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

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Hello there, Andrew Dunkley here the
host of Space Nuts, and it's great

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to have your company on the latest
episode, and coming up, we're going

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to be looking at a couple of
things very scientific show. Today, scientists

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have done something that only colliding neutron
stars can do. They synthesized new isotopes.

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I had to practice a lot to
say synthesized new isotopes, and I've

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said it twice without stuffing it up, so I'm very happy. We're also

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going to talk about a discovery.
Recently, we talked about something that's the

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biggest of its kind we've ever found. We've found the oldest of its kind.

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Recently, now we seem to have
found something that is defined as the

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fastest growing and brightest of its kind. What is it? We will tell

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you very very soon. That's coming
up on this episode of Space Nuts fifteen,

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Channel ten nine Ignition Squench Space Nuts
Side three two one spaces actually bought

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it real goods and joining me as
always is the goenna hunter himself. You've

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got you've got a visitor in your
backyard as we speak, Yes, we

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do, yes, about one and
a half meters long, something in the

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region of five feet the ghana,
which is a lizard like creature on four

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eggs, with a long face and
a big belly and a tongue that's coming

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in and out all the time,
and very sharp claws. Actually, you

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don't want to mess with garaners because
they can do a lot of damage.

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So this one's pottering around the backyard
at the moment as we speak, in

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fact, a lot of sight of
them. I'm not sure we'll hurt.

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I'm not sure sure which way they
have gone, but yeah, they were

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there a minute ago. Quite extraordinary. They've got the pad food and they're

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gone. Yeah, that's right,
that's what it is, left over plat

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food. Yeah, they can grow
to be quite enormous, and yeah,

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you're right, they can do a
lot of damage, and they're very very

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They look harmless enough, but you
don't really want to get too close.

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I've seen a couple of goannas at
my parents' place in the year's gone by,

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and even the smaller ones can be
a little intimidating close up there.

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That's quite amazing and ancient creatures.
Now, oh okay, never try that.

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Now. Now we've got a couple
of stories that we've got to talk

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about. Fred and some exciting news
in science with the synthesization of isotopes,

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which was done in a lab using
a laser. But this is a sort

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of a replication of something only colliding
neutron stars can do. We better sort

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of work out what this means,
because the scientists involved are very excited about

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this. They are, that's right. So just very briefly the backstory,

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what do we mean by isotopes?
And it starts off with our understanding of

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how chemical elements differ from one another, and so there's the chemical elements are

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actually sort of defined by the number
of protons in the nucleus, the atomic

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nucleus, and so hydrogen, for
example, has one proton and he always

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has one proton, Helium always has
two, iron has twenty six, just

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to jump to another number, and
so you know, you can't have hydrogen

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with two protons, and you can't
have iron with twenty five. And I'm

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quoting here from our old friendiespace dot
com website. But in there atomic nuclei,

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the atomic centers, protons are joined
by neutrons, and so the number

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of neutrons essentially contributes can vary in
a way that the number of protons can't.

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Protons are charged particles, Neutrons aren't
positively charged particles. Neutrons are neutral,

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hence the name. So if you've
got hydrogen atom with one proton and

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one neutron, bless you, then
there'll be another ten of those. Okay,

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she sneezes once away. Her record
is twenty five. Oh my goodness

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me, that's almost sounds like a
medical condition. I just said, sorry,

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not no need to apologize. You
can't help sneezing. So the bottom

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line is that adding neutrons doesn't change
the element that it is, but it

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changes the isoto of the element,
and so isotopes can vary. And once

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again, space dot com has a
nice example. One of the isotopes of

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iron is iron fifty four, which
has twenty six protons and twenty eight neutrons.

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There is also something called iron fifty
six, which has twenty six protons

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and thirty neutrons, et cetera,
And so it goes on. So that's

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what we mean by isotopes. It's
elements in a different form, which is

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governed by the number of neutrons that
are present in the atomic nucleus. Now,

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to cut to the trace, to
cut to the story. There are

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facilities that can actually make isotopes.
In fact, I think we've got one

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here in Australia at the Adanstow,
the Australian Nucleus Science and Technology Organization.

