Cosmic Queries – Hubble Space Telescope

It was only supposed to last 3-5 years and it’s been orbiting for 30. Neil deGrasse Tyson celebrates the Hubble Space Telescopes 30th anniversary with comic co-host Chuck Nice and Hubble senior project scientist Jennifer Wiseman, PhD.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and I got with me Chuck Nice. Yes. Chuck in the house? Neil. All right, this is a Cosmic Queries edition. Absolutely. And we're celebrating 30 years of the Hubble Space Telescope. Wow. Yeah, 30, it was launched in 1990, April. Look at that. Yeah, and we're talking across someone right here. I know, so rude of us. So very rude of us. Edwin would be ashamed.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so we have Jennifer Weiss. Jennifer, welcome.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think this is your first time visiting here.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  It's wonderful to be here.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We go way back, but your first time, so it's long overdue. And I got your pedigree here, Senior Project Scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope at the NASA Goddard, um, uh, uh, what's the full?

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Space Flight Center.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Goddard, because we have a Goddard here. We have a Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Yeah, we have a Goddard Institute for Space, Goddard got around. Goddard, yeah. Had a rocket, so he got around.

• 1:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right outside of Washington DC. And you're primarily responsible for, um, making sure Hubble is as scientifically productive as possible. Wow. And sure enough, that's what it has been. We're gonna get into that. Yeah, there's a little bit. And you're professionally, what would you say is your special, your cosmic specialty?

• 1:40Speaker 01

  I'm interested in how stars continue to form in interstellar clouds, so.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So all those pictures from Hubble with the stuff with the clouds? Yes. That's her. Nice.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Well, that's not all.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She took them personally.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Uh, not exactly.

• 1:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She owns them all. Yeah, she owns all the pictures.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  This is called inflation, uh, in some way. No, there are people all over the world studying different aspects of how stars and planetary systems around them presumably are continuing to form.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So, but, but it's. You're in the right place to be fed.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Absolutely. We're blessed to be fed with all this new information from the Hubble Space Telescope and also telescopes, all kinds of other telescopes in space and on the ground. We use them all together in complementary fashion.

• 2:28Chuck Nice?

  You kind of layer the information to put it together and get a, dare I say it, a better picture.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Exactly. I think of it like a symphony orchestra. The conductor is pulling out some parts of the music from the trumpets and some from the percussion and some from the violins and so forth, but all together it gives you the full piece of music. So astronomers use some information from the Hubble Space Telescope, some from other space telescopes, some from telescopes on the ground. They all have some different niche, you know, they get some different colors or parts of the wavelength spectrum or a different types of fields of view and precision. And we use all that together to answer the questions we have about galaxies or stars or planets or whatever we're interested in.

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So tell me, you don't just happen to be at the Goddard Space Flight Center. That's where Hubble is controlled?

• 3:17Speaker 01

  The Hubble Space Telescope Control Room is, yes, at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then what's that Hubble building on the campus of Johns Hopkins?

• 3:27Speaker 01

  At Johns Hopkins, we have the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is a wonderful place with hundreds of scientists and other specialists who work with us at Goddard to help us manage the daily science operations of Hubble, to help with the selections of which proposals that are sent in from around the world actually get the time on the Hubble telescope.

• 3:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think people think much about that. The data just show up, right?

• 3:54Chuck Nice?

  Somebody had to do an American Idol version of, "Yo, I need Hubble." "That's the next big show coming to Fox. Yo, I need Hubble."

• 4:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Show me your proposal, right?

• 4:06Speaker 01

  That's a really good analogy, but it's not done quite the way it's done in terms of the TV shows. What's done is that scientists around the world will write a written proposal for why they want to use the Hubble Space Telescope. Why are the observations they want to do so important to advance science? And why do they need the Hubble Space Telescope to do that?

• 4:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As opposed to any other telescope that they could be applying for time on.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you don't want to waste, I think this is true for the allocation committee, they're not going to give you time. For a proposal that you could do on a ground-based telescope. Because space-based telescopes are so expensive and so precious every moment of observing time.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Exactly. So you have to make the case, why is it important that we use this precious time with the Hubble telescope to observe this particular galaxy or this particular exoplanetary system? And why do we need the Hubble telescope or the particular instruments that are on Hubble to do that? And that goes through a pretty stringent peer review process. We have specialists come in and review all the proposals and rank them. And in the end, basically, one in four or one in five get time on the Hubble space telescope.

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's it like on American Idol? Is it one in five?

• 5:21Chuck Nice?

  I think a little bit less than that.

• 5:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're better off applying for Hubble time than winning American Idol?

• 5:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you probably are, but probably not, to be honest.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Although I should add that we're pretty good about storing this data. So once the observations are done with Hubble, the data are put in an archive that's easily accessible. And so scientists around the world often go into that archive, pull out data that's already there. But they can use it for something else. And in fact, about half of the results, the peer-reviewed, published science discoveries and results coming from Hubble now are based on data that scientists have taken out of that archive.

• 6:03Chuck Nice?

  So if you use the telescope, then everything that you glean from using it is now open source?

• 6:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's better than that, I think.

• 6:13Chuck Nice?

  Is it better than that?

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I had my own motives for observing that part of the sky. But maybe you have another thing you could extract from the data that I hadn't thought of yet.

• 6:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  That's right, exactly.

• 6:28Chuck Nice?

  But there is nothing proprietary.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Well, there is.

• 6:31Chuck Nice?

  There is.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  For some types of observations.

• 6:35Chuck Nice?

  See, now that's all I care about, is who gets the proprietary stuff.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  There are some types of proposals where the proposing team get a few months.

