S02E40: Super Moons, Dark Matter Mysteries, and Star Wars Comedy: A Celestial Week in Review

[00:00:00] Good day everybody, and welcome to the Astronomy Daily podcast for the first of September 2023. My name is Tim Gibbs, and I will be your host for today's episode. Now as usual, I have my digital AI assistant Hallie here in the studio with me.

[00:00:17] Now Hallie, have you got any interesting stories for us this week? I do indeed Tim. One of them is a biggie, so hold onto your hat. Ooh, intriguing! So back to you Hallie for your stories of the week.

[00:00:38] A rare blue super moon, the closest full moon of the year, dazzled Stargazer's Wednesday night. Saturn joined the celestial spectacle, visible alongside the moon, at least where skies were clear. It was the second full moon of August, thus the blue label.

[00:00:54] And it was unusually close to Earth, therefore a super moon. The moon appeared to be bigger and brighter than usual, given its close proximity to Earth, just 222,043 miles, 357,344 kilometers, or so. The August first super moon was more than 100 miles, 160 kilometers, farther away.

[00:01:17] If you missed it, it will be a long wait, the next blue super moon isn't until 2037. But another regular super moon is on the horizon at the end of September, the last one of the year.

[00:01:29] Isaac Newton described his theory of gravity as a force that acts instantaneously across space. A planet immediately senses the effects of another astronomical object, regardless of the separation between them. This aspect inspired Einstein to create the

[00:01:44] renowned theory of general relativity, where gravity becomes a local deformation of spacetime. The principle of locality states that an object is directly influenced only by its surrounding environment. Distant objects cannot communicate instantaneously, only what is here right now

[00:01:59] matters. However, in the past century, with the birth and development of quantum mechanics, physicists discovered that non-local phenomena not only exist but are fundamental to understanding the nature of reality. Now, a new study from CISA, a Scuola Internationale Superior D.

[00:02:16] Studi Avanzotti recently published in the Astrophysical Journal, suggests that dark matter, one of the most mysterious components of the universe, interacts with gravity in a non-local way. According to the authors, Ph.D., students Francesco Benetti and Giovanni Gondolfi, along

[00:02:32] with their supervisor Andrea Lappi, this discovery could provide a fresh perspective on the still unclear nature of dark matter. Dark matter is a fundamental component of nature. It is responsible for the formation of the structures we observe in the universe today and surrounds luminous

[00:02:47] matter in galaxies, contributing to the motion of the stars we see in the sky. However, the nature of dark matter, especially its interaction with gravity in smaller galaxies, remains mysterious. In recent decades, the scientific community has made great efforts

[00:03:03] to understand these enigmatic phenomena, but many questions remain unanswered. To explore the nature of dark matter and its interaction with gravity, a new approach may be necessary, explain the authors of the study. The new research from CISA has precisely

[00:03:18] explored this intriguing path. The study proposes a new model of non-local interaction between the dark matter of a galaxy and gravity, it's as if all the matter in the universe tells the dark matter in a galaxy how to move, state the authors. To model this non-locality, fractional

[00:03:34] calculus has been employed, a mathematical tool first developed in the 17th century and recently found applications in various areas of physics. The power of this calculus had never been tested in astrophysics before. We wondered if fractional calculus could

[00:03:50] be the key to understanding the mysterious nature of dark matter and its interaction with gravity, and surprisingly, experimental results on thousands of galaxies of different types have shown that the new model more accurately describes the motion of stars compared to the

[00:04:03] standard theory of gravity, explain the authors. This non-locality appears to emerge as a collective behavior of dark matter's particles within a confined system, proving particularly relevant in small sized galaxies. A thorough understanding of this phenomenon could bring

[00:04:19] us closer what dark matter really is. Now back to you Tim. Now I saw a headline the other day and it was why Star Wars needs its own answer to Star Trek Lower Decks. Star Trek's animated sitcom has brought comedy to the final frontier.

