#446: Voyager's Future Paths, Black Hole Star Quenching & Ultimate Temperature Limits

Oh again, thank you for joining us. This is a Q and A edition of Space Nuts. My name is Andrew Dunkley. Coming up, we're going to be looking at Voyager one and Voyager two. A question from Alan Ron wants to talk about star formation and Tom has brought up that maximum potential temperature in the universe thing again. We'll talk about all of that and more on this episode of Space Nuts. Fifteen second in Channel ten nine ignition Space Nuts or three two one Space Nurse as the night reported, Neil's good and here. To answer them all with a massive disclaimer is Professor Fred Watson as Dorono Merill Tiphrad. How are you, Andrew? I'm just reading one questions now and sech I wonder what the answer to that is, just as he was sitting. Yes, we're going to throw all the questions. I think if we if we write a letter to the Astronomical Union and just sit and wait, we can answer it in a couple of. Weeks' worse a long episode. Yet, let's just get straight down to it, shall we. First question comes from Alan Bye. This is Alan Skalhill Roll Medicine, not Alberta, Canada. My question is can the trajectory of Voyager one and two be extrapolated to determine what galaxy, star or planet they could come into contact with in the distant future, and what would the likely outcome be of such a contact, but they be pulled into the orbit of any of these space structures. Thank you, love your podcast. Thank you Allen. Nice to hear from you again. I remember him distinctly because of where he lives Madison Hat. Yeah, but it's a question I think that we've had come up before in a different form, people wondering where they're headed and what they might run into. The answer is, well, probably not that complicated for. It at the moment, I think they are. I don't think you can actually identify anything that they're heading towards because we've got blank sky in that direction. And just the disclaimer here, you never quite know what sort of perturbation they're going to have on the way by, you know, out gassing from the spacecraft or a little bit of residual solar wind. It could alter the trajectory. But I do remember turning the question on its head when your old friend Umuamora was first discovered. The extrapolation backwards in time forma put it somewhere near the star of one of the brightest stars in the in the sky. But the disclaimer there was we don't know when it left, and Vega would have been in a different place when it left from what what we see now, because you're talking about journey times of millions of years. And I think the same. Is true of you know, of the two voyagers, and probably new Horizons as well. Pioneer spacecraft are also leaving the Solar System. All of them, I think, are heading for regions unknown. And it's partly, as I said, because we don't know. You know, first of all, how long is it going to take them to to have an interaction with another body? And until you know that, you don't know where that other body is going to be in the first place. So it's. We're talking flight times of potentially billions of years? Are we so right now? We couldn't tell you, but of years, so much will have changed, so much will have moved, something might get in the way and influence them, or maybe they'll just go on forever and not hit a thing. That's right, So you know, in a billion years time, our galaxy will have rotated five times in the in the at the distance of the Sun from the from the galactic center, so you've got all that swirling stuff going on as well. You know, the journey of every star around the center of the galaxy takes them on past that aren't identical by any means, So you might very well find in a billion years you're looking at a completely different set of stars that it might run into. Yes. But the bottom line though, and the answer to the final part of the question, is it would The likelihood is that it would wind up going into orbits around something. A direct collision is unlikely but not impossible, but winding up in orbit around something else is perhaps the most likely outcome. Whether it's probably going to be a star, maybe a planet might become the artificial mode of the planet. Yeah, well the Earth has picked up the odd rock, hasn't it in recent times? So yeah, that's a possibility. But we're not talking any time in the near future. I mean, Voyager one and Voyager two barely out of our rum, out of the Sun's influence, let alone getting into deep interstellar space. They're only just sort of sort of on that on on that on that border zone, aren't they. Now that's right, Yes, so long way to go yet, Alan, a very long way to go, and maybe they'll never see a thing and probably go cheese. Is it boring? Are we there yet? That's right, It probably will go forever. It's straw. Wish I'd brought more cassettes. Yes, quiet, Let's move on to. Our next question. This comes from Ron A question for you from upstate New York. I'll be in upstate New York in the latter half of next year. Wrong, just in case you want to have lunch. I've seen a few posts about star formation being extinguished by the outflow of the super massive black hole at the galactic core. The paper star formation shut down by a multi phase gas outflow in a galaxy at a red shift of two point four to five inches. I assume that is discusses the higher outflow. Is it minutes discussed. As the highest neither, it's just the other quotation mark from the. End of the quote. It's all right, discuss this two point four to five discuss us the higher outflow of Thank you, cool and