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jennifer's got a point. This is my cluster.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  No, nobody owns anything in the universe personally, but

• 6:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not yet, but go on.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Some of the proposals, the proposing team gets a few months of time to do what they actually propose to do and do it well, because we want them to have the time to do it well. And then the data gets put in this archive and then it's open to everyone. And there are other types of observations that are generally done, like big surveys and things that, let's say, the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute decides would be a good general purpose use of Hubble. And that data immediately goes into public purview, so it can be immediately used by scientists around the world, but anybody in the public can reach the archive. We also have an image gallery that I think is probably of more interest to most general

• 7:32Speaker 01

  people in the science-interested public, and that you can find at our websites, nasa.gov/hubble or hubblesite.org. But these have the images, the things that you really think about when you think of Hubble's galaxies or nebulae.

• 7:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your desktop screensaver.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That's where you go, and that's just all free to anyone around the world to use and enjoy. And that's something I'm very proud of about the Hubble mission, is that we've made all of this data and all of these images free for anyone around the world to use. That's why Center stock hates you. Well, it's inspiring to everyone. No, it is. We thank you for it.

• 8:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before we get to the questions, I've got one more inquiry here. So is it still true that the director can just say, "Here's a good idea. Everyone will benefit. Let's just do this. It's not going through the telescope allocation committee." Okay, so it's a director's discretionary time. Does that still exist?

• 8:32Speaker 01

  It does. So the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, who currently is Dr. Kenneth Simbach, has a certain allocation of

• 8:40Speaker 01

  of time with Hubble each year that they can use for what they think is the most, some scientific purpose that might not come through sort of the general competitive process with scientists around the world. And usually this time is done, is used for, let's say, a kind of big survey or a general purpose observation that will be of use to people for many years to come.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could it be used for something that's a little quirky?

• 9:11Chuck Nice?

  A little quirky?

• 9:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You would have to have a great deal of trust in that director.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Well, that's what when you have the

• 9:19Chuck Nice?

  I believe that there are aliens in NGC 3801. I'm positive.

• 9:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Well, let me assure you that we take great care in choosing the directors of the Space Telescope Science Institute. We've had excellent ones.

• 9:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna refrain.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  And so I'll mention a couple of these that I think are particularly noteworthy.

• 9:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're not political appointees.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  The current Institute, Space Telescope Science Institute Director, Dr. Ken Simbok, has very wisely allocated director's discretionary time to do a lot of observations in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, looking at stars and star-forming regions that that radiate light in this high-energy frequency range. Well, why is that? Well, that's because Hubble is really the only general-purpose telescope right now that can see in the ultraviolet. And you have to be above the Earth's atmosphere to see in the ultraviolet because of the filtering effects of the atmosphere.

• 10:18Chuck Nice?

  Unless you're Geordi La Forge.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Well, exactly. But this is, this is important to get this data and get it in the archive while we can, and then we can use it for many years to come. There's another director's discretionary project that I think is really noteworthy, and this came from years ago, a previous director, Dr. Bob Williams.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Used his director's discretionary time to just point off in a direction of space where there weren't very many nearby stars to drown out the image and just collected light for many days.

• 10:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, was he crazy? Pointing to nowhere?

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 10:51Chuck Nice?

  Listen, that's pretty dark over there.

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, let's put the telescope...

• 10:55Chuck Nice?

  Let's look there.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  So...

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's nothing interesting there.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Some people did push back on this and said, "This is a very valuable time on this telescope. There's a lot of competition. Why would you quote-unquote waste your director's discretionary time this way?"

• 11:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I'm director.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  There you go. But, basically, it was, you know, let's look and see. We think there are probably some faint galaxies that will pick up by just integrating light, receiving light for days, but we weren't sure. After several days of doing this, the result was this image that's now iconic. It contains thousands of little smudges of light. They are all galaxies. It's called the Hubble Deep Field, and we've done some subsequent ones called, like, the Ultra Deep Field.

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's one of the most famous images from Hubble.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  It certainly is, and it's my favorite, yeah. But it really showed us visually what we may have suspected already, just from the physics and the cosmological theories, but that our universe is filled with galaxies, and they come in many different shapes and sizes. And, of course, the intriguing thing about getting these fields is that you're seeing all these galaxies in one picture, but of course, the ones that are actually farther away, you're seeing them as they were farther back in time. So if you can somehow tease out which of those galaxies are closer to us and which of them in that image are farther away, and compare their differences. Are they different in their morphology?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Are they different in composition? Sometimes you need other telescopes to get that information. Why does this one look like a sombrero? Exactly. You can see how galaxies have changed over time. So it's a true time machine that you can now see visually, and Hubble really set the foundation for this kind of pictorial study of galaxy evolution. And I think it's just a wonderful accomplishment. But that was based on a very wise but brave use of director's discretionary time with the Hubble Space Telescope. It's a great story.

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With naysayers all along.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And also, once the Hubble sort of... Pitch's tent, right there.

• 13:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Other telescopes can say, I can now get different kind of information from that same.

• 13:10Chuck Nice?

  Going to the same place.

• 13:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me go to the same place.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 13:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's probably one of the most observed spots in the sky today.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Certainly is. So we now have deep, we have other positions on the sky also that have been observed in these kind of deep field ways using different kinds of telescopes, like the Chandra X-ray Observatory, or.

• 13:27Chuck Nice?

  One of Neil's favorites.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Telescopes on the ground, and all of these telescopes have different capabilities, and so they complement Hubble and are giving us a tremendous understanding of how the universe has changed over time.

• 13:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 13:41Chuck Nice?

  That's really cool.

• 13:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 13:42Chuck Nice?

  Very, very cool stuff.

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let's go to some, I don't know how much time we have in this segment.

• 13:44Chuck Nice?

  I don't know how much time we have in this segment either.

• 13:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got time for a couple. Let's do it.

• 13:48Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 13:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Patreon members first.

• 13:49Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we do a Patreon member first.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paying fans get their questions first.

• 13:53Chuck Nice?

  Yes, they support us on Patreon.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 13:56Chuck Nice?

