The Habitable Worlds Observatory with Evgenya Shkolnik

Are there habitable worlds that look nothing like Earth? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Matt Kirshen discuss NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory and its eventual search for life beyond our solar system with astrophysicist Evgenya Shkolnik.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  As an environmental advocate, professional climber Alex Honnold knows the most critical battles for our planet happen far from the spotlight. That's why he hosts Planet Visionaries, a podcast dedicated to the people finding real, hopeful solutions to climate challenges. Throughout season six, Alex brings together extraordinary change makers for powerful conversations about grit, determination, and the power of hope to fuel our fight for a better future. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  What if you could turn your curiosity for true crime into a degree? At Southern New Hampshire University, you can.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Southern New Hampshire University offers over 200 degrees you can earn completely online, including subjects like forensic psychology, criminology, and crime analysis. And with low online tuition, Southern New Hampshire University makes earning your degree affordable, flexible, and achievable.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Find your degree at SNHU.edu/Scared. That's S-N-H-U dot E-D-U slash scared.

• 1:12Speaker 03

  Matt, it was all about habitable worlds. I want to visit them.

• 1:16Matt Kirshen?

  I want to, although they don't sound that habitable.

• 1:19Speaker 03

  Let's find out more, coming right up. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Today, my co-host is Matt Kirshen. Matt, welcome back.

• 1:51Matt Kirshen?

  Hey, thank you. It's nice to be back in town.

• 1:53Speaker 03

  You're based in LA.

• 1:55Matt Kirshen?

  I am. You've just realized that. I didn't realize. You thought I was here all along.

• 1:59Speaker 03

  Or cloned or something. But delighted you're coming through town. We snatched you off the comedy line, and here you are.

• 2:06Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, delighted to be snatched.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  All right. All right. So you know what we're going to talk about today? Habitable worlds.

• 2:12Matt Kirshen?

  Love it. Feel like this is always a popular subject.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  Always. Habitable worlds, not Earth.

• 2:18Matt Kirshen?

  Right.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  Earth is like prime habitable world, but we're going to see if there's more.

• 2:23Matt Kirshen?

  Nice.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  We have one of the world's experts on that subject, Evgenius Konik.

• 2:29Speaker 05

  Very nice.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  Did I say that correctly?

• 2:31Speaker 05

  You did.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  I did.

• 2:33Speaker 05

  Pretty much.

• 2:34Speaker 03

  I approximately said it perfectly. Welcome. You're a professor of astrophysics at Arizona State University.

• 2:44Speaker 05

  Indeed.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  And Department of Earth and Space Science.

• 2:47Speaker 05

  School of Earth and Space Exploration.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:50Matt Kirshen?

  Nice.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  Oh, that's a little extra.

• 2:53Speaker 05

  Little extra.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Action there.

• 2:55Matt Kirshen?

  That feels like.

• 2:56Speaker 05

  That's how we roll over there.

• 2:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know.

• 2:58Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, that feels like comes with an extra costume, like exploration. Helmet, at the very least, a hat.

• 3:03Speaker 05

  For you, you can visit us, we'll get you a hat.

• 3:06Matt Kirshen?

  Nice.

• 3:07Speaker 03

  You also distinguished visiting scientist at JPL. We all love JPL, Jet Propulsion Labs. That's your hood.

• 3:14Matt Kirshen?

  I have, I've got to visit JPL. I did that like a year or two ago, and it was fantastic.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, no, it's great. It's great. Co-chair of NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory, Community Science and Instrument Team, that has an acronym CSIT.

• 3:30Speaker 05

  CSIT, we call it.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  CSIT.

• 3:32Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 3:33Speaker 03

  Okay, no one else will call it that. You realize this, okay? And after all of that, you're also an associate up at the Harvard Department of Astronomy, Cambridge, Massachusetts. There's apparently your PI, PI, Principal Investigator of SPARKS, Space Telescope Mission. What is SPARKS?

