Southern Skies

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Hello, I'm Robin Ince, and I'm Brian Cox, and we're back for a brand new series.

New episodes will be released weekly, but if you're in the UK and can't wait you can hear it all right now before anywhere else first on BBC Sounds.

It's a wonderful platform.

It's so good.

BBC Sounds music, radio, podcasts.

I'm Robin Ince.

And I'm Brian Cox and this is a new series of the Infinite Monkey Cage.

And today we are in Australia again.

Of course we're in Australia because as many Australians will know when you kind of got a sitcom in Britain that eventually is starting to fall apart and reach the end of its its life, it comes to Australia.

So

are you being served?

Tony Hancock, love thy neighbour.

All of them eventually found themselves here, and so do we.

I wouldn't say we're a sitcom.

There's no place for comedy in science.

That's why we work well together, actually.

Meow, it turns out, Schroedinger, the cat, was alive.

That was my first and only ad-lib of the evening.

Which is weird because when I hear you talking about physics, I think you're making it all up.

One of the great joys of the southern skies is the view afforded of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

The southern hemisphere points directly towards the galactic centre and the rich star clouds of Sagittarius, the constellation of the archer.

And of course, that's one of the reasons that we've picked that particular one, the constellation of the archer, because anyone here who is a regular Radio 4 listener knows that anything that involves the everyday story of country folk, even if it is from an astronomical point of view, wins over an audience.

And this, by the way, was a joke that Brian suggested that we put in, and he said it's really going to work.

And that shows

both of us are doing heavy lifting, but very much in different genres here.

Does anyone have a clue what the archers is?

Yeah, I see.

So, it just wasn't funny then.

So, yeah,

you all got older contexts and older background.

I think it was because you said archer singly.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's one of the problems.

It was the singular rather than the archers,

which suggests the everyday story of archers.

So, I think you find it was your delivery initially that destroyed that.

But it's not called the,

it's the archer, isn't it?

Yeah, I know that's true.

That's the problem.

You see, this is the issue with doing jokes and mixing them with science.

It's because science has to be accurate, very often that means whereas comedy involves misunderstandings, right?

Whereas you go, a misunderstanding, I cannot have that.

That is not the Schwarz-Charles radius at all.

But it is if we're going to do the black hole joke.

Well, we can't do the joke then.

If you want to talk about science, what you've employed is the Schuler principle.

And that's a very specific Archers joke.

There was a character called Schuler in it for many years.

Well, I'll tell you what, we slowly got a laugh, but you get a lot of respect.

You get a lot of respect for being niche.

Jokes about the Archers in Sydney for an Australian audience.

Magnificent.

So right,

we'll change the joke.

So if you say, of course, it's wonderful, the rich star fields of the Sullivans,

and then I'll say something about the TV soap property, the Sullivans, that ended in 1982.

The block universe still runs.

The southern hemisphere points directly towards the galactic centre and the rich star fields of the Sullivans.

There we go.

You see, you got a laugh.

We didn't have to do anything else with it.

That was like a Beckett play.

Brilliant.

Anyway, now you do your next bit, which is you sounding a bit like Carl Sagan.

The deeds of heroes and gods in the skies.

Yep, go on.

The night sky is a place of beauty and legend.

The stars have always told us stories of origins and endings.

And the deeds of heroes and gods.

But what stories do the stars tell us today?

What secrets do they reveal when we gaze at them, not with human eyes, but with the telescopes and instruments of the 21st century?

Today we are at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, and with us to discuss the magic of the southern sky and its stories, past, present, and future, we are joined by two astrophysicists and the 11th greatest stand-up in the world.

And they are.

I'm Kirsten Banks.

I'm an astrophysicist and science communicator.

And the weirdest thing I've seen in the night sky is while working at Sydney Observatory as a tour guide, I saw this really bright light thinking maybe it was Venus but it was in the wrong spot so then my undergrad brain went am I seeing a star exploding?

No it was just a plane.

I'm Davika and I'm a stellar astrophysicist and a senior lecturer at Macquarie University.

Something in the night sky that really touched my heart was the transit of Venus in 2004.

Now the transit of Venus is very special because it is an event that, you know, back in the 1770s when Captain James Cook came looking for it in the Pacific Ocean, he didn't really see the transit as well, but he did land up mapping or rather discovering Australia.

So, the transit of Venus helped him sort of spot Australia.

And in my case, I was a student back in India in 2004.

I saw the transit of Venus, and I landed up in Australia for my PhD.

I'm Ross Noble.

