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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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And of course, helium was discovered on the sun, which is something that my high school science teacher used to relish telling us in class You know, those kinds of things where someone loves telling a story so much that they forget that they've told it more than once. This sort of story of the discovery of helium on the sun was one of those for my high school science teacher.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of helium's discovery on the sun?
Well, yes, needless to say, according to my high school science teacher, helium was discovered on the sun, and I actually forget the precise mechanism that was used to do this, but... In some way, a spectral analyzer, some device that was able to analyze the electromagnetic spectrum, could pinpoint out helium as an element that was being produced from the sun, or should I say within the sun.
And as an interesting fact, as a teenager, I suppose, it at least piqued my interest very slightly. But the implications of that, and I think precisely what he was trying to convey, wasn't really truly understood to me until I was much older. Far more recently did I discover...
why it is that we might see helium in the sun hello by the way my name's Andrew and today I'm talking about space or should I say deep space that place between stars between nebula the
emptiness of the universe i suppose which may seem like a strange topic to speak about as we try to relax and fall asleep but i'm hope i'm hoping as i continue you like me will begin to see the beauty of it the poetry of this space this idea
this thing that I suppose is truly only conceptual to us I think very very few people on this planet will experience true space even the astronauts that travel to the edge of our atmosphere or even to the moon only get a glimpse of deep space
But in case you don't actually know and are not familiar with the idea of helium on the sun, the reason that we might find it there is because, well, the sun is this huge, dense thing. And... It is so because gravity is simply pulling together all of this debris and gas until it collapses in on itself. And this is what we see occurring inside nebulae.
that we have observed through our wonderful, technologically advanced telescopes, such as, well, past telescopes as well, but especially, more recently, our James Webb telescope from NASA. And I'm not saying that this is a recent discovery. We have known what goes on within Nebula for some time. But what we see are within these vast, huge clouds of gas and debris...
clumps of it beginning to attract itself to itself as it were until they grow very large in size and this is when the gravity of it begins to become so overwhelming that it collapses becomes more dense
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Chapter 3: How do nebulae contribute to star formation?
And this is when the process of building a star begins. And this process, what we call fusion, occurs. And this is when the heat inside of this dense, dense early star is able to move matter, atoms in such a way and almost, I suppose, rip them apart and refuse them together into new elements.
And that is why we see so many other elements inside of stars, and the larger they get, the more gravity there is that creates this denseness, getting more and more dense towards the core of a star. we will see the hierarchy of elements come forth, you see. And this is where I'm going to make clear my embarrassment that I am not wholly familiar with the periodic table, but...
We see elements like hydrogen and helium, the lighter elements, are being produced in stars. And then as you go further towards the denser internal area of a star is when we see denser elements. Although I've forgotten the exact linear line of which I believe you'll see iron in the center, very center of a star. And, although I must say, although we see these things,
coming from our sun and from other stars and this is how we are able to infer that these elements are being produced within the center of stars it is of course entirely hypothetical there is no real way of knowing what is at the center of a star perhaps one day we will know but
For now, it is a theory, although it is most likely true because we have enough evidence to suggest that that is most likely what is going on. And to look at these nebulae, and I'm sure you've seen an image of a nebula before because there are many famous ones that crop up from time to time
You wouldn't necessarily think that they are the place where stars are born, so spread out and ephemeral and cloud-like as they are, and very beautiful as well. Some nebula look like works of art. Cast your eye upon them. These beautiful patterns that emerge within were simply dust, debris and gas that floats around in space.
And some nebula, or nebulae, I'm not entirely sure what the plural of nebula is, but some of them are simply debris in space some of them are the remnants of dying stars and you can see that they make particularly different particularly more interesting patterns
And you can see, if you look upon one, the sort of radius of explosion and these almost look like undulating waves of gas and dust that emit from a central point where you know the star once was. And then again to look at these things, to imagine the sheer scale of what you're looking at. Thousands and thousands of times larger than our Earth is a field of space debris.
And there being so many myriads in our observable universe. It's a beautiful thing to acknowledge the scale that we find ourselves in of the universe as a whole and then to look upon our small earth. I think it's important to remind ourselves how small a part we truly do occupy. within the vastness that is the universe.
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Chapter 4: What mysteries lie within the concept of deep space?
that we can observe to account for the way that galaxies and the bodies of heaven move around. It cannot account for how much gravity, I suppose. I lack the technical ways of saying it, but it doesn't make sense that the...
matter out in the universe should move in the way that it does with there being so little of it that we can observe at least and so they have dubbed this thing this theoretical form of matter that might exist out in the world that we simply can't see so it's there but we just are unable to observe it hence dark matter and that is their way of accounting for this discrepancy.
Dark energy, similarly, is attempting to account for the rapid expansion of the universe and the very fact that there should be some reason or some energy behind this rapid expansion
that again is unobservable and so they have dubbed this dark energy now when I speak of the vacuum catastrophe and this unthinkably large energy density that comes out that we can't observe it does very much sound like that might be some solution to dark energy
And I think I remember reading somewhere that people were investigating into the possibility, although my personal understanding of quantum field theory then begins to be less, and I am, I could not confidently say whether it is a theory that holds water or not.
