EP #26 Amber Straughn’s AMA: Are Wormholes Real? w/ NASA Astrophysicist

In this episode, Amber Straughn answers questions regarding getting back to the Moon, wormholes for space travel, how to protect ourselves from space asteroids, and more. You will learn about: 00:57 | Wormholes Could Be Used For Space Travel... One Day. 05:20 | What Is The Best Way To Get Involved With Space Exploration? 10:41 | How Do We Protect Ourselves From Stray Asteroids? Dr. Amber Straughn is an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and serves as the Deputy Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope. Her research explores how black holes and stars form in distant galaxies. _____________ Resources Check out the latest discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope Learn more about Abundance360. Read the Tech Blog. Learn more about Moonshots & Mindsets. _____________ This episode is brought to you by: My executive summit, Abundance360 Levels: Real-time feedback on how diet impacts your health. levels.link/peter Consider a journey to optimize your body with LifeForce. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Every mile matters, whether you're driving your dream car or your daily commuter. The Mobile One team knows that. It's why we created Mobile One Advanced Clean Motor Oil. It cleans your engine in one oil change and helps extend engine life, delivering performance, protection, and cleanliness for vehicles of all ages. All to help keep your engine running like new, whatever you're driving. Visit mobileone.com/advancedclean to learn more.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think as far as human travel goes, I mean, really any space travel, I think that we really do need a revolution in propulsion. If we are ever going to actually become an interplanetary species, like thinking further in the future, but even in the near term, we could accomplish so much more if we could revolutionize the propulsion system.

• 0:58Peter Diamandis?

  And a massive transformative purpose is what you're telling the world. It's like, this is who I am, this is what I'm gonna do, this is the dent I'm gonna make in the universe.

• 1:11Peter Diamandis?

  Now, we have went out to Twitter, to the community there, to ask for questions. We have an incredible list of questions. Some of these are great, and I want to just take a second and share them with you because I think they're worth answering. So, and feel free to say, "Not my area," or "I'll answer it in a few years." But Dan asks, "I would love Amber's thoughts on the hypothetical existence of wormholes." So, do you want to go there?

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Um, it's, again, it's theory, but it's, I mean, it's good physics, right? I think theoretically, yeah.

• 1:57Peter Diamandis?

  I've seen this in Star Trek, so it's gotta be true.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, it's gotta be true, right? So, yeah, I think hypothetically, theoretically, yes, it's possible from a physics standpoint. Can we use it as humans to travel across space, right? That's the big question, the big underlying question. And...

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Not right now. Um, maybe later. You know, I like to take an expansive view of what we're going to be able to accomplish in the future of humanity because we've been able to do so much already.

• 2:31Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, I would never say, I would never say never if it's within the realm of physics.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, I agree. So someday we'll be, we'll be able to use wormholes to travel. I would say, I hope so.

• 2:44Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, all right. I'll, I'll take that. Um, uh, thinks magic cube seven says, how confident are you or your colleagues that will be boots on the moon by 2030?

• 2:54Speaker 01

  By 2030? Um, well, I can't speak for my colleagues, um, but for me, um, I think it's, again, it's so hard to tell. Um, but I, I think it's, I think it's going to happen. Um, obviously we had a really good, uh, uh, Artemis test, uh, last year. So that's exciting. Um, you know what Starship is doing, I think is also super, super incredible and exciting. So I think the technology is there.

• 3:24Peter Diamandis?

  And by the way, it could be Chinese boots on the moon, too.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  It could. It absolutely could. You know, China's space program is growing faster than anywhere else in the world. Um, so yeah, it could be. Um, I think, I think it's, I think it's likely, actually.

• 3:41Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, I, I'd probably given, I would give it 90% chance. I mean, unless something catastrophic happens. Uh, I think a, a race to the moon's surface by 2030, um, is a very realistic target. So I'll, I'll, I'll take bets on that online. We'll, we'll go there. All right, Amber. So, um, another question here, uh, is what item do you think would be the most interesting thing to send to space? Um, that would intrigue the world. Do you have any, anything in the back of your mind that?

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Hmm. Well, you know what? I think Carl Sagan had, had a pretty good idea with the golden record, right? I mean, I think that's-

• 4:26Peter Diamandis?

