conrad , and who do we have with us today ?
I am astronomer John Reed . John Reed , wow .
Round two , round two Welcome back . You get a second cheers for that there you go .
Welcome back to the show . Thank you .
And we're at the Oxford Tap Room once again .
I'm trying their summer , summer , uh .
What is this , matt ?
a summer , uh , jazzler jazzler , that's what they called it . Oh my gosh .
Okay , well , it's pretty good and uh , it's a radler three yeah rather three percent , right , so it's uh , there's a pretty .
It goes down pretty quick . And what do you got there ?
I get their jalapeno ale . I love that one . It's you know what . Uh , they used to do jalapeno ale like when they first started , and it was legitimately spicy and I used to love it yeah .
This one for anyone who's concerned ?
Yeah , for anyone who's concerned , like I don't like spicy . This is not spicy at all , but it has a really great jalapeno flavor , nice flavor , just the flavor , no heat yeah .
And what do you have there , john ? I'm drinking Tulsa Bale Classic classic . That's the classic staple garrison . Good beer too .
Anyways , man , thank you so much for coming back to us . We wanted to start having guests come back and we said really early on that we wanted to talk to you again . I think our first conversation was quite fascinating , so we learned things .
I hope so .
I went out and bought a second telescope since our first honest to god . Yeah , it's in the living room , right ? So ?
he went from 20 to 20 million dollars no , I don't know where you got it from this podcast is doing really well , here you go 20 to 25 dollars more like it but uh , but still , yeah , yeah .
So we got the kind of wider , wider scope thing that you recommended .
Yeah , so you got a higher aperture . Yeah , higher aperture See more detail .
Yeah , yeah , and we've used it once .
Yeah , used it once it's been cloudy though . Yeah , it's been cloudy , we were lucky . Did you guys see the eclipse on April 8th ?
Yes , he used it on the eclipse . He used it on the eclipse .
He did tell , tell us not to do that in the first episode .
Uh no , I didn't uh , use it on the eclipse . I , I did . We all had the eclipse glasses , because the kids all got them in school , we all . So did you go ? Did you see the partial eclipse from halifax ? Partial , okay , so you saw parts , but you didn't go to new brunswick .
No no , okay , no , but we got like 93 percent , I think yeah so in terms of the awesomeness , that's about a one percent .
A 99 eclipse is a one percent awesomeness eclipse . That's what they say and it's so true . So we get partial eclipses every year . So the next one is March . We had one in October 24th . We had a partial eclipse here in Halifax . Everyone came out to see it in Dalhousie . It was a little cloudy but we were able to see it through the clouds .
And the next partial eclipse is March . I don't know it , it was 27% .
Okay . So yeah , it was 99 .
So I was surprised with the folks in Halifax that they did see it get noticeably dimmer outside .
Oh yeah , no , it was clearly dimmer . Yeah , definitely .
And I didn't expect Halifax to get as dim as I heard it did .
Yeah , it darkened up a bit . I'm in prospect . It got darker , it just felt like a sunset . Yeah , but not just felt like a sunset . Yeah , but not a full sunset , obviously . Yeah , but the temperature dropped too .
Yeah birds were kind of going a little funny , yeah , they were .
They were and so .
So I was in , I was in doaktown , new brunswick , okay , and I was . I was using all the , I had all this camera equipment set up and I had all these experiments set up and and I was trying to change my camera from video to picture and I had to turn the little dial . I couldn't do it . Oh , I couldn't see it .
It was too dark to see any of the settings on the camera . And then people , people were screaming and howling like wolves and it was just a very interesting experience .
Now , did you go with your family or just with with folks from uh ?
so . So I got invited to storytown cottages and they were having a private event cool um for photographers and um , what's storytown Cottages ? And they were having a private event for photographers and what's Storytown Cottages ? Storytown Cottages in Doak Town . So it's just some cottages on the river in central New Brunswick and it was beautiful .
Do they read your stories to go to sleep or something ?
Yeah , I didn't stay there . I was in Miramichi the night before . Remember there was a snowstorm the day before up north , and so when I was in Miramichi the night before , remember there was a snowstorm the day before up north , and so when I was in Miramichi , getting there , we had .
There was a snowstorm the day before the eclipse in Miramichi , oh my , gosh , it was nuts .
And so they got three I think it was three feet of snow , wow , and I didn't realize . So we were listening to podcasts on the way up . We were like this is great to stay off the roads . And we got there , and then the next day , during the eclipse , the sun came out and it was a beautiful day .
And then , of course , the sun went away for the eclipse and it was dark , and then it came back , fortunately .
That's cool . Yeah , that's probably a good thing . Yeah , no , sun would equal pretty bad time for the rest of us .
It was interesting , richard Zyrowski was there at this event . Richard Zyrowski and he was so excited , he was just like running around and being like did you see that ? Did you see that , did you see that ? And so that was my experience meeting Richard Zyrowski , who I only know from Wonder why Wonder , why ?
yeah , I've met him a couple times , I mean he was a counselor , and so he's running actually again for counsel again here here . Yeah , he was counselor for one term .
Okay .
I think he should stick to science , not politics . Personally , Ooh , yeah , well I mean , he's a very smart man and I really really enjoyed listening to him when he was on the radio talking about science .
Yeah .
I don't like him in politics . That's funny .
Yeah , I guess we're not getting him on the show now . Thanks , man .
Once again his opinion . He's more than welcome to come on here and tell me why I'm wrong .
No , there were lots of interesting people there , so we also had Tim Doucette , the blind astronomer , Sorry the blind astronomer .
Yeah , the blind astronomer .
That sounds he has a condition where he had his lenses and his eyes removed as a child . So he basically is focused on infinity . So he's legally blind .
He has to wear blackout sunglasses during the day , but at night his eyes are focused on infinity , so he can see the Milky Way and he actually sees it better than anyone with regular vision and so he's not just tripping , like he's seeing this for real . Yeah , so he's got a giant observatory in Yarmouth .