  Quite frankly, we're easily bought. Thank you. This message brought to you by Chuck Nice from StarTalk Radio. Anyway, uh, this is Sheri Lynn S.K. Uh, she says, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Weisman, and, uh, hey Chuck.

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is not what she said, no.

• 14:13Chuck Nice?

  That is. Yes. And she goes, what are two or three discoveries that laypersons like myself can reference when talking to others about the fantastic contributions Hubble has given us? Right now, all I can say is, it took some really pretty pictures of some stuff, and I need better ammo for those of us not literate in astrophysics.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Ooh, that's a lovely question, right?

• 14:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rank the science. How would you put that?

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Well, I'm not gonna rank, uh, rank order, because there's a lot of different.

• 14:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just between us and our audience, no one else has to know.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  But I would say there are some profound, uh, discoveries in, in different realms of astrophysics that Hubble has really made a, a, a groundbreaking, if you will, or spacebreaking, if you will, a contribution.

• 15:00Chuck Nice?

  I like the change there.

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See what she did there?

• 15:02Chuck Nice?

  See what you did?

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See what you did there?

• 15:04Chuck Nice?

  He's breaking.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  I think one of the first things Hubble did was to confirm that there are, in fact, supermassive black holes in the core. of galaxies. There were, it was theorized that that was the case, perhaps, but what one of the first observations Hubble did was to look at the core of another galaxy. M87, for example, is one of these other galaxies that we knew was kind of active. We could see that there was like a high-speed jet coming out of the core, but we weren't sure what was causing these types of things. Hubble looked at another external galaxy and saw that the gas moving around the core of that galaxy was moving very fast.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  And so, when you have something orbiting very fast, but you don't know what it's orbiting, you can pretty easily calculate what the mass of that material is based on the distance from the core that the material is moving and its velocity. And the only thing that could be that massive in such a small volume had to be a supermassive black hole. So Hubble then became what we call our supermassive black hole finder, because with subsequent instruments on Hubble, we actually looked at the cores of lots of other galaxies and confirmed over and over again that supermassive black holes are often, if not always, perhaps, in the cores of galaxies.

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what went implied but not stated there is, you needed Hubble to do that because Hubble has very high resolution.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Exactly, right.

• 16:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Other telescopes, it's just a smudge, and you can't find something so close to a tiny center.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, that's a point that needs to be made. The reason Hubble is there at all is because we put it above the atmosphere. The atmosphere has a blurring effect on light coming through, and it even filters out some types of light. So Hubble, being above the atmosphere, gives us very high-resolution

• 16:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Above all.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Observation. Exactly. And that's why we were able to use Hubble to just discern this gas right around the cores of other galaxies. And on one side, it seemed to be moving away from us very fast. That would be the red-shifted gas. And on the other side of the center of those galaxies, we'd see stuff that appeared to be moving toward us very fast. Blue-shifted light. And so you can tell that the material is orbiting very fast, and from that calculate that the only thing that would create orbits that fast would be a lot of mass condensed in a very small volume. And the only thing that answers that question is our supermassive black hole.

• 17:34Chuck Nice?

  So now, let me ask you, as you talk about this process, what immediately comes to my mind is the process. How long does something like this take? Or is it that you are doing mathematical interpolation? Or making extrapolations from a period of time? That you're looking at the, the information that you're receiving?

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How long does it, what take? Just the whole?

• 17:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the process. The discovery and observation and the whole deal.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, good point. Yeah, from proposal to published paper.

• 18:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How long does that take?

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Well, I have to say, it all depends. So, so an observation, depending on what you're doing, like I mentioned, that deep field took several days of observations. Others, if it's something bright, if it's just one pointing, you can do it maybe in an hour or two.

• 18:20Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  But then you need to go through some processing time for the, the data comes down, but it needs some data processing. Uh, you know, in that case, usually we can get images out if they're just simple snapshots within a few days.

• 18:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Um, but if you're doing scientific analysis, like you're, you're doing a proposal to answer some question that requires quite a lot of analysis, maybe comparisons with data from other telescopes, these kinds of things, that can take months or a year, um, sometimes even years. So it just depends on the complexity of the question that's being asked and, and, and that's being, and the data, how the data are being used.

• 18:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you submit the paper, gets peer reviewed.

• 19:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Oh, that's right.

• 19:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then maybe they want adjustments to it because you didn't dot your i or cross your t. Then you do that, satisfy the, the reviewer. Then it gets accepted for publication, then it gets scheduled. Right? And so that, that adds a chunk of time at the end there as well, but...

• 19:19Chuck Nice?

  See, and now I have a, see, we gotta wrap it up, right? I know, but now I got another question, which is, and I'm sorry...

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is, we don't have time for your damn question.

• 19:26Chuck Nice?

  I gotta ask it, man. I gotta ask it real quick.

• 19:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Put it out there.

• 19:29Chuck Nice?

  Real quick, I gotta ask. So with that being said, considering the process, has anyone looked for something, right? And then peer review finds, no, no, no. But then something even better was found from the information.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Well, sure.

• 19:46Chuck Nice?

  Like found, found from the, not, I don't, I can't call it a mistake. What do you call it?

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't have time to answer your question.

• 19:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay, all right.

• 19:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll come back.

• 19:53Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 19:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you remember it after the break. StarTalk Cosmic Queries, Hubble's 30th anniversary when we return.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Cosmic Queries, Hubble 30th Anniversary Edition. We last left off with Chuck in the middle of a question. What happens if whatever issues a first proposed research paper confronts?

• 20:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They discover something even better?

• 20:42Chuck Nice?

  Right. Well, the peer review says, "Oh, no, that's not the case." And then they find something that's like, "Whoa."

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, the peer reviewers or the?

• 20:49Chuck Nice?

  Well, both. Either one. Anybody goes, "Wow."

