All right, everybody, it's the mid term. It is the midterms that we're halfway through the season. Yep, we're at episode six. How do y'all feel? I hope y'all have been studying and are ready for this quiz we're about to post. Don't worry, there'll be a curve. Anybody took a class with me, you will know that it's not how it goes. I'm TT and I'm Zachiah and from Spotify Studios. This is Dope Labs. Okay, so did you watch Homecoming? Did I how many times have you watched it? Right?
I've only watched it one time, but I'm planning on watching it after this because I feel like every morning I need to I need to wake up two hours early so I can start Homecoming and really get my mind right for it'll be everyone's daily devotional. That's exactly what it's like. I mean, she's been stre on y'all's next, okay, but she's really saying like, bow down for real, Yeah,
you have no choice. She showed us her not only that she is, you know, at the top of her game as far as vocals and entertaining, but also that she has the work ethic of there's not really nothing to compare her to she You have to have the Beyonce work ethic. That's the that's the new gold standard, honestly, Like Beyonce said that basically all she was eating was air molecules and eight counts for a year and a half.
I don't understand. She was like, I rehears four months with the band and then four months with the dancers, and I was like, huh what, I don't do anything with that much advanced notice. I couldn't even get that prepared. If I wanted to write like something's happening in four months, I'm like, Okay, get back to me in three months and twenty five days. Yeah, I'll let you know if I'm up for it. It was just great to see that type of passion, you know, and just somebody that
was just working day and night. Right, And why is Beyonce never out of breath? Ever? I don't know if she has a built in what's those things that the respirator. I don't know if she has a built in respirator. I don't know what's going on. I'm like, she was dropping down, getting up, moving around with the dancers and I'm like, the dancers gotta be tired. They not singing, They not singing, and they're heaving okay yeah, and Beyonce
is like, y'all all right back there. I'm like, man, I would have had to crush up some a leave and make a paste. I would put the paste on my knees and saran rappids. I could not move like that for that long. That's crazy, just aching, And I'm like, do you know how do you get better than Beyonce? You don't. I think the only person who it's possible is Blue because she's watching Beyonce. She had Beyonce's breast milk. I think that's the only way you can get the
levels Beyonce. You gotta have ingested her breast milk. Yeah. But I mean, when you think about it, that's the reason why we called somebody like Beyonce a star. Yeah, that's sheer star power for real. It's so concentrated it hurts your eyes to even look at her. It's not the sequence. Yeah, the sequence aren't even doing it. It's Beyonce herself. It's it's our ara and we're just all just happy to be there. She's a star and I'm
just Stardust, just hanging out. Like so today we're gonna talk about stars and not just superstars here on Earth. We want to talk about the stars in our sky, but we actually think that there's a lot of similarities between the two, between the stars and the sky and Beyonce absolutely. Okay, so let's get into the recitation. So let's start with what we know. We know that Beyonce is unlike anybody else on this planet, and we also know that stars are very unique. So we know that
the Sun is a star. Yes, we know the Sun is a star. I know a little bit about those planets. Men are from Venus, I mean, what does that from Mars? Women are from Venus? Okay, yeah, which, but I also know that that's actually not true. Yeah, and all here on Earth. And then we also know that, you know, that's saying that we learned in probably like middle school. My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas or something like that. But something happened to Pluto. Yeah, people
not talking about it. Yeah, so that was supposed to let you know, like Murcury, Venus, Earth, Mars, your mother didn't serve the rights and I remember that's just good Okay, so I got to go back to middle school. Basically, the other thing we know is the big Dipper and a little dipper. Right, there are constellations, but that's it. That's the extent of my knowledge in the North Star wherever it is, nor Yeah, that's right, shout out to
Harriet Tubman. And So I feel like when I started talking about space, there's so little that I know, and I feel like it's actually holding me back from really enjoying some of the films, Like some of the movies that I like, I'm like, why is it taking them a long time? Is that a short place to go? Because I always get gallic sees and universe and solar system,
I get all those things mixed up, right. I hope that after this episode, I'm gonna go back and watch Interstellar and just try to see if I can make sense of some things. Probably won't. It was a very confusing movie.
You know.