Yeah .
And then he invites similar people from around the world that have his condition to go and learn to stargaze .
That's brilliant . No way so that's .
Tim Doucette .
And so he's got a cabin and he's got domes down there . It's a whole astrotourism experience .
We've got to go on a trip to Yarmouth . That sounds like a trip . No , it's great .
And so he's got a big telescope . I think he's got a 14-inch telescope in a dome that's electronic and everything and he'll show you around . It's got sky circles for star tours and the whole bit . It's great . And he's got kayaks and stuff during the day at the cottages .
Super cool yeah no-transcript .
Lot of the epic photos the eclipse that you saw were taken from uh , here there in doketown . Cool , that's really cool shout out to doketown .
That's pretty awesome it was put on by stefan picard and so he organized it and he has an astro tourism business where he connects people that are trying to get people excited about space astro tours , yeah , that's kind of the future right , yeah there's a lot of aspects to it because for the everyman you know you're probably not going to go to space within the
next 30 years , but you can sort of vicariously experience it through different experiences , like you could go in an airplane that does your gravity flight , so that's sort of a form of astro tourism or space tourism you could .
¶ Future of Space Tourism and Safety
You could do on what's called an analog mission , where you go to Hawaii , for example , they have a dome . You know that that you can , you can pay money and sort of go and you can either play scientist or you can actually do science there in these sort of they're called analog simulations and they're a lot of fun .
I saw an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson . I probably talked to him last time , you know big fan , and I was listening to him talk about how he feels that space . He was calling it space tourism . Astro tourism is like the future and how . That is actually how a lot of funding could actually end up happening is , you know , obviously , people who can pay .
That's how it will start . It's happening now , right , with billionaires going up to zero gravity flights and all that stuff , but eventually , hopefully , it gets to a point where it's , you know , more feasible for people to go visit the moon or something like that , like I'm going to go vacation on the moon or whatever . Right .
Yeah , so you have the pioneers like Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic for the first time , and now we have people like Jared Isaacman going to space and doing the first all-civilian spacewalk , and I think that's next month or later this month in a mission called Polaris Dawn , and so he's got a team of people and they're all civilians , but two of them are
SpaceX employees and then they're going to go on probably a three or four day mission , extremely high altitude mission , three times as high as the space station , and do spacewalks to test . They're testing hardware and they'll do lots of experiments , but you know that's privately funded .
Privately funded mission . So I mean , yeah , there must be some real fears associated with this too , with things going wrong , I can think insurance liabilities right through the roof .
Yeah , but I mean , when you have a human mission , space shuttle aside , there's a lot of redundancy , so there's very little single-point failure on the spacecraft itself . And you're talking about spacecraft these days . They're not like airplanes that go to space like the space shuttle was .
You're talking about basically diving bells , and if you want to come back to Earth , all you do is slow down in your orbit and then you'd lose energy and intersect the atmosphere and you've got a diving bell-shaped spacecraft that just naturally wants to come back into the atmosphere and slow down , and so the risk is greatly reduced .
And on takeoff as well , which is the most dangerous part of the flight , you've got a launch abort system dangerous part of the flight , you know . You've got a launch abort system , so anything happens . During launch , you hit a button and and and your boosters drop off and you fly away from the exploding rocket behind you yeah , you know , yeah .
When's the last time like there have been fatalities in space , as far as you know ?
yeah , so the last the last , uh , fatality in space would have been columbia , so I believe that was 2004 , yeah , um , and then before that it would have been challenger , and then before that , as a russian mission , without actually , uh , they're coming back in the atmosphere and someone had flipped a valve and invented the oxygen out of the capsule yeah , so just
lit everything up . No , so they did . They were just uh , dead within within a few seconds .
Yeah , if you , if you lose pressure in the capsule , oh sorry I was thinking like the oxygen , because I'm thinking entering the atmosphere , there's lots of heat and I was thinking someone flipped the oxygen , the oxygen , just like , because oxygen can ignite . Yeah , no .
They lost pressure , they lost the pressure , and then the other death in the space program would have been Apollo 1 , which was Gus Grissom and the other two guys , um , which was just a fire in the cockpit during a training exercise how , like I guess in your opinion , like how sustainable , because I mean , you know it takes a lot of fuel to get something into
¶ Exploring Sustainable Space Tourism and Education
space .
How sustainable is that with us trying to , like you know , go green and and get off fossil fuels and all that stuff ?
yeah , fortunately , um you know we're trying to move to a hydrogen economy .
There's one way to think about it , right , yeah , okay , so I've heard about this .
And most rockets , I believe , well , a lot of them are kerosene , which is basically jet fuel , but you know , a lot of rockets are using hydrogen , hydrogen and oxygen . And you can make that hydrogen with electrolysis , which is just splitting water into its components with electrolysis , which is just splitting water into its components .
I was reading , uh , or not reading . I'm watching a youtube video about this recently with how , like uh , they were explaining half of the when they fill them up with fuel . Half of it is basically like liquid oxygen and liquid uh , nitrogen or something , whatever it is . Yeah , and it was a bit , and that's the fuel and I was like that's kind of interesting .
So I guess we're not really running out of oxygen anytime soon .
I don't know . I don't know .
I don't know . Yeah , same , probably for nitrogen , I guess . Yeah .
But I mean the other thing about the space industry . Right now , you know , if you're worried about the environment , most of the science that we get about the environment comes from space .
No , I think we need to do it .
So it's kind of an interesting , you know , it's interesting where we get our knowledge , like we wouldn't even known about environmental concerns if it weren't for , you know , starting with Apollo 8 , when , you know , anders , who just passed away a couple weeks ago , took that picture of Earth rising , you know , on the other side of the moon , and that kicked off
that Earth Day movement that we still celebrate today , celebrate to today . And then you know , the hundreds and hundreds of uh satellites that do our earth observation , that monitor our oceans and our farms , to know , you know , when the crops have moisture and etc .