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But this particular one that we're talking
about, which is at Michigan State University,

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is a very fancy one. It's
called f f RIB FRIB that's what

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the acronym spells, FRIB. I
like that. Actually it's a bit like

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you're telling fribs. It's the Facility
for Rare Earth Isotope Beams, that's what

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FRIB stands for. And it's basically
an accelerator where they can synthesize isotopes.

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And what they've done is they've synthesized
some of the isotopes that we think are

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created by colliding neutron stars. Now
we can't go and test the insides of

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colliding neutron stars. What we can
see though, is their gravitational waves,

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and that allows us to see some
understanding of what's going on inside in that

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ultra turbulent environment when two neutron stars
collide. And neutron stars, of course,

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are the remnants of massive stars which
have got to the end of their

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lives and collapsed, usually a super
over explosion that blows off the outer outer

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envelope. The center collapses to form
a neutron star, where the collapse to

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a black hole is only stopped by
the outward pressure of neutrons against each other.

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So what the scientists at FRIB,
the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams,

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have done is created some isotopes which
have never existed on Earth. That's pretty

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that's a pretty big, you know, pretty impressive, very bold claim exactly

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to be to be specific, they
are thulium one eight two, thulium one

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eight three, itterbium one eight six, itterbium one eight seven, and lutetium

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one ninety. I think I went
to school with a lutitian. There's one

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in every school I think I went. I went to school with a few

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euterbiums until they were rough anyway.
And the thing is that we think these

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isotopes are probably involved with the process
where colliding neutron stars create new elements.

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And we now know that the heavy
elements elements and in particular gold and silver,

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are created in these neutron star collisions. And so if you can understand

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the way the sort of intermediate isotopes
behave, then you are going a long

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way to understanding what the processes are
as I said, the ultraturbulent environment of

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colliding neutron stars, if I can, if I may quote one of the

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scientists involved with this, Bradley Sheryl, who is the University Distinguished Professor in

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mitch Good State University's College of Natural
Science and head of the Advanced Rare Isotopes

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Separator Department, says, this is
probably the first time these isotopes have existed

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on the surface of the Earth.
I like to draw the analogy of taking

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a journey. We've been looking forward
to going somewhere we've never been before,

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and this is the first step we've
left home and we're starting to explore.

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So that's really a very nice,
almost poetic way of putting it. This

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journey to understand the nuclear processes that
go on in some of these very exotic

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collisions. Is that the ultimate purpose
to just try and understand a process or

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will there be applications that this might
be able to be used for if they

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can take it to the next level? Yeah, yeah, I mean you

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never know what the applications might be. And in fact, I think nuclear

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physics generally can get can basically benefit
by people understanding how these newly forged isotopes

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behave, so nuclear physics will be
one of the benefactors in this In this

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work, one of the other scientists
involved in this said, it's not a

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big surprise that these isotopes exist,
but now that we have them, we

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have colleagues who will be very interested
in what we can measure next. I'm

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already starting to think of what we
can do next in terms of measuring their

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half lives, their masses, and
other properties. So it is, you

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know, it's setting an improved baseline
in the whole science of nuclear physics,

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but it is. But it's motivated, as as we've just said, by

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the idea of trying to understand these
processes better that take place in collisions between

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neutron stars. I'm still a bit
confused though, I mean, I've read

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through this and tried to absorb it
and understand it, and I've taken some

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headache tablets afterwards. But what do
they what do they make by synthesizing?

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I mean they obvi, they didn't
have any neutron stars lying around A bit

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of drawn out not in there.
So what does synthesizing mean? Well,

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so I'm not not a nuclear physicist, but my guess is that it involves

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a particle accelerator that is colliding things
together to smash them up and synthesize other

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things. That's essentially what happens at
the large Hadron collider, for example,

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on the on the Swiss French border
cerns large adron collider, So it's all

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about colliding things together. In the
large Adron collider, it's generally protons,

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although they also collide lead atoms the
nuclei of lead atoms and learn different things

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from that. So not only when
you smash atoms together you don't just break

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things apart, you also get reactions
taking place that create new things, so

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you can synthesize them. Often though, those elements that you've synthesized only lasts

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for a very short fraction of a
second, and I don't know in this

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particular work just how long these newly
synthesized isotopes are. So I can actually

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just say a little bit more once
again quoting from space dot com talking about

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those isotopes threi, one, eight, two, et cetera. These isotopes