One of the things I've always been really really interested in is like shine and shine and shine and shineing. Yeah, like when you think about the sun, how is the sun power? What is the fuel? What is power? And Beyonce, we saw a little bit of that in Homecoming yeah, we did, but I still was like, girl, what's the code so I can do a step left, left left, jump down? I'm like, I need the eight count so I can unlock a better meat. So that's a question
I'm gonna have off gate, okay, Like what fuels? What's the star? What is it? I mean, I know what a star is, do we really what makes something a star? What makes something to start?
Like?
What are the properties? What are the qualities of a star? Right? I think I want to know, like what sustains a star? Like how does it keep going and going? Because I think that they last for ever, right or for a long time until they they burn out? But what keeps them going for so long? And what determines to burnout? Right? Yeah, that's a really good question. And then I also have
questions about just like constellations and planets in general. I know that Pluto isn't a planet anymore, but I don't really get what makes a planet, Like how do you determine whether something is a planet or not? Yeah? Or constellation? We're in constellation? Like the only constellation I really know is the Big Dipper Orion's Belt, the stars, the cosmos. That's not my strong point, not mine either, Like I think I know maybe some physics, U huh, but nah,
not really. I've always been terrible at that, and so you know, we had to call in the reinforcements. Absolutely, it's very needed in this episode. So let's get into the dissection, and in honor of homecoming, we brought out a student this week.
So my name is Amy Steele, and I'm an astronomy PhD Candidate at the University of Maryland. That's fancy speak for I'm a student.
There are some basic things that we know, right T T. Yeah. I think one of the things that we know about stars is that they're mostly hydrogen gas.
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and stars are mostly made up out of hydrogen.
I understand they're mostly hydrogen, but then what what else? In the cores of stars?
You have fusion going on, where you're combining hydrogen into helium, and that process releases not really that much energy, but it happens so many times that it ends up being a lot of energy.
Yes, fusion, I remember you explaining that. Yeah, that's when you put to nuclei together and it gives off a lot of energy.
That energy comes out at us the light that makes us hot.
So hydrogen is like the IT factor. Yeah, the stars, that's what's making them glow, and so that IT factor can determine whether or not you're a big star or a little star. So that's the difference between being Rihanna or Rita Aura. Yeah. But stars have the same risk though, right, Like they can run out of fuel or not be relevant. Right, So what happens when a star runs out of fuel, like or it runs out of hydrogen.
It's not like a star can go to a gas station. So it forms with a set amount of hydrogen and it uses up that hydrogen over the course of its lifetime, and when that hydrogen is gone, it's gone.
So wait a second, does that mean that someday that the Sun is gonna run out of hydrogen? Yeah, but that's still like at least five billion years away. Oh so we're good. We're good. Okay, So now we know that it's not complete lights out for the Sun. The first thing that we have to know about a real star is that everything revolves around you, literally, but also
everything exists because of you. So when the Sun, our star was being formed, it was basically like, okay, ladies, Dallat's get information.
A stellar system isn't formed for the planets. The planets form as a result of the star forming itself. The star is the star of the show.
And all of the planets, the Earth, the Moon, all of that is just leftovers from the formation of the Sun. We're just a byproduct. We're just like a little crumb. The Sun is the cookie.
The Sun is the cookie, The Sun is the cake.
It just like we saw in Homecoming, Beyonce was dancing, those people are moving around her doing all that stuff. But you know, if I had to say, who are my favorite planets that orbit Beyonce lay Twins, Yes, Oh my goodness. They really know how to shine and they probably wouldn't be as well known without Beyonce. Like they are stars in their own right. Yeah, don't get me wrong, but with Beyonce bringing them close to her definitely took
them to another level. They're always together. Would they exist as real planets? Okay, so let's pull back a bit. If our solar system is made up the Sun the cookie and we're just the crumbs off the cookie, how did the cookie get made? How is the Sun formed? We want to see the ingredients. Yea, how many chocolate chips.
The way that it starts is you have this cloud, huge cloud of gas and dust, and there's some little bit of motion to.
It, but you need some kind of external stimulus, like you need something else nearby to go off and give a little bit of energy. Right, So sometimes it could be like a supernova nearby.
