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00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Anna: Hello and welcome to Astronomy daily for
00:00:02 --> 00:00:04 Tuesday the 14th of July
00:00:05 --> 00:00:06 2026. I'm Anna.
00:00:07 --> 00:00:09 Avery: And I'm, um, Avery. Episode 140
00:00:09 --> 00:00:12 of season five. And honestly, today's rundown
00:00:12 --> 00:00:14 reads like someone dared us to pick the most
00:00:14 --> 00:00:16 argument starting stories we could find.
00:00:17 --> 00:00:19 Anna: It really does. Coming up, American
00:00:19 --> 00:00:22 regulators have just approved the launch of
00:00:22 --> 00:00:25 the first commercial space mirror, a
00:00:25 --> 00:00:27 spacecraft designed to beam sunlight down to
00:00:27 --> 00:00:30 Earth at night. And astronomers are,
00:00:30 --> 00:00:32 let's say, not thrilled.
00:00:32 --> 00:00:35 Avery: We've also got a newly revealed minefield of
00:00:35 --> 00:00:37 invisible space junk in one of the most
00:00:37 --> 00:00:39 valuable orbits around Earth with an
00:00:39 --> 00:00:41 Australian telescope right in the middle of
00:00:41 --> 00:00:44 the detective work. Plus, physicists and
00:00:44 --> 00:00:46 Manhattan have recreated black hole energy
00:00:46 --> 00:00:49 extraction in a lab. The biggest telescope
00:00:49 --> 00:00:52 ever built just moved for the very first
00:00:52 --> 00:00:54 time. And a new paper explains how the Square
00:00:54 --> 00:00:57 Kilometer Array is about to turn cosmic
00:00:57 --> 00:00:59 lightning flashes into a map of the invisible
00:00:59 --> 00:01:00 universe.
00:01:01 --> 00:01:03 Anna: And later, a quick update on Starship
00:01:03 --> 00:01:06 Flight 13 and the story of the Harvard
00:01:06 --> 00:01:09 astronomer who's just been handed the keys to
00:01:09 --> 00:01:11 the White House's new UFO
00:01:11 --> 00:01:14 Avery: Science Council told you argument
00:01:14 --> 00:01:15 starting. Let's get into it.
00:01:16 --> 00:01:18 Anna: Our lead story today. On 9 July,
00:01:18 --> 00:01:21 the US Federal Communications Commission
00:01:21 --> 00:01:24 formally authorized the launch of Earendil
00:01:24 --> 00:01:27 1, a demonstration satellite from
00:01:27 --> 00:01:29 California startup Reflect Orbital.
00:01:30 --> 00:01:32 Once in orbit around 600 kilometers up,
00:01:32 --> 00:01:35 it will unfurl a thin film reflector
00:01:35 --> 00:01:38 18 meters on a side that's roughly
00:01:38 --> 00:01:41 60ft and use it to bounce sunlight
00:01:41 --> 00:01:44 down to specific spots on the ground for
00:01:44 --> 00:01:45 several minutes at a time.
00:01:45 --> 00:01:48 Avery: So to be clear for everyone, a giant
00:01:48 --> 00:01:51 steerable mirror in space whose entire
00:01:51 --> 00:01:53 job is to shine daylight onto the night side
00:01:53 --> 00:01:54 of Earth.
00:01:54 --> 00:01:57 Anna: That's exactly it. The company calls itself
00:01:57 --> 00:01:59 the Sunlight Company and the pitch is
00:01:59 --> 00:02:02 sunlight on demand. Lighting construction
00:02:02 --> 00:02:04 sites so crews can work through the night,
00:02:05 --> 00:02:07 illuminating search and rescue operations,
00:02:07 --> 00:02:10 and boosting solar farms by extending their
00:02:10 --> 00:02:12 generating hours past sunset.
00:02:12 --> 00:02:14 Avery: The demonstration satellite weighs about
00:02:14 --> 00:02:17 142kg and is due to launch
00:02:17 --> 00:02:19 later this year. And here's the number that
00:02:19 --> 00:02:21 makes this a much bigger story than one test
00:02:21 --> 00:02:24 satellite. ReflectorBital has talked about
00:02:24 --> 00:02:27 operating 50 or more of these
00:02:27 --> 00:02:30 mirror craft in low Earth orbit by 2035,
00:02:30 --> 00:02:31 which is why
00:02:31 --> 00:02:34 Anna: the astronomy community has reacted the way
00:02:34 --> 00:02:36 it has. The FCC application drew
00:02:36 --> 00:02:39 nearly 1900 public comments, the
00:02:39 --> 00:02:42 overwhelming majority critical. For
00:02:42 --> 00:02:45 comparison, SpaceX's application for up to
00:02:45 --> 00:02:48 a million orbital data center satellites drew
00:02:48 --> 00:02:51 about 1500. The European southern
00:02:51 --> 00:02:53 Observatory has described plans like these as
00:02:53 --> 00:02:56 an existential threat to optical astronomy.