• 20:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they missed something?

• 20:52Chuck Nice?

  They missed something. And then I go, "Oh, my goodness." I just want to know if that ever happened. Like, I have a thing for that. Like, radiocarotonomy, like, I cut his eye and he goes, "Wait, I can see. Whoa, who knew?" Like, I love that.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 21:06Chuck Nice?

  You know?

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Okay, let me try to parse that.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  So, again, these observations typically go through two peer reviews. One is to get the time to use Hubble in the first place. So, that means that they generally had a pretty good idea of why these observations would be useful. And then there's the second one, when they, after they've done the analysis of the data and they submit their analysis to the professional journal of what they think they found. And, true enough, the journals can actually say, you know, "We don't actually think this is right or profound," and maybe choose not to publish it, but usually they do. What's interesting, though, by then... But what's interesting is that that data that may have been used for the initial proposer's

• 21:54Speaker 01

  purposes is now available for other researchers to use. And, as we discussed about the archive, they can pull that data and find something that the original proposer didn't even think of to use with this data. And that has happened quite a lot. Let me tell you why.

• 22:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It becomes a whole other research paper.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  And the reason is because Hubble has been around so long, 30 years now, of often taking, sometimes repeated, observations of the same areas in the sky for different purposes. We can now look back and see things that have changed over time, which is very interesting, in particular in our solar system. Looking back at images of, let's say Jupiter, over time, year after year after year, and then starting to compare these images and saying, whoa. As we look back at this data that may be even taken for different purposes in earlier years, but we can see trends. Let's say that big, great red spot on Jupiter. It's a big storm, but as we look over the decades of-

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you know what its official term is?

• 22:51Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jupiter's red spot.

• 22:53Chuck Nice?

  Oh, there you go. Right.

• 22:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just so you know, just so you can stay with the lingo here.

• 22:57Chuck Nice?

  I don't understand-

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't want her to lose you-

• 22:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, why you guys gotta get all fancy?

• 23:01Speaker 01

  I think it's, we're trying to make it clear. The great red spot is there, but it is red.

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a red, it's a spot.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  However, it is shrinking as we look at these images year after year after year. And like, whoa, this storm is changing, it's changing in color. It's getting smaller. We see new storms cropping up. So this is one of the benefits of having a telescope operating so long and being able to look back in that archive at data that may have been taken for some other purpose, but then stringing it all together and we see how things have changed, are changing, over time.

• 23:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you find the monolith in the red spot?

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Uh-

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She cannot authorize. Next question. Next question.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  None detectable.

• 23:44Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay, look at that.

• 23:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's not authorized to go beyond that.

• 23:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. Now I'm seeing a conspiracy. All right, Robert Weaver from Patreon wants to know this. What is the most interesting, unexplained thing we have observed with Hubble? Is there something that astrophysicists are still trying to work out?

• 24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love it.

• 24:01Chuck Nice?

  That Hubble has revealed? Uh, Robert Weaver.

• 24:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Robert Weaver.

• 24:06Chuck Nice?

  Way to go, Robert. You have impressed the room, sir.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Robert, that's a terrific question, and a couple of things come to mind. Hubble is observing a lot of effects of what we call dark matter. And so we can't really see dark matter, and we don't know what it is. It's a mystery, but Hubble can see where it is because it's distributed pretty heavily in these clusters of galaxies. We can see the galaxies, but we know there's a lot more stuff in there because Hubble sees what's called lensing of light coming from behind those clusters of galaxies. It's traveling through that cluster and it gets- Distorted, it gets magnified and stretched out. And so, background galaxies look kinda strange when they come through these regions.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  And we can, because of that, we can map out where the dark matter is. But it's still a mystery as to what it actually is. And even more mysterious is something we call dark energy. Because this is a surprise. We were looking at, we've been, for all of Hubble's mission, we've been measuring very carefully the expansion rate of the universe. That was one of the original goals of Hubble. But, just a few years ago-

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wasn't that one of the original reasons why it was named Hubble?

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Well, exactly.

• 25:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because Edwin Hubble himself discovered the expanding universe.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 25:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that, if this telescope was gonna go all in on that, you might as well name it after the guy who put it on the map.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. So Hubble was, one of the first goals of Hubble was to measure better the rate of the expansion of the universe. We expected that as we became better able to look at more distant galaxies, which is looking back at time, and measuring the expansion rate at that time and comparing it to the expansion rate in the current epoch, that we would see that the expansion rate of the universe has been slowing down. That was the expectation. Because gravity, basically, is trying to pull things together and perhaps slow down this expansion. The surprise in recent years was that by comparing Hubble observations with also observations from good telescopes on the ground,

• 26:15Speaker 01

  and looking at the difference between the expansion rate in the distant universe, meaning far in the past, with the expansion rate in our current epoch, that the universe's expansion rate has, has actually, in recent epochs, meaning in recent billions of years, been getting faster. It's accelerating. It was first decelerating, and now it's accelerating. We don't know what's causing that. Hubble's a big player in this, in this discovery. It's not the only player, but it's a big player. And so now, this is a whole new enterprise in astrophysics, is trying to understand what is it that could be accelerating the expansion of the universe?

• 26:55Chuck Nice?

  Well, getting better with age, that's all. That's all.

• 26:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Attacking on a billion years, you're looking even better.

• 27:02Chuck Nice?

  That's right, that's right. Look at that. Alright, cool, man.

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 27:06Chuck Nice?

  So, let's go to Cameron Kessler from Facebook. Says, "Does Hubble have any sufficient technology to keep up with the needs of today's understanding of the universe? And will there ever be a telescope with a 360 panoramic view like Google Street Maps?"

• 27:25Chuck Nice?

  That's a pretty cool question.

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the measure of the future of cosmic discovery.

• 27:29Chuck Nice?

