Cosmic Questions, Red Dwarfs & the Search for Life Beyond Earth

I'll be okay. I think I'll survive this time. Professor Fred Watson: Hopefully. Hopefully. Yeah, I don't know. I guess you never know. Could be, could be. didn't like you think about those crazy cases where it's like didn't Bob, Bob Marley died from skin cancer and it's like, I guess you really never know. Professor Fred Watson: That's true.

Well, hey, here's something that hopefully you can answer for us, Fred. Rennie from S.A. sunny West Hills, CA asks theoretically, if an observer scientist outside our universe was able to look into our universe, would that observers re research on light speed and other phenomenon match our scientists findings? Professor Fred Watson: It's a great question, Rennie. Rennie's one of our regular questioners and always asks the provocative ones. I like it very much so.

Professor Fred Watson: We'Ve got to envisage an observer that's in some other universe where the light speed and other, you know, other fundamental quantities, speed of light, mass of the electron, things like that, they might be quite different. so you would have to basically think outside the box. We're talking now about the

biggest boxes that could exist. If we're talking about separate universes, you'd have to look into our universe and use yardsticks that were basically part and parcel of our universe in order to measure those fundamental quantities. So you'd need to have a way of determining distance, and that way you could perhaps use a way of determining time to determine the

speed of light. you might well be able to determine that the speed of light in our universe was different from the speed of light in your universe, which will be a very interesting property. and it's actually one of the reasons why People speculate, Heidi, that, there might be other universes. The fact that those physical parameters in our own universe are so well suited to, the formation of stars, galaxies, planets, stability that, would allow molecules to be created that could eventually

turn into living organisms. One of the reasons astronomers think there might be other universes is because those properties of our own universe are so well tuned to life that maybe there are other universes where that is not the case. And so if you were standing in one of those universes and looking back at our own, you might well say, well, that's ridiculous. The speed of light, there's only 300,000 kilometers per second. It's much faster than that here.

So, you know, you could be looking at different parameters. So I think, Rennie, it's an interesting thought experiment and, thank you very much for the question. It's very, interstellar when he goes into the dimension where they're looking through a different plane. Our next question is from Dean, and Dean says, I believe you all had mentioned previously that in a, protoplanetary disk, heavier elements reside closer to the star, which is the reason the interior planets of our

system are, quote, rocky. The protostar is too hot for volatile materials to become solid, and the solar wind blows the lighter elements away. My question was Earth in a belt of protoplanetary disk where liquid or water orbited? Could such a belt exist in protoplanetary disk? Professor Fred Watson: yeah. It is another great question. And I suppose what Dean is saying is, is there a Goldilocks zone in the protoplanetary disk? because the protoplanetary disk is

where the planets were formed. and yes, the temperature of material in that disk will vary. It'll be much hotter near the star itself and much colder outside. And we do see, just in the way the planets of our solar system are distributed, with the four rocky ones internally and then the four, gaseous ones and icy ones further out, we see that effect of, the Goldilocks zone. So Mars sits just within the sun's ice. what's it called? The ice limit? Can't remember.

Anyway, it's something like that. It's where, water ceases to be a vapor and becomes ice. so beyond the orbit of Mars, things, things basically freeze. if, if, if you've got water vapor. and that is thought to be why the gas giants grew so big, the four gas giants, because, the fact that their water is actually the commonest two element molecule in the whole

universe. so if the water vapor becomes something solid, beyond that that ice limit, then, then you're going to get the collection of much more mass in a planet that's being built by this process of accretion. so because the water is now in a solid form, you can build a much bigger planetary core. and that is why you can then get something big enough that it actually hangs onto the gases surrounding it and you've got a gas giant. So that's the picture that we imagine is the way planets form. So

just turning to Dean's question. Was Earth in a belt of the protoplanetary disk where liquid water orbited? it wouldn't have been liquid because you can't have liquid in a vacuum. but you can get water molecules in vapor form basically or in the form of ice. And yes, there would have been a step there I think in the protoplanetary disk where the ice

solidified, where you've got solid ice. so I think that's a really good question and I believe I've seen some papers recently, which suggest that we are actually observing that in fact, very recently, I think it might even have been last week, Heidi, there was a paper that reported the detection of ice in a protoplanetary disk. so that's one to check out. it's yeah, it's there and in the inner regions it's probably too warm for it to exist as a solid material.

