#403: Stellar Synthesis & Quasar Quests: Crafting Cosmic Particles & Unveiling the Universe's Brightest Beacon

Hello there, Andrew Dunkley here the host of Space Nuts, and it's great to have your company on the latest episode, and coming up, we're going to be looking at a couple of things very scientific show. Today, scientists have done something that only colliding neutron stars can do. They synthesized new isotopes. I had to practice a lot to say synthesized new isotopes, and I've said it twice without stuffing it up, so I'm very happy. We're also going to talk about a discovery. Recently, we talked about something that's the biggest of its kind we've ever found. We've found the oldest of its kind. Recently, now we seem to have found something that is defined as the fastest growing and brightest of its kind. What is it? We will tell you very very soon. That's coming up on this episode of Space Nuts fifteen, Channel ten nine Ignition Squench Space Nuts Side three two one spaces actually bought it real goods and joining me as always is the goenna hunter himself. You've got you've got a visitor in your backyard as we speak, Yes, we do, yes, about one and a half meters long, something in the region of five feet the ghana, which is a lizard like creature on four eggs, with a long face and a big belly and a tongue that's coming in and out all the time, and very sharp claws. Actually, you don't want to mess with garaners because they can do a lot of damage. So this one's pottering around the backyard at the moment as we speak, in fact, a lot of sight of them. I'm not sure we'll hurt. I'm not sure sure which way they have gone, but yeah, they were there a minute ago. Quite extraordinary. They've got the pad food and they're gone. Yeah, that's right, that's what it is, left over plat food. Yeah, they can grow to be quite enormous, and yeah, you're right, they can do a lot of damage, and they're very very They look harmless enough, but you don't really want to get too close. I've seen a couple of goannas at my parents' place in the year's gone by, and even the smaller ones can be a little intimidating close up there. That's quite amazing and ancient creatures. Now, oh okay, never try that. Now. Now we've got a couple of stories that we've got to talk about. Fred and some exciting news in science with the synthesization of isotopes, which was done in a lab using a laser. But this is a sort of a replication of something only colliding neutron stars can do. We better sort of work out what this means, because the scientists involved are very excited about this. They are, that's right. So just very briefly the backstory, what do we mean by isotopes? And it starts off with our understanding of how chemical elements differ from one another, and so there's the chemical elements are actually sort of defined by the number of protons in the nucleus, the atomic nucleus, and so hydrogen, for example, has one proton and he always has one proton, Helium always has two, iron has twenty six, just to jump to another number, and so you know, you can't have hydrogen with two protons, and you can't have iron with twenty five. And I'm quoting here from our old friendiespace dot com website. But in there atomic nuclei, the atomic centers, protons are joined by neutrons, and so the number of neutrons essentially contributes can vary in a way that the number of protons can't. Protons are charged particles, Neutrons aren't positively charged particles. Neutrons are neutral, hence the name. So if you've got hydrogen atom with one proton and one neutron, bless you, then there'll be another ten of those. Okay, she sneezes once away. Her record is twenty five. Oh my goodness me, that's almost sounds like a medical condition. I just said, sorry, not no need to apologize. You can't help sneezing. So the bottom line is that adding neutrons doesn't change the element that it is, but it changes the isoto of the element, and so isotopes can vary. And once again, space dot com has a nice example. One of the isotopes of iron is iron fifty four, which has twenty six protons and twenty eight neutrons. There is also something called iron fifty six, which has twenty six protons and thirty neutrons, et cetera, And so it goes on. So that's what we mean by isotopes. It's elements in a different form, which is governed by the number of neutrons that are present in the atomic nucleus. Now, to cut to the trace, to cut to the story. There are facilities that can actually make isotopes. In fact, I think we've got one here in Australia at the Adanstow, the Australian Nucleus Science and Technology Organization. But this particular one that we're talking about, which is at Michigan State University, is a very fancy one. It's called f f RIB FRIB that's what the acronym spells, FRIB. I like that. Actually it's a bit like you're telling fribs. It's the Facility for Rare Earth Isotope Beams, that's what FRIB stands for. And it's basically an accelerator where they can synthesize isotopes. And what they've done is they've synthesized some of the isotopes that we think are created by colliding neutron stars. Now we can't go and test the insides of colliding neutron stars. What we can see though, is their gravitational waves, and that allows us to see some understanding of what's going on inside in that ultra turbulent environment when two neutron stars collide. And neutron stars, of course, are the remnants of massive stars which have got to the end of their lives and collapsed, usually a super over explosion that blows off the outer outer envelope. The center collapses to form a neutron star, where the collapse to a black hole is only stopped by the outward pressure of neutrons against each other. So what the scientists at FRIB, the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, have done is created some isotopes which have never existed on Earth. That's pretty