WEBVTT
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This is Spacetime Series twenty eight, Episode one hundred and
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thirteen for broadcast nineteenth of September twenty twenty five. Coming
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up on Space Time, The Search for Exploding black Holes,
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an immense still a jets seen on the outskirts of
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the Milky Way Galaxy? And how do you prepare for
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an Earth Observation satellite mission? All that and more coming
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up on Spacetime.
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Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary.
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A new study suggests that astronomers could catch a black
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hole in the process of exploding. Some physicists have long
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believed that black holes explode at the end of their lives,
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and that such explosions happen at morst once every hundred
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thousand years or so, But now in the journal Physical
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Review Letters claims there's a better than ninety percent probability
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that one of these black hole explosions might be seen
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within the decade, and if we're prepared, our current fleet
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of space and earthbound telescopes could actually witness the event.
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Such an explosion would be strong evidence of a long
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theorized but never actually observed object called a primordial black hole.
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These are black holes that formed less than a second
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after the Big Bang thirteen point eight billion years ago,
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and furthermore, these explosions would give astronomers a definitive catalog
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of all the sub atomic particles in existence, including both
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the ones we've observed, such as electrons, quarks, and the
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Higgs boson, and the ones we've only ever hypothesized about,
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like dark matter particles, as well as everything else that
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is so far entirely unknown to science. This sort of
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catalog would finally answer one of a man's oldest ultimate questions,
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From where did everything in existence come? We know black
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holes exist, and we have good understanding of their life cycle,
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and a massive star runs out of fuel and eventually
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implodes into a massively powerful supernova that leaves behind an
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area of space time with such intense gravity that nothing,
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not even light can escape. These black holes are incredibly
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heavy and essentially very stable. But back in nineteen seventy,
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physicist Stephen Hawking claimed another kind of black hole, a
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primordial black hole, could be created not by the collapse
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of a star, but from the universe's primordial conditions shortly
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after the Big Bang. Primordial black holes, like the standard
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stellar mass black hole we mentioned earlier, are so massively
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dense that almost nothing can escape them, which is of
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course what makes them black. However, despite their density, Hawking
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believed primordial black holes could be much lighter than the
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black holes were so far encountered. Furthermore, Hawking believed that
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black holes had a temperature and could, in theory, slowly
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emit particles through a process called Hawking radiation. That's if
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they got hot enough. Hawking radiation occurs when two quantum
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particle pairs hop into existence right on the event horizon
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of a black hole. But these quantum particle pairs would
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annihilate each other virtually immediately. But if one of the
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quantum particle pairs was on one side of the event
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horizon and the other quantum particle pair was on the
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other side, then the one on the black hole side
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of the event horizon would disappear forever into the black
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hole's singularity, leaving the one in our universe to float away,
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evaporating part of the black hole. Now. One of this
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studies authors, Antheathane from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, says
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the lighter a black hole is, the hotter it should be,
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and the more particles it will emit. As primordial black
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holes evaporate, they would become even lighter and so hotter,
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emitting ever more radiation in a runaway process until they
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eventually explode. Fame believes it's that hawking radiation that telescope
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should be able to detect. The problem is that no
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one's ever actually directly observed a primordial black hole, but
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this new hypothesis suggests is up to a ninety percent
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chance of winter seen an exploding primordial black hole in
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the next ten years. The works all based on a
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dark QED model. This is essentially a copy of the
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usual electromagnetic force, but which includes a very heavy hypothesized
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version of the electron, which statement colleagues call a dark electron.
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Now with this dark electron, the authors could reconsider long
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held assumptions about the electrical charge of a black hole.