So Dean's, Dean's onto something. We get a lot of really smart people who follow along this show too.

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Professor Fred Watson: Thanks, Ron. and greetings to upstate New York. yeah, that's another. They're all great questions that we count space nuts. and it's a very intelligent one as well. And just to sort of give the backstory of this Population three stars, and it's usually written as a Roman three stars. They're what we think of as being the first stars to form in the universe back probably within the first 2 or 300 million years of the Big Bang, which we believe happened 13.8 billion

years ago. so we. What would signify a population three star? It would be a star, whose spectrum, when you analyze its light, reveals only the presence of hydrogen and helium, because they were the elements that were predominantly produced in the Big Bang. There were a few other things produced in very, very small quantities, like lithium, but really it was mostly hydrogen and helium that were produced in the Big Bang.

And so population 3 stars will be stars that only show the signatures of those chemical elements in their spectrum. We haven't actually found any yet. We found some that look very nearly like Population 3 stars, but they still have a little trace of iron in them, the ones that have been found, and iron is formed, in the interior of stars. And so you know that anything that shows up iron is not the first generation of stars ever to exist because other stars have been there

first, and have formed the iron. So population three stars are a bit of a holy grail, actually. Trying to find Them, I've worked with, people here in Australia whose sole scientific mission has been to find population, three stars. And they've come pretty near it with these very early, what we call metal pore stars. Metals, unlike the way we think of metals in everyday life, things that contribute steel and brass and stuff like that, metals are anything other than hydrogen and

helium. To an astronomer it's a very curious expression. so metal poor stars are ones that don't have much of anything other than hydrogen, helium. So the cutting to the nub of Ron's question though, we think the very first generations of stars to form in the universe were not, were not red dwarfs. we don't think they were dwarf

stars at all. We think they were very massive stars, perhaps 20, maybe even up to 100 times the mass of the sun, that had very short lives, and exploded, you know, within perhaps less than a million years. Such a short life that, remember our sun is four, and a half billion years old and it's in its sort of middle age, midlife, not a crisis, but a midlife term. So red dwarfs probably did not form in the early

universe. And in any case, what categorizes a red dwarf star, is actually the fact that it has seen many generations of stars before it because they're rich in all kinds of different chemical elements, not just hydrogen and helium. they are basically, you know, cool stars, which show the characteristic signatures of all sorts of things, even molecules. I think some molecules. Molecules don't usually exist in stars because they get torn apart. The atoms get torn apart by

the heat. But I think red dwarf stars have some molecular signatures as well. so the answer is, I think no. red dwarf stars weren't formed right after the Big Bang. And there probably aren't any population three red dwarf stars. But you're absolutely right that the lifetime of red dwarf stars is very, very long. Maybe, up to trillions of years as you've suggested. Ron, thanks very much for the question. Very interesting, very interesting indeed.

Oh, you know, I was actually thinking in my head of playing a joke and just saying some random planet and then going, oh, oops, he must have meant this for you.

I don't know. I really think that it's gonna, for some reason I think there's probably something on a moon somewhere because I'm just imagining primordial solar system, everything's crashing into each other and when it, when that matter ends up on a planet it's getting churned through its core and getting heated up and everything that maybe existed, even bacteria, is just getting cooked and destroyed. But on a moon it's not getting

that turnover. So I would assume, and this is with my background not in this at all, I would assume that we would find something on a moon. Professor Fred Watson: I think you're right actually. so I guess the most obvious places to look, first of all Mars, Mars we know has been warm and wet in the past. we know that it was warm and wet at a time when the first living organisms were forming on Earth. So if all you need is the right atmospheric conditions

while they were there on Mars. And so Mars may show signs of ancient microbial life. Unfortunately we don't at the moment have the wherewithal to find it. We've got samples of rocks and soil that have been taken by the Perseverance rover on Mars which are stashed away for a future mission to go and collect them. Sadly that mission is a bit in doubt at the moment because it's turned out to be very expensive. but there may be evidence