00:02:56 --> 00:02:58 Avery: And it's not just professional observatories.
00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 The American Astronomical Society Raised the
00:03:01 --> 00:03:03 prospect of eye damage for amateur
00:03:03 --> 00:03:05 astronomers. The company itself has
00:03:05 --> 00:03:07 acknowledged there's a risk if someone
00:03:07 --> 00:03:09 happened to catch the reflected beam through
00:03:09 --> 00:03:12 a telescope with a large enough aperture.
00:03:12 --> 00:03:14 Plus concerns about momentarily dazzling
00:03:14 --> 00:03:17 pilots and about what artificial daylight
00:03:17 --> 00:03:20 does to wildlife. Circadian rhythms are not
00:03:20 --> 00:03:22 optional extras for most living things.
00:03:22 --> 00:03:25 Anna: The FCC's answer to all of that was
00:03:25 --> 00:03:28 essentially not our department. The
00:03:28 --> 00:03:30 commission said concerns about optical
00:03:30 --> 00:03:32 astronomy and the environment fall outside
00:03:32 --> 00:03:35 its review, which is limited to radio
00:03:35 --> 00:03:37 spectrum. It found the risks with a single
00:03:37 --> 00:03:40 satellite unlikely to materialize, and said
00:03:40 --> 00:03:43 testing novel technology is in the public
00:03:43 --> 00:03:43 interest.
00:03:44 --> 00:03:46 Avery: Which might be true for one satellite. One
00:03:46 --> 00:03:48 mirror tested carefully with the light
00:03:48 --> 00:03:51 contained, switchable and steered away from
00:03:51 --> 00:03:53 observatories. That's a technology
00:03:53 --> 00:03:56 demonstration. 50 of them is a
00:03:56 --> 00:03:58 different planet to live on. And the
00:03:58 --> 00:04:01 regulatory gap is the real story here. If the
00:04:01 --> 00:04:03 agency licensing these satellites says
00:04:03 --> 00:04:06 impacts on the sky aren't their job, then,
00:04:06 --> 00:04:07 uh, whose job are they?
00:04:07 --> 00:04:10 Anna: To be fair to the company, they say they're
00:04:10 --> 00:04:13 trying to earn trust. The light is
00:04:13 --> 00:04:15 contained within the target spot. It can be
00:04:15 --> 00:04:18 switched off at any moment. And they'll avoid
00:04:18 --> 00:04:21 sensitive areas like research
00:04:21 --> 00:04:24 observatories and protected habitats.
00:04:24 --> 00:04:27 Their co founders said this license is the
00:04:27 --> 00:04:30 first step toward rigorously testing
00:04:30 --> 00:04:32 both the technology and the safeguards.
00:04:33 --> 00:04:36 Avery: And that test data, uh, will matter. But I
00:04:36 --> 00:04:38 suspect this is one we'll be covering again
00:04:38 --> 00:04:39 and again.
00:04:40 --> 00:04:42 Anna: The satellites, named Earendil, by the way.
00:04:43 --> 00:04:46 Tulkin fans, will recognize the mariner, who
00:04:46 --> 00:04:48 sails the sky with a shining star on his
00:04:48 --> 00:04:49 brow.
00:04:49 --> 00:04:51 Avery: At least they've got good taste in names.
00:04:51 --> 00:04:53 Whether the night sky agrees is another
00:04:53 --> 00:04:54 matter. Okay.
00:04:54 --> 00:04:57 From mirrors we can see, to junk
00:04:57 --> 00:05:00 we can't. A new study led by the
00:05:00 --> 00:05:02 University of Warwick has uncovered some of
00:05:02 --> 00:05:05 the faintest space debris ever detected in
00:05:05 --> 00:05:08 geosynchronous orbit. Fragments down to
00:05:08 --> 00:05:11 about five centimeters across. That's
00:05:11 --> 00:05:13 two inches. And here's the kicker.
00:05:14 --> 00:05:17 Nearly 80% of the faint objects
00:05:17 --> 00:05:19 they found don't appear in any publicly
00:05:19 --> 00:05:20 available catalog.