Etc . And the flat photograph helped establish that the earth was flat . Yeah , yeah , yeah exactly .
You know what's crazy . I find it absolutely fascinating that the earth seems to be flat .
But , like all the other planets around . What weird , what it's the weirdest thing . It's very curious . Yeah , yeah , it's so weird . Eh yeah , shadows and flat earths , yeah , they're a fun bunch . Yeah , yeah .
So , anyway , you kind of mentioned with this gentleman down in Yarmouth that he has an observatory Last time we talked , which was actually at our beer kickoff , oh yeah thanks for coming tonight , john , yeah yeah , you came by , a few other people came by .
Yeah , that's a very interesting , made a really fun night you know what the funny thing is ?
you were a hit uh . We had a lot of people who were uh , who I talked to afterwards . They were like we had so much fun at your , at your event . It was really great , like seemingly funny , and I got to meet an astrophysicist .
Like , what's up with this ? Well , it's funny , they get me going . They get me going talking about space .
Oh man , yeah , andrew , my partner knew who you were and he spoke with my brother there . I mean , yeah , a lot of people , yeah , so you were a celebrity .
Yeah , there you go .
Yeah , so yeah .
So sorry . So Matt was saying , but you were telling me that you actually are in the works of trying to get your own .
AstroTourism Center in Halifax . Yeah , that's one of my dreams is for Halifax to be an astro-tourism center . Get some land yeah , we talked about this last time . We've got 26 acres . The development agreements have been submitted I'm not sure where they are in the process or how long it takes and then we've also got the permits with the city for an observatory .
And so when Dave Lane , the director of the observatory , director of meritorious at the observatory at St Mary's , passed away , he had a fairly large observatory on his property that was robotic , just like the one at St Mary's and could be used by anyone in the world .
And when he got sick it went offline , and so we were able to get a grant for a student to help and we were able to transfer the rights to that observatory , or the ownership , over to Stargaze Nova Scotia and we're going to move it to that location on Prospect Road near Peggy's Cove , and so we'll get that built back up again and get it back to its
original capacity of being able to be used by anyone in the world to do to do some important science .
And then , on top of that , we're going to add some additional capabilities and in what's called the star finder program , which is , which is a foundation set up by by Dave Lane's family , and what it'll enable is funding to train teachers to come and use the telescope that one and the one in St Mary's and some other programs as well but to teach the 6th and
9th grade science teachers in Nova Scotia how to teach kids about astronomy , and they'll have this asset that they can have access to as well at Stargaze , nova Scotia , under dark skies , where they can use this telescope in person .
Do public schools have any secondary courses for astronomy now ? I don't think they do , so it's in the curriculum .
So it's in this . As far as I know , it's currently heavily in the sixth grade science curriculum the solar system and then my understanding is that the Starfinder program will help ninth grade science curriculum . They do the solar system and then my understanding is that the Starfinder program will help ninth grade science teachers . The last year of middle school .
They'll touch on space as well , because there's a lot to cover and it's also one of the biggest industries . If you include telecommunications , it's also one of the fastest growing industries as well . Now that launch costs the cost to get stuff into space has come way down over the last few years .
Um , and so the amount of hardware that we can put in space and have it working for us to make our lives better uh , it is is vastly accelerating , right ? Yeah ? that's pretty cool so but yeah , so it's super excited to have an observatory uh at stargaze nova scotia up there . Do you think that's going to happen ?
like in the next 10 years , five years , or do you have a kind of a goal in mind ? Oh , a timeline .
So we were hoping to get the telescope moved over this month .
Oh wow , um , we can't open it as a business until the development agreement is approved I'm hoping within the year and then the development agreement will include additional observatories that can hypothetically be rented out , and then there's a business model to go with that , and so that would be for amateur astronomers or families who want to go and just have a
night under the stars and have access to telescopes .
I can't see anything but benefits . I mean , around that area you have lots of cabins and lots of places to stay . So if you want to , go there in the evening , the night .
Well , I'm not talking about make a evening of it on the way to peggy's cove , like everyone and their dog goes up to peggy's cove in the summertime right yeah it . Uh , it's a great spot for it . I mean , there's no , there's less light pollution is yeah , it's very dark .
Yeah , you step out of your car in the summer and you see the Milky Way .
That's where I live . Right , I'm out in Prospect .
Yeah , it's wonderful .
It's pretty awesome up there . I mean , I know you said grade 6 to 9 or maybe more or whatever , but I can imagine my wife teaches grade 3 , so I can only imagine that . You know , take a couple grade 3s out there , that they'd probably be pretty amazed .
Oh , absolutely , and as soon as we've got that telescope there , if people want to , you know contact me at learn to stargazecom . You've got a contact us page on the website then . And then you know , I'll probably assign a grad student , or maybe myself will do it , and they'll they can go out and do a tour with the telescope .
Have them look through the afternoon point would love a tour . You can definitely have a tour . Can we do stars and beers ? Beers and stars .
That sounds like an absolutely wonderful event . I think we should do that , yeah . And then you have to stay in the cabins . Don't want you driving home .
Okay , I'll just get my white shirt and pick this up . There you go , there you go . No , that sounds like a good time , volunteering , volunteering her .
So , matt , I was asking you before the show . I said what do you want to talk to john about ? You said , oh yeah , I want to talk about . I took notes . What was it you want ? So I
¶ Planets, Stars, and Asteroids
want to ask you . I read this article recently that uh , uh , there was a I don't know a theory that jupiter may have been a dead star oh yeah , I think it depends on your definition of star , and so think about what a star is .