Eventually it'll start to spin and flatten like a pancake. Once the conditions are right for hydrogen to start fusing into helium, that process that makes stars shine. The star turns on and then the leftover bits that stuff starts to clump together, possibly sweeping up material as it's orbiting its new baby star. And that's how the planets form.
Lots of these crimes are just aggregating together and making bigger cookies. Yeah, bigger crumb balls, right, what are those donut holes? Munchkins? Bigger little munchkins. But how do you tell this is just a clump of crumbs or this is a legit planet?
So to be a planet, there are these three rules that you have to abide by, according to the International Astronomical Union.
So first you have to orbit the Sun. You actually have to travel around the Sun and follow that path over and over again.
So this is also why the Moon is not considered a planet because its primary orbit is around the Earth.
So the second thing is that you have to be the largest thing in your orbit. And the third thing is that you need to be roughly spherical.
So a lot of the asteroids that you'll see, they're elongated or they look like someone took two balls and just slapped them together.
Like an asteroid. Asteroids are just two rocks slammed together, and they have this really weird shape. So they could never be a planet. Your faith could never you bad built.
And so you have to have enough mass to have smoothed yourself into a roughly spherical shape.
So now that we have laid down the rules for what it takes to be a planet, what about the differences we see between the planets, right? I know that like Saturn has rings yep, and Neptune is like has like a lot of water. I'm just out here guessing. Let's see what Amy has to say.
Venus, Earth, and Mars are all pretty rocky, and then Jupiter, Soturn, you're in a Snaptune, those are all gassy. Overall, you have the small rocky things close to the star where it's hotter, and then you have the things that are more full of you know, gases that could potentially be boiled away if they were too close to something hot.
Those are farther out. Oh So that makes sense, right, because if we have any of those gassy things, they need to be in the core somewhere where they're protected from the sun. Otherwise they're all evaporated off and all we have left is the rock exactly. So these planets are set up perfectly in order to sustain themselves. So that's really interesting because that's kind of what Amy's job is. So she looks at debris from the formation of stars and she tries to figure out what they're made of.
So not our star, not the sun, but the formation of other stars. She looks at the debris around them. Well, why is there something going on with that? Like? Why is that stuff important? If it's just debris. When I think of debris, I think of trash on the side of the road, just blowing in the wind, But any things, it's important.
Knowing what those asteroids and comments are made of is pretty important in terms of figuring out how the Solar system formed.
In other words, in order to understand how a star is formed, you got to know what's going on around it.
You want to see what the material around those stars it's made of, so that we can begin to assess just how unique or not unique the rocky material in our solar system actually is.
Yes, and this gets me to my favorite thing, aliens. Right, because if the dust and rocks that surround other stars are similar to the dust and rocks that surround our star, the Sun, it helps us put our own star, our solar system in context. I feel like if those dust and rocks look like our dust and rocks, that means there could be an Earth in their solar system. Oh, I see where you're going. So you think that it's possible for there to be another Beyonce in another universe?
Highly unlikely, but could it be. I feel like it's more likely that there's Aliens then there's another Beyonce. Do you think it's possible that Yonce is an extra terrestrial? Absolutely? Her a salon that would make complete sense to me. Let me tell you something, if you said, heyby Ransom, test, Beyonce does not have the same composition as the rest of y'all. I would say accurate, not surprised. The odds are in her favor. Okay, she got different kind of dust,
she had different interstellar debris, everything different. It's crazy to think that our solar system is just one of many solar systems that's in our galaxy, and then our galaxy is just one tiny part of this huge universe. Right. You remember in Men in Black? When did you watch Men in Black? Yeah, at the end of the first Men in Black, when they were looking for that ball thing and it turned out to be a marble and
it was all these galaxies and stuff like that. That was the only time that my brain was able to understand that there are other galaxies out there. I was like, there's other galaxies, and these aliens are just playing marbles with the galaxies. But when we get back, we're going to start talking about things that are outside of our solar system. And we've just been talking about things that are in our solar system, our sun and the planets around it. But there are whole other solar systems just
like ours. Y'all thought y'all have a special didn't you. And we're back, so we've been talking mostly about our solar system, our Sun, our Earth, and the neighboring plants around it. But our solar system is just a small part of the Milky Way galaxy. And the Milky Way has over two hundred billion stars in it, which means billions of the planets, dust and debris that are a byproduct from the formation of those stars, and enough gas
and dust to make billions more. But when we think about that, how big is the Milky Way really?