  Right. That was, that was a stroke of genius.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:30Peter Diamandis?

  Describe what that golden record was and where it flew on which flight.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So this is the, um, the, the-

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, it's a golden record. It's a, it's a, it's an object that contains data about the human species that was sent up a Voyager. And it, it was a sort of, it was almost a last minute, kind of like, oh, there's this satellite going up to space. We should, we should do something about humanity with it. And it contains, you know, you know, like, images of what human, the human body looks like. It has, I think, songs of like whales, whale noises. It has music.

• 5:07Peter Diamandis?

  It has greetings from like every nation on the planet. Yeah.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  So it's, um, yeah.

• 5:12Peter Diamandis?

  It has that famous photo of a naked man and woman and the nine planets and, uh,

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:18Peter Diamandis?

  binary. Um, yeah, it's amazing.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  It's beautiful. And it's, it's so hopeful. I mean, that's what I love about it. And again, getting to more of the, you know, the, the touchy feely aspects of space.

• 5:32Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  It's a, it's hopeful, you know, that was a very hopeful thing to do, to send that and to, you know, to, to think there's someone out there that might see this.

• 5:44Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah. And it created an entire Star Trek movie episode. That's incredible. Beger. All right. So, uh, Surrender, uh, says, I am an Indian and want to enter the domain of planetary science. What are the recent research areas so I can get ahead of the domain? I'm doing my engineering undergraduate. So if someone wants to dive in, where would you direct them to focus?

• 6:08Speaker 01

  So planetary science is super interesting. Um, there, there's, wow, there's so much going on at NASA in particular with planetary science. So we are going to soon bring samples back from Mars. So that's very interesting. Um, so I think there's, there's a lot of options in planetary science. Um, sending probes to Europa. Um, all the, all the planetary missions that we have planned are, are super, are absolutely incredible. Um, I would say in general, if you're, if this, um, listener is, is interested, uh, in planets outside of our solar system, that the field Of exoplanet science is really, it really is one of the, the sort of hottest fields in astronomy

• 6:53Speaker 01

  right now. And so, um, you know, if I was 20 years younger, I might go into exoplanet science myself.

• 6:58Peter Diamandis?

  Well, you know, the other, the other conversation we have a lot on this, on this podcast is around longevity. So you'll have your second, third and fourth career coming up soon.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 7:06Peter Diamandis?

  There you go. And honestly, uh, I agree with you. I mean, that's like one of the most exciting ideas I could think about is exoplanet conversation. Um, another question comes up, um, how fast, uh, let's say, speed of light being the fastest, uh, could we safely go is a question. And that brings us up into sort of propulsion systems and, uh, you know, traditional propulsion systems where we carry all the fuel from the surface of the earth and we, you know, we burn it to get speed and we burn it to slow down is kind of limiting

• 7:47Peter Diamandis?

  right now. Um, but there's a lot of conversation that I've seen on nuclear propulsion, uh, and solar cell, solar sails. Uh, what are you hearing from your exoplanet friends or propulsion friends out there about traveling to Mars or, you know, to the outer moons of Saturn and Jupiter?

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, um, as far as human travel goes, I mean, really any space travel, I think that we really do need a revolution in propulsion. Um, if we are ever going to, to actually become an interplanetary species, like thinking further in the future, um, but even in the near term, um, we could accomplish so much more if we could revolutionize our propulsion system. So, so yeah, I think nuclear propulsion, um, like you said, solar propulsion, solar sail kind of technology, still pretty early, um, I think in technological development, but super interesting. Um, so I think, I think we need all cards on the

• 8:50Speaker 01

  table in terms of, of figuring out the best ways to get, you know, our spacecraft and ourselves, um, out into space in the future.

• 8:57Peter Diamandis?

  I'm still holding out for wormholes though. We're going to go back to that.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Yep. That's the hopeful approach.

• 9:03Peter Diamandis?

  Near, nearer to earth, um, uh, space debris. Um, I mean,

• 9:09Peter Diamandis?