I'm a stand-up comedian, and the weirdest thing I've ever seen in the night sky was a strange, pulsating orb.

I was in Wales, I won't tell you what I was doing, but I was on a Welsh mountain in the dark.

I was having a wee, I'll be honest, I was having a wee,

and behind me, a strange red orb started pulsating.

I looked up thinking it was a UFO, right?

It was the red light on top of a wind turbine, and every time the blades went round,

it went on and off.

Not a UFO at all.

I presumed it was the police.

We've told you before.

Yes, you're right.

Stop urinating on that slide.

But it's also completely inaccurate because it's not in the sky, then, is it?

It's on top of a wind turbine, so it doesn't count.

It was bloody high, though.

Yeah.

Hang on.

Sorry.

First question from a learman's point of view: where does the sky begin?

Oh, I've gotten this question on TikTok many, many times.

On TikTok?

Yeah.

Sorry, it wasn't accompanied with a dance.

That's the secret.

You've got to dance while you're doing your science.

Where does the sky start?

Because I've got a big ladder.

That's a good start.

I've got a big ladder.

When Jimi Hendrix said, excuse me, well, kiss the sky.

Is it possible to do that with a ladder?

Well, see, I would argue that the sky starts where Rayleigh scattering happens, where we get the blueness of the sky.

And that happens in some kilometres above the ground.

How many kilometres?

Some.

Some.

Yes.

Right.

Where the blueness starts.

I'm from the northeast of England.

I didn't see blue sky until I came to Australia.

Technically, that means there's no sky.

How about anything above the horizon?

That could be sky.

That's very far away, though.

Yeah.

You see how difficult it is doing this show.

I was hoping we were going to deal with the death of stars, but I don't think we're really going to get beyond the end of the pier, are we?

Anyway, this is our panel.

Also, by the way, can I just say, Domingo, I was impressed when you were talking about Captain Cook and the transit of Venus.

The difference between when you came here and he did is you worked out you hadn't discovered it, that there were people here already and you weren't the first.

Very true.

Kirsten, we'll start off really with you grew up under Australian skies.

And I think for a lot of people, they think the sky, wherever you are in the world, is the sky, and you'll get roughly the same thing.

And then you come to the southern hemisphere and you discover that this is a totally different picture.

Oh, yes.

I believe we have the best view of the night sky here in Australia and other southern hemisphere countries, of course.

But that's because, like you said at the start, Brian, that we have the most privileged position where we look directly at the center of the galaxy.

And there is so many stars, but also not stars there as well, where you can see some really interesting patterns within the dusty bands of our Milky Way galaxy.

And Davika, many people listening to this will not have seen the majesty of the southern sky.

So, could you take us through some of the highlights that you see?

Sure.

So, I grew up in the northern hemisphere in the southern parts of India.

So, I was, you know, very familiar with the northern sky.

And then, when I came to Australia, the first thing I noticed was everything was upside down.

This is down under, and everything.

Orion, one of all our favorite constellations, was upside down.

And I was like, why is the hunter upside down?

And I realized, well, that's Australia.

It's just different.

But, you know, the southern sky as Kirsten said is just spectacularly beautiful though it confuses you in terms of orientation because the other thing that you only see in the southern hemisphere is the closest star to our Sun which is Alpha Centauri.

You cannot see this in the northern hemisphere.

You know you have our Sun and we're all happily enjoying planet Earth for as long as it lasts.

But then there's another star, Alpha Centauri.

So there's a lot of new objects that you can't see in the southern hemisphere that you can.

Now one that you can see in both hemispheres is Andromeda, which is the closest galactic system.

And you can see that in the northern hemisphere, but for three months, which is kind of now-ish, you can see it in the southern hemisphere.

So there's a spectacular system.

It feels to me like if anyone here has ever been one of those like universal studio tours, I would always pick the wrong side of the ride to go on.

So Jaws would always be coming out of the water on the right-hand side when I was sat on the left.

The Bates Motel would always be on the left-hand side of us on the right.

And that's kind of what it's like being in the northern hemisphere, isn't it?

We're looking right at the Arse End of the galaxy, and there's a great view down here, isn't there?

I mean, that's the thing, is we see a very different sense of even the potential of the stars.

So, radio for listeners, arse end means outer spiral arm.

Arse End was a very popular sitcom in the late 1950s.

Please welcome Kenneth Horn with Arsene.

And a lovely suburb of London as well.

It's weird, isn't it?

Because you said about before about Orion.

Upside down and I thought the first time I came here and I saw that and because that is the one that you notice and you think thank God he's got a belt on, his trousers will fall down.