that's a pretty big, you know, pretty impressive, very bold claim exactly to be to be specific, they are thulium one eight two, thulium one eight three, itterbium one eight six, itterbium one eight seven, and lutetium one ninety. I think I went to school with a lutitian. There's one in every school I think I went. I went to school with a few euterbiums until they were rough anyway. And the thing is that we think these isotopes are probably involved with the process where colliding neutron stars create new elements. And we now know that the heavy elements elements and in particular gold and silver, are created in these neutron star collisions. And so if you can understand the way the sort of intermediate isotopes behave, then you are going a long way to understanding what the processes are as I said, the ultraturbulent environment of colliding neutron stars, if I can, if I may quote one of the scientists involved with this, Bradley Sheryl, who is the University Distinguished Professor in mitch Good State University's College of Natural Science and head of the Advanced Rare Isotopes Separator Department, says, this is probably the first time these isotopes have existed on the surface of the Earth. I like to draw the analogy of taking a journey. We've been looking forward to going somewhere we've never been before, and this is the first step we've left home and we're starting to explore. So that's really a very nice, almost poetic way of putting it. This journey to understand the nuclear processes that go on in some of these very exotic collisions. Is that the ultimate purpose to just try and understand a process or will there be applications that this might be able to be used for if they can take it to the next level? Yeah, yeah, I mean you never know what the applications might be. And in fact, I think nuclear physics generally can get can basically benefit by people understanding how these newly forged isotopes behave, so nuclear physics will be one of the benefactors in this In this work, one of the other scientists involved in this said, it's not a big surprise that these isotopes exist, but now that we have them, we have colleagues who will be very interested in what we can measure next. I'm already starting to think of what we can do next in terms of measuring their half lives, their masses, and other properties. So it is, you know, it's setting an improved baseline in the whole science of nuclear physics, but it is. But it's motivated, as as we've just said, by the idea of trying to understand these processes better that take place in collisions between neutron stars. I'm still a bit confused though, I mean, I've read through this and tried to absorb it and understand it, and I've taken some headache tablets afterwards. But what do they what do they make by synthesizing? I mean they obvi, they didn't have any neutron stars lying around A bit of drawn out not in there. So what does synthesizing mean? Well, so I'm not not a nuclear physicist, but my guess is that it involves a particle accelerator that is colliding things together to smash them up and synthesize other things. That's essentially what happens at the large Hadron collider, for example, on the on the Swiss French border cerns large adron collider, So it's all about colliding things together. In the large Adron collider, it's generally protons, although they also collide lead atoms the nuclei of lead atoms and learn different things from that. So not only when you smash atoms together you don't just break things apart, you also get reactions taking place that create new things, so you can synthesize them. Often though, those elements that you've synthesized only lasts for a very short fraction of a second, and I don't know in this particular work just how long these newly synthesized isotopes are. So I can actually just say a little bit more once again quoting from space dot com talking about those isotopes threi, one, eight, two, et cetera. These isotopes formed by firing a beam of platinum ions that's platinum without its electrons a target of carbon at the frib the rare isotope manufactory and the isotopes they say might not be present in the wreckage of neutron star collisions, but their existence on Earth is definitely a step towards creating those briefly lived, transitional super heavy elements on our planet to see if they result in elements like gold. In other words, these are temporary things that only exist temporarily and that might themselves decay to form something recognizable and stable, like the nucleus of the gold at it's really exciting stuff. I think, you know, it's tinkering around with matter at it's most rudimentary. Yes, yeah, indeed, I think it was also fascinating to try and understand that you're talking about stars being the furnaces of all these elements. And yes, I think most stars can't do anything more significant than create iron. You need a neutron star to smash into another neutron star to get these, That's okay, and my furn is not is ignoring what I'm saying. That's okay. So you need a neutron star smashing into a neutron star to start creating heavier elements like silver and gold. That's correct, Yeah, that's correct. And how often do these How often did neutron stars hit each other? Or wouldn't I wouldn't expect it to be here every day, a van or is it? It's well, given you know the size of the universe and the number of objects in the universe, and the fact that we can now detect these by the gravitational wave signals, I think they are pretty pretty frequent, actually, so I wouldn't like to put a number on it. But I don't think you're talking about events that are essentially very rare. And so it's now thought, whereas not very long ago we used to think that all the gold and silver were created in super and over explosions. The evidence that apparently has been uncovered really by the James Web Space