00:05:20 --> 00:05:23 Anna: Let's set the scene for anyone new to this
00:05:23 --> 00:05:26 geosynchronous orbit is that special
00:05:26 --> 00:05:27 band about
00:05:27 --> 00:05:30 36km up where a
00:05:30 --> 00:05:33 satellite circles the Earth, exactly in
00:05:33 --> 00:05:36 step with our planet's rotation so it
00:05:36 --> 00:05:39 hangs over the same spot. It's home
00:05:39 --> 00:05:41 to the big, expensive workhorses.
00:05:41 --> 00:05:44 Communications, broadcasting, weather,
00:05:44 --> 00:05:47 monitoring, some of the most valuable real
00:05:47 --> 00:05:48 estate in space.
00:05:49 --> 00:05:51 Avery: And unlike low Earth orbit, there's no
00:05:51 --> 00:05:54 cleanup service. Down low, the wisps of
00:05:54 --> 00:05:57 atmosphere gradually drag debris down until
00:05:57 --> 00:06:00 it burns up. At, uh, geo altitude, there
00:06:00 --> 00:06:02 is essentially nothing. Whatever ends up
00:06:02 --> 00:06:05 there, a dead satellite, a, uh, fragment from
00:06:05 --> 00:06:08 a breakup stays there effectively
00:06:08 --> 00:06:08 forever.
00:06:09 --> 00:06:12 Anna: So how did they find pieces this small
00:06:12 --> 00:06:13 at that distance?
00:06:13 --> 00:06:16 Avery: Clever image processing rather than new
00:06:16 --> 00:06:18 hardware. The team went back to archival
00:06:18 --> 00:06:20 survey data from the Isaacman Newton
00:06:20 --> 00:06:23 Telescope in the Canary Islands and applied a
00:06:23 --> 00:06:25 technique called blind stacking, layering
00:06:25 --> 00:06:27 many images along different possible
00:06:28 --> 00:06:30 trajectories so that incredibly faint moving
00:06:30 --> 00:06:33 objects rise up out of the noise. That
00:06:33 --> 00:06:36 reprocessing revealed 25 debris track
00:06:36 --> 00:06:39 lips the original analysis had completely
00:06:39 --> 00:06:41 missed. And the brightness flickering of many
00:06:41 --> 00:06:44 of these fragments shows their tumbling as a
00:06:44 --> 00:06:45 drift.
00:06:45 --> 00:06:47 Anna: And um, there's a lovely local connection in
00:06:47 --> 00:06:50 this one. The follow up observing campaign
00:06:50 --> 00:06:53 extended the survey to Siding Spring
00:06:53 --> 00:06:55 Observatory here in Australia. Working with
00:06:55 --> 00:06:58 the Australian National University plus
00:06:58 --> 00:07:01 Japan's Bisei Space Guard center with
00:07:01 --> 00:07:03 jaxa. Genuinely international
00:07:04 --> 00:07:07 detective work, which makes sense because the
00:07:07 --> 00:07:09 Geo Belt is a shared resource.
00:07:10 --> 00:07:12 Avery: The study's lead author, Dr. James Blake,
00:07:13 --> 00:07:15 pointed out that pieces of junk up there can
00:07:15 --> 00:07:18 be moving at kilometers per second relative
00:07:18 --> 00:07:20 to each other. So even a 5 centimeter
00:07:20 --> 00:07:23 fragment carries enough energy to do serious
00:07:23 --> 00:07:26 damage to a very expensive satellite. And
00:07:26 --> 00:07:29 his co author, Dr. Stuart Eaves had the line
00:07:29 --> 00:07:32 of the week. The debris in geosynchronous
00:07:32 --> 00:07:35 orbit is a potential minefield. And
00:07:35 --> 00:07:37 nobody in their right mind walks into a
00:07:37 --> 00:07:39 minefield without a mine detector.
00:07:39 --> 00:07:42 Anna: The constructive takeaway being we now
00:07:42 --> 00:07:45 have the detection techniques. Beeper's
00:07:45 --> 00:07:48 systematic surveys of the Geo Belt need
00:07:48 --> 00:07:51 to become routine because there are
00:07:51 --> 00:07:54 only so many orbital slots up there and
00:07:54 --> 00:07:57 one bad debris event could poison a
00:07:57 --> 00:07:59 chunk of that belt for generations.