You know , a star is when enough mass gets together , enough gravity gets together , that in its core , that pressure inside it starts fusing , in our sun's case , hydrogen , into helium . So you have this process by which you have enough mass that it causes fusion to happen . So Jupiter is simply not that big .
That's what this was kind of saying . But what they were saying is it was like basically a doomed star , Like in the dawn of time . It got into a battle with our sun star and it basically lost the tug of war .
Sure , I mean , that's one way to think about it . If you think about how we can observe solar systems being created , you use your telescopes when we look at big clouds of dust in space and you see other solar systems being created .
You see new stars being born , right , and so that gas is collapsing and as it collapses it rotates and it sort of spins itself into this disk , and then that gas collapses more and itself into this disk , and then that that gas collapses more and you get stars , and if there's heavy stuff , you get planets , and then out on the exterior you get comets , and
then you know you wait enough time and you've got a solar system .
Yeah , and , and that's why most solar systems actually have more than one sun yeah , yeah , exactly , yeah , you can have yeah , and that's what that blaze star is that we were talking about earlier , and although I I think that's something I think you also saw in the news , where they're like oh , a blaze star is going to show up in the sky , that's a case
where you've got two stars in the same system , you've got a big star and you've got a little star , and they're sharing gas between them , and so that's all that is .
I find that so fascinating . If you put your astrometeorologist hat on , do you think that storm's going to end on Jupiter ? Oh , I don't know .
I mean , as far as we know , it's been going on for 400 years , 350 , 400 years , yeah and maybe because of the size of Jupiter and the energy it has , maybe it'll almost never end , yeah .
So everyone doesn't know .
It energy it has . Maybe it'll almost never end . Yeah , it doesn't know it's the red dot yeah , the big , the big red dot on jupiter . And you know , because if we look at um some of the other gas giants and it's maybe depends on their mass , like neptune has one as well yeah and you can . You can see that it's got this sort of similar shaped storm .
And then saturn's a little different . Saturn seems to have this hexagon that forms at its poles . It's hexagon shape and that's sort of the natural pattern that flows out of its size and and and rotation .
I had a question for you too about um , so in the in the Kuiper belt they have , they've deemed the um uh series , which is like a dwarf planet . Okay , how did they , like I , how did they ? I find dwarf planets such a cop-out name Because it's like , is it a planet or is it not a planet ?
Just like shit or get off the pot type of thing , right , and it's like , stuck in the middle of this belt of rocks and meteors and whatever right , how's that thing even still considered a planet and how's it not completely banged up ?
Maybe I think it is pretty banged up , I mean imagine . Look at that thing . Did you see the expanse ? No , cirrus Station , the expanse , okay Anyway .
Yeah , I find that it's funny . We have this dwarf planet Pluto . Pluto was at one point a legit planet .
We talked about this before we uh , you know , we demoted pluto pluto's I think pluto got a promotion , a promotion , a binary planetary system there with sharon , it's , it's , buddy . Yeah , you know , I mean pluto's pretty cool , and when you get there you see this big giant pink heart .
I think pluto is cool and that's why I think classing it in the same like category as serieseres is kind of lame . Ceres just looks like to me . It just looks like a really , really big rock in the . I mean , I guess that's every planet , but you know what I mean . It looks like a meteor just floating in the middle of the Kuiper Belt , type of thing .
It doesn't really look like a planet .
Yeah , I think . If I recall , though , ceres is in the asteroid belt , so series so Jupiter or Saturn and Jupiter , pluto takes about 15 years to get to , or I think I think new horizons , the took about nine years to get there . It was booking it going really fast . You could probably get to series in in about a year .
Okay , yeah , and so it's .
it's actually quite a bit closer . I think it's in the asteroid belt asteroid belt .
That's what it was saying . Yeah , it's in there . Maybe that's right . Pluto's in the kuiper belt series , yes , series in the asteroid point . So and then ?
so vesta would be the other sort of big body out there . They're also pretty small though , so so pluto and the moon are more similarly similar size . Yeah , series and vesta are like a lot smaller than the moon , so there's a big size difference between those two as well .
So speaking of the moon , I think I read something , is it uh ? Is it coming up in the next year ?
I was reading that there's an ash no 2029 , I think is what it is uh that they're supposed to be some sort of like asteroid that actually passes , like a significant one that passes between us and the moon , and it's like you know , it's like doomsday maybe um , it's pretty funny .
I like to my wife on the weekend .
She was like uh , that's scary . I'm like , and they're tracking this stuff , they know what they're well , hilariously , we had this big joke .
So so johns hopkins university was in charge of the dart mission remember that and that's where they blew up . That ass effectively blew up the asteroid there and we had that . They had the meme with the dinosaur , the t-rex , and he's like that's how it feels , and so you know if there was basically the movie armageddon yeah .
So if there was an asteroid , you know , with um , you know greater than a one in ten thousand chance of intersecting the earth within a decade , uh , at this point I think it would be pretty trivial to move it . Yeah , because all you do is you have enough lead time .
You know , because I think I think we track about 600,000 asteroids on radar , wow , and then we know where they're going for the next thousand years or so and where they'll be , just from doing math .
And so if you did see one of those that got perturbed in such a way that it was going to intersect the Earth with a higher probability , I think we'd just go and move it . Yeah , I was actually reading just go and move it .
Yeah , I was actually reading about how they move like stuff and it's quite fascinating . But I also read that they don't want to like jump on it too early because they could also kind of screw
¶ Space Debris Mitigation and Moon Dumping
it up .
And yeah , I mean it's the same thing with debris mitigation , which is happening , I feel like , about once , a once a week now where where Space Force in the United States , out of Vandenberg , will call a satellite operator and be like hey , there's less than a one in 10,000 chance that a piece of space debris is going to move your spacecraft .
You need to move your spacecraft , and what happens , though , is they need to be very careful , because what if you move your spacecraft into a more dangerous situation ?