  I don't think people realize what a challenge that could potentially provide to humans getting off the planet. Any conversations that you're hearing on space debris? I mean, we're seeing more and more of it, right? As more satellites get launched and those satellites bump into each other or spent fuel tanks explode. What's the buzz there?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm, I mean, I'm not in a lot of the sort of NASA conversations about about space debris, other than when it does impact our satellites, which it does. Right? We have to maneuver the International Space Station to avoid big chunks of debris. We have to maneuver our satellites to avoid debris. So it does, like, it's not a future thing, like, it's happening now. It's impacting space now. And so I do think that

• 10:09Speaker 01

  we have to get, we have to to figure out how to manage it. And I certainly don't, don't have those answers, but I know, I know very smart people are working on it.

• 10:19Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, and I think, you know, we're working right now on a space debris X Prize. I mean, there will be a business in terms of that. And, you know, the solution there is falls in different categories. One solution is can you in fact build spacecraft that go and gather the largest piece of space debris down? When I was, when I was a kid, there was a television show.

• 10:45Peter Diamandis?

  I forget the name where where the basis was. It was a company that would go and salvage, I think it was like Salvage One was the name of it. You go and salvage debris from the, from orbit. The energy of that's crazy. Another idea is using space-based lasers to sort of zap the space debris that, you know, slows them, slows them down. Let's talk about one of my favorite subjects, asteroids. And asteroids are of incredible interest as a future resource base for liquid oxygen principally,

• 11:27Peter Diamandis?

  hydrogen potentially, nickel, iron, platinum group metals. But the thing that's interesting more than that is the concern of near earth asteroids that get too close. We just saw recently, I guess it was a school bus size asteroid that came within the geostationary orbit of Earth. It's pretty large. And the thing that was scary about it was it was discovered like four days earlier. I guess it was approaching from the sun. Like we can see the asteroids that are coming from the outer solar system because they're illuminated from far away, but if they're coming directly from the sun, you can't see them. Is that a conversation going on inside the halls of NASA?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. Yeah. And I think it's being taken even more seriously now than it was, say, 10 years ago. And of course, we just had the DART mission, successful mission.

• 12:24Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah. Describe the DART mission because that was a super cold mission.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  So we slammed a spacecraft into a little tiny asteroid and it was amazing. And it's the first time I've...

• 12:35Peter Diamandis?

  It wasn't just for fun, right?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Right. So the acronym basically stands for, well, I'm going to be honest, I don't remember the first two words, but it was a redirect mission. So it was seeing if we could smash something into an asteroid to alter its trajectory enough that would be sufficient to protect us in the future from an asteroid impact. And it worked. I mean, it was incredible. And it's the first time I've ever seen a crowd full of scientists, a room full of scientists like react with joy when their camera stopped working, right? Because it smashed in and then it's like, yeah, it's gone.

• 13:14Peter Diamandis?

  It's ecstatic and snow. Yeah. I mean, but what was amazing was the precision with which, you know, a bullet hitting a bullet type of velocities and smack into the center as predicted. I didn't see the final results of it because of course, the world just tuned in for that moment of impact. But statistically, it...

• 13:38Peter Diamandis?

  It deviated the asteroid in a predictable way that would be enough with enough advance notice to get it out of the path of Earth. Is that correct?

• 13:46Speaker 01

  In general, yes. Of course, again, with these kind of things, it's all about orbital mechanics and math, right? Because it all depends on how close it is, how soon you detect it, how fast it's moving, you know, and how big it is. You know, those things come all come into play. This was just a very sort of initial first proving we can do it. But yeah, it's it's it's incredibly, it's incredibly important, important work. And again, I I try to stay hopeful. So I would think that if we did discover something, we, we, we

• 14:28Speaker 01

  would have the tools and the know how to be able to deflect a planet destroying asteroid.

• 14:35Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, we got it. We got to figure it out before Bruce Willis, you know, departs.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 14:41Peter Diamandis?

  So, all right, let's go back to space telescopes here. What's on the drawing board next? I mean, we have, I think they're called the great telescopes, right? These telescopes that we've been producing. And so James Webb telescopes conceived of in 96, 25 years later, it gets launched after you said congressional cancellation and lots of, you know, budget overruns and time overruns and such, but it makes it, thank you to you and your fellow scientists and those who support it because it's, I mean, it's like, once it's there, it's like, oh, my God, this is a human treasure. Where are we going? Where are we going next? What's the, what's the vision for, you know, next generation?