00:08:00 --> 00:08:02 M Now to a story that's been making headlines
00:08:02 --> 00:08:05 this week, and it's a proper piece of physics
00:08:05 --> 00:08:08 history. Researchers at the Advanced
00:08:08 --> 00:08:10 Science Research center at the City
00:08:10 --> 00:08:13 University of New York have recreated in
00:08:13 --> 00:08:16 a laboratory the mechanism by which energy
00:08:16 --> 00:08:18 can be extracted from a spinning black hole.
00:08:19 --> 00:08:20 The papers in Nature.
00:08:20 --> 00:08:23 Avery: Okay, walk me through the black hole part
00:08:23 --> 00:08:25 first, because it's one of the great ideas of
00:08:25 --> 00:08:26 20th century physics.
00:08:27 --> 00:08:29 Anna: It goes back more than half a century. To Sir
00:08:29 --> 00:08:32 Roger Penrose, A, uh, spinning black hole
00:08:32 --> 00:08:35 drags the very fabric of space around with it
00:08:35 --> 00:08:38 in a region called the Ergosphere.
00:08:38 --> 00:08:41 Penrose realized that if a particle ventured
00:08:41 --> 00:08:43 in there and split in two, one piece could
00:08:43 --> 00:08:46 fall in while the other escaped, carrying
00:08:46 --> 00:08:49 more energy than the original particle
00:08:49 --> 00:08:51 arrived with energy stolen from the black
00:08:51 --> 00:08:54 hole's rotation. The physicist
00:08:54 --> 00:08:57 Yakov Zeldowicz then extended the
00:08:57 --> 00:09:00 idea to bounce a wave off a, uh,
00:09:00 --> 00:09:02 sufficiently fast rotating object and the
00:09:02 --> 00:09:05 wave can come away amplified. That effect
00:09:05 --> 00:09:07 is called super radiance.
00:09:08 --> 00:09:10 Avery: And the problem for 50 odd years has been the
00:09:10 --> 00:09:13 words sufficiently fast. You can't
00:09:13 --> 00:09:15 mechanically spin anything quickly enough.
00:09:15 --> 00:09:17 There were beautiful experiments with water
00:09:17 --> 00:09:20 vortices in 2017 and a rotating
00:09:20 --> 00:09:23 acoustic disc in 2020. But physically
00:09:23 --> 00:09:24 spinning objects hit a heart
00:09:24 --> 00:09:27 Anna: ceiling, which is where the New York team's
00:09:27 --> 00:09:30 trick comes in. They call it synthetic
00:09:30 --> 00:09:33 rotation. Instead of spinning anything at
00:09:33 --> 00:09:35 all, they built a ring of electronic
00:09:35 --> 00:09:38 resonators and rapidly modulated their
00:09:38 --> 00:09:40 electrical properties in a timed sequence
00:09:40 --> 00:09:43 running around the ring to an incoming
00:09:43 --> 00:09:46 radio wave. The stationary device is
00:09:46 --> 00:09:48 indistinguishable from something rotating
00:09:48 --> 00:09:51 impossibly fast. The synthetic rotation
00:09:51 --> 00:09:54 can even mimic motion faster than light,
00:09:54 --> 00:09:57 which no physical object could ever achieve.
00:09:57 --> 00:10:00 Avery: And it worked. The waves actually came out
00:10:00 --> 00:10:00 stronger.
00:10:01 --> 00:10:03 Anna: They did. The team measured genuine
00:10:03 --> 00:10:06 amplification with waves extracting energy
00:10:06 --> 00:10:08 from the synthetic rotation, exactly as
00:10:08 --> 00:10:11 Penrose and Zeldewicz predicted. Nothing
00:10:11 --> 00:10:14 moves. Yet the wave leaves with more energy
00:10:14 --> 00:10:15 than it arrived with.
00:10:16 --> 00:10:18 Avery: What I love about this one is that it cuts
00:10:18 --> 00:10:20 both ways. It's a fundamental physics
00:10:20 --> 00:10:22 validation, a 50 year old prediction about
00:10:22 --> 00:10:24 black holes confirmed on a benchtop in
00:10:24 --> 00:10:27 Manhattan. But it's also a brand new kind of
00:10:27 --> 00:10:29 amplifier. With a team talking about
00:10:29 --> 00:10:31 applications in wireless communications,
00:10:31 --> 00:10:33 optics and quantum technologies.
00:10:34 --> 00:10:36 Astrophysics as an engineering department.
00:10:36 --> 00:10:39 Anna: Black holes inspiring better radios since
00:10:39 --> 00:10:41 1969, who knew?