So they're very careful about you know , you want to adjust the orbit of your spacecraft to that minimum requirement of less than one in 10,000 chance of a conjunction between the spacecraft and the piece of space junk , so that you don't cause it to . You know cause ? Then you've got to redo the math , and it might .
You might have a higher probability of conjunction with some other piece of junk .
And there's like a whole bunch of stuff up there .
Yeah , so last they were tracking they were tracking 27,000 pieces last time I checked and that's anything bigger than a deck of cards , um , and and I mean , that's a . That's big .
That's a big deal right now , especially if you had a foreign power that like didn't want gps anymore or didn't want spy satellites anymore send some stuff up there to interfere yeah , because hypothetically , you could just eliminate the use of space entirely by just creating a debris field around the earth intentionally , and so that's a big risk right now that I know
at least the united states military is working on . How do you mitigate that ? If it happens , how do you clean it up ? Should we clean up what's already there ?
Now , you know , should you have a policy in place and my proposal was a one-up , one-down policy and so if for every 180 kilograms you're putting into space , you need to take a piece of space junk down , and so 180 kilograms called an aspa class satellite , they're pretty , they're like the size of a dishwasher so for every one of those , those that you put in
space , you need to have a little cube set that goes in bags and tags , you know , a piece of space junk and pulls it down Can you just push it further out of orbit . Yeah , sometimes you do that . It depends on how you are .
So anything below about 500 kilometers in altitude is going to come down over the next few years anyway , and you could sort of pull stuff down a little quicker . If you're over 1,000 kilometers in altitude , usually it's better to just push it up higher into an orbit that's not used anymore .
What would be the problem with us just treating the moon like our dumping ground ?
The problem is just cost .
Yeah , just cost . But I mean there's nothing there . People get all bent out of shape to like . You know , I see comments on facebook and they're like oh , you know , we're doing enough damage to our own planet , why do it ?
But I'm like there's nothing on the moon , there's nothing like it's yeah , like we look cool about like a little garbage hat like a little pile of man you're making a picture just a big pile of tires on the moon , just on fire .
It's like the Simpsons , it's just like burning Eternal burning fire , and then we used all of the moon .
We had to go further . You filled it up and then you look at the night sky and the moon would just be a different color . We got .
Mars , we can get there . We can get there . That's good here we go .
So we were talking about , Before you got here . Another question , another article that I read . I just wanted your thoughts on it . I'll get you to explain it too , but I was reading an article about oh there you go Dogs .
It's a dog-friendly place . Yeah , exactly , we get a puppy in there every now and then . He just wanted to say hi .
¶ Exploring Dyson Spheres and AI Future
Exactly Dyson Spheres . Oh yeah , They've recently , I guess , kind of discovered that they could potentially be actually real , because they were kind of theoretical before , I believe .
I mean , I don't so Dyson .
Sorry Matt , so go back . So Dyson Spear let's .
Do you want to explain what it is ? No , I don't want to explain what it is .
So you have a star and a star puts out just an incredible amount of energy , and let's say you wanted a bunch of energy to maybe travel between the stars and you need the entire energy of a star , and so what you would do effectively is maybe you mine the asteroid , the asteroid belt , for all the iron and you build a sphere around the entire star , you put
I don't know solar panels on the inside of it and so you collect a hundred percent of the energy coming out of out of a star and and it's a lot like trillion , trillion , trillion , trillion trillion times as much energy as , like , humans use . And and then so effectively , the idea is okay .
Well , maybe if we're looking for aliens or something you would look for Dyson spheres in space .
Right .
And look for these stars that had been blocked out by some sort of sphere . So you know , it almost looked like if you were observing , you'd have a black hole , what looks like a black hole , but it's not . Maybe , uh , because it's been covered by a uh , basically a sphere of organic black yeah . Yeah and uh , so I don't know .
So Freeman Dyson , the author , really cool guy . I just read a book by him which was really good , called the Scientist and the Rebel , and he basically goes through all the scientists in history , the ones that were really rebellious and tells their story .
Now , AI would need one of these things in order for it to really take over the Earth , right ?
That's true . Yeah , I think you could take over the earth a lot more easily than having to build a Dyson sphere .
You know what Actually ? We had a conversation we had a guy on last week , Giles Crouch .
Yeah , he's going to be on and he's kind of like a bit of a futurist and he also , but he's a digital anthropologist , yeah , and he talked about how he's not worried about AI , because it would have to take all of the energy that the Earth can produce in order for it to get to the point where it's , at the level of a human brain .
It can never get as intelligent as a human brain . Sometimes I feel like AI is smarter than me already . I think it passed me a few years ago . You know what ?
it's not yet , because I I , as we were , we were talking about this . So the meta ai thing , we were talking about this and I use it . Some people hate it , but I love it . I use it to create cool images .
I have a picture on there of thanos fighting red hulk and green hulk uh , to show my son , and I get it if my son wants to read stories and he's almost three and he says like , oh , I want to hear a story about you , know one that we were talking about . It's like I want to hear a story about you .
You can't just make up a story , you can't just make up a story , entertain a three year old . I sure my wife is actually the one who said like hey , you know what ? Because my wife can't , apparently . And she was like hey , you know what I do ? I just use the Meta AI and I just tell them what I want to hear .
And I was like , oh , that's a good idea . What if the AI robot falls in love with your child and eventually tries to replace you as parents ?
It can't , it can't have .
It can't experience that it's , although I think things happen really slow , and then they happen fast like .
in terms of technological change , we're in a fast jump right now , I believe , with AI .
Here's me being a futurist and I'm just coming up with this right now . You've got humanoid robots and they've never really worked . They're clumsy . You have Atlas and the Boston Dynamics one the same companies that makes that dog and you have Tesla bots , and then you have a bunch of ones in Japan .
I think there's going to be an inflection point where we're actually going to see those in our daily lives .
Yeah , and it's , and it's going to be it's going to be like the .