I do find it so fascinating, so beautifully interesting that we can know so much about space and have so many theories that describe the universe in such detail. And then huge discrepancies like the vacuum catastrophe can fall out. And that is a beautiful part of the mystery.
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Chapter 5: How does dark matter relate to the universe's structure?
Even dark matter is a beautiful mystery. You know, it's not a nuanced conundrum as you might see with other parts of science where people are still fiddling to work out the finer details of something that is mostly discovered or understood. You know, this idea that
There is a huge amount of matter and energy missing that is required to make sense of the universe and so they make it up and say it's out there but it's just completely invisible. Almost makes you feel like we're back in medieval times as if You know, it gives you the context of where we are.
Because I think there's a tendency to feel like, because we are in the modern day, we have so many technological advancements. Science has come so far to describe so much. It almost feels like there's nothing left to discover. But then when you hear things like this, it makes you remember that we understand so little. We have answers to not very much.
We certainly cannot say really what dark matter is. That's the funny thing about it, I think. to a layman, someone who may have heard of the idea of dark matter, when it's spoken about, it's spoken about as if it is a definite thing, as if it's a thing that scientists have discovered. But it is simply a label for what is unknown.
You may as well call it unknown matter or the we-don't-really-know matter, which is quite humorous to me. Another interesting mystery of deep space, interesting to me at least, is this idea of of the great attractor, which you may have come across if you're interested in this kind of thing. And it was some time ago that I learned about this, so the details are quite fuzzy to me.
But, not too long ago, fairly recently, in the grand scheme of things, it was discovered that off out in deep space, there is something huge, something very very very big, and its gravity is enormous. Now I think scientists
although they are unable to say concretely, I think they've mostly concluded that it is probably a black hole, or a supermassive black hole of sorts, of which there are many in the universe, but this one appears to be fairly large, half way, way, way out in deep space, And nevertheless, it is attracting other things towards it at quite a steady and consistent rate.
And I think the going theory is that Eventually, given time, and we are talking hundreds of millions of years, but given the time, it will come to us. And that will be ultimately the end of the Earth, at least. Though, what we as humanity will look like in Hundreds of millions of years time, I'm not entirely sure. I wouldn't be confident to put any bets on that.
And I understand perhaps if you're listening to this sort of thing, you might start to have a little bit of worry, a little bit of an uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach.
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Chapter 6: What is the vacuum catastrophe in physics?
I know this is something that my partner feels sometimes when we talk about this sort of thing. Because thinking about these huge scales of the universe and things like the greater tractor sort of feels like this unstoppable force off out in space that we can't even see that eventually will consume the earth. Well, it does. It does sound a little scary. And
the idea of these mysteries, unsolved, we cannot account for, about the fundamental underpinnings of the universe, it starts to make you feel like perhaps you don't have very much control. And sometimes that's not a very nice feeling. And the truth is, Because I don't want to lie, but really we all don't have very much control.
Chapter 7: How does the Great Attractor influence our galaxy?
There is very little in this life that we have control over. Though that's not to say we control nothing. Of course we are the arbiters of our existence. we rest assured that mostly all of us have control over ourselves and what we do and what we think and what we love, what we enjoy, how we choose to spend our lives.
Certain things within that we could say we don't quite have control over, but on the most part there's always choices for us to make. And ultimately, our choices are our lives. So, we needn't really worry about a great attractor way off in space, or the mysteries of the universe
Because they're not really a part of our lives.
They're wonderful things to think about, I think. Cosmic vastness and the mysteries of the void. beautiful in that way that it forces us to think about the world that ultimately we don't live in because as I say these ideas this idea of the void of space is ephemeral It is conceptual. We can't and won't experience it.
Discussing traveling to the moon, traveling to Mars, traveling to the sun is almost tantamount to the idea of traveling to fairyland. It is and always will only be an imagining for us. And as someone who enjoys imagining, I think that's why it particularly appeals to me. There's this philosophical idea about a teapot
that orbits the earth and I believed it has something to do with discussions around truth and knowledge and provability it might be that it goes something like this where someone's trying to make a case for the existence or non-existence of something. No, I do have, I have been mistaken about this. It is the existence of something.
And it's this idea that you can't prove emphatically that something doesn't exist. but you can only prove that it does exist. Hence the idea of this teapot that orbits the Earth. It would be infinitely more difficult to prove that it doesn't exist than to prove that it does. In fact, in attempting to prove that it does,
Only after many, many unsuccessful attempts could you suggest the idea that it may not exist. But even then, there is sort of no true way to prove that it doesn't exist.
It is an untenable objective.
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Chapter 8: What philosophical insights can we draw from our understanding of space?
Almost like I had reached out and grabbed it. Or even just walked there in a couple of days. I felt its presence like it came closer to me when I took the time to understand truly that it was there. It is in these ways that we can transform space. Or at least we can dispel the veil of fantasy that is layered on top of it.
And reveal it for what it is. Part of our universe.
Part of our home. . . . Thank you. you Thank you. . . . Thank you. you Thank you. Thank you. you . . . so so . . . Thank you. you