  Cosmic discovery is, will we have a Google Cosmos Maps, like Google Street Maps? And, I know the Mars Rovers do this, their pictures, but would it make more sense to have this sort of thing instead of falling back on the, now this is getting thrown a little shade here, the excuse, "We have to look in the right places," as they used to say in SETI.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I'm trying to understand the question, is it?

• 27:58Chuck Nice?

  In other words?

• 27:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's look everywhere, instead of in places we think we want to find something.

• 28:02Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we might discover something we're not looking for otherwise.

• 28:05Chuck Nice?

  Well, basically, he's saying like Google Maps, like, so it's just like, "I really want to go to 359 Main Street, but what's that over there? Oh my god, that coffee shop looks pretty awesome! I'm gonna go check it out!"

• 28:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 28:17Chuck Nice?

  So...

• 28:18Speaker 01

  This is a very good question, and we need both, because we want to be able to see everything in the sky, and we have survey telescopes that are designed to do just that, to have big fields of view, and to survey the entire sky, often for a particular reason. So, right now, for example, we have the TESS satellite that's surveying the sky, but looking specifically for stars that may have planetary systems around them in our nearby neighborhood.

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it fair to think of TESS as a follow-on to Kepler?

• 28:52Speaker 01

  I think so, yeah.

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And TESS, get me through that.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, I think. I'm gonna have to remind myself. But anyway, the idea of test is to do just that. Survey the sky.

• 29:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  And then there's a telescope being designed for the ground. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. The whole idea of this is to do the whole sky survey very frequently. So it's a good idea. However, when you're doing that, you're not getting the precision in small fields of view that you can get with a telescope like Hubble. So it depends on the purposes at large. If you really want a high angular resolution, precision, high sensitivity observation of something, that's a different goal than doing a whole sky survey. And we sort of need both of that. So the best way this works is if you're doing whole sky surveys, and then if you find something

• 29:52Speaker 01

  that you'd really like more detail about, then you hone in with some other telescope to do that. Hubble is really not good for these whole sky surveys. It's much better for pointing and getting much higher angular resolution. My favorite example of this is the Orion Nebula. I love the Orion region of the sky. It's a very famous constellation. I did my own doctoral research on star formation in this region of the sky.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't the closest star-forming region to us?

• 30:23Speaker 01

  It's the closest region of massive star formation. So stars bigger than our sun. But they light up these massive stars. Once they form, they're so powerful, they ionize the surrounding gas, so you get these beautiful nebulae. So the Orion Nebula is famous. Hubble can peer into that Orion Nebula.

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jennifer was born in the Orion Nebula.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  You know, maybe I was.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's the spirit energy of the Orion Nebula.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Possible I wasn't told, but maybe, you know.

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, how would you know?

• 30:54Speaker 01

  I was told I was born in Arkansas, but you know.

• 30:57Chuck Nice?

  Listen, in this current climate, let's go with the Arkansas story.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Anyway, I love the Hubble image of the Orion Nebula, because it does give you that great detail. You can see massive stars, you can see the colors, but you don't get the big field of view that you can get with other telescopes.

• 31:15Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha, gotcha.

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next.

• 31:16Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go.

• 31:20Chuck Nice?

  This is Holdwig, at ThunderOStorm on Twitter. And he says, or she says, or they say, if I want to be correct.

• 31:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This person says.

• 31:33Chuck Nice?

  This per- thank you.

• 31:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's possible to get through this, Chuck.

• 31:36Chuck Nice?

  I know, it's just that once I start thinking about it, I'm like, well, that can't be right. Well, that's not right either. What am I doing? I don't know anything anymore!

• 31:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Help me, help me.

• 31:45Chuck Nice?

  Help me, please! Okay, here we go. What are the projects that you think will be the most important for this current decade? So, we're in the twenties now? What's gonna happen between twenty and thirty that is the most important?

• 32:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Would this be what Hubble would be able to contribute in this decade? Or is that more general?

• 32:04Chuck Nice?

  They don't say. They just say, what are the projects? I mean, of course, they're talking about telescopes. But they just say, what are the projects?

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Well, that's a terrific question. And Hubble is poised to be a major player in these astrophysics discoveries in the coming decade. So, one of them I've already mentioned is kind of getting a better grip on this idea that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. How's that? Why is that? And how is that working so hard?

• 32:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who ordered that?

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so, telescopes like Hubble will be working in concert with other observatories. The Wide Field Infrared Space Telescope, or WFIRST, is a telescope idea that's being developed and right now, that will be a large, again, one of these big fields of view that can kind of give us a better sense of how galaxies are distributed and how they've become distributed over time. And that's related to dark matter and dark energy.

• 32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just remind me, wasn't WFIRST a retooled, decommissioned military telescope?

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Right. We took a telescope that had another purpose and now we're re-envisioning it to do this kind of stud- big, big surveys in the infrared.

• 33:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which helped reduce the cost, ultimately.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Um, that was the idea. Although sometimes, you know, retooling things has its own complications. But it is, it is gonna be a terrific telescope. I think-

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's that, military or spy talk?

• 33:29Speaker 01

  The name of the game, I think, for the coming decade is complementary cooperative work. Let me tell you, one of my favorites is that Hubble is being used in complement with probes that we're sending out to other planets in our solar system. And we get much more information this way than we would by just Hubble alone or just the probe alone. For example, the Juno probe that's at Jupiter right now is getting all kinds of information about Jupiter's magnetic field and gravitational field. And Hubble is back here orbiting the Earth, looking at Jupiter, and Hubble has the unique ability to see the ultraviolet light coming from the auroras, the magnetic poles of Jupiter.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  And those are dancing around, relevant to what's happening with the magnetic fields around Jupiter that Juno is measuring in situ there. So this cooperative work gives us a lot better understanding of these magnetic fields and what's happening on Jupiter and even its moons than we could alone.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not an after-the-fact conjoining of data. It's in situ.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is beautiful. I love that.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Right. We're doing things cooperatively with Hubble. Another example in just the recent past was when the New Horizons probe went past Pluto.