It's going to be like iPhone fast . Yeah , and then all of a sudden , they're going to be everywhere and then there'll be another inflection point where , instead of like , looking like the robots from I movie with Will's or I robot with Will Smith , they're going to look like people and that's .
And I think there's going to be a point where that that I think there's going to be a point where that is normal .
I think that I totally agree with that . I guess maybe some solace that I take with Giles' theory of the energy is not because our brains are like the energy . Our brains are an anomaly , right , the amount of energy that they can take . There's so much there and they can't quite fully explain , like , why they fire the way that they do .
And , uh , so I actually said a funny little , I said cool movie would be that ai has to like be . It's a zombie ai movie where it has to human brains in order to power itself , kind of thing .
So anyway , um , but I like his , I like that theory that it can never get to that level , because he said it will always need a creative mind and it can never truly be a creative mind . It has to do its research , it can't make something up .
So I was like , okay , that's a cool theory , right , because even though AI can search the Internet , when I say I want to hear a story about how Venom and Carnage fight the Silver Surfer , they go .
It scans the internet , it finds out who Venom is , it finds out who Carnage is , finds out who Silver Surfer is and all their characteristics and everything , and it tells me a story . And you know what ? The reason why I started doing them is because I can make up my own stories , but when I tell them to do it , I'm actually entertained too .
Because , there's some twists that it gives me there , right , and some of them are predictable . But it's pretty good , right . But in the end it needed my creativity and I have to ask for more , I have to expand it and all that stuff . So it's like I don't know .
I think it will always need a creative mind , but big fan of meta AI because I think it's fun .
I think it's cool too . It helps us out . But , yeah , meta ai because I think it's fun . Yeah , I think it's cool too . Uh , it helps us out . Yeah but but yeah , anyway , so back back to you in space , back to space . You're an expert in right .
We had the ai expert on there , so we'll try yeah , I don't know , I don't know anything about neurology and I don't know , I don't really know anything about ai , uh , except I think it's a , it's a pretty good proof reader , yeah , so I tested it to see if it would be a competitor to me .
You know because , because I make , I make a living as an author really you know , I write . I write stargazing guidebooks , and so I . So I tried to ai . I'm like , hey , can you come up with a list of targets to see tonight in the night sky ?
And I asked it a thousand different ways and , and , and I could not get it to come up with a good list of things to see that surprises me that that met my criteria . Okay , and I would give it criteria .
I'm like , hey , no messier items , no planets whatever , and it it could not do it yeah , I'm sure that'll maybe it's because I was just using chat gbt 3.5 instead of four , I don't know . Yeah , um , but that gave me confidence that at least I'll still have a job for the next little while .
Six months . Six months , but what's ? Some of the newest things that you've discovered . I know you're constantly excited about what's going on out there .
What's the newest thing in space ?
What are you , I'd say , obsessing about these days ? Oh , I'm just trying to pass my class .
So I'm at Johns Hopkins doing space systems engineering . So I'm doing spacecraft design all the time . It does , and so currently it's funny I'm taking- a course called electro-optics which should really just be called cameras and lenses , but no , it's called electro-optics and what's really blowing my mind right now , and I think that's important .
I learn something every week that completely blows my mind now and I think that's important . I learn something every week that completely blows my mind , and sometimes it's historical and sometimes it's forward-looking .
And so one of the historical things for example , like the spy satellites that the Americans used If they wanted to spy on Russia during the Cold War this was in the 60s they would literally launch a spacecraft with a telescope the size of Hubble and on that spacecraft spacecraft it would have like 300 kilometers of film .
They would fly over russia , take their pictures , the capsule full of that film would eject out of the spacecraft . It would re-enter in like new mexico or something . They would fly over new mexico in a cargo plane with a hook , catch the parachute , get it in , get it back to like head , the air force headquarters or whatever .
Develop the film , blow up the pictures under like eight sheets of paper and then use like a microscope to go and look at the images , or magnifying glass and then look at what the Russians were doing . And this is the sixties . This is how they did it , because they didn't have digital cameras , right .
And then the first digital camera blows my mind , and they use this on deep space missions . Like how simple it was the entire camera , get this . The entire camera was just four fiber optic cables .
Oh .
That's it Crazy . And basically what you would do is you you would have one , for it's called pan optics , so it'd be all wavelengths of light .
Then you have a red , green and blue , and and so the those , that's four or five roctic cables , only let in that those colors of light , and then one for every color of light , and so there's like one pixel or one little bit of color information , and then what would happen is , as the satellite would go , you sweep out lines , and so these , these four leds .
What you do is you'd use a mirror or the leds , they would rock back and forth , and and then the spacecraft would move forward .
So you're effectively scanning the earth , or scanning , in this case , the example I was thinking I was the first mission to mars , yeah , and they would , and it would basically just take count the number of light photons that would go into each of these fiber optic cables . That was the extent of the complexity in the camera at the time , and then .
So , basically what you would have , what the spacecraft was . Wow , what the spacecraft would send back to earth would just be a list of numbers in a box , and they would . The numbers would come in one at a time , basically how many photons went into each , each of these cables , and there's a number from like 1 to 256 , like computer numbers , right .
And then what they would do is they would have a big in . In the case of the mars mission , they had a big whiteboard and colored pencils and they would go on the whiteboard and had all the numbers and they would color it in on the number that they got back . And then you would go as the spacecraft was delivering its numbers .
All right , this cell is the power of pixel art blue and you're gonna it's got a value of 180 , you'd fill it in and then so they'd go with their colored pencils and they'd go and fill in all the numbers . Remember , this is the 60s and digital cameras weren't invented .
All they had were these mirror that rocked back and forth a spacecraft going forward , but that was the digital camera at the time and then when you stood back at the back of the room and looked at the wall with all your colored pencils . There was the image Amazing . And that's how the first camera worked . That's so cool , hilariously .