So one way that you can think about that is in terms.
Of light years.
So a light year is a distance that light travels in one year.
That distance a light year is huge, huge, As an understatement for real, one light year is five point nine trillion miles. So you can do a round trip from the Earth to the Sun over thirty thousand times. That's crazy.
And the size of the Milky Way galaxy going from one end to the other is about one hundred thousand light years.
So now we're just this is just getting ridiculous. So we already said it's crazy, you're gonna go over thirty thousand times to Sun back to dirt, to Sun back to dirt. Now you're telling me multiply that by one hundred thousand too much, cannot compute and that's so crazy. Right, So when we think about all those miles that makes up our Milky Way, and then we're in our galaxy, we're saying there are over two hundred billion stars. I
think about us being able to see those stars. Like I used to go look at the stars at my grandparents' house and they didn't have a lot of light pollutions, so you can kind of see everything. And it just really occurred to me, like, hey, girl, you looking at other solar systems that are light years away, and because they're light years away, that light has to travel to me. That's not even what it looks like anymore. Oh, Like, refresh the screen. I want to see what the stars
look like right now? How do we make sense of all that? Like the only thing I really remember about the stars was being able to see the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, right, but I don't really know, Like, how do we determine what a constellation is?
Constellations are just a way of dividing up the sky or the celestial sphere into different regions.
So currently we have eighty eight constellations, So like, how on the surface of the Earth we have different countries cities states. Similarly, constellations help us organize the sky, and constellations have served a lot of practical purposes over the years, like agriculture. Yeah, way back before calendars, people used to use constellations to keep track of when the harvest crops. That's just crazy. Or navigation. You know, Molana, yes, is
out there on the sea. You say the line where this guy needs to see it calls me, that's exactly the part where I start tearing up. And she was putting her hand up and navigating that boat. Yeah, same thing. And the interesting thing about constellations is that even though we look at them and say like, oh, this is this constellation, it's the Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Orion's belt.
Two things that I found really interesting. One is that those stars aren't necessarily close to each other, right, So you could have a star that's really bright and it's close to you, or a star here that's dim, but it's dim because it's super far away compared to that bright star. And then the other thing is that the names we use for constellations, most of them come from like Greek mythology or ancient Roman stories, but they weren't
the only ones that were looking at the star. Come on, somebody, so the Messiah. Native American tribes, all of these different groups have had different names for those constellations in the sky, but only some of those names are in your textbook, SIPs Tea. I ain't saying, but I'm just saying so in our galaxy, constellations are there to help us make sense of things. But there are other things in our galaxy that, no matter how hard we try, they may
never make sense. Like black holes. We just got the very first picture of a black hole a couple weeks ago, and I don't know about you, but that terrified me. I don't want to see a black hole. Everybody dies in the movies when there's a black hole. Right, that black hole isn't even in our galaxy. I don't need that disrupting the space time continuum. Let things be as they are. Right. And so now people say, oh, pretty soon we should have a picture of a black hole
in our galaxy. No, I don't want no smoke from a black hole. Listen, leave it be. It might not light flash photography. You need to carry on as you were. It's like the Sas squad. Stop looking for it. Black holes.
I just my brain kind of gets a little too hot when I try to make sense of black holes.
Black Holes are massive pits where gravitational force is so strong it sucks in everything in its path, debris, dust, planets, light. And the way a black hole is formed is when a star dies and collapses in on itself. I got some stuff to throw on a black hole. I've got plenty stuff to throw on the black hole. Take mine, Witchie.
The Milky Way our galaxy. We have our own supermassive black hole, and it's called Sagittaries a star, and we just looked at a sort of an image of one in the galaxy see M. Eighty seven, which is really exciting.
So we do know we have one Sabarius a star. But I'm a little nervous. Right where are you a black hole in our galaxy? And are you close to us? That's what I write, because are we like right on the edge? Are we about to fall in? Are we in danger? Earth? You in danger? Girl?