00:10:42 --> 00:10:44 Avery: Next to a mountaintop in Chile's Atacama
00:10:44 --> 00:10:46 Desert, where the biggest optical telescope
00:10:46 --> 00:10:49 humanity has ever attempted just did
00:10:49 --> 00:10:52 something for the very first time, it moved.
00:10:52 --> 00:10:55 Anna: This is the European Southern Observatory's
00:10:55 --> 00:10:57 Extremely Large Telescope, the
00:10:57 --> 00:11:00 elt, under construction on Cerro
00:11:00 --> 00:11:02 Armazonis. Crews rotated the
00:11:02 --> 00:11:05 telescope's entire structure around its
00:11:05 --> 00:11:08 vertical axis for the first time. And in the
00:11:08 --> 00:11:10 most charming detail of the week, they
00:11:10 --> 00:11:12 started by pushing it by hand a few
00:11:12 --> 00:11:15 centimeters before completing a full
00:11:15 --> 00:11:18 rotation with auxiliary motors. Eso
00:11:18 --> 00:11:21 captioned the release. And yet it moves,
00:11:21 --> 00:11:23 which Galileo would surely have appreciated.
00:11:24 --> 00:11:26 Avery: Now, let's put numbers on why hand pushing
00:11:26 --> 00:11:29 this thing is remarkable. The structure
00:11:29 --> 00:11:30 currently weighs about three and a half
00:11:30 --> 00:11:33 thousand tons. Once the mirrors and
00:11:33 --> 00:11:35 instruments go in, it climbs to around 4
00:11:36 --> 00:11:38 tons. And the whole assembly floats on a film
00:11:38 --> 00:11:41 of oil just 80 microns thin,
00:11:41 --> 00:11:44 roughly the width of a human hair. That's how
00:11:44 --> 00:11:46 a handful of people can start 10 million
00:11:46 --> 00:11:48 pounds of telescope turning.
00:11:48 --> 00:11:51 Anna: And this wasn't ceremony. It was a critical
00:11:51 --> 00:11:54 engineering test. That rotation is how the
00:11:54 --> 00:11:57 ELT will point anywhere in the southern
00:11:57 --> 00:12:00 sky. So proving the motion is smooth is a
00:12:00 --> 00:12:02 genuine milestone on the road to first light.
00:12:03 --> 00:12:05 When it's complete, the ELT's segmented
00:12:05 --> 00:12:08 primary mirror will stretch 39 meters
00:12:08 --> 00:12:11 across, built from 798
00:12:11 --> 00:12:14 hexagonal segments. Working as one,
00:12:14 --> 00:12:17 it'll gather more light than any optical
00:12:17 --> 00:12:18 telescope in history.
00:12:18 --> 00:12:21 Avery: ESO's program manager, Roberto Damai, said
00:12:21 --> 00:12:23 it beautifully that it's a reminder of what
00:12:23 --> 00:12:25 can be achieved when people push in the same
00:12:25 --> 00:12:28 direction, literally and figuratively.
00:12:28 --> 00:12:31 Anna: And for our listeners. Remember, this giant
00:12:31 --> 00:12:34 lives under southern skies, the Magellanic
00:12:34 --> 00:12:37 Clouds, the galactic center overhead. The
00:12:37 --> 00:12:40 ELT will see the same sky you do from
00:12:40 --> 00:12:42 your backyard, just 40 million times
00:12:42 --> 00:12:43 better.
00:12:43 --> 00:12:45 Avery: Rude, frankly, but we'll allow it.
00:12:45 --> 00:12:48 Anna: Sticking with giant instruments and southern
00:12:48 --> 00:12:51 skies. A new paper doing the rounds this
00:12:51 --> 00:12:54 week lays out how the Square Kilometer
00:12:54 --> 00:12:56 Array is going to use one of the most
00:12:57 --> 00:12:59 violent phenomena in the cosmos to
00:12:59 --> 00:13:02 map things, things no telescope can see.
00:13:02 --> 00:13:05 And the lead author is Dr. Manisha Caleb
00:13:05 --> 00:13:08 of the University of Sydney Home, UM team.
00:13:08 --> 00:13:11 Avery: All right. The violent phenomenon in
00:13:11 --> 00:13:14 question being fast radio bursts.
00:13:14 --> 00:13:17 Anna: Fast radio bursts. Flashes of radio
00:13:17 --> 00:13:20 energy from other galaxies that last about
00:13:20 --> 00:13:23 a millisecond, a hundred times quicker than a
00:13:23 --> 00:13:25 blink, yet carry enormous energy.