• 34:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Pluto goes unmentioned here? We don't-

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Oh, well, you know, Pluto is still there and it's doing fine, right? So, in fact-

• 34:58Chuck Nice?

  Just because you're not taking Pluto's calls, Leo-

• 35:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'll make an exception.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  In fact, Pluto is beautiful, and Hubble was used, as New Horizons was on its way out there, Hubble was used to find other undiscovered moons around Pluto and to help New Horizons, help us chart a good course for New Horizons, and even to help New Horizons to know what objects to look at beyond Pluto. So, these are things that I think are examples of how Hubble and other telescopes are going to be used cooperatively in the coming years to give us a lot more information than we could from any observatory alone.

• 35:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wasn't there also a mission, I have a memory, where there was a probe to an asteroid, where it- Dropped a, a, a, a projectile which would then kick up asteroid dust.

• 35:54Chuck Nice?

  And then collect?

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Would, no.

• 35:55Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 35:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With, in a direction and an azimuth and an angle so that, was it Hubble that would then be able to see through the dust and get a spectrum?

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Well, that was the idea, yes. So, so it was, it kicked up dust, it was observed by quite a few telescopes.

• 36:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Quite a few telescopes.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  And I would have to, you know, to look into the details of what was found, but I thought that was a really nifty idea.

• 36:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's another example of a, of a, I'll do this and then you do that.

• 36:20Chuck Nice?

  Collaboration, yes.

• 36:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cosmic collaboration.

• 36:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. By the way, what a brilliant idea.

• 36:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 36:25Chuck Nice?

  To drop a projectile and kick up the dust and then look through it.

• 36:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look through it with, with ground-based telescopes or, or space-based telescopes.

• 36:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah. I gotta say, you guys are really smart.

• 36:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, Chuck.

• 36:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Just in case you hadn't, just in case no one's told you, wow, you guys are really smart, man. You NASA people. It's amazing what you do.

• 36:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we gotta wind this, this segment.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Let me, I, I, let me, could I add one thing?

• 36:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go ahead, go for it.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  I would be remiss, Chuck, if I did not bring in a huge topic of interest for the coming decade, which is the whole topic of exoplanets.

• 37:00Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Uh, and this is where telescopes will be working very cooperatively. Uh, we didn't even know back when I was in graduate school if there were planets orbiting other stars, stars other than our sun. Now, because of telescopes on the ground and telescopes like Kepler in space, we know of thousands of star systems that have planets. And so now we can presume that most stars have at least one planet. Hubble will be being used in the coming decade to do more analysis of the atmospheres of these exoplanets, complementing work from, uh, telescopes like TESS that's looking around for nearby systems that have planets and future.

• 37:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Finds the system, then there's the handoff to Hubble to analyze the system.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Yes. Also, the James Webb Space Telescope that will be launched in 2021 will be looking at exoplanetary systems in the infrared part of the spectrum, and that will complement Hubble's observations of these exoplanetary systems. Hubble can see a little in the infrared, but mostly in visible and ultraviolet light. And so we'll be getting this wonderful suite of information by using Hubble in complement with other telescopes about the nature of exoplanets.

• 38:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. Just think about it. First, you gotta know that it exists. Right. Then you have that catalog, and now you go in with a whole other layer of questions. Right. Yes. And then that might open other questions you didn't even know to ask at the previous round. Oh, we wanted, yeah. Now you're saying, "Well, now I wanna look at the atmosphere of the planet." Mm-hmm. You're not happy just knowing there's a planet there. Right, exactly. When there was a day when that was a banner headline, "There's a planet there." Right, exactly. So what a luxury to even have that ability to make that measurement. Exactly. We gotta take a break. Okay. When we come back, we'll finish out our 30th anniversary Cosmic Queries on StarTalk.

• 38:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey, guys. It's time for a Patreon shout-out to the following Patreon patrons: Alejandra Salinas and Adam Cook. Thank you so much. Without you, we couldn't make this trek across the cosmos. And for those of you listening who would like your own Patreon shout-out, go to patreon.com/startalkradio and support us.

• 39:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back with Jennifer Wiseman from the Goddard Space Flight Center in... Greenbelt, Maryland. Greenbelt, Maryland, right outside of DC. Mm-hmm. I've been there. It's a huge campus. I mean, it's, it's, it's... And it's like, it's got engineers and scientists working in harmony. Nice. Absolutely. That's as, as... Jets and sharks living together. Jets and sharks. Look at that. Boy, boy. Crazy boy.

• 39:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just saw a West Side Story on Broadway. Did you? Yeah, the revival. Yeah, the new one. Yeah, yeah. So Chuck, we've got more questions.

• 40:05Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we do. Here we go. Um, this is from Louis, um, I'm sorry. The Force Choked Podcast. Okay, I don't know what that is, but from Instagram. Hey Neil and Jennifer, what is the plan for Hubble as its final photo and when will that be? What's the lifespan of Hubble? How long, how long can this go on?

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Well, that's a great question. You know, Hubble was, was launched back in 1990 from the space shuttle and it was designed to be continually replenished with the space shuttle missions, which we did for, for a lot longer than we originally expected. Uh, so we're not servicing it anymore because the space shuttle program is, is over. We're now building a new future spacecraft.

• 40:46Chuck Nice?

  Space Force, yeah.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  So we've got what we've got with Hubble, but Hubble's working very well. The last astronaut servicing mission we did back in 2009 was very successful and they've left the telescope. The astronauts went up and put in some new science instruments and repaired some other instruments and some, and some other equipment on the telescope. It's a satellite orbiting the earth and Hubble is doing very well right now.