That's so cool , hilariously . And here's what blew my mind . I was looking at how the latest google earth camera works on the modern spacecraft they're getting . They're getting 30 centimeter resolution . The new one's actually getting 15 centimeter resolution on earth , which is pretty crazy .
But currently , like world , it's a spacecraft called world worldview 3 and that's where most of the google earth images come from . But the hilarious thing to me is that it almost does exactly the same thing instead of a normal camera .
Like when we take a picture on a camera , it basically projects an image , the image physically shows up at the back of the camera and then it gets sort of embedded into your , into your chip , cmos or ccd , whichever technology you're using .
But in the spacecraft it basically literally just has a row of pixels and then , as the spacecraft moves over the earth , it scans it just like your scanner in your computer and so yeah , yeah and , and so that's like a rock in my mind .
And so you have in the worldview 3 , has a , has a 35 000 pixels wide , and that's what it is , and then you have another one for if you're looking at infrared , and the infrared photons are fatter or wider , and so you only have 9 000 pixels for detecting infrared light .
And the other thing that blew my mind this week so I'm just going through things that I think are crazy sure is that the I think it was the us government made it illegal in infrared light to see anything smaller than seven meters or seven and a half meters in size , for whatever reason National security , I don't know , anyway , so what they were doing , but the
spacecraft , sorry why would you think they'd do that ?
I have no idea Anyway . So they seven idea anyway .
so they seven below seven meters , so seven meters , this is from space . 21 feet , yeah , so an altitude of 700 kilometers , with the spacecraft orbit at um , because they cover the entire , they photograph the entire earth every day now , what could they possibly be concerned about ? I don't know , and so they were only allowing seven meters .
And so these companies , the spacecraft , the telescope , resolution is actually in in infrared . So this is you can see stuff at night like people walk around , and stuff is is actually three meters . It gives them three meters , so the government was coming in and down sampling the images to make the resolution lower so that they could obey the law .
¶ Infrared Imaging and Space Telescopes
And so I'm reading these papers this week and they're talking about the companies fighting back and finally being able to release . Have the government release it and allow them to have higher definition . How higher definition ?
uh , images in the infrared it was photobombing aliens , yeah , and so I I thought that was that was super .
It must be all the concern of people being in the wrong place at the wrong time , like how could you take you couldn't take an infrared image and pin it to a person , could you ?
no , you're talking about at that point you're probably talking vehicles , anything that's large and makes heat right , but like you know why america would care about that I don't know that's . That's what I was curious they have .
They have vehicles where they shouldn't , yeah no , I think .
I think there's a the rule too with with 30 centimeters is a rule for the public . So anything , anything under 30 centimeters , so that would be like a face or a license plate or something that is . That's a no-no . So you're not supposed to take pictures of space that are more fine detail than that . Now they're allowing 15 centimeters going forward in cities .
Okay , so what about like the James Webb ? Like that thing takes insanely detailed pictures of space .
Yeah , but it never points at Earth . So James Webb is nowhere . James Webb is a million kilometers away right , yeah , it's at lagrange point , that's the stable orbit on the other side of the moon . Yeah , um , on the other side of the moon's orbit , sorry , and and so it's a million kilometers away and I can't point .
If it points at the earth , it'd be pointing at the sun and that would just it would just burn up yeah , gotcha , gotcha , because that like it takes amazing pictures , it does but they're , but they're not necessarily .
Um , you know if , if it turned around or hypothetically pointed at earth , it wouldn't have very good resolution at all , like it would each pixel ?
would be like , you know , if you bring something too close to your eyes , like no , it'd be the opposite .
Each like pixel would be like a kilometer in size , just because it's so far away .
Okay , yeah , and with the James Webb . It's like pretty much am I right to say like , as it feels depth or whatever . It's kind of colorizing it . Is that how we see those beautiful colorful images ?
So James Webb is an infrared telescope . Right , and the reason it wants to be sensitive in the infrared is it's looking at stuff that's really far away .
Right .
And , as in the infrared is , it's looking at stuff that's really far away , right , and as the universe expands , a regular light wave gets stretched out . So it might have once upon a time been a visible light ray that would be detectable through a regular telescope or with our eye , but if it passes through enough space , then it just stretches out .
Yeah , and so you want to . You want to be sensitive at infrared wavelengths if you're looking at things that are in , you know , several billion light years away okay yeah , but hubble , hubble is visible as well . So so what ? Basically , what you'll do ?
Um , all cameras are black and white cameras , all cameras , even on your phone , and then they have filters on each pixel that decide whether to let in a red , green or blue photon . And , um , so the space telescopes are the same way , but you can get higher detail if you only take a black and white image or you only take an infrared image .
And then you , if it's something the human eye can't see , like we can't see in the infrared , but all the light coming from deep space is the infrared . And so when we actually expose the as a photograph to put on the internet , you're just going to color it purple or something .
And so when we actually expose the as a photograph to put on the internet , you're just going to color it purple or something , and so basically , that's not a real color purple's not a real color , um , and so that's what they'll do , and so they have .
Especially , they have assigned every uh wavelength of light a specific color , and so , like uv would have a color , and you know , um , and they're usually assigned by the type , by the element that is emitting that light .
So it'd be like oxygen three and that would have a specific color Hydrogen , uh , hydrogen alpha has a specific color and and it'd be related to you know whatever filter they're putting on the telescope at the time or whatnot . But yeah , so that's how they make , that's how they make those images .
It's some people call it false color , but that that I find that term doesn't really make any sense .
Um , you know , super cameras very cool yeah so you're just , your whole life is cameras right now . Well , yeah , my whole life is electro-optical systems .
So yeah , so my current assignment and it's literally just for a grad school course , despite me having to , like , write letters to the us military and try and get the specs on their telescopes uh yeah , it's just to design an electro-optic system so like a worldview google earth style telescope to take photos of the earth .