That's all the Australian beer.

That's what it is.

And Kirsten, it's interesting we refer to Orion because that's one of the legends.

It's Orion the Hunter.

But we're a jurywoman and so you grew up with different stories.

of the stars.

So could you take us through some of the stories in the sky?

I would actually love to share with you one about Orion, but we we call it by a different name.

In Waradri, we call it Biyami.

It's the creator spirit.

But what's interesting about this is that it's the exact same stars creating the picture of a man, but to Waradji perspective, it's the same orientation as Orion.

upside down, which seems weird when you first think about it.

Like we're on the, you know, the right side of the world and it should be the right way up on this right side of the world.

But it's not, it's upside down.

And that links into one of the stories where Bayami is chasing an emu, which we call Dinoan.

And as he's chasing chasing Dinoan the Emu, he trips over a log and falls flat on his face.

Not so great for the creator spirit, but that is reflected in the stars.

If you watch Orion or the stars of Orion, the stars of Biyami setting in the western sky, he sets headfirst into the ground, just like falling into the ground, like the story.

It's illustrated in the stars.

That's interesting that you would build the stories around an upside-down character.

Because he was chasing the emu, whereas in the northern hemisphere, we have an emu that chases people with an old man called Rod Hull.

I think there are richer stories.

I think that's astronomy, really.

It's looking up at the sky and trying to figure out what's out there.

So, you know, different cultures looked at it through different times and they interpreted it the way they saw it.

The emu is the only constellation that is not made solely of stars.

That's right.

In Waradri, we call it Gogomon.

And if you look for the Southern Cross, one of the most iconic constellations in the Southern Hemisphere, in a place with very little light pollution, you're not going to get it here in Sydney, unfortunately.

But just below the Southern Cross, you have this dark triangle shape of dust that we call the Coalsack Nebula in Western astronomy, but it makes the head of Gogomen, the head of the EMU.

And as you continue along the sky towards the center, massive bulge of our galaxy, you have this thin band that makes the long neck of the Emu, and then the bulge of the galaxy is the body of the EMU.

And its position in the night sky indicates to us as Wuradri people when is the right time to go looking for emu eggs.

So when it's kind of just coming up above the horizon after the sun has gone down, it kind of looks like an emu running along the horizon.

So that maps and mirrors down onto the ground that the Dinawan, the ground emu, are running around looking for a mate.

But then later in the year, as the Earth moves further around its path around the sun, that center of our galaxy rises higher and higher into the sky.

And then our perspective changes again.

Instead of it being a body of an emu anymore, it's now an emu egg in a nest.

And that tells us that now's the right time to go looking for emu eggs.

It seems that a lot of First Nation astronomy has been ignored until more recently, and there's a lot more books coming out of this.

And it seems that there was a lot of First Nation astronomy was kind of dismissed because it was interpreted as being literal, as opposed to the fact that's the way we remember by having these vivid tales.

Absolutely, much easier than any textbook.

To the untrained eye, people who aren't astronomers, you will look at the sky and you see points of light, and all those points of light basically look the same.

So, could you take us through the differences that are up there?

Right, how much time do we have for this program?

Because there are many types of stars out there.

Have you got any plans for Thursday?

We're fine, and as we also know, time is an illusion, possibly a construct.

Oh, fantastic.

So, let's start at the very beginning.

The sun is a star.

It's a pretty ordinary star.

It's currently burning hydrogen in its core, turning it into helium.

It's a main sequence star.

Most of the stars we see in the night sky are in this category of main sequence.

But eventually, when stars like our Sun run out of that nuclear fuel in their cores, the core itself will shrink because it's no longer being held up by this pressure of nuclear furnace.

And it starts to grow bigger and bigger and turn into a red giant.

And eventually, depending on what type of star you are, you'll go through a different category or a different journey of life.

If you're more massive, you have more mass as a star.

You will live fast, die young.

Massive stars do it well.

And you'll turn into, thank you, I'm sometimes funny too.

But you have these big red giant stars.

There are different categories of red giant stars.

You have your red giant branch, which is like a branch on this graph that we show in astronomy.

You have your red clumps, which are a clump of red stars in the big graph as well.

We're really good at naming things in astronomy.

Is that the technical term, a red clump?

Yes, literally called a red clump.

That is my entire PhD on the red clump stars.

Yes.

Well, that's what you found in the plug after Ed Sheeran's been round.

Come on, Ed.

I love it.

The speed you drag it down is incredible.

That even had a visualization of something being dragged down as well as you do.

It's the best

you said, I can be funny too.