• 41:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Did they leave graffiti on it because they were the last ones there? Like Suzie was here.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Uh, if they did, they didn't tell me.

• 41:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, alright, alright.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Right. But, um...

• 41:21Chuck Nice?

  Jennifer said that question a little personally.

• 41:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, I know. I was just seeing her get a little disturbed. It was really a joke question.

• 41:27Chuck Nice?

  It was a joke and she was like, "And if they did, they did not tell me." And I swear I will give them such a look.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  I want you to know out there that I did not have that look at all. I'm, I have nothing.

• 41:40Chuck Nice?

  We have you on camera, Jennifer. It's too late, we're busted.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  I will tell you that one of the astronauts, John Grunsfeld, who is an astronomer himself, brought with him a...

• 41:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A friend of StarTalk, he's been on several times.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Awesome. He brought with him a model of Galileo's telescope. And so up there on the space shuttle during the last servicing mission, we had this marvelous juxtaposition of this model of Galileo's telescope from 400 years ago.

• 42:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The first telescope, yeah.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  And out the window of the cockpit of the shuttle, you could see the Hubble Space Telescope. And so it was just a wonderful visual of how the progress of, of engineering and curiosity and optics all worked together to give us a brand new understanding of the universe.

• 42:24Chuck Nice?

  Money.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can be as curious as all get out.

• 42:27Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 42:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if nobody's paying for your ideas, you just go back to the cave.

• 42:32Chuck Nice?

  You've got some great ideas.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Well, but you have to have the ideas to get people to donate the money. So it all works together.

• 42:39Chuck Nice?

  Well, speaking of that, let's stay right.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  I didn't quite answer your question. So Hubble is working very well. And so we don't really have an end date of Hubble in mind. The kind of stated NASA position now is as long as Hubble is being scientifically productive, we'll keep operating it. And it looks like, just from looking at the health of the gyroscopes and the batteries and the science instruments, that we'll be able to get good science from Hubble for probably through the end of this decade and maybe even beyond.

• 43:06Chuck Nice?

  Not bad.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  And that's great because we want it to be operating while other telescopes are also operating with complementary capabilities.

• 43:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  The James Webb Space Telescope should launch in 2021, and it will be a fabulous space telescope tuned into infrared wavelengths of light.

• 43:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  And so in the infrared, you can appear at galaxies that are coming, that are very distant in space and time. Their light is getting redshifted as it travels through expanding space to get to us. And Hubble can't see that far into the infrared spectrum of light. So Hubble can see very distant galaxies, but the Webb will see galaxies even a little bit farther back in space and time.

• 43:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're going to emphasize something you just said because it's remarkable to me.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So we are seeing infrared light from galaxies in the early universe who, in the early universe, were emitting visible light.

• 44:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Or even ultraviolet.

• 44:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that all got redshifted.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 44:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Over to the infrared part that the James Webb Telescope is tuned to see.

• 44:13Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 44:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So we're folding in that knowledge of the universe.

• 44:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To nab those galaxies right when they're being born.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  I like to put it this way. The universe, we think. At least the universe that we know and love started about 13.8 billion years ago.

• 44:30Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  And Hubble is seeing all the way back right now to baby galaxies from within that first point eight of the 13.8 billion year history of the universe. And the Webb will see even closer to the beginning of the universe, within a few hundred million years of the beginning of the universe.

• 44:48Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  You can see basically infant galaxies with little galaxies.

• 44:53Chuck Nice?

  That's almost like seeing the universe when it's crowning. That's amazing.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Well.

• 44:57Chuck Nice?

  It's amazing. It's just like, oh my god, the baby is coming in a second now.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  This is a little too graphic, but it's not, it's, let's think a little later. Let's think toddlers.

• 45:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay, toddler, toddler, alright.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Because what these telescopes are seeing are the first, after the first gas formed from the first atoms, which first from the, formed from the first subatomic particles, you finally get enough gas to form stars. And these stars and gas coalitions, if you will, are what we call the first proto galaxies. And that's as far back, that's what the Webb telescope will be, will be seeing. And over time, these, these little baby galaxies began to merge together and form bigger galaxies. And these grew over cosmic time into the galaxies we know and love today, like our own Milky Way, which is the product of several mergers over time.

• 45:49Chuck Nice?

  Right. And, and, and has there been any recent collisions that we have seen of galaxies?

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Well, of course, it takes a long time for galaxies to actually merge, but Hubble, actually, that's one of the, one of the wonderful discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope is that merging is common and was more common in, in the early universe. So with Hubble, we've looked out into distant space, looking back in time, and we've seen quite a few cases where galaxies are either in the process of merging, or they've already merged. And that merging process creates distortions in the shapes of these galaxies because of the tidal pulls and the gravitational pulls. And it's quite interesting, we believe that our own Milky Way is set to merge with our nearest neighbor, Big Spiral, Grand Spiral, the Andromeda.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  And we're on a head-on collision course, that's something Hubble helped us find a few years ago.

• 46:43Chuck Nice?

  Thanks a lot, Hubble.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Thanks. So, uh, the night sky was gonna look a lot different.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  In a few billion years.

• 46:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  But it won't be for quite a long time.

• 46:55Chuck Nice?

  Quite some time.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Billions of years.

• 46:56Chuck Nice?

  All right, staying right there with the, uh, with, with the future here. Uh, Team Fortsight Observatory wants to know this. Hi Neil, Jennifer, Chuck. Would it be possible if NASA ends funding for Hubble? Or, um, it comes to its regular end? Someone like Elon Musk could buy the rights to the scope? And send his own repair missions thereby now owning the telescope?

• 47:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good question.

• 47:25Chuck Nice?

  Cause we are seeing that, right? We are seeing, we are seeing the commercialization of space. We are seeing more, uh, collaboration between the public, public and private sector with respect to missions to space. So what, what, what's the feasibility of this?

• 47:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it for sale?