So we are not close to the center of our galaxy. We are in the outskirts. We are in the boonies.
I want to be I don't want to be in the city next to the black hole. Another thing that can happen when the star dies is that it can become a white dwarf. What's that?
So if the sun is a flame, then a white dwarf is the ember after the flame is gone.
I think a black hole is like something that leaves this gaping opening and everybody misses them. Like Nipsey Hustle, a black black hole. Rest in peace will never be the same, and so like it affects affects everybody. But then a white dwarf is a star that kind of just has, you know, run its course and it's now, you know, a legend or something like that, like we'll never forget the shine it had, and now they're just enjoying their time as a white dwarf. Kind of like
Diana Ross. She not dead, she's not dead, but she's her career is her singing career is done. She's not singing. She just did something recently because it was her seventy fifth Oh god, okay, let's do something. Let's keep it. It's perfect. This reminds me of that time when I said Anita Baker and you thought I met Josephine Baker. Every time I think about that time and You're like the lady in black and white with the bananas. Who knows who knows? Who? Can never be really sure about
who's Anita Baker and who's Josephine Baker? No one. I love it. So that was a lot for both of us, right, I mean, we are in our recording studio and it is hot in here from all of us being like what, my brain is overheated. But I think we learned a lot, and there was one thing that I think that Amy brought up that is very very cool. It brought me a lot of hope. Yes, maybe there is a future for us.
This is so cheesy, but I'm gonna say it anyway. It's just that we're made of star stuff and it's so cool to think about.
I love it.
All of the things that we have on the Earth that are heavier than hydrogen were formed through the evolution of stars.
And we're made of those elements. We are made of the same elements of a star of the sun. Beyonce Beyonce too. I'm gonna say it with even more conviction now when I tell people you can't shave me, I say, you can't shave the sun. And I really want to telescope, Like, after thinking about this, is it gonna it's gonna make me? Yeah, man,
it's not gonna be good for it. I mean for me, it'll be bad if I got to tell us, because the idea of that much space around me, it crushes my brain where I'm just like, I'm not even the size of a molecule of hydrogen when you think of the universe, when we think about what a molecule of hydrogen is to us, we're not even that small. We're smaller than that. Good grief and that type of awareness paralyzes me. I'm like, ooh, all this space, you are now free to roam. I feel like now free to
roam about the cabin. Yeah, except I'm not. I want to get to another galaxy. I'm out of here people, I'm trying to get to another rock. So we've always structured our seasons as semesters, and everybody knows halfway through the semester it's the midterm, and celebrate our midterm. First of all, we're gonna be asking y'all a lot of questions about those these Verse six episodes. But more importantly, we are celebrating with twenty five percent off in the
Dope Labs store at Dope Labs podcast dot com. Use promo code midterm m I d T E r M. For more on today's episode, check out our cheat sheet and show notes at Dope Labs podcasts dot com. And remember the phone lines are always open. You can leave us a question or comment or text us. Our number is two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight. That's two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at Dope
Labs podcast. T T is on Twitter and Instagram at dr Underscore t s h O. And you can find Zakia on Twitter and Instagram at z Said So. And if you do love the show, don't forget to follow us on Spotify or wherever else you listen to your podcast Special Things Today to our guest Amy Steal. You can learn more about her work and today's sh notes on Dope lap podcast dot com. Our producer is Jenny Rattle at Mask. Mixing and sound designed by Hannis Brown.
Original theme music by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex sugi Ura. Additional music by Elijah Alex Harvey. Dope Labs is brought to you by three M and is a production of Spotify Studios and Mega Own Media Group, and is executive produced by us T. T. Shadia and Zakiah Wattley. What's that? Missy Elliott had that song? All I know is the Tyree song? Yeah, there's that one. The signs of love, These are the signs of love making. Hey are you that Zodie yack freak looking for fuckercon? But then that
Beyonce and Missy Elliott? Which one? Oh wait, you know, I don't. I don't know what you're talking about. You just said, whoa, I don't know what's song that you're trying to shame. No, I'm not trying to say I'm trying to get to where you at. Let me look it up.