00:13:26 --> 00:13:28 And they're useful precisely because of what
00:13:28 --> 00:13:31 happens to them on the way here. As a
00:13:31 --> 00:13:34 burst crosses billions of light years, the
00:13:34 --> 00:13:37 plasma it passes through disperses it,
00:13:37 --> 00:13:40 stretching the signal out by frequency. And
00:13:40 --> 00:13:42 magnetic fields twist its polarization
00:13:43 --> 00:13:45 through an effect called Faraday rotation.
00:13:46 --> 00:13:49 Every burst arrives carrying a record of
00:13:49 --> 00:13:50 everything it traveled through.
00:13:51 --> 00:13:53 Avery: So each one is like a core sample drilled
00:13:53 --> 00:13:55 through the universe. The gas between
00:13:55 --> 00:13:58 galaxies barely emits any light, and
00:13:58 --> 00:14:01 magnetic fields emit none at all. But you can
00:14:01 --> 00:14:03 read both from what they've done to the burst
00:14:03 --> 00:14:03 along the way.
00:14:04 --> 00:14:07 Anna: Exactly. And the paper's argument is
00:14:07 --> 00:14:10 about scale. We've caught FRBs by
00:14:10 --> 00:14:12 the hundreds so far. The SKA, with
00:14:12 --> 00:14:15 SKA low being commissioned right now
00:14:15 --> 00:14:18 in Western Australia alongside the Dish
00:14:18 --> 00:14:21 Array in South Africa, is expected to
00:14:21 --> 00:14:24 detect them in the thousands upon thousands.
00:14:24 --> 00:14:27 At those numbers, the team argues, frbs
00:14:27 --> 00:14:30 graduate from curiosities into a
00:14:30 --> 00:14:32 genuine cosmological survey tool,
00:14:32 --> 00:14:35 tracing where the universe's missing ordinary
00:14:35 --> 00:14:38 matter is hiding, mapping cosmic
00:14:38 --> 00:14:40 magnetic fields, probing the universe's
00:14:40 --> 00:14:43 expansion, even testing fundamental
00:14:43 --> 00:14:46 physics, like whether photons have any
00:14:46 --> 00:14:47 mass at all.
00:14:47 --> 00:14:50 Avery: And the poetry of it is that we still don't
00:14:50 --> 00:14:52 fully know what makes a fast radio burst.
00:14:53 --> 00:14:55 Magnetars are the leading suspects, but the
00:14:55 --> 00:14:58 case is enclosed. So the SKA
00:14:58 --> 00:15:01 gets to work the mystery from both ends,
00:15:01 --> 00:15:03 using the bursts as tools while
00:15:03 --> 00:15:06 simultaneously figuring out what they are.
00:15:06 --> 00:15:08 Anna: A telescope, partly in our own backyard,
00:15:09 --> 00:15:11 using millisecond flashes from across the
00:15:11 --> 00:15:14 universe to weigh the invisible. The next
00:15:14 --> 00:15:17 few years of this are going to be something
00:15:17 --> 00:15:18 special Next up
00:15:18 --> 00:15:21 Avery: a, uh, quick update on Starship Flight 13. We
00:15:21 --> 00:15:23 gave you the full preview in yesterday's
00:15:23 --> 00:15:26 episode. So just the new developments today.
00:15:26 --> 00:15:29 First, the launch date has slipped. SpaceX
00:15:29 --> 00:15:31 is now targeting no earlier than Thursday
00:15:31 --> 00:15:34 16th July at 6:45
00:15:34 --> 00:15:37 in the evening US Eastern Time. That's
00:15:37 --> 00:15:40 8:45 Friday morning for those of us on
00:15:40 --> 00:15:41 Australia's east coast.
00:15:41 --> 00:15:44 Anna: And second, the good news that came with the
00:15:44 --> 00:15:47 slip. Basex has completed a, uh, full
00:15:47 --> 00:15:49 static fire of the super heavy Booster,
00:15:49 --> 00:15:52 lighting all 33 Raptor engines on the
00:15:52 --> 00:15:55 pad. That's the final major test before
00:15:55 --> 00:15:56 flight.
00:15:56 --> 00:15:58 Avery: The mission itself is unchanged from what we
00:15:58 --> 00:16:00 covered yesterday. The second flight of the
00:16:00 --> 00:16:03 version 3 vehicle carrying the first
00:16:03 --> 00:16:05 genuinely functional Starlink V3
00:16:05 --> 00:16:08 satellites rather than mass simulators.