• 15:25Speaker 01

  So right now, we are building and are very fought for along on our next quote unquote flagship, our next big astronomy telescope at NASA. And that's the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope. That's going to be launched in 2027, so not too far away. It is smaller in terms of like scale. It's about a Hubble sized telescope, but the The primary

• 15:49Peter Diamandis?

  Just a Hubble sized telescope.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Just a Hubble, you know. But the, the, the big deal about the Roman telescope is that it has a huge field of view. So whereas Hubble, again, and J W T sort of stare at one teeny tiny piece of sky, sort of like looking through a straw very deeply. The Roman will be able to see large swaths of the sky. And that just allows you to do different science. So we'll have to do another podcast on the science of the Roman telescope. But it's awesome. So it's going to focus on also on exoplanets, but also on dark energy, this big, you know, space mystery that we have of what is most of the universe made of. So Roman is, again, it's doing great.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Technology is there. It's being built, it's being tested, launches in 2027. As far as the next big, big thing after the Roman telescope.

• 16:43Peter Diamandis?

  Bigger is better.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Bigger is better. And let me tell you what, the next big one is going to be awesome.

• 16:48Peter Diamandis?

  Okay.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  So, and just to give a little background context, every 10 years astronomers get together and say, what are our biggest astronomy questions? What do we need to build to answer them? And those are the decadal surveys. So your listeners have probably heard of these. So for the, the last, you know, 2020 decadal survey,

• 17:09Speaker 01

  we decided that we need to build basically a fleet. So we need three new observatories, new big, bold, awesome observatories. And the first of these is going to be called the Habitable Worlds Observatory. So that's exactly what it sounds like. We are going to build a telescope to find life. So that is the next big goal in astronomy of NASA. So it's essentially going to search 100 nearby star system to search for earth-like planets. That's the goal and to find evidence of life on those planets. So that's a big goal, but I think we can do it.

• 17:51Peter Diamandis?

  So going back to Sirindeer's question of what should he study? It's going to be perfect for you, just looking for exoplanets with with life.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  With life, yeah.

• 18:01Peter Diamandis?

  And what's interesting, right? Hopefully, fingers crossed, we will expand the the envelope of what we can deliver to space with the advent of Starship, which is huge.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah. And having these big, reliable, and in this case reusable rockets, I think is going to be a complete game changer for astronomy. And also the the prospect of in-space servicing, super important. You know, we've we've done that with Hubble, but all of our other telescopes have not been built to be serviceable, including JD-RST. But our next fleet of observatories that we're thinking about, those have to be serviceable. And so that's something that we're sort of actively planning for. And you know, I think we, again, JD-RST is awesome. It's so worth it, but it was so hard.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  And you know, this next fleet of observatories we're thinking about is it's not a whole new, you know, it's not a revolution, you know, it's going to be building on the technologies and the lessons learned we have from JD-RST to be able to build these. So again, this habitable worlds observatory is the first one we're prioritizing. And then we also want to build a huge X-ray telescope and a huge far infrared telescope, which sort of, you know, basically help us to get at all of those fundamental questions that we have in astronomy.

• 19:33Peter Diamandis?

  Right.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's it's super exciting. And if we can do it, I say if, we can do it. We just need the will to do it. And we, you know, we need, we need people to get to get behind it, to decide to do it. It's going to be hard, but I think the faster we can get these observatories in space, the better it's going to be overall. So.

• 20:01Peter Diamandis?

  Can't can't imagine what could be more exciting and you know luckily you know a few of the wealthiest people on the planet are space cadets along with you and me. And so if you know if government has difficulty, maybe we'll get some privately funded. Uh, you know, mega space telescopes out there as well. I mean, you know, what's $10 billion between friends? That's not not too bad. I'm going to close us out with a question I ask my guests. Um, so Amber, you know, uh, about the X Prize, you know that, um, we run these large scale global competitions. And I'm always looking for great moon shots, great X Prize ideas. So if I were to say to you, Amber, we're going to fund, uh, the Amber Strong X Prize. It's fully funded.

• 20:47Peter Diamandis?

  I just need you to tell me, what do you want scientists and engineers around the world focusing on? Is there a grand challenge that you think would be a great X Prize? I know I'm putting you on the spot here, but you're brilliant too as well. So, uh, we've covered a lot of different subjects. What are your thoughts? What do you, what do you think, you know, unleashing global creativity on, uh, might give us, uh, some interesting breakthroughs?