• 3:52Speaker 05

  SPARKS is an acronym for the Star Planet Activity Research CubeSat, which is a small space telescope.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  That sounds tortured, like you all had a five-hour meeting and somebody came up with this. I know about CubeSats. These are these, you know, they're this big.

• 4:08Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  Very affordable, very university-friendly satellites that can be launched relatively cheaply. And you just, you clad it with instruments, right? So these, what instruments on your CubeSat?

• 4:22Speaker 05

  SPARKS has an ultraviolet space telescope inside of it. So it's a small telescope, as you said, that fits into a small box. It's only nine centimeters across, but it is equipped with.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  There's America. Show us what nine centimeters.

• 4:35Speaker 05

  Oh dear, almost four inches.

• 4:38Speaker 03

  Okay, so nine centimeters. Yeah, about like that.

• 4:40Matt Kirshen?

  It's adorable. It's a little adorable telescope.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  Don't call telescopes adorable. That is so insulting.

• 4:47Speaker 05

  You could put it into your backpack.

• 4:49Matt Kirshen?

  Right.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 4:51Matt Kirshen?

  How much would that cost your institute if I were to do that?

• 4:53Speaker 05

  Well, I'd charge you at least $10 million for it.

• 4:57Matt Kirshen?

  Okay, noted.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  Okay, so what are you going to do with the UV?

• 5:01Speaker 05

  So the ultraviolet is an important wavelength range that we need in order to study the stars that host exoplanets. So these are planets around other stars. And as we all know, the ultraviolet is a dangerous, highly energetic wavelength range, right? And so very, we are very grateful that we have an atmosphere here on Earth that protects us from the sun's ultraviolet. But there's a lot of great science that you can do in the ultraviolet. And so we wanted to launch a space telescope in order to study this UV from other stars and how they impact their own planets.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  So you, your list already contains stars with known planets. You're not looking for planets.

• 5:43Speaker 05

  That's right. We're not looking for planets. And most of our targets have known planets. Not all of them have known planets yet, but statistically, they should all have planets.

• 5:53Speaker 03

  Oh, that's bold.

• 5:54Matt Kirshen?

  Yes.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  If you don't have a planet, you should.

• 5:57Speaker 05

  You should. We just haven't discovered it. It should be there.

• 6:00Matt Kirshen?

  Well, this is something I've learned just from actually being on your show as the host. It's like, it seems like well within my lifetime. In fact, even the last third of my lifetime, we've gone from basically assuming there are almost no exoplanets to assuming just about every single star has them, right?

• 6:17Speaker 05

  Assuming is an interesting word there.

• 6:19Matt Kirshen?

  Okay, good.

• 6:20Speaker 05

  Because.

• 6:21Matt Kirshen?

  Pull me up, please.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  She means it's a wrong word. She's just being polite.

• 6:25Speaker 05

  No, no, no, no, we can assume it, but we also know it.

• 6:28Matt Kirshen?

  Interesting thing you've done with your homework here.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's very interesting.

• 6:31Matt Kirshen?

  As a good professor at play. That's an interesting way of.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  See, she is a professor. She's trying to be nice to her students.

• 6:36Speaker 05

  In our lifetimes, yours and mine, mine, we went from knowing for sure of zero exoplanets to over 6,000 known confirmed for sure are there. Now, if you can work out the probabilities and the statistics of the known sample compared to all the ones that we have not been able to detect planets around or have not looked yet, we can say with reasonable certainty that on average, every star has at least one planet.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  And so just to distinguish, just to go back to her correcting you, okay? It's not that we assumed no stars had planets.

• 7:11Matt Kirshen?

  We just knew.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  We had no data on any stars having planets yet.

• 7:15Matt Kirshen?

  Cool.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Right, that's different.

• 7:17Matt Kirshen?

  That is different.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  Knowing is not the same as presuming.