Telescope and other recent facilities have suggested that all of the Earth's gold was actually made in neutron star collisions. And in fact, I think that that story was also covered by space dot Com not very long ago actually, but essentially in recent weeks. So yes, it's it's exciting stuff. Well, our thinking is moving along if I can put it that way from perhaps a simplistic viewpoint, that every neutron star collapse produces gold from a super and over explosion, but that is possibly not the case. It might need colliding neutron stars to do it. So all of this happened before Earth was formed, and as the planet was created, all that this stuff was just floating around and accreted into the into the crust. That's right for floating around read interstellar medium. That's just that's the technical term. Interstellar medium means floating around. Yeah, it's the you know, the debris between the stars, and a lot of that debrity is the result of super and over explosion and we're now seeing nuclear sorry, neutron star collisions. Fantastic, all right, it's a really fascinating discovery and a major achievement. And if you would like to chase that story up, as Fred mentioned, it's the space dot com website. This is space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson. Three space Nuts. Our second story. Fred looks at something just as spectacular, if not more spectacular, And we talked recently about finding the biggest UH what was it the biggest black hole ever? Or it might have been the oldest, the oldest we found, the oldest one ever. We found, we found all the brightest cosmic explosion ever. Now we've found the brightest quasar. And this is also conjunction with a huge black hole that you're normally at. This is hard to comprehend. That's correct, it is. The statistics are extraordinary, So let's do the statistics. This is an object with a very memorable name Jay zero five two nine minus four three five one. Don't forget that it is. It's intrinsically the brightest object in the universe. It has a luminosity equal to seventeen billion times the Sun's luminosity. I beg your pard, that's the mass. The luminosity is even more. It's even more dramatic. So I have given you the wrong statistic. Its mass is seventeen billion times the soulness, so that makes it a supermassive black hole. Its luminosity is five hundred trillion times the luminosity of the Sun. Forget the billions, five hundred trillion times the Sun's luminosity. And all of this is taking place at a great distance in the universe in fact at the look back time of about twelve billion years, so that's really long it is. So we're seeing this as you know, as it was when the universe was less than two billion years old. And the work has been led by Christian Wolfus and astronomer at the Australian National University here in Australia. And as you said, the story kind of starts at Siding Spring Observatory where I used to work as the astronomer in charge of the Anglo Australian Telescope then Australian Astronomical Observatory. So they started with basically the story starts before that with an analysis of data from the Gaya spacecraft that we've talked about before, European Space Agencies Gaia satellite which measured billions and I think it's still doing it bon of stars. So it essentially in automatic mode analyzed this object as being a star because they thought it was too bright to be anything else than the only real alternative to a star is a quasar. But then observations, yes, deciding to bring observatory with the Australian National Universities two point three meter telescope there allowed astronomers to recognize that this was not a star, but it was a quasar, and that it was bright, and that meant and quasars are always seen at great distances, but the fact that it was bright meant that this might be a very special object. So applications were made to the European Southern Observatory for time on their marvelous facility in northern Chile, THEVLT, the Very Large Telescope, which is actually four telescopes that can be used together or singly, each one with a mirror eight point two meters in diameter. And the only reason that these Australian astronomers could do that could apply for time on this facility was because of the strategic partnership forged between the Australian government and the European Southern Observatory back in twenty seventeen that gave astronomers in Australia ten years of access to the VLT, as well as access to the sort of governance of the Southern Observatory and the ability to build instruments for them as well. Thinks of that sort. So this strategic partnership, which is knowing about it, it's a big part of my job, Andrew, which is why I'm waxing lyrical about it at the moment. And it's not the first time we've seen classic examples of astronomers being able to capitalize on a combination of Australian instruments and the VLT the Very Large Telescope. Only last year we saw reports of the most distant fast radio burst ever discovered. The one Yes, that was from discovered by a radio telescope in Western Australia, but identified as being the most distant fast radio burst at eight billion light years away or look back time of eight billion years by the VLT, the Very Large Telescope in the Chilean andes the European Southern Observatories facility. So that's the sort of backstory of the observations. But yeah, what a claim to fame that this object the brightest, the most luminous object known in the universe. We We've talked about boats for some time before, right of all time, Rights of all time, and I think this one might be. I think this is the new boat. Yeah, the new boat. You mentioned the statistics. I don't know if you mentioned the size of the event horizon. This is just unthinkably huge. I don't think there's a word big enough to describe the size of this event horizon. This thing stretches seven light