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Well, when I think about problems facing us humans, um, I, my mind goes to climate change, of course. I think that's a huge one and I know X Prize is funding, uh, things to, to address that.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think, I think climate change is the thing that comes to mind. I think it is, um, not only in the future, but now it's a big problem now. It's affecting people now.

• 21:43Peter Diamandis?

  You know, in the climate change and the space area, an idea I've kicked back and forth, and I'm curious of your view on this, is the idea of a sunshade. Can we put up a large scale structure that would titrate would maybe block, you know, a fraction of 1% of the sun in a way that would fail safe and allow you to put like a thermostat on the solar flux hitting the earth?

• 22:08Speaker 01

  That's super interesting.

• 22:10Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  I don't know. I need to think about that a little bit. That's interesting. I, well, you've heard me say a couple of times now, I try to take a hopeful outlook on things and I really do. I, I, a lot of times when I think about these big problems, I feel like a lot of our problems are. To address the problems, it's social or political problems rather than technological. So that's a tough side of these sorts of things.

• 22:40Peter Diamandis?

  X prizes work more when you're building a technology.

• 22:44Peter Diamandis?

  You know, I've thought about, just to enter this sort of conversation with you, would there, would an X prize to look for Earth approaching asteroids from within the orbit of Venus, potentially, you know? Could we create small telescopes that would be launched and funded to look for those asteroids? Give us a little more advanced warning?

• 23:10Peter Diamandis?

  Maybe something like that? I wonder if data prizes, looking at all of the James Webb Telescope, like competitions to discover the most interesting breakthrough by citizen scientists? Does something like that exist?

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Um, as far as prizes, I'm not sure. But, but yeah, there are huge platforms for citizen science and they're fairly active. But you know, competition always spurs on human beings. So having a competition for diving into that data does sound, sound really interesting. So, um, and, and we have tons of data. It's great, but once we do bring on the Roman telescope, and also a ground-based telescope called the Rubin Telescope. These two telescopes.

• 24:00Peter Diamandis?

  Where's that one gonna be?

• 24:02Speaker 01

  That, uh, that one, oh no, I'm forgetting off the top of my head where it's being built. I should know that. So, uh, but it's a huge, and it's the same idea as Roman, um, in terms of science.

• 24:15Peter Diamandis?

  Wide field.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Wide field. And what that means is so much data that we actually don't really know how to handle it yet. In terms of, in terms of analysis. That's one of the reasons there's a lot of effort on machine learning, um, algorithms in astronomy right now.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  So, once we get in the era of Roman and Ruben data, we are definitely gonna need help from humans, from competitions, from machines, to be able to analyze this massive amount of data.

• 24:50Peter Diamandis?

  Amazing. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Amber Strong, this was probably one of my favorite conversations. You sort of tickled your young nine-year-old in me, who got, you know, sort of turned on with Star Trek and Apollo. And, God, it's extraordinary that the human race, using these tools, can discover the everything that's going on in this universe. It's literally awe-striking to our souls. Amber, I thank you. You're going to be joining us at Abundance 360 this year onstage. I hope you'll bring with you some of your favorite images and tell some of your favorite stories,

• 25:35Peter Diamandis?

  because this very much is a visual story. And anyway, thank you for painting the pictures with your words and taking the time today. Folks who want to dive in deeper, see some of these images, learn about more, where would you direct them? What website?

• 25:51Speaker 01

  So, to learn more about JWST and find all the images and all the great stuff, it would be jwst.nasa.gov.

• 25:59Peter Diamandis?

  Nice. Well, thank you to NASA, to Congress for putting the money back up, to all astronomers who have been working around the clock for this. And thank you to you, Amber. It's just amazing to call you a friend, and thanks.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 26:29Speaker 00

  Every mile matters. Whether you're driving your dream car or your daily commuter, the MobileOne team knows that. It's why we created MobileOne Advanced Clean Motor Oil. It cleans your engine in one oil change and helps extend engine life, delivering performance, protection, and cleanliness for vehicles of all ages, all to help keep your engine running like new, whatever you're driving. Visit mobileone.com/advancedclean to learn more.