• 7:19Matt Kirshen?

  Presuming zero.

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Zero, right. Did I clear them up on that?

• 7:22Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  Good, okay. So let's, let's understand the word habitable. And I've never liked the word. I thought it was too many syllables crammed together in a row. And, and so.

• 7:35Matt Kirshen?

  And also just like as a torrent comedian who stays in hotels most of my life, like I know that the word habitable has a range of meanings.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  Habitable hotels. So habitable, I've rejected it for quite some time. Of course, I use it if I have to, but I just prefer Goldilocks zone, Goldilocks planet, which is right in the middle of extremes. So what's your formally defined for us habitable?

• 8:02Speaker 05

  Well, if you use Goldilocks and you think about the Goldilocks zone, right, that is a very, no offense, simplistic expression of habitability, because right now, we say that that's just a place, a zone, a ring around a particular star where it has the right temperature.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Not too close.

• 8:22Speaker 05

  Not too close. So you're not too hot.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  Not too far.

• 8:25Speaker 05

  Not too far, so you're not too cold. So it's just right in our sense, meaning that you could have liquid water on the surface of it. But what else do you need, right? You need the water to be there. In order for the water to be there, you need the atmosphere. You need to.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  It's not good enough just to be able to have liquid water. You got to have the liquid water.

• 8:42Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  Right?

• 8:44Matt Kirshen?

  Like water would be liquid if it existed in this condition.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  If it existed. Right, okay, so.

• 8:51Speaker 05

  That's right. If water were on this planet, and it had an atmosphere, and it had a well-behaved star, then that planet has the potential to be habitable. That doesn't mean that it is inhabited, which is a completely different thing that we have to think about. But all the pieces need to fit together to be habitable.

• 9:11Speaker 03

  So habitable is different from habitated?

• 9:13Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  That word doesn't even exist. But we all know what I meant.

• 9:18Speaker 05

  It's your show.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  I get to use whatever word I want. So what about?

• 9:28Speaker 03

  Our inherent bias as Earth life. How biased are we? Is that habitable? Is it just like Earth? I mean, I remember, I don't remember, I read that in Darwin's day, there was this idea, if life evolved, as he described, you might need a tide pool that's room temperature. And you start constructing these things that are just fine for us, or what might be our genetic ancestors. Meanwhile, we're finding life form thriving in extreme environments on Earth. So this whole thing about the tepid environment in which to evolve.

• 10:05Matt Kirshen?

  I know there are like these extremophiles on Earth that can exist in like near volcano.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  They're doing the backstroke in.

• 10:11Matt Kirshen?

  In a volcano.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  Well, not in.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  No, they're volcanic vents that.

• 10:15Matt Kirshen?

  Right.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  It's still a liquid water state, but they're getting their energy from other places.

• 10:19Matt Kirshen?

  Ludicrously hot or.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  Ludicrously hot, perfect.

• 10:22Matt Kirshen?

  Or ludicrously acidic or alkaline or.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  Exactly. So my question is, how biased are you?

• 10:29Speaker 05

  Very.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 10:32Speaker 05

  But, but of course, we have to start with what we know.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:35Speaker 05

  Right? So we know, we understand how surface life on the Earth interacts with our atmosphere and creates these biosignatures. These are chemical fingerprints of surface biology. That is the kind of thing that we're going to be looking for in other planetary systems, because we can only right now look for these chemical signatures in planets' atmospheres. And so therefore, why not look for things that we know and we understand? And if you think that we are only in the life as we know it crowd, really, it's possible that life is very similar to us. It's possible that it's very different, but looking for what we know is critical.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  And then, another thought that I had with regards to the detection of life is that in astronomy, for instance, we have never detected just one of anything. Right? So we have, we have a first detection of a pulsar, and then we learn how to find more pulsars, right? We get better at it, more efficient at it, and we, and through a statistical sample of pulsars, we learn something about pulsars.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  And this goes way back. We thought the sun was something special and unique. Learned that the other dots of light in the sky are just other suns.