The requirement is it has to be 30 centimeters resolution and revisit every place on earth once per day . So basically , it's stuff that's already been done and so we're just , you know , for the purpose of this uh course , just recreating it .
Yeah so still really cool if you want to have your wedding on the moon , john will be your photographer , be your photographer .
Yeah , there's actually a telescope that's being created in chile uh , I forget the name of it's like called . You know these ?
they have the names like ultra , super , duper , giant telescope , yeah , like it's in the mountains there , yeah , so they've got a whole bunch of them .
Yeah , yeah , like the extremely large telescope is one example , and that's you know great at elt , great at naming them , yeah , so there's one that actually it's .
It's , it's mirror is going to be large enough that it can see detail , like it could see something as small as a car on the moon not that you'd necessarily want to , and it would just be like one pixel and I'm not sure they'll ever point it at the moon .
But , like in a hypothetical situation , you actually have a telescope that big it's , you know , for the price of 10 billion dollars yeah , so are you building a spacecraft as well ? you're helping , oh yeah , so during the capstone uh project for just grad school . So we did a small sat where we actually went to Johns Hopkins university .
Uh , we were on campus with my team and then we we put it together out of the kit . It was a lot of fun . It was a lot of fun .
Yeah .
Um , uh , basically , the goal wasn't necessarily to build the spacecraft for the program . The goal was to develop an integration test program .
Okay .
But using the spacecraft as sort of our tool tool du jour . But that was a lot of fun . So there's pictures on my Learn to Stargaze Instagram of me holding this spacecraft , Because it was pretty small 20 centimeters by 20 centimeters was the size of it . Oh , it was a small spacecraft yeah , so it's a . Sent a few crickets to space . It was called ISAT .
Yeah , so it was a training module developed by the US military for training their space systems engineers . So IS is a baby eagle Cool , or baby falcon , I forget which and so that's what the spacecraft was named after .
So you launched this thing into space ? No , no , we just built , we just constructed it , okay , he made a model .
Yeah , he made a model . Yeah , it was a model and it functions , so you hang it from a string . I did the same thing when I was 10 .
I made a car once you could do what's called safing the spacecraft . And so you'd point a light at it and it would come to the light .
Okay , yeah , it's fun stuff like that . That's still cool , though . Yeah , that's really cool .
That's super cool so most of my classmates work for the Applied Physics Laboratory and for this particular class a lot of people were at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and they were very sad because a lot of their coworkers got laid off because they submitted a budget for the Mars sample return mission and that's where they wanted to get back 30 vials of Martian soil by
2040 . And the budget came in at $11 billion for the mission . And when they submitted the budget , the powers that be basically said no and please eliminate 20% of your workforce or something as sort of a consequence and then get the , basically get the budget down to a reasonable price of $4 billion , $4 or $5 billion , yeah .
So compare that to the United States I think it was today or yesterday proposed a new ICBM program at $140 billion for missiles , and so you can sort of compare . This is not even really a NASA mission .
Well , I guess it's a .
NASA-funded mission .
Yeah , but they're getting peanuts in comparison at the end of the day .
So if you compare the two missions , a 20-year Mars sample return mission for $4 billion versus your ICBM program for the military that came out around the same time and you can see the compare and contrast between the two budgets there $4 versus $140 billion .
Is Space Force getting off the ground in you in the united states ?
like is no so my understanding , so space force . Earlier it used to be a division of the uh um the air force right um you know , donald trump creation yeah , so he just he just officially broke it , apart from the air force , yeah , but they've also .
They've always been bigger than nasa , and so primarily they launch out of vandenberg Air Force Base , which is just north of Santa Barbara in California , and they launch quite a bit of hardware into space .
Their budgets are bigger than NASA's and pound per pound , they're probably launching a lot more stuff , and most of it is spy satellites that are absolutely massive machines .
Wow , I can tell you the TV show was funny with Steve Carell .
Yeah , I never watched it . I came and went . It got really bad reviews . I never bothered .
Yeah , you know what ?
It had its moments . Yeah , yeah , it had its moments I love .
Steve .
Carell . That's the thing I like , steve Carell .
Those were the moments . Those were the moments . Those were the moments when Steve Carell was on screen . So when are you done this school like this current program . Is that all wrapping up soon ?
Yeah , so hopefully I'll graduate . I've done all my core courses . I've done my capstone project . I just have , after this course , three electives , and so I plan to graduate in May of next year ?
When are you going to stop being a student ?
I think that's it for me .
Oh , really , I was hoping you'd say never it's something intellectual that's cliche , bronson , yeah , I'll probably never be unless . I get an honorary . I'll probably never be Dr Reed .
But I really need to focus on getting the telescope set up and the observatory set up here on Prospect Road , there near Peggy's Cove . That's my project .
I love that program . I think it's an awesome idea and we totally support it . And please let us know If we can share progress on it on the Pint page .
I mean , you know we've got a great page going with a lot of followers . I think the biggest milestone will be getting the telescope moved over .
Right , so we need the city to approve the building permit yeah , so we need the city to approve the building permit and then getting the actual device moved over , with the rotating dome and everything so that's going to be really exciting there you go .
It's a good time , it's a good time to put some pressure and then just getting that development agreement approved so that we have permission to run a business on the property . There you go .
¶ Telescope Launch Expedition Cheers
John , I realize our battery is going low and maybe it would be a good time to wrap up . We've almost had an hour , so yeah , jeez man this was great .
It goes by so fast .
Yeah , so round three is welcomed Absolutely .
Telescope launch .
Maybe that will be on video , maybe we'll come down and check the place out .
Oh , we could do one live . Yeah , yeah , we can sign an observatory .
Yeah , we plan on getting the show in a video real soon . So that would be a fun expedition . Sure , would , yeah , man . But once again , thank you so much and cheers .
Cheers , cheers .