You were like, no way!

I've got an Edge here and gag now.

Red clump's the best thing I've ever heard.

Oh, yes.

So what is a red clump?

A red clump star is a type of red giant that is burning helium in its core.

So it's gotten rid of all the hydrogen.

The core's kind of just hung out just being helium for a little while, while a shell of hydrogen fusion is happening outside the core, creating more helium that's heavier than hydrogen.

So it's falling down into the core until it gets to a point where it's, I believe, about 1.4 times the mass of our sun, and then that helium ignites in what we call a helium flash.

Again, we're really good at naming things in astronomy.

And then when it's burning helium in its core, that's a red clump star.

And don't feel bad, by the way, just about astronomies naming things.

Look at biology.

Blob fish.

Why do you call it that?

Just look like a blob.

Imagine that.

All that evolution and what you end up being named?

Blobfish.

It's not fair, is it?

I must say, it's quite accessible, though.

It looks like a blob.

It doesn't look like a blackboard.

And it does look quite like a blob as well.

But doesn't the blob fish, when it's in the water, it only blobs when you take it out of the water.

Yeah, yeah.

It's very disappointing.

Yeah, yeah.

So when it's floating, it's all right.

Yeah, it's magisterial.

Non-blobs.

That's exactly what you don't want.

This is a show about astronomy.

Stop talking about this.

Let's get back to the record.

Like a star's dead, and then, but you could, the light takes so long.

Yeah, I don't need to explain this to you, but

that was.

No, no, Ross, I want you to.

Come on.

You amused me.

If Kirsten did jokes, you're allowed to

do that.

That would be deeply unsettling.

If your grand died, but you could still see the light coming off

at the funeral.

You go, do you want a sandwich?

You're going to be dead.

Give it a thousand years, I'll be gone.

Brian, can I just say you've never looked more confused?

I'm just trying to work out how to steer it back.

I think you've been steering it back all the time.

It's absolutely fine.

Davika, your research is based on, first of all, measuring the composition of stars.

Could you run through how it is that just from the light, a point of light in the sky, we can understand exactly what that star is made of?

So like I said before, stars have a chemical composition and one of the long-standing research questions we have is where do the elements in the universe come from?

And when I mean elements, if I take this glass of water, it's got hydrogen and oxygen in it.

The question is, where is this hydrogen coming from?

Where is this oxygen coming from?

And like I said, not all stars make the elements at the same time.

As, you know, Kirsten said, young stars are just making hydrogen into helium.

They're not making carbon and so on.

So, but the question that Brian asks me is, how do we know?

So I spend all my day looking at starlight and turning it into rainbows.

That's my life, guys.

It's beautiful.

And the way I do this is, I stare at a star and the starlight comes to me and I put it through a prism.

And that prism breaks up this white light into the colors of the rainbow.

That's what it does, right?

White light through a prism gets broken down into the colors of the rainbow.

But now, imagine my star has helium, or neon, or argon, or whatever the chemical element is.

When the photon from the core of the star is passing through this element, some of the energy of the light particle is absorbed by that element.

So, what happens is when I look at my rainbow, I either see dark lines because some of the light has been absorbed by that particular element.

What we can do, and this is measured in laboratories and through atomic physics, we can tell the missing lines to great precision where I know when a line is missing, I know which element it represents.

And in some cases, the line's not missing or the light particle is energized.

So the light can either be absorbed by the element or it can be energized by the element.

And that's going to show up in my spectra as what I call an absorption line or an emission line.

In my beautiful rainbow, it's going to be a bright line or a dark line.

It's simple.

It's so cool with studying stars like that.

Like, we're getting information not from the light that they emit, but from the light they don't emit.

That's right.

So basically, elements have a chemical fingerprint just like you and I.

Very, very unique.

I've just got this image of you, like people walking past your lab, and the doors open, it's just rainbows flying out and around.

Ah, she's exploding on my little pony again.

It's either astronomy astronomy or it's the lucky charms factory.

One or the other.

I can't be sure which.

It's interesting.

When we think of the galaxy, you know, 400 billion stars, give or take.

Some people say 200 billion.

The astronomers don't care about factors of two,

whatever, but 400 billion.

And we tend to think that that whole galaxy has the potential to be like this part of the galaxy.

So could you explain, Kirsten, where we are in the galaxy, so our solar system, and how the galaxy changes as we move inwards towards the core.

Right, so we are kind of in the bit of the outer suburbs of the galaxy.

Our galaxy is a big spiral galaxy with maybe two or four spiral arms.

We're not too sure on that one, I'm pretty sure.