• 11:50Speaker 05

  Right.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  And then we thought, Earth is surely, no, we're just another object orbiting the sun. So it's kind of the attack on human ego, that this scientific exercise in the history of astronomy. And so, but I'd like that, given that precedent, you're just pushing it forward.

• 12:06Speaker 05

  Exactly. Given that we have detected life on Earth, which I think we can agree with here on Earth, here in this room, then there should be other life on other planets. And it's possible that there's life very similar to ours, at least chemically, around on these other stars.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  All right. So how do you bring the biology into the questioning and the experiment design? How much biology do you formally have? Or do you just reach over to the biology department and grab somebody? That's what I would do. You know, get someone where that's their expertise.

• 12:41Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 12:41Speaker 03

  And say, what should we be looking for?

• 12:44Speaker 05

  Absolutely. I work with people who are astrobiologists. These are astronomy people, focused people. There's biology people, and they come together and they call themselves as a group astrobiologists. But yes, people have to have a deep expertise in some field and then be able to communicate with people across fields. And we have these wonderful interdisciplinary studies in order to work out what is habitable and whether or not we can discover if it's inhabited.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Might their deep expertise itself be a bias? In the sense that if they're an expert in all life on Earth, and they celebrate the biodiversity on Earth, at the end of the day, all life on Earth has common DNA. Are they capable of thinking about life that has no DNA at all?

• 13:35Matt Kirshen?

  See, what I'm hearing from this as well is that I'm at a big advantage in this whole conversation by having no expertise.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Oh, so.

• 13:42Matt Kirshen?

  I'm coming to this with zero bias compared to you scientists.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  So it's easier for you to say, how about life with no DNA?

• 13:48Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, exactly. I'm like, I can throw all of this out. I'm probably. You can all share in my Nobel.

• 13:54Speaker 05

  Well, that's exactly what we need. We need diverse opinions. And that's what we have right here.

• 13:58Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, we have all the experts and then one guy who, just winging it.

• 14:02Speaker 05

  And asking all the hard questions.

• 14:03Matt Kirshen?

  Right.

• 14:04Speaker 05

  Right? These are the, these are the folks who are going to ask us questions like.

• 14:07Matt Kirshen?

  Hard questions like, I just got stuck in the door again. Can someone free me? Like, all these important.

• 14:12Speaker 05

  That's right. And what is it about human evolution that causes such situations? Getting stuck indoors.

• 14:16Matt Kirshen?

  See, you're such a good teacher. Always seeing the good side.

• 14:32Speaker 06

  Because the universe is always expanding, there's never any shortage of unanswered questions or new rabbit holes to dive into. So when you want to build on your ever-evolving understanding of the cosmos, it can be hard to know where to start. ChatGPT can help. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. Connect your Google Drive, point to the files that helped you develop your current knowledge and theories, and ask chat to research the newest discoveries, major disagreements, and the latest space missions. ChatGPT can turn it into an editable, living workbook you can shape over time.

• 15:14Speaker 06

  So as the universe grows, so can your perspective. When you have ambitions of knowing all there is to know about what's really out there, ChatGPT can help you explore further than ever. Get started at chatgpt.com.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  You may have heard the best voice in show business, Morgan Freeman, talking about a serious and under-diagnosed heart condition that's often missed, A, TTR, cardiac amyloidosis, or ATTRCM. It's a condition that can greatly disrupt your life with symptoms like severe fatigue, shortness of breath, and carpal tunnel. If left untreated, ATTRCM may become serious, leading to a shorter lifespan. Atrubey helps adults with ATTRCM live longer and have fewer hospitalizations due to heart issues, so you can focus more on living for what you love. Tell your doctor if you're pregnant, plan to become pregnant, or are breastfeeding,

• 16:15Speaker 00

  and about the medications you take. The most common side effects were mild and included diarrhea and abdominal pain. If you have ATTRCM, talk to your cardiologist about Atrubey and visit atrubey.com/podcast. That's A-T-T-R-U-B-Y.com/podcast to learn more. It's time to get busy living. Brought to you by Bridge Bio.