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formed by firing a beam of platinum
ions that's platinum without its electrons a target

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of carbon at the frib the rare
isotope manufactory and the isotopes they say might

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not be present in the wreckage of
neutron star collisions, but their existence on

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Earth is definitely a step towards creating
those briefly lived, transitional super heavy elements

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on our planet to see if they
result in elements like gold. In other

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words, these are temporary things that
only exist temporarily and that might themselves decay

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to form something recognizable and stable,
like the nucleus of the gold at it's

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really exciting stuff. I think,
you know, it's tinkering around with matter

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at it's most rudimentary. Yes,
yeah, indeed, I think it was

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also fascinating to try and understand that
you're talking about stars being the furnaces of

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all these elements. And yes,
I think most stars can't do anything more

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significant than create iron. You need
a neutron star to smash into another neutron

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star to get these, That's okay, and my furn is not is ignoring

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what I'm saying. That's okay.
So you need a neutron star smashing into

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a neutron star to start creating heavier
elements like silver and gold. That's correct,

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Yeah, that's correct. And how
often do these How often did neutron

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stars hit each other? Or wouldn't
I wouldn't expect it to be here every

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day, a van or is it? It's well, given you know the

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size of the universe and the number
of objects in the universe, and the

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fact that we can now detect these
by the gravitational wave signals, I think

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they are pretty pretty frequent, actually, so I wouldn't like to put a

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number on it. But I don't
think you're talking about events that are essentially

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very rare. And so it's now
thought, whereas not very long ago we

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used to think that all the gold
and silver were created in super and over

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explosions. The evidence that apparently has
been uncovered really by the James Web Space

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Telescope and other recent facilities have suggested
that all of the Earth's gold was actually

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made in neutron star collisions. And
in fact, I think that that story

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was also covered by space dot Com
not very long ago actually, but essentially

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in recent weeks. So yes,
it's it's exciting stuff. Well, our

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thinking is moving along if I can
put it that way from perhaps a simplistic

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viewpoint, that every neutron star collapse
produces gold from a super and over explosion,

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but that is possibly not the case. It might need colliding neutron stars

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to do it. So all of
this happened before Earth was formed, and

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as the planet was created, all
that this stuff was just floating around and

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accreted into the into the crust.
That's right for floating around read interstellar medium.

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That's just that's the technical term.
Interstellar medium means floating around. Yeah,

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it's the you know, the debris
between the stars, and a lot

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of that debrity is the result of
super and over explosion and we're now seeing

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nuclear sorry, neutron star collisions.
Fantastic, all right, it's a really

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fascinating discovery and a major achievement.
And if you would like to chase that

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story up, as Fred mentioned,
it's the space dot com website. This

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is space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here
with Professor Fred Watson. Three space Nuts.

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Our second story. Fred looks at
something just as spectacular, if not

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more spectacular, And we talked recently
about finding the biggest UH what was it

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the biggest black hole ever? Or
it might have been the oldest, the

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oldest we found, the oldest one
ever. We found, we found all

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the brightest cosmic explosion ever. Now
we've found the brightest quasar. And this

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is also conjunction with a huge black
hole that you're normally at. This is

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hard to comprehend. That's correct,
it is. The statistics are extraordinary,

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So let's do the statistics. This
is an object with a very memorable name

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Jay zero five two nine minus four
three five one. Don't forget that it

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is. It's intrinsically the brightest object
in the universe. It has a luminosity

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equal to seventeen billion times the Sun's
luminosity. I beg your pard, that's

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the mass. The luminosity is even
more. It's even more dramatic. So

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I have given you the wrong statistic. Its mass is seventeen billion times the

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soulness, so that makes it a
supermassive black hole. Its luminosity is five

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hundred trillion times the luminosity of the
Sun. Forget the billions, five hundred

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trillion times the Sun's luminosity. And
all of this is taking place at a

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great distance in the universe in fact
at the look back time of about twelve

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billion years, so that's really long
it is. So we're seeing this as

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you know, as it was when
the universe was less than two billion years

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old. And the work has been
led by Christian Wolfus and astronomer at the

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Australian National University here in Australia.
And as you said, the story kind

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of starts at Siding Spring Observatory where
I used to work as the astronomer in

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charge of the Anglo Australian Telescope then
Australian Astronomical Observatory. So they started with

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basically the story starts before that with
an analysis of data from the Gaya spacecraft

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that we've talked about before, European
Space Agencies Gaia satellite which measured billions and

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I think it's still doing it bon
of stars. So it essentially in automatic

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mode analyzed this object as being a
star because they thought it was too bright

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to be anything else than the only
real alternative to a star is a quasar.