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Standard black holes have no charge, and it was assumed
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that primordial black holes would likewise be electrically neutral. But
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the studies authors are making a different assumption. They believe
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that if a primordial black hole is formed with a
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small dark electric charge, then the model predicts it should
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be temporarily stabilized before finally exploding. Taking all experimental data
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into account. They find they could even then potentially observe
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a primordial black hole explosion, not once every hundred thousand
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years has previously thought, but once every ten years. Now
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the authors admit they're not claiming that's going to absolutely
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happen for sure sometime in the next t decade, but
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they believe there's a ninety percent chance that it does,
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and since we already have the technology to observe these explosions,
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we need to be ready for them. If it happens,
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it would be the first ever direct observations of both
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hawking radiation and a primordial black hole, and it would
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also provide definitive proof of every particle that makes up
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everything in the universe. It would completely revolutionize physics and
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hope astronomers rewrite the history of the cosmos. This is
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space time Still to come Astronomers discover an immense stellar
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jet on the outskirts of the Milky Way Galaxy, and
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how to scientist go about preparing for an Earth observation
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satellite mission. All that and more still to come on
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space time. Astronomers have discovered an immense s dollar jet
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blasting out into deep space from the outskirts of our
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Milky Way Galaxy. The huge fireworks display cataloged at Shapless
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two to eighty four is being generated by a massive
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young star still in the process of forming. It's producing
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seething twin jets of hot plasma blazing across some eight
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light years of space that's twice the distance between our
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Sun and the nearest neighboring star system Alpha Centauri. It's
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caused by superheated gases falling under the massive star being
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blasted back into space along the star's rotational axis, with
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powerful magnetic fields confining the jets to narrow beams. These
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jets are then plowing into interstellar gas and dust, creating
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fascinating details which are being captured by NASA's web Space
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Telescope and witnessed in infrared light. Astronomers say the sheer
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size of this cosmic blow torch of seething gases erupting
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from the still growing monster star qualifies it as extremely rare.
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The outflow is streaking across space at hundreds of thousands
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of kilometers an hour. The central proto star, which has
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at least ten times the mass of the Sun, is
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located some fifteen thousand light years away in the outer
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reaches of the galaxy. The studies lead author Yu Cheng
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from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan says the web
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discovery was serendipitous. Astronomers had no idea there was a
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massive star of this kind out there, no idea that
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there was a super jet outflow from it. That was,
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until they saw it. Such spectacular outflows of molecular hydrogen
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from a massive star are very rare in other regions
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of our galaxy. This unique class of stellar fireworks, known
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as herbing Harrow objects, are highly colimated jets of plasma
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shooting out from newly forming stars. You could think of
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these jetted outflows as being the stars spectacular birth announcement
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to the universe. Well well over three hundred herbing Harrow
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objects have been observed so far. They're almost all coming
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from low mass stars, and for astronomers, whether they're from
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big stars or little ones, these spindle like jets as
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they offer new clues about the nature of newly forming stars,
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their energetics, their narrowness, and their evolutionary time scales also
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to constrain models of the environment and physical properties of
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the young stellar objects powering these outflows. This new detection
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offers evidence that herbing arrow jets must scale up with
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the mass of the star powering them. The more massive
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the stellar engine propelling the plasma, the larger the star size.
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This jet's detailed filamentary structure captured by web is evidence
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the jet is plowing through interstellar gas and dust in
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the process, creating separate knots, bowshocks, and linear chains. The
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tips of the jet, lying in opposite directions from the
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central star, encapsulates the history of the star's formation. See
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Originally the material would have been very close to the star,
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but over the past one hundred thousand years the tips
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have propagated outwards at nearly twice the distance from the
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galactic center of the Milky Ways. Our Sun is the
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host protocluster that's home to this voracious jet is on
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the very peripheral Milky Way galaxy. It's within the cluster
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containing hundreds of stars that are still forming, but being
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in the so called galactic interlands means the stars are
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deficient in heavier elements beyond hydrogen and helium. In astronomy,
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all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are considered metals,
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and the amount of metallicity a star contains gradually increases
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over cosmic time as each passing generation of stars expels
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the end products of nuclear fusion through stellar winds and
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supernova explosions, and so the low metallicity of Sharpless two
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to eighty four is a reflection of its relatively pristine nature,
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making it a sort of local analog for the environments
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of what the early universe was like, an environment that
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was also deficient in heavier elements. Webs observations are also
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showing that relatively more stars seem to form at lower
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masses in Sharplett two to eighty four than in closer,
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more metal rich clusters. Massive stars like the one found
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inside this cluster have very important influences on the evolution
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of galaxies. Cheng says. The discovery sitting new light on
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the formation mechanism of massive stars in low metallistity environments,
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so astronomers can use this massive star as a sort
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of laboratory to study what's going on in earlier cosmic history.