• 16:43Speaker 06

  Since when has building a website been hard? Since forever until now. That's right. With Wix, the first-of-its-kind AI website builder, where you get the best of AI and drag-and-drop editing in one place. Wix Harmony allows you to build a real, working website for yourself in minutes with the business stuff already built in. I'm talking e-commerce, scheduling, payments, all of it. Plus, easily switch between prompting AI and editing things by hand whenever you want, so every detail of your site is exactly right. It's like having a website engineer looking over your shoulder and at your fingertips at the same time.

• 17:28Speaker 06

  Aria is an AI agent specifically trained in web design and business strategy. Click anywhere on the website and ask her to make a specific change instead of endless back-and-forth prompting. It all runs on Wix's tried-and-true infrastructure, with 99.99% uptime and enterprise-grade security, so your site performs as good as it looks. Wix has been a pioneer in website tech for more than 20 years, powering millions of businesses around the world. So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and be that website-building genius that you are. Try Wix Harmony for free at wix.com.

• 18:10Speaker 06

  That's W-I-X dot com.

• 18:17Speaker 03

  Space fact. Dark matter is 85% of all the gravity we measure in the universe, and we don't know what's causing it. It doesn't interact with our light. It doesn't even interact with itself, which means it cannot coalesce to form solid objects like stars, or planets, or people.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  If you like that fact, you can find 4,999 more in Lost in Space. 5,000 facts to help navigate the universe. Lost in Space is now available wherever you get your books.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  So the Habitable Worlds Observatory, is that a single telescope or multiple telescopes or consortium? What is that?

• 19:30Speaker 05

  The Habitable Worlds Observatory, which we call HWO for short, is a single telescope, one observatory, but with multiple instruments. So it can do lots of different science in different wavelengths, at different resolutions, but all the instruments are fed by one mirror.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  Got it. Very, very, very efficient and convenient.

• 19:52Speaker 05

  It's technically a series of mirrors, but it's one telescope.

• 19:55Matt Kirshen?

  Right.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  So it's a mosaic of mirrors?

• 19:58Speaker 05

  It will be.

• 20:00Speaker 03

  It's not built yet?

• 20:01Speaker 05

  No. The Habitable Worlds Observatory-

• 20:03Speaker 03

  When are we gonna have it?

• 20:05Speaker 05

  Well, we're working to do it as fast as we can, but it is NASA's next big flagship. So it's a giant mission, you know, following on, on the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, the Roman Telescope, and now the next one in line is the Habitable Worlds Observatory.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  So I was on the year 2000 decadal survey of astronomy and astrophysics, but every 10 years, my people get together.

• 20:32Matt Kirshen?

  Okay.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  And we say, the most trusted among us, and we say, what are we gonna do next? And if a chunk of money lands, either from the NSF or from the feds and any other department, or even private money, it helps us channel the money for the single big projects that no one institution could probably fund realistically. So what's the total cost of the Habitable Worlds Observatory?

• 20:54Speaker 05

  Well, that is unclear until we figure out what exactly we're going to be building, which instruments we're going to have, which countries are going to become our partners, right? So these missions are so big that lots of countries, everyone in the world wants a piece of it and wants to contribute. So it's gonna be, it's gonna be a lot, you know, in the few billions range, but-

• 21:16Speaker 03

  Do we know where it's gonna sit?

• 21:18Speaker 05

  The goal right now is to go to L2, which is Lagrange Point 2.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  Oh, space-based. So that sounds like it would be the Earth-Sun L2, because then it's opposite the sun from Earth.