[00:04:44] Surely it's time that the galaxy far far away followed suit. Strange new worlds and lower decks are both unmistakably Star Trek, even though they hail from very different corners of the final frontier. The former plots a similar course to Gene Roddenbury's original series,

[00:05:05] a live action TV show set on the flagship of the Federation, crewed with familiar characters and steeped in canon. Lower Decks meanwhile goes where no Trek has gone before. Yes, the animated series has taken Kirk, Spock and the rest of the original crew into the second

[00:05:24] dimension back in the 1970s, but the veteran franchise has never previously set its phases so bluntly to fun. The comedy show setting is also far from traditional, seeing as the USS Sarritos is in the second division of Star Ships, crewed by officers unlikely to trouble even

[00:05:47] the footnotes of Federation history. Yet when the two shows collided in those old scientists, the latest episode of Strange New Worlds, they were able to coexist organically, more comic than your average SNW story and more serious than the standard LD outing.

[00:06:08] The crossover ensured that Ensign's Bumler and Mana never seemed out of place alongside Spock, Pike and Uhura, not beyond the usual fish out of water time travel gags anyway. That's largely because Lower Decks has never lost sight of the fact that it's first and

[00:06:31] foremost a Star Trek show. It is an animated workplace sitcom that just happens to be set in the 24th century that Jean-Luc Picard calls home. This is a show that laughs with the franchise's long established tropes rather than at them and with the show's fourth season heading for

[00:06:49] Earth later this year on September 7th 2023, it's a formula that has a proven track record. It leaves you wondering why Star Wars is yet to make a genuine comedy of its own, well exception of James Bond that's been such a gift for comedy writers as Star Wars.

[00:07:11] Beyond the all out goose, spaceballs, family guy etc etc, George Lucas' Galaxy far far away has provided rich pickings for everything from the Big Bang Theory and friends to robot chicken. A large chunk of Kevin Smith's filmography and bad lip-breeding videos about the relative

[00:07:32] merits of sticks and bacon. But beyond the numerous Lego Star Wars themed spin-offs and Aardman's wonderful visions episode I Am Your Mother, Lucas' film have traditionally been reluctant to play Star Wars for fun as they're happier to let other people write the gags

[00:07:51] and make the funny for themselves. So I ask myself isn't it time we had Star Wars funnies? Let me know what you think. In a cosmos rich with planets beyond our solar system, a majority tread astonishingly close to their stars but NASA's exoplanet hunting satellite

[00:08:16] has no spotted a world with one of the longest known periods, meaning it strays farther from its star adding to a just a handful of such long-distance planets. The newly found gas giant called TOI-4660C is about the size of Saturn, resides in a star

[00:08:36] system about 815 light years from Earth and orbits its star every 482.82 days or 16 months. Among the 2000 or so worlds detected by NASA's TESS, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TOI-4660C is special for two reasons not only does it have the longest year but at a frigid

[00:09:02] minus 110 degrees Fahrenheit that's minus 78 degrees Celsius, the newly found world is also one of the coldest among those spotted by TESS. Astronomers are particularly excited about this discovery because based on what we know about the exoplanets we've found so far nothing really looks like

[00:09:22] our solar system. Ismael Morellis a graduate student from the University of New Mexico and lead author of the new study said in a statement so we want to find out how these different types

[00:09:36] of systems formed and migrated. Now Hallie have you got a terrible joke for us this week? As we talking sci-fi this week here are a couple for you. Why did the board go to therapy? Because they had too many assimilation issues. Why did Anakin Skywalker cross the road?

[00:09:55] To get to the dark side. That's truly terrible Hallie but thank you very much indeed. That's it for this week folks don't forget you can join the conversation on our Facebook page SpaceNuts podcast group and you

[00:10:11] can get all of our current and previous episodes at spacenuts.io and bites.com. You can catch Steve on Monday for a full episode and myself on Friday for a good for a full episode.

[00:10:22] Thanks for listening this week. Thanks everybody and goodbye see you next time on Astronomy Daily podcast. Say goodbye Hallie. Goodbye Hallie. Thanks for listening everybody and see you next time on the Astronomy Daily podcast.