00:16:08 --> 00:16:10 If the schedule holds, we'll have the full
00:16:10 --> 00:16:11 story in Friday's episode.
00:16:12 --> 00:16:14 Anna: Set those alarms, Australia. A Friday
00:16:14 --> 00:16:17 breakfast launch is the civilized way to
00:16:17 --> 00:16:18 watch Starship fly.
00:16:19 --> 00:16:21 Now, in case you missed it over the past
00:16:21 --> 00:16:23 couple of weeks, and because it's simply too
00:16:23 --> 00:16:26 interesting to leave on the shelf, Harvard
00:16:26 --> 00:16:29 astrophysicist Avi Loeb has been
00:16:29 --> 00:16:31 appointed to chair a brand new White House
00:16:31 --> 00:16:34 UAP Science Advisory Council, a
00:16:34 --> 00:16:37 scientific panel tasked with investigating
00:16:37 --> 00:16:39 unidentified anomalous phenomena.
00:16:40 --> 00:16:42 That's the current official term for what
00:16:42 --> 00:16:45 everyone still calls UFOs, covering
00:16:45 --> 00:16:48 objects in the air, in space or even
00:16:48 --> 00:16:49 underwater.
00:16:49 --> 00:16:52 Avery: And for listeners who know the name, yes,
00:16:52 --> 00:16:55 that Avi Loeb, former chair of
00:16:55 --> 00:16:57 Harvard's Astronomy Department, hundreds of
00:16:57 --> 00:16:59 papers on black holes and the early universe,
00:17:00 --> 00:17:02 and in recent years, the most famous or
00:17:02 --> 00:17:05 infamous advocate for taking the possibility
00:17:05 --> 00:17:08 of alien technology seriously. He's the one
00:17:08 --> 00:17:10 who suggested the interstellar object
00:17:10 --> 00:17:13 Oumuamua might have been an artificial light
00:17:13 --> 00:17:15 sail back in 2017.
00:17:15 --> 00:17:18 Anna: The setup the council was established under
00:17:18 --> 00:17:21 the Trump administration's transparency push
00:17:21 --> 00:17:23 on uap alongside agencies
00:17:23 --> 00:17:26 including the Pentagon's Anomaly Resolution
00:17:26 --> 00:17:29 Office, Office of the Director of National
00:17:29 --> 00:17:31 Intelligence and the FBI.
00:17:31 --> 00:17:34 Loeb's team reports to a new UAP
00:17:34 --> 00:17:37 governance board overseen by the intelligence
00:17:37 --> 00:17:39 community. And after its first meeting, the
00:17:39 --> 00:17:42 council requested more than 50 videos,
00:17:42 --> 00:17:45 images and documents from the Pentagon tied
00:17:45 --> 00:17:48 to known incidents, including the so called
00:17:48 --> 00:17:51 orb sightings reported by military personnel.
00:17:52 --> 00:17:54 Avery: Now the scientific community's reaction has
00:17:54 --> 00:17:57 been divided is the polite word.
00:17:57 --> 00:18:00 John Kirkpatrick, who used to run the
00:18:00 --> 00:18:02 Pentagon's own UAP investigations, said
00:18:02 --> 00:18:05 Loeb is not viewed favorably by much of the
00:18:05 --> 00:18:07 scientific community and lacks national
00:18:07 --> 00:18:10 security experience. Critics point to his
00:18:10 --> 00:18:12 hand picked counsel, including not just data
00:18:12 --> 00:18:15 scientists and oceanographers, but also
00:18:15 --> 00:18:18 figures who've openly claimed the US has
00:18:18 --> 00:18:20 recovered non human craft and
00:18:20 --> 00:18:22 Anna: in fairness, here's the other side of the
00:18:22 --> 00:18:25 ledger. Loeb himself says he's starting from
00:18:25 --> 00:18:28 the assumption these objects are human made
00:18:28 --> 00:18:30 and treating it as a national security
00:18:30 --> 00:18:33 question. He says the government is genuinely
00:18:33 --> 00:18:36 baffled by some of what it's seen, and his
00:18:36 --> 00:18:38 argument is that the fact these cases are
00:18:38 --> 00:18:41 being open to scientists at all suggests
00:18:41 --> 00:18:43 officials aren't confident they're
00:18:43 --> 00:18:45 conventional. His stated focus is
00:18:45 --> 00:18:48 instrumentation, data standards and
00:18:48 --> 00:18:51 rigorous collection. In his words, better
00:18:51 --> 00:18:54 data could settle the alien debate once and
00:18:54 --> 00:18:54 for all.