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The stellar jets are powered by the gravitational energy released
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by the star as it grows in mass, and they
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encode for the formation history of the protostar itself. Web's
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new images are telling astronomers that the formation of massive
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stars in such environments could proceed through a relatively stable
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disk around the star that's expected in theoretical models of
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star formation known as core recretion. Once they found a
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massive star launching these jets, the authors realized they could
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use the WEB observations to test theories of massive star formation.
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So they developed new theoretical core recretion models that fitted
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the data to tell them what kind of star was
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at the center. And these models implied that the central
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star would be about ten times the mass of the Sun,
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and it's still growing for more than thirty years now.
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Astronomers have disagreed about exactly how massive stars form. Some
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think a massive style requires a very chaotic process called
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competitive accretion. Now, in the competitive accretion model, material falls
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in from many different directions, so the orientation of the
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disc changes over time. The outflow is launched perpendicularly above
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and below the disc, and so it too would appear
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to twist and turn in different directions. However, WEB be
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shown that the opposite sides of the jets are nearly
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one hundred and eighty degrees apart from each other and
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that tells astronomers that the central disk is being held
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steady and therefore validating the hypothesis of the core recretion model.
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This is space time still to come preparing for an
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Earth observation satellite mission, and later in the science report,
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a new study shows that people who engage in hate
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speech have similar patterns to people with psychiatric disorders. All
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that and more still to come on space time. Developing
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a space mission is a long process. It involves lots
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of tests and sometimes very harsh environments. A good example
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of this was an airborne campaign recently carried out in
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the Arctic between Greenland, Iceland, and Twelbard. The campaign was
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carried out under the auspices of the European Space Agency.
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Scientists involved in the project had to enjoy temperatures of
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thirty degrees below zero. They were testing an airborne version
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of a new Imagy microwave radiometer designed to support the
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development of potential satellite mission for the European Copernicus program.
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Its report from TERTV.
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Inside this small plane at the airport of long Eurpian,
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one of the most northern cities in the world, is
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an instrument that is helping to define a future space
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mission to better understand our planet in the extremely harsh
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conditions of the Arctic, and engineers and scientists are testing
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a microwave radiometer, an instrument that is able to monitor
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sea ice and its evolution.
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The radiometig just sensus. It reads basically the sis so
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at certain frequencies, and from that, from actually breaking down
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into several different frequencies, you can actually study the SI
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signatures and from that then you can infer what kind
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of CIS you have, and also from that you can
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infer all all the cis is.
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For instance, the information on sea ice characteristics from this
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airborne campaign is being used to support the Copernicus Imaging
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Microwave Radiometer, one of the six high priority candidate satellite
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missions being studied for the European Union's Copernicus system. This
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is a difficult activity but necessary to be sure that
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if the mission is selected to go into space, scientists
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will be able to retrieve the high quality data they
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are looking for.
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This instrument that we're flying has been around for many
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years already and had to be completely renovated in order
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to fly again, and we're testing it now for the
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first time because We want to obtain the sort of
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data that the satellite will see later on and really
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make infer answer some scientific questions we have in the meantime.
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So with this data that we're going to collect here.
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This is how many operational Earth observation missions are created,
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a policy need that leads to the development of a
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tool able to give the best scientific measurements. The results