neutral guests. Well discovered discovered? What should I start again? Discovered by the web space telescope. I can understand how this outflow would interrupt the stellar formation of the path of these jets. But I don't see the mechanism for this black hole to quench stellar formation across the entire galaxy. Do these jets process and sweep across the galaxy? Hopefully doctor Watson can shed some light on this thanks to the great podcast Always a Learning Experience, and they send us a link to an article about this very thing. Thank you, Ron. Can you just for me dumb down his questions? Yes, So it's basically, and I should say, this is a really complex area of galactic astronomy, the astronomy of galaxies, and you've got some processes. It depends on gas flows, the environment of the galaxy, whether it's surrounded by other galaxies, weather, there's a black hole in the middle of it, and all of you know, all of that throws into the mix as to whether you get this quenching effect of the gas flow can quench style formation, for example, until stars don't form us rapidly. So I'm just having a look now at the Cosmos article that Ron tends us are linked to, and it's so here's the sentence, and thank you. Who am I quoting? I think I might be I might a should be quoting a press release, in which case that's all right, because I can't find an author for this article. But that's okay. I'm quoting Cosmos magazine. That's the Australian homegrown science magazine. It's long been thought that outflows from super massive black holes can suppress style formation, but direct observational evidence this has now been lacking. How can a black hole have an outflow in the first place A fair question, given that black holes are meant to be so dense the gravitational field can prevent even light from escaping. So the best scientists, I think I'd agree with all scientists aren't completely sure, and I think we are pretty sure actually. But the best theory suggests that spinning black holes have this outflow would flow of matter in the form of vertical jets of material, and it's all about conserving angular momentum. It's also about magnetic fields. I might throw it and so okay. So much of difficulty in proving that this car that this wind is suppressing star formation is because previous studies have been limited to studying ionized gases, which are warm in the black hole outflows. But the new study shows that more than ninety percent of the wind is made up of cool neutral gas, effectively invisible in previous research. And so I think that is the hint that the outflow that we're seeing, they says of the order of one hundred times larger than what we thought it was, because this is in the outflow rate of the neutral gas there, not the ionized gas that's had its electrons stripped off, and so you've got much more outflowing mass than was thought of before. And it's so what it says is and again i'm quoting now. Who am I quoting now? Rebecca Davis from Swimburn. Thanks mate, Rebecca, Welcome to space Nuts. Rebecca says the outflow is removing gas faster than gas is being converted into stars, indicating that the outflow is likely to have a very significant impact on the evolution of the galaxy. Our findings provide new evidence to indicate that black hole driven outflows are able to rapidly shut off or quench. There you go the word I use myself staff imation in math gallus. So I think the answer to the question is, and you know, I think basically Ron thinking of the idea of jets of material coming from black holes, which is the way they are. But when they get to higher galactic latitudes, in other words, higher distances above or below the galactic plane, then that those jets become lobes, we call them lobes. They become big bubbles of gas. And if there's one hundred times more forming those outflows than we can actually see, it means those gas bubbles are big enough that they can affect the whole galaxy, or at least much of the galaxy, which is really the question that Ron's asking, and it's a great question. So you know, we tend to think of these jets as being focused just vertically one way and the other from the black hole, but they're really spreading out in a large into a large blob to the north and south of the black hole, which can basically permeate the entire galaxy. So I think that's the answer to the question. Okay, don't keep. Very good, Thank you, Ron, great question, Thanks for sending it in. This is Space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here and Professor Fred Watson there left right up down. Not sure. Let's take a quick break from the show to tell you more about our sponsoring Cogni and I'll give you a special URL to find out how to take advantage of their great offer for Space Nuts listeners. 