Yeah, a few.

A factor of two, you know.

Even that's remarkable that we don't know how many spiral arms our galaxy has.

Absolutely.

There are so many questions that we still have yet to answer.

But we're kind of in the outer suburbs.

Our galaxy is around 100,000 light years across, and we're about 25 to 27,000 light years from the center of our galaxy.

And that seems to to be quite a good place for life to form.

There's some good stars around here.

We've got a pretty good one that's up during the day most of the time.

Not from olden.

I would say, just in case you're wondering, a light year is quite a lot of distance.

That's like almost 9.25 trillion kilometers.

I don't know if that's made it any better or worse.

But just saying it's quite big, no?

Location, location, location.

That's what they always say.

That's it.

That's it.

The center of the universe.

Oh, God, I've got to get an Uber.

And the nearest star is about four light years away also.

About four light years away from us, yes.

So while there is a lot of space in space, we've got a lot of space between us and the next star.

Sorry, you just sounded like me there.

There's a lot of space in space.

It's a good light.

Is it wrong?

Yeah, no, I'll tell you what.

I believed you when you said that, and I would not believe it if you said that.

Yeah, sorry, there's a lot of space in Spierce.

That's why they call it

space.

That's right, indeed, there is.

Still got it.

No, I wouldn't.

We live in a bit of a spur of one of the arms of our galaxy called the Orion Arm.

And as you go further into the galaxy toward the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, recommend looking at it from a far distance, you get much older and older stars that are just kind of hanging out in this bulge of the galaxy.

As you go through the spiral arms, you tend to have younger stars that are just being born.

Our sun's around five billion years old and a bit of a middle-aged sort of star.

And as you go higher and higher as well, we find that there's actually lots of neutron stars and black holes just flung out from different supernovae events.

That's a new pit of science that we've come out recently.

It's really, really interesting.

And some older stars kind of up around the dinner plate of the galaxy, I like to call it.

Why are the older stars towards the center?

That is a great question that I'm going to fire to De Vika.

De Vika's going to throw it tomorrow.

The old ones, they all hang around together.

Sorry,

are you sure, Ross?

I don't want to steal your thunder here.

Okay, well, it's actually to do with what we believe is the formation of every galaxy.

So, typically, what happens is when you have a galaxy being formed, there's two models that you can either start from outside going inwards, or you can start because of some sort of turbulence in this massive giant molecular cloud and then you start inwards going outside.

So what we find based on observations of most galaxies is almost every galaxy has a supermassive black hole, almost every galaxy.

Because of the way the galaxy is formed, we believe that it starts off with this supermassive black hole because of the way the cloud collapses, which is this massive cloud of dust and gas.

Now when you have a star being bombed, it's also forming because of the gravitational collapse of a cloud, but a baby cloud.

If you have a big cloud, then when that collapses, you'll end up with the formation of a galaxy.

This is what we believe at the moment based on observations.

And then the configurations of stars start off with being older towards the bulge.

And as you go outwards, you'll end up forming disks.

And the much more younger population is in spiral arms.

I'd forgotten we were recording a radio show, and I'm just getting very interested in this physics measure from that.

We should probably talk amongst amongst yourselves.

I've got some technical questions.

But we should perhaps explain that the mass of a star is related to its lifetime.

When we say mass, we're always comparing it with respect to our sun's mass, okay?

So we assume that the sun is one solar mass.

So when I say massive, I mean anything between, say, 10 and 20 solar masses and beyond, you know, Ita Carina, for example, is somewhere around 100 solar masses.

So we don't really know what the exact mass is.

That's a lot of mass.

That is a chunky star.

That's a chunky star.

And it's...

That's a technical against.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're going all these notes.

Chunky star, red clump, you're getting the whole back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A chunky star, I believe it's like

kick hats, isn't it?

It's like kit cats, you know.

The regular stars were the original two-fingered ones.

I'm fully with you.

But the more massive a star is, the more exciting his life is, and the more exciting your life is.

It's beautiful, but it can be short.

And that's exactly what happens, right?

So massive stars die pretty young because it consumes its fuel at a very faster rate i just like the way you looked straight at rust and said it's massive but beautiful and short

she's flirting with robin

yeah

so curse what are the most elusive elements for the time being?

I mean are there certain elements we really can't seem to understand where they've come from?

We have a pretty good idea of where majority of elements come from.

There was a really great paper that came out recently showing the evolution of all the elements on the periodic table except one.

And I forget what it is.

Was it a lucid?

What I can tell you is that it is a metal, according to astronomers.