• 21:29Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  Beyond the orbit of the moon. The moon's still going around Earth, but it's way out there.

• 21:33Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 21:33Speaker 03

  Right. And I think JWST is there as well.

• 21:36Speaker 05

  JWST is there, and Roman is going to be there.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  Oh, it's a whole family?

• 21:39Speaker 05

  Yes. It's a very nice, stable, chill environment for astronomy.

• 21:44Matt Kirshen?

  I feel like Hubble gets lonely.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  I know!

• 21:46Matt Kirshen?

  Every so often, there's like an astronaut who comes and visits.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  Except Hubble got serviced five times.

• 21:51Matt Kirshen?

  Right.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  These, unless we AI a robot and send it out there and get-

• 21:56Matt Kirshen?

  Right, no one's gonna get out there.

• 21:57Speaker 05

  We are hoping to have HWO serviceable, robotically serviceable.

• 22:01Matt Kirshen?

  Wow!

• 22:02Speaker 05

  That is, that is in the plans right now. We're working towards making that happen because we want to be able to upgrade it, just like we did the Hubble Space Telescope, that you could take an old, like, after, say, a few years, you want to upgrade with latest technology and instrument. The goal is to make it modular, so you could have a robot come in, grab the old instrument, plug in the new one.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  It would be the first modular telescope at L2.

• 22:27Speaker 05

  That is correct.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 22:29Matt Kirshen?

  Very cool.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 22:31Speaker 05

  I know.

• 22:32Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, because these projects get done so far in, like, you're so limited by, not just even the technology now, but the technology several years ago when it was all being initially-

• 22:41Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 22:42Matt Kirshen?

  -developed, so.

• 22:42Speaker 05

  That's right. So the opportunity to upgrade it with time is, is not, is not something we're gonna pass up.

• 22:49Speaker 03

  And I just want to distinguish the Sun-Earth L2 from the Earth-Moon L2, right?

• 22:54Matt Kirshen?

  I wasn't gonna pull you out, but yeah.

• 22:56Speaker 03

  You were thinking this, too?

• 22:57Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, we were all thinking it.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  So, you have the Sun, the Earth, and this Lagrangian point out there. Earth and that Lagrangian point orbit together around the Sun, okay? So it's stable out there. But the Earth-Moon L2 would have to be always on the other side of the moon, as the moon orbits Earth. So-

• 23:20Matt Kirshen?

  Right.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Because every two-body system has these five Lagrangian points, and so you have to specify which those are.

• 23:27Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  So how big is the mirror?

• 23:29Speaker 05

  Well, the main, the main mirror is gonna be somewhere between six and eight meters.

• 23:33Speaker 03

  Okay. So at that size, what launches it?

• 23:38Speaker 05

  That's a, that's a good question, and that's actually part of our limitation, is what launch vehicles are going to be available to us, say, in a few years' time.

• 23:48Speaker 03

  And big enough.

• 23:48Speaker 05

  So it has to be big enough and be able to carry the weight of the whole thing.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 23:53Speaker 05

  Out to L2.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  And you need some clever engineers to fold it up somehow.

• 23:56Speaker 05

  Exactly. Then the plan is, you know-

• 23:57Speaker 03

  Into the fairing.

• 23:58Speaker 05

  Exactly. Right. So it's very similar to how the James Webb Space Telescope launched in 2021, and, and the size of the mirror is really driven by the science, right? So there's, there are some really incredible science that we want to do, and it requires lots of sensitivity, and the bigger the mirror-

• 24:15Speaker 03

  In my field, the bigger, the better.

• 24:18Matt Kirshen?

  Okay.

• 24:19Speaker 05

  In some cases, because we talked about Sparks earlier.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:22Speaker 05

  And it is, it is very small.

• 24:25Speaker 03

  Stop calling it adorable. That is, don't call scientific instruments adorable.

• 24:30Speaker 05

  I'm not offended, Matt, in any way. It's, it's, it's an adorable instrument.