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But then observations, yes, deciding
to bring observatory with the Australian National

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Universities two point three meter telescope there
allowed astronomers to recognize that this was not

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a star, but it was a
quasar, and that it was bright,

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and that meant and quasars are always
seen at great distances, but the fact

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that it was bright meant that this
might be a very special object. So

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applications were made to the European Southern
Observatory for time on their marvelous facility in

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northern Chile, THEVLT, the Very
Large Telescope, which is actually four telescopes

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that can be used together or singly, each one with a mirror eight point

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two meters in diameter. And the
only reason that these Australian astronomers could do

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that could apply for time on this
facility was because of the strategic partnership forged

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between the Australian government and the European
Southern Observatory back in twenty seventeen that gave

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astronomers in Australia ten years of access
to the VLT, as well as access

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to the sort of governance of the
Southern Observatory and the ability to build instruments

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for them as well. Thinks of
that sort. So this strategic partnership,

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which is knowing about it, it's
a big part of my job, Andrew,

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which is why I'm waxing lyrical about
it at the moment. And it's

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not the first time we've seen classic
examples of astronomers being able to capitalize on

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a combination of Australian instruments and the
VLT the Very Large Telescope. Only last

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year we saw reports of the most
distant fast radio burst ever discovered. The

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one Yes, that was from discovered
by a radio telescope in Western Australia,

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but identified as being the most distant
fast radio burst at eight billion light years

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away or look back time of eight
billion years by the VLT, the Very

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Large Telescope in the Chilean andes the
European Southern Observatories facility. So that's the

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sort of backstory of the observations.
But yeah, what a claim to fame

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that this object the brightest, the
most luminous object known in the universe.

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We We've talked about boats for some
time before, right of all time,

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Rights of all time, and I
think this one might be. I think

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this is the new boat. Yeah, the new boat. You mentioned the

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statistics. I don't know if you
mentioned the size of the event horizon.

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This is just unthinkably huge. I
don't think there's a word big enough to

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describe the size of this event horizon. This thing stretches seven light years,

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which is fifteen thousand times the distance
from the Sun to the orbit of Neptune.

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Fifteen thousand times bigger than that.
That's that's unbelievable. I just you

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can't get your head around it.
It is, that's right, And that's

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the kind of inner dimension of the
accretion disc, which probably corresponds to the

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event horizon exactly as you've said.
And that accretion disc is, of course

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what lets what makes this thing bright, because this is all stuff swirling around

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the black hole, some of it
being sucked in, some of it being

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redirected magnetically into the jets to the
north and south poles of the black hole,

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if I put it that way.
But all of that highly energetic and

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emitting emitting well light as well as
X rays and radio waves, so very

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very energetic object. And I'm not
sure whether I mentioned I might have said

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this already, but gobbles up the
equivalent of one Sunday every day, one

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solar mass per day is what it's
actually a creting. So I think it

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is also the most voracious known of
all the black supermassive black holes. Now

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correct me if I'm wrong. I
have this distant memory that suggests that at

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this point in the age of the
universe, quasars are all extinct. Or

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am I thinking of something else?
But do you mean by this point what

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we're seeing now? Yeah, yes, that's correct. We think what we're

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saying is quite historical data because of
the time it takes for the light to

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reach us. Yes, twelve billion
years. Yeah, this all happened twelve

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billion years ago. Now, you're
right. The nearest the nearest quasar,

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which is caused by a very active
black hole, is actually less than a

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billion light years away, but there
are very few within that distance. In

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fact, perhaps only one maybe to
perhaps, but most of them are more

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than a billion light years away,
which means we're seeing them as they were

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before a billion years ago, and
so today they're extinct. That's right.