Yeah, so it's not a hydrogen.

So it's not hydrogen or helium.

Is it on the periodic table?

Has it got like just a blank square and you open a little door and it's just like.

So can I just reiterate that?

So for the Advent Telephone, I love

For the radio listeners, Ross just did an impression of an element, which was quite impressive.

It's a facial expression.

You know, behind a tiny trap door.

So now that's the element of surprise.

But it was when you.

You can go, Ross.

We're fine.

We're fine.

We don't need you.

Ross a quad, so what is it?

What is this thing?

This element is very unstable, so we don't see it so much in the spectra of stars and galaxies.

So I believe that is the reason.

I read this paper only recently.

This is very embarrassing.

But

I think we've found the problem because it's the most forgettable of elements.

I think when the research is being done, oh, I forgot to check whether.

It strikes me, for educational purposes in this show, that you mentioned the stability of elements.

Just the idea that, well, iron is the most stable element.

So if you could take us through how stars make the lighter elements, and then beyond iron, it gets more difficult.

Yes, it does, yeah.

Okay.

that's it.

It's the most Julie Andrews of elements.

You love musicals, and yet we've moved straight back to iron.

Well, we could stay with that.

I was trying to complete the educational journey that we're on.

Well, actually, it's a very interesting process.

So, I mean, you're right, Brian.

I mean, most of the time.

Anyway, about the elements, I probably stick to the elements.

So iron has a really high binding energy of the nucleus.

Now iron-56, which is the number of particles in the nucleus of an iron, is very, very stable.

And if you want to make elements after iron-56, you cannot burn them.

So you cannot cook iron like you'd cook pasta.

What you have to do is you basically have to add particles onto iron.

And we call this neutron capture nucleosynthesis.

So you have iron, and then you add neutrons into it and that's exactly what happens in a supernova explosion.

And you have massive amounts of energy and you have lots of neutrons that come from secondary reactions that happen in the background of the star.

So you have lots of neutrons, you have stable iron nuclei, you get the bombardment of neutrons onto the stable iron nuclei and you land up making something that's unstable.

And then this unstable nuclei, because it's unstable, it's going to beta beta decay.

Now, beta decay is just a fancy word for saying a neutron converts into a proton or a proton converts into a neutron.

That's just what it is.

It beta decays into the next element, which happens to be a stable element.

So all of the elements outside of iron are made through a series of neutron captures and beta decays.

It's worth emphasizing that what we mean there is gold and silver and platinum.

So those are things we're very familiar with.

We all own something made of those things.

Yeah, so there's some of the things that we're doing.

You said more than others, Brian.

Some more than others.

Supernova explosions.

It is a wonderful thing.

Just for my records,

so what's the future of the Sun?

What are we looking at?

What are the stages before it's over?

So our Sun has another five billion years on the main sequence fusing hydrogen, so we're good for now.

After that, it will turn into a red giant star where it will stay like that for maybe about a hundred million years.

And from our point of view,

this is the fun part.

Yes, where the sun starts to expand, it will snack on Mercury, Mercury, gobble up Venus, and probably consume the Earth as well.

Yep, lovely.

But don't worry, before it consumes the Earth, the Earth will be a fiery husk before it even gets to us because of the Sun still.

But as it grows, it will continue up the red giant branch for about 100 million years, drop down into the red clump phase where it's burning helium in its core for about 1 million years.

Maybe 10.

It's a factor of 10.

It's fine.

Call it five.

Call it five.

Yeah, it's totally fine.

Then it will continue up into where De Vika studies stars, into the asymptotic giant branch.

But then, after that, staying there for a very short amount of time, a couple million years, it will leave behind a dead core called a white dwarf.

And that white dwarf will slowly fade until it becomes a black dwarf.

We've never seen that happen before.

The universe isn't old enough for us to have seen a white dwarf completely fade into darkness.

Well, that's reassuring.

But again, fine.

You asked asked that question if you were thinking about your retirement home.

Where's going to be the safest place for me?

And so when it becomes a white dwarf, sorry, I know this is route one for you, but when it becomes a white dwarf, what does it then do to the rest of the solar system then?

Nothing, because

the separations are just too big for it to interact unless it's in a relationship.

Then it might make a supernovae explosion because it could kind of...

Luckily though, we are not in a relationship with another star.

No.

But then again, dead husk by then, so

what does that matter to us?

A pink dwarf might turn up, they get together.

We should round up there, I think, Russ.

There's just one final question I want to ask Kirsten.

So I know you're

just finishing your PhD.

So what is the big question that you would hope to answer?