00:18:55 --> 00:18:57 Avery: And that's the version of this I can
00:18:57 --> 00:19:00 genuinely get behind. The worst outcome for a
00:19:00 --> 00:19:01 question like this is that it stays in the
00:19:01 --> 00:19:04 realm of blurry footage and anecdote forever.
00:19:04 --> 00:19:06 If this council produces calibrated
00:19:06 --> 00:19:09 instruments and open data, that's a win,
00:19:09 --> 00:19:11 regardless of what the answer turns out to
00:19:11 --> 00:19:14 be. If it produces headlines instead of data,
00:19:14 --> 00:19:16 well, we'll report that too.
00:19:16 --> 00:19:19 Anna: His own line on it Keep our eyes on the
00:19:19 --> 00:19:21 orbs, not the social media.
00:19:21 --> 00:19:24 Avery: On, um, this show, we keep our eyes on both
00:19:24 --> 00:19:26 strictly professionally Time for
00:19:26 --> 00:19:29 Anna: your skywatch, and Tonight is genuinely one
00:19:29 --> 00:19:32 to circle. 14 July brings a
00:19:32 --> 00:19:35 super new moon, which means the darkest
00:19:35 --> 00:19:37 skies of the entire month. And for those of
00:19:37 --> 00:19:40 us in Australia and New Zealand, that's a
00:19:40 --> 00:19:43 standing invitation. The Milky Way's core
00:19:43 --> 00:19:45 is riding high through the evening, with
00:19:45 --> 00:19:47 Scorpius and Sagittarius nearly
00:19:47 --> 00:19:50 overhead. If you've been meaning to get
00:19:50 --> 00:19:52 somewhere dark and see our galaxy properly
00:19:53 --> 00:19:55 tonight and the next few nights are the
00:19:55 --> 00:19:58 Avery: time while you're out there, look west after
00:19:58 --> 00:20:00 sunset for Venus, absolutely blazing at
00:20:00 --> 00:20:03 around magnitude -4 in LEO. You
00:20:03 --> 00:20:06 can't miss it. And here's one for your diary.
00:20:06 --> 00:20:09 On Thursday and Friday evening, the 16th
00:20:09 --> 00:20:11 and 17th, a slender young crescent
00:20:11 --> 00:20:14 moon slides up past Regulus and then Venus,
00:20:14 --> 00:20:16 low in the western twilight.
00:20:16 --> 00:20:19 Anna: A beautiful photo opportunity for the early
00:20:19 --> 00:20:21 risers. The pre dawn east is where the
00:20:21 --> 00:20:24 planets are congregating. Saturn is up after
00:20:24 --> 00:20:27 midnight and high before dawn with its rings
00:20:27 --> 00:20:30 tilted nicely for small telescopes. And
00:20:30 --> 00:20:32 Mars is gliding right past Aldebaran in
00:20:32 --> 00:20:35 Taurus this very morning. Two reddish
00:20:35 --> 00:20:38 points of similar brightness about 5 degrees
00:20:38 --> 00:20:41 apart. A lovely color comparison with just
00:20:41 --> 00:20:42 your eyes.
00:20:42 --> 00:20:45 Avery: Dark skies, a brilliant evening star, and
00:20:45 --> 00:20:48 a red planet racing a red star. Not a
00:20:48 --> 00:20:50 bad week's programming from the universe.
00:20:50 --> 00:20:52 Anna: And that's Astronomy daily for Tuesday
00:20:53 --> 00:20:55 14th July. All our episodes,
00:20:55 --> 00:20:57 show notes and the newsletter are
00:20:57 --> 00:21:00 @astronomydaily IO and you'll
00:21:00 --> 00:21:02 find us across social media.
00:21:02 --> 00:21:05 Avery: Astrodaily pod if
00:21:05 --> 00:21:07 today's episode sparked an opinion and let's
00:21:07 --> 00:21:10 face it space mirrors and UFO councils will
00:21:10 --> 00:21:12 do that. Come tell us about it. We read
00:21:12 --> 00:21:14 everything. I'm Avery.
00:21:14 --> 00:21:16 Anna: And I'm Anna. Thanks for spending part of
00:21:16 --> 00:21:18 your day with us. Until tomorrow.
00:21:18 --> 00:21:19 Avery: Clear skies.