• 24:35Matt Kirshen?

  Small but mighty.

• 24:36Speaker 05

  Small but mighty. That's right. And so even though there are some science cases that really demand a large mirror, like a six to eight meter mirror, there are some science cases that could get away with a smaller mirror, but really have more time on the target, or more agility, or being able to work together at multiple wavelengths. I mean, there are science cases that bigger is not always better.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. So agility is the word there.

• 25:03Speaker 05

  Perhaps, yeah.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. Will the Habitable Worlds Observatory target already-known planets, or does it have a search mode of its own?

• 25:11Speaker 05

  Well, for the, the driving science case of looking for Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars for life on them, it's gonna be searching for them. We will not know necessarily ahead of time that these planets are there, so it's going to find the planets and then go back and characterize the planets.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  So the telescope is one-stop shopping?

• 25:34Speaker 05

  It's, yeah.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  Wow. You create your own data set that you then investigate?

• 25:40Speaker 05

  100%.

• 25:41Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 25:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right. So it's gonna be a finder scope and a life finder.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Okay. But are you gonna at least target the 6,000 or more exoplanets we currently know?

• 25:53Speaker 05

  Yes, absolutely. There'll be science to do.

• 25:55Speaker 03

  That's free, that's free data right there. You just go on in.

• 25:57Speaker 05

  Well, it's not free. The operations cost will matter, and the, the competition to get time on this telescope will be fierce. So, so you're gonna have to have a really great science experiment, a great idea.

• 26:11Speaker 03

  Explain to everybody what that means, competition for a telescope. Because I don't think people think that way, the way we do about that.

• 26:20Speaker 05

  Sure. So we, as astronomers, cannot build necessarily everyone their own space telescope, even though we at ASU have Sparks. But it's a small telescopes you could probably get into space just on an institution level. But the big ones are so big that we all have to work together and get multiple governments working together, and therefore it's available to anyone to apply for time, including you, Matt. Anyone can. You don't have to be a professional astronomer.

• 26:43Matt Kirshen?

  You don't need to tell me twice.

• 26:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, you can apply for time. Anyone can put in a proposal. And then that, those proposals, and the thousands of them come in, go to a review panel of experts, and they decide which ones-

• 26:53Speaker 03

  Peer review.

• 26:53Speaker 05

  Peer review, exactly. Competitor review sometimes, but, but it's a peer review process where the best science wins. And then, so for instance, for the Hubble Space Telescope, there's about 1,000 different experiments that it runs a year, probably comparable to the James Webb Space Telescope. And so then they divide up the year's time on the telescope amongst a bunch of different experiments.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  Confirm for me, the HWO came out of one of these decadal surveys. Which one was it?

• 27:22Speaker 05

  It came out of the Astro 2020.

• 27:25Speaker 03

  2020?

• 27:25Speaker 05

  Yes, the 2020 decadal survey, which I got to sit on and got to be part of the committee that recommended it.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  That sounds suspicious.

• 27:32Speaker 05

  No, it's just part of, it was long before I was involved, but I have long been a believer in needing something like this to do the most compelling science.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  And the, the panel has, what, two dozen people on it? How many people? I don't remember.

• 27:46Speaker 05

  Well, there's the steering committee that has about that, and then there's a bunch of sub-panels that recommends different kinds of things. So the panel that I was on was one that evaluated space telescopes of a particular wavelength, and then there was another panel that evaluated ground-based telescopes, another one that evaluated different kinds of activities. And so-

• 28:04Speaker 03

  See, my people, we-

• 28:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  My people.

• 28:07Speaker 05

  No, it's a great process. It's a great process, because what it's doing is it's bringing together the community's priorities and funneling it through a review process that then can be documented and given over to agencies and saying, this is, these are the most compelling questions. These are the questions that demand answers.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  And even private funders, if they want to get in on the action. But for something like that, you