The ultimate question is, why are we here?

And to answer that is answering the question of where are the elements in in the galaxy?

And to do that we study the stars.

And we can study very specific types of stars that allow us to do that really, really well.

That's those red clump stars.

But the problem with red clump stars is they look very similar to their red giant branch imposters.

We can't use those as effectively to map the galaxy.

So what I'm trying to do is to distinguish one from the other using spectra, using spectroscopy.

So your why are we here is a kind of geographical question, basically.

Why are we here?

Why are we in this part of a galaxy rather than the bigger philosophical question of why are we here?

I tend to digest that, the first one, better.

Yeah, yeah, I'd say you've got a lot more chance of success, to be quite honest.

Philosophy is moving slower than we might have hoped.

Tamika, what about for you?

What is the big question you would like to hope that we can understand within your working life?

I think it's really understanding how galaxies evolve with time through the basic building blocks, which are stars.

So, the big question is really trying to understand the chemical composition of the the universe, starting from the basic building blocks, stars.

And we don't know a lot of it because of the diversity.

It may seem like, well, yeah, we know these stars make carbon, but there's so many internal complexities.

If you take a galaxy and you map the chemical composition of it, it's not going to be a straight line for every element.

And even the same group of stars, some of them will make carbon or some element, and some of them will decide, nah, I'm not going to show up today, and I'm not going to make this element.

And the question is why?

Yeah, I think it's such a wonderful picture that a galaxy, this thing, as you said, 100,000 light years across, is a big chemistry set.

Yes, it is.

Incredibly complex.

That we don't quite understand.

We understand it by and large, but the intricacies of it is what we don't understand.

See, that's the worrying thing, though.

For anyone here who, if they were a kid, was given a chemistry set.

What was the first thing you did?

How do I make everything explode?

Which means that we might not be the people who should be responsible for the chemicals.

Oh, don't worry.

Even if it explodes just fine by itself.

Okay, that's it.

did you want another question i'm i was about to say

has your big question changed from what you've heard tonight um

no still the same i'm still working on my big question for my in my uh research is uh if you were racing centaurs right

would you just have them racing normally or would you have miniature jockeys on them with horses heads

no where have you got to so far to be honest with you i'm finding it hard to source the centaurs yeah Yeah,

I'm using regular horses with Papua Masha human heads.

So, this you're hoping this will be an observational science and not just theoretical?

Yes, to be honest.

When I do it theoretically, the people at the bus stop move away quickly.

To be honest, I remember when you had two minotaurs on a unicycle, that was disaster enough, wasn't it?

Yeah, it won't fund me research anymore.

The people at the centre,

the centaur centre, the centaur centaur, yeah.

Is that the central centaur centre?

Yes.

What would you if you.

No, no, no, Brian, don't go further with this.

No, I'm intrigued now.

Now we've got to.

If one of the two possible outcomes you described were shown to be.

Which one would you hope would turn out to be the correct answer?

Well, I would hope.

I would hope.

I mean, obviously, you've got to decide: do you put a jockey's hat on the human head of the centaur?

Yeah.

You know?

Technically, they've got a horse's body, but human head.

So that's the first thing.

But that's not an observational question.

Do you choose that?

Do you choose or do they choose?

They've got a human brain, yet a horse's body.

Right.

Yeah.

To be honest, I was even more excited when you got that Cyclops to play darts.

The

monocular nature of it really does change its ability, doesn't it?

It starts deflecting him.

This is why Brian is the greatest popular scientist, because a lot of people who are very intelligent would go, shut up, Ross.

Ross.

I'm just trying to pin it down.

What you have to understand about science is it's just loose.

We don't know all the answers.

It's okay, Ross, Ross.

What you need to say here, that's beyond the scope of this research.

Exactly.

And then move on.

Well, anyway, we'll be following up on Ross's Centaur Centre research in the next series.

We won't.

Yes, we will.

We'll be putting them in a centrifugal.

Yeah.

Obviously, if he actually brings us some evidence, it's like when you made up that story about that crocodile on the loose in Newcastle, created that panic.

That's true, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I made up a story about a crocodile being on the loose in a park in my hometown of Newcastle.

This is before the internet.

And I got people to ring up a phone-in radio show and say, I saw a crocodile in the park and it spread like wildfire.

I just thought it was a bit of a laugh.

And the next day, four of the national newspapers had the story was featured.

But the best bit of all is Robin at the time was writing on a topical news show and had to write topical jokes about the story in the paper that he knew was bullshit.

Yeah, but just

thank you very much to our panel, Kirsten Banks, Dr.