on Mars. but you're absolutely right that some of the moons of the solar system are perhaps the next on the list because first of all, and this is the one that's really the poster child of looking for life on moons in the solar system is Europa. Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, which we know has a rocky core, it's got a liquid water ocean over that core, and that is sealed in by a layer of solid ice on top of

it. And we have seen evidence of geysers of ice, crystals coming through that layer of ice because of cracks in it. there is evidence as well that there are quite complex carbon containing molecules, on the surface of Europa got a reddish brown colour which looks as though it's the effect of sunlight and solar radiation on these carbon containing molecules. So the ingredients for life might very well be there.

likewise, further out in the solar system, Enceladus, Saturn's moon which was explored by Cassini, that definitely has these geysers of ice crystals because we've seen them and in fact Cassini flew through them and measured some of the contents, of them. in terms of it's mostly water ice, but there's also molecular hydrogen and some other really interesting ingredients that suggest that there are geothermal vents down at the bottom of Enceladus oceans. Maybe that is where

life could have kicked off. We think life might have kicked off on Earth down in hydrothermal vents, maybe on Enceladus too. And you know, Dean mentions also Titan. I, beg your pardon, Jake. I'm sorry, Jake, the wrong name there. Jake also mentions Titan, which is another of these ice worlds with the same sort of structure and a liquid ocean, but it's also got these lakes of methane and ethane, natural

liquefied natural gas. The only place we know anywhere in the universe other than Earth where there's liquid in equilibrium with an atmosphere. And Titan has a thick atmosphere, mostly carbon dioxide, but hydrocarbons in there as well. So these are all great candidates for living organisms. and if I had to pick one, let's go with Titan

because I think you get two shots at it there. There might be water, based life in the oceans underneath the surface, but there might also be carbon, some weird carbon based life in the liquid, natural gas, lakes and seas on Titan. And we might find that when the Dragonfly spacecraft visits Titan later, in. The decade, these are all very exciting. I mean there is just so much happening in space right now. Every single week we are closer and closer to new breakthroughs and new

discoveries. and I'll even share a program that I'm a part of that anybody who is a high school, or like if you're in high school, if you're doing your undergrad graduate or early career professional, you can join this too. It's called the L space, so l apostrophe space program. And it is a competitive proposal writing program where they select different individuals. So you can apply. I'm in the summer program right

now, but you can apply for the fall program. But all of us got put into different interdisciplinary teams and we are going to be coming up with a proposal that is going to address one of NASA's gaps. And they have a whole training on how to write proposals the way NASA wants them written and the taxonomy of everything they're looking for. And the gaps that need to get filled. But the cool thing is, is that, the proposals that we come up with, one, of them will be selected as the

winner. And the winner will get thousands of dollars of grant money and it will probably go on to become a real project. So if you are an engineer, even a high school or early career professional or anyone in between who feels like you have a lot of good ideas for discovering these kinds of things, like I've been co hosting now for a while and I've seen how smart you guys are.

So I would really encourage you to all get involved and use your, creativity to help push humanity forward into the stars. Because every single one of you has something to add. And never, ever, ever let imposter syndrome get in the way of that. Because every creative mind add something to all of this. And that's my, that's my rah rah for this week. Professor Fred Watson: Remind us again what the program's called.

It's L Space. So it's an L apostrophe and then S, P, A, C, E. And the program that I'm in, they have several different programs. So I'm in the, proposal writing. So np, W, E, E. NASA Proposal writing Experience. Something, something, something, something. It's. They love, they love acronyms. They just. They, But yeah, L, Space. and you can look

that up. I can probably send the link to that to you guys to post, in the link and the description of this episode if anybody is interested in adding to their contributions into space. Professor Fred Watson: Fantastic. great program. and I look forward to checking out on the Web. On the Web, absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Fred. This has been another wonderful Q A session of Space Nuts. We'll catch you. Professor Fred Watson: Thank you. We'll catch you all next week. Bye for now.