years, which is fifteen thousand times the distance from the Sun to the orbit of Neptune. Fifteen thousand times bigger than that. That's that's unbelievable. I just you can't get your head around it. It is, that's right, And that's the kind of inner dimension of the accretion disc, which probably corresponds to the event horizon exactly as you've said. And that accretion disc is, of course what lets what makes this thing bright, because this is all stuff swirling around the black hole, some of it being sucked in, some of it being redirected magnetically into the jets to the north and south poles of the black hole, if I put it that way. But all of that highly energetic and emitting emitting well light as well as X rays and radio waves, so very very energetic object. And I'm not sure whether I mentioned I might have said this already, but gobbles up the equivalent of one Sunday every day, one solar mass per day is what it's actually a creting. So I think it is also the most voracious known of all the black supermassive black holes. Now correct me if I'm wrong. I have this distant memory that suggests that at this point in the age of the universe, quasars are all extinct. Or am I thinking of something else? But do you mean by this point what we're seeing now? Yeah, yes, that's correct. We think what we're saying is quite historical data because of the time it takes for the light to reach us. Yes, twelve billion years. Yeah, this all happened twelve billion years ago. Now, you're right. The nearest the nearest quasar, which is caused by a very active black hole, is actually less than a billion light years away, but there are very few within that distance. In fact, perhaps only one maybe to perhaps, but most of them are more than a billion light years away, which means we're seeing them as they were before a billion years ago, and so today they're extinct. That's right. So if we would go, if we were able to just sort of flash over to this boat, now, what would we see if the quasar is extinct, brightest of all time? What would be happening there now? So it probably will be. Yes, in today's universe, it's probably a fairly quiescent galaxy a bit like ourses. I mean, we think our own galaxy comfortable, warm and cozy place that it is for stars like the Sun and its planets like ours. We think that that may in its history have also been a quasar. There is actually evidence of outbreaks out sorry outburst from the center of our galaxy from the supermassive black hole there, which probably caused by debris falling into it, quite significant amounts of debris. There's evidence of there having been jets, because there's fluorescence of some of the gas above and below the center of our galaxy, which has probably been excited to fluoresce by basically by jets of material which are now long gone from the center of our galaxy, jets of material that excited that stuff to fluoresce. The jets and material have gone, but the fluorescence is still there. So yes, maybe we think all galaxies might go through a quasar phase. I've always described quaisars as delinquent galaxies, and it's not quite true because the quasar itself is the thing that's at the middle of the galaxy. The galaxy is just hosting the quasars, so it's more parasitic perhaps than delinquent, so they think this is the brightest in the universe. Do you think anything could top it? On me? Any thing just is gargantuan in size and brighter than anything. Like the numbers are just staggering. Is there any chance will find anything? Well, I think in astronomy, like many other things, never say never. You know there might be another discovery. This is a serendipitous discovery because this thing is it said, was thought by the Gaya Survey to be a star, and it was only because it was followed up as being an object of some interest by astronomers the A and EU Australian National University that it was discovered to be a p quasar and then found to be a particularly interesting one. Yascinating, Yes, most definitely and well worth reading about. If you'd like to have a look, you can go to the ESO website that's e SO dot org and just do a search for lightest and fastest growing and you'll definitely find it. It's a great story and a nice pickup from I mean, the thing's been hiding in plain sight basically, it's only just now we've pieced it all together. It's fascinating. Fred just about to the end. I just need to remind people that if you're following us on YouTube, don't forget to hit the subscribe button below. If you would like to go to our website and learn about supporting us financially, you can do that. There's all sorts of options there under support space. I hang on, what does it say? And now I can't remember, but anyway, it's there somewhere. Oh look, support space nuts. That's what I say. So there you go. I was right. I should have stuck to my guns. So yeah, just have a look around and see what you can see. And if you want to support us, great. If you just want to be a listener, that's fine too. The more the merrier, that's yeah, we've got to keep the family growing. And Fred, that brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you so much, great pleasure, talk to you and soon I hope, yes, yes, indeed, and good luck with you going a hunt and pictures. Yeah, what wares me is the guy that might be hunting us? Yeah, yeah, don't let the cat out exactly all right. Yeah, thanks for red Sea soon and see you later. Cheers up. Fred Wat's an astronomer at large and thanks to hu not in the studio today when a wall and from me Andrew Dunkley. Always great to have your company. Looking forward to joining you again on the very next episode of Space Nuts. See you then bye byepauts. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or your favorite podcast player. You can also stream on demand at bites dot com. This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com.