Vika Kamath, and Ross Noble.

We asked our audience a question as well: What is the most improbable thing you would like to be discovered deep in the universe?

So, the fountain of youth that Brian Cox drinks from.

Zanita says, a strawberry saying to a cat, knock, knock, and the cat replying, open the bloody box and find out.

Lizzie wants a cocktail bar with hot aliens.

Is there one of those in Sydney?

Do you know?

I think that's a cocktail.

Can I have two hot aliens, please?

Space cats with laser eyes.

You know, when your eyesight's not very good and you have the laser put in to fix the eye,

would that make the cat's eyes better?

If they had lasers coming out of the eyes, would it make the eyes better or worse?

You said that so much like an optician.

Better or worse.

Can I ask you again, puss in boots?

Better or worse?

Laser cat?

Better.

Better or worse.

Worse.

John said dark side of the moon on the dark side of the moon.

Took me a while.

He wants to find the Pink Floyd album on the dark side of the moon.

I keep meaning to ask you this as well.

What happens if you put a werewolf on the moon?

The dark side of the moon isn't dark.

No, no, no, he's not talking about that.

If it's on the dark side of the moon, it will be perpetually human.

If it's on the other side of the moon, it will be a perpetual lycanthrope.

But it wouldn't be seeing the moon.

It would be seeing the sunlight.

No, no, no, no, but it doesn't matter.

The moon is always going to be full, though, isn't it?

But it is because

of the money.

Well, no, no, can I just tell you, just so you know, even though it's night, I'm still able to move around and see.

No, but I'm just saying that it's not night all the time on the dark side of the moon.

No, no, no, but it doesn't have to be night to be a werewolf.

God, you don't know anything about werewolves.

Yet, another enormous gap in your life.

No, but there's no difference.

You said it was

on the dark side of the moon, it'd be one thing, and on the light side of the moon, it'd be the other thing, but it's not because there's no difference to the werewolf.

No, but there's still the requirement of that it's actually the reflected light.

It has to be your full moon, but you're perspective wise you're there so you're not getting the full moon you're only getting the curvature of the moon you're not getting the full moon but you'll be getting

would only take like the earth then would take in place of the moon if it was a full earth would that be what would you only if it was a space werewolf that had yeah yeah if it was a no but it's always going to get reflected moonlight if the surface is illuminated that's what i'm saying it's standing on the damn thing no it's going to if it's the earth it makes it kind of wear labradoodle like that kind of thing like labra poodle doodle it's gonna be the pepperoni and the pizza that's what it's gonna be like yeah right i'm just saying this is you're gonna be in your lab all rainbows flying around you're not gonna be able to concentrate on your important work you're thinking about the moon

anyway so uh

thank you very much to everyone next week our guests include four humans and two spiders we have our final show that we're recording Australia and we have an orb web spider and a huntsman, both of which you're very keen on, aren't you, Brian?

I don't like spiders.

Love them.

Absolutely love a spider.

I'm so looking forward to having the spiders on because we had an episode once with a crow

and you were really annoyed by the crow, weren't you?

Because the crow kept walking around and giving you a look that showed that it possibly was more intelligent than you because it had a little puzzle with this box that had to pull strings and it did it and you couldn't.

Yeah, well, if the spider does that, I'm going to be extremely.

My top tip on the spiders, right?

Because I live in the countryside and there's a lot of big ones around.

And a lot of people they try and catch the spiders and flick them out.

But when you zoom in on a spider, you know how they've got the hair, they're quite hairy creatures, spiders.

Get a bit of hair gel or hair spray,

doesn't kill them, but it sets them.

And you sprick them up, put them outside, rains on them.

Oh, I'm off.

There you go.

With that.

With that.

With your rockabilly spiders.

Thank you very much, everyone.

Bye-bye.

In the infamous monkey cage.

Now, nice again.

Hello, I'm Professor Hannah Fry.

And I'm Dr.

Adam Rutherford.

And together, we're investigating listener-led mysteries.

Some people have levitated a frog.

Yeah, yeah, I've seen it happen.

Has anyone ever levitated a human?

In this new series, you'll discover the secret of levitation and what really fueled the construction of the pyramids.

All the burgers you can eat, lots of beer, and one of the groups called themselves, and I'm not making this up, the drunkards of Menkara.

All this and daredevil experiments, too.

Now, here is the crystal.

Am I allowed to touch it?

You certainly are.

Oh, hang on, it's a sweet.

It's slippery.

The new series of The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry.

Available now on BBC Sounds.

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