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So if we would go, if
we were able to just sort of flash

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over to this boat, now,
what would we see if the quasar is

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extinct, brightest of all time?
What would be happening there now? So

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it probably will be. Yes,
in today's universe, it's probably a fairly

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quiescent galaxy a bit like ourses.
I mean, we think our own galaxy

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comfortable, warm and cozy place that
it is for stars like the Sun and

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its planets like ours. We think
that that may in its history have also

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been a quasar. There is actually
evidence of outbreaks out sorry outburst from the

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center of our galaxy from the supermassive
black hole there, which probably caused by

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debris falling into it, quite significant
amounts of debris. There's evidence of there

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having been jets, because there's fluorescence
of some of the gas above and below

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the center of our galaxy, which
has probably been excited to fluoresce by basically

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by jets of material which are now
long gone from the center of our galaxy,

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jets of material that excited that stuff
to fluoresce. The jets and material

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have gone, but the fluorescence is
still there. So yes, maybe we

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think all galaxies might go through a
quasar phase. I've always described quaisars as

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delinquent galaxies, and it's not quite
true because the quasar itself is the thing

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that's at the middle of the galaxy. The galaxy is just hosting the quasars,

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so it's more parasitic perhaps than delinquent, so they think this is the

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brightest in the universe. Do you
think anything could top it? On me?

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Any thing just is gargantuan in size
and brighter than anything. Like the

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numbers are just staggering. Is there
any chance will find anything? Well,

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I think in astronomy, like many
other things, never say never. You

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know there might be another discovery.
This is a serendipitous discovery because this thing

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is it said, was thought by
the Gaya Survey to be a star,

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and it was only because it was
followed up as being an object of some

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00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:41.599
interest by astronomers the A and EU
Australian National University that it was discovered to

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00:26:41.640 --> 00:26:47.359
be a p quasar and then found
to be a particularly interesting one. Yascinating,

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Yes, most definitely and well worth
reading about. If you'd like to

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have a look, you can go
to the ESO website that's e SO dot

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00:26:56.759 --> 00:27:03.240
org and just do a search for
lightest and fastest growing and you'll definitely find

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00:27:03.279 --> 00:27:08.480
it. It's a great story and
a nice pickup from I mean, the

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thing's been hiding in plain sight basically, it's only just now we've pieced it

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all together. It's fascinating. Fred
just about to the end. I just

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need to remind people that if you're
following us on YouTube, don't forget to

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00:27:22.160 --> 00:27:26.839
hit the subscribe button below. If
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00:27:26.880 --> 00:27:32.359
and learn about supporting us financially,
you can do that. There's all sorts

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00:27:32.400 --> 00:27:36.839
of options there under support space.
I hang on, what does it say?

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00:27:37.079 --> 00:27:40.920
And now I can't remember, but
anyway, it's there somewhere. Oh

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00:27:41.000 --> 00:27:44.160
look, support space nuts. That's
what I say. So there you go.

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00:27:44.240 --> 00:27:45.759
I was right. I should have
stuck to my guns. So yeah,

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00:27:45.880 --> 00:27:48.960
just have a look around and see
what you can see. And if

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00:27:49.000 --> 00:27:52.640
you want to support us, great. If you just want to be a

302
00:27:52.720 --> 00:27:55.880
listener, that's fine too. The
more the merrier, that's yeah, we've

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00:27:55.880 --> 00:28:00.240
got to keep the family growing.
And Fred, that brings us to the

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end of this episode. Thank you
so much, great pleasure, talk to

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you and soon I hope, yes, yes, indeed, and good luck

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00:28:07.799 --> 00:28:15.960
with you going a hunt and pictures. Yeah, what wares me is the

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00:28:15.160 --> 00:28:18.200
guy that might be hunting us?
Yeah, yeah, don't let the cat

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00:28:18.240 --> 00:28:23.880
out exactly all right. Yeah,
thanks for red Sea soon and see you

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00:28:23.960 --> 00:28:30.119
later. Cheers up. Fred Wat's
an astronomer at large and thanks to hu

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00:28:30.319 --> 00:28:33.160
not in the studio today when a
wall and from me Andrew Dunkley. Always

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00:28:33.200 --> 00:28:37.440
great to have your company. Looking
forward to joining you again on the very

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00:28:37.440 --> 00:28:42.559
next episode of Space Nuts. See
you then bye byepauts. You'll be listening

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00:28:42.759 --> 00:28:51.000
to the Space Nuts podcast available at
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