• 47:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  It is not for sale.

• 47:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yet. If you're a billionaire, say everything's for sale.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  The, uh, current plan is we'll operate Hubble for as many years as it is scientifically productive. And then when it's not, um, no longer providing a, a good science, um, it will cease to function. Eventually, uh, we'll need to either push the satellite itself either to a higher orbit. We call it a parking orbit or, or else help direct it safely into the ocean.

• 48:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pacific Ocean.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I don't know exactly where. But, uh, as for private company involvement, we don't have any official plans for that right now. But let me tell you, there's a lot of energetic discussions out there. So, uh, you know, stay tuned for coming years.

• 48:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that idea. If, if it's, Hubble's going to plunk Hubble in the Pacific or someone can buy it, I think.

• 48:32Chuck Nice?

  Let somebody buy it, right? And continue to receive information.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Let me, let me, uh, add this though. Astronomers think about this very hard, all the time. What's the best kind of facility to have to do the kinds of astrophysics we want to do? And there comes a point, such as came the point with my own car recently, where you have to decide, is it worth it to put a lot of money into continuing to refurbish something that's decades old?

• 48:57Chuck Nice?

  As they call it, nickel and diming.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Exactly. Or is it better to build something fresh using newer technology? So, you know, Hubble's not in that situation. We hope Hubble will be operating for much of the next decade and beyond, but at some point, the decision will need to be made as to whether the kinds of capabilities that Hubble does could be better done with a new telescope. And in fact, there's some wonderful concepts being developed right now for Hubble follow-ons.

• 49:21Chuck Nice?

  Fantastic. All right, Neil told me to make this the last one, right, for you, for you, because this is a personal question just for you, Doctor. And this is from Brett Shara. And Brett Shara from Instagram says, "What is your favorite Hubble discovery?" By the way, I'm a huge fan. Thanks for all that you do. So this is somebody who follows you and wants to know, "What is your favorite Hubble anything?"

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Uh, I'll slip into my favorite Hubble discovery. It doesn't sound flashy, but it's actually the, looking at things like the ultra-deep field and finding out that galaxies themselves change in amazing ways over billions of years. And Hubble being the time machine that it is, we can actually map out by looking at distant galaxies and comparing them to nearby ones, how they've changed.

• 50:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this ultra-deep field is even deeper than the original concept of deep field?

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Yes, that's right, that's right.

• 50:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once, once they got the deep field swagger, it's like, "Let's do this again."

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, exactly.

• 50:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 50:25Chuck Nice?

  Let's get a deeper field.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  And then, one, one image that I just love, it's, it's nothing special, if you will, but it's just a beautiful galaxy. It doesn't have a beautiful name. NGC 1309, I just think is a gorgeous spiral. So those of you listening to this, go out and Google NGC 1309 Hubble, and you'll see a beautiful spiral with some interesting galaxies in the background.

• 50:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you call it on your phone, NGC 1409, it'll answer.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Beautiful nebulae. I'm, I'm holding one now, NGC...

• 50:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're holding a picture of one?

• 50:54Speaker 01

  I'm holding a picture of one.

• 50:56Chuck Nice?

  Yes, actually, it was on a cat's collar.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  NGC 3603, 3603, NGC 3603 is a beautiful...

• 51:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If someone Googles that, they'll go to this image online.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you use Hubble in the name, you'll see this cluster of newly formed stars, surrounded by beautiful ionized gas, a kind of purplish nebula. And to me, this just shows great beauty in the universe and how our telescopes are enabling us to see these kinds of beautiful, active regions that we haven't been able to see in such detail before in human history. And this inspires all kinds of things, even beyond science, art, science, philosophy. All kinds of things are inspired by the observations we can do with Hubble and other telescopes today, and I'm grateful for that. So, thank you for your comments.

• 51:45Chuck Nice?

  I just looked up NGC 1309, and Apple owes you guys some money.

• 51:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 51:52Chuck Nice?

  Because this is what comes up on my computer.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  That's the Hubble image?

• 51:56Chuck Nice?

  That's the pinwheel galaxy.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  No, it's not, they don't owe any money because all of our images are freely available to anyone, and so...

• 52:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't already pay for it.

• 52:06Chuck Nice?

  They pay, we pay our tax dollars.

• 52:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tax money, pay for it.

• 52:09Chuck Nice?

  Oh, in that case, Apple owes me some money!

• 52:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  You can fight that out with them, yes, okay.

• 52:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta land this plane.

• 52:16Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 52:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Jennifer, you have any just concluding reflective thoughts, beyond what you have, the reflective thoughts you've already shared?

• 52:24Speaker 01

  I think that the Hubble Space Telescope has shown how we can use, as humanity, we can use technology to do something that not only enhances our scientific understanding of nature, but also gives us a sense of unity. There are people all over the world, from every nation, that are excited about the Hubble Space Telescope and what we're seeing. And it gives us, I think, I hope, a sense of unity as citizens of Earth, that we're part of a magnificent universe, an inspiring universe, something to look up at and be inspired by, and to keep our sights, our spirits, high. I think astronomy inspires all kinds of...

• 53:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Positive.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Positive.

• 53:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except for when that asteroid is coming.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Deeper thoughts of beauty, and philosophy, and theology, and art, and music, and all of these things are part of what it means to be human. So, keep looking up, I'd say.

• 53:23Chuck Nice?

  Somebody just can't end the show now. You gotta let her end the show now.

• 53:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can't.

• 53:27Chuck Nice?

  You gotta let her end the show now, Neil.

• 53:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What I got?

• 53:30Chuck Nice?

  You got nothing, bro.

• 53:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got nothing.

• 53:33Chuck Nice?

  You got nothing, Doc.

• 53:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jennifer, you just took us out. That was Jennifer Wiseman, ending StarTalk for me.

• 53:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we'll catch you on the next round.