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One of the listeners was asking about absolute limit on temperature, lower temperature and the upper limit and Fred mentioned that the upper limit there was none because partugles can move as fast as they want to wouldn't the speed a light. I mean, there's a limit, an upper limit on a speed particles with the speed of light. Wouldn't that let be a limit limiting factor on the upper round on the temperature limit. Anyway, thanks for the great show. All right, thank you, Tom. We understand absolute zero being where all motion stops. Tom's suggestion is absolute max temperature is limited by the speed of light. I think that's where he was going. Yeah, and it's that's exactly right. So that you know that would represent a maximum temperature because your particles are all traveling at the speed of light. And the reason why it's not the case is that you know, if you continue to heat a gap. So yes, the temperature of the gases is a reflection of how fast the particles of the gas are moving. You continue to heat it, they move faster and faster, and they can approach the speed of light. But of course, the only thing that can go the speed of light is light itself or electromagnetic radiation, because what happens is as you put more energy in, it's taking more and more energy to accelerate the particles, and they what we call a symptotically approach the speed of light. They never get to it. So you can put as much energy as you like in and the particles that get more energetic, but they won't exceed the speed of light, and there's no stop. But you can keep on putting energy in and they'll nudge that little bit nearer to the speed of light. In fact that you know, the bottom line is that to reach the speed of light, you've got to provide something within energy. That's what Einstein's special relativity theory says, and it's been proven many times. So if you put infinite. Energy in, then you know you hit the speed of light, but you haven't got infinite energy. That's what we're talking about. An absolute maximum for the temperature. So the temperature, the maximum temperature is infinity. That's what it means. So there isn't one. There is an absolute zero, but not an absolute maximum. They are. Yeah, that's the bottom line. There's a little bit more to it because relativity also tells you that as things approach the speed of light, they're mass increases, and that's why you need to put more energy into, you know, to get them going any faster, because their mass has gone up. So it's never going to happen. You're always going to be able to add more heat to it to increase the temperature. Even though the particles might be traveling very near the speed of light, they're not actually there. Yeah. You start off throwing a screwed up piece of paper, and you know, as you get there and you're trying to push a planet. That's yes, not try it. That's it. That's exactly right. Yeah, we are all. Right, Thank you, Tom. I think we've got time for one more quick one. This is this is a fun question from Renny. It's a it's a what if question. Rennie asks, if plants and animals were discovered on another planet that we landed on, would we be able to digest its plants and animals? I assume it means could we, you know. Feed ourselves. That's so. Yeah, I suppose if it was a planet like ours. Maybe I don't know, but yeah, And. It depended if we had water based living organisms, which the planets plants and animals would be. There might be similar enough two what we have on Earth that we could digest them, but it might be a bit difficult. And would you want to be the guinea pig? A piece of meat from some rendered planet somewhere. Yeah. Thanks. My guess is that that it will be unlikely. You know, there might be trace elements that will be toxic to us, even if it was a water based like form, that there could be stuff in it that you really would not want to buy with. Notwithstanding the bacteria and virus impact that we would never have been able to defend ourselves against. This could be all sorts of reasons not to. Yeah, so possible, yes, logical, No, maybe it's the best way to answer it. Thanks, Rennie, great question. I love that. I love the hypotheticals. Just one more thing before we finish up, fred I got a lovely message from Hannah the airline pilot the other day. Hannah introduced herself to us some years ago when she sent us photographed from the cockpit of her British Airways airliner of not too lucent clouds. She's just sent me some more photos, which I've shared on the Space Nuts podcast group facebook page. She's done a. Time lapse of the super moon rise above the volcano in South America on her way to visit Alma. So yeah, oh, I'm so jealous. I'm so jealous. They're great photos, and especially that moon rise she took. She was trying to do it handheld, so it's a bit wobbly, but it's worth looking at. And yes, that is a big volcano right next to the moon, so it's amazing. And yes, getting to see the Alma Observatory. Yeah, what a great, great opportunity for her. So thanks for sharing those, Hannah and you can you can check those out on our Space Nuts podcast group Facebook page. There you go, We're all done, Fred, Thanks for answering those questions. It's a pleasure. Thank you very much for asking them my pleasure. Indeed a late message from TTJ. Hi boys, I started to listen to all the episodes from the start after hearing one of the new episodes first. I'm now up to episode seventy six, still got years worth before I catch up. Thank you boys, no, thanks for finding it. We appreciate it. Tell your friends. Fred until next time, aut of. Wir, aut Ofvoir and Daffy desain and goodbye. Yes, and as we say in this country, see you later. Yeah mate, all right, see you Fred Frick what's an astronomer at large? And thanks to Hue in the studio for sending us all those last second questions live and in person. Well no he's not here. Actually never seen the guy, and from me Andrew Dunkley, thank you again for joining us, Thanks for sending in questions, and don't forget to go to our website so you can send more space nuts dot io. Until next time, take care and we'll see you real soon on another episode of space Nuts. Oh you'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, all your favorite podcast player. You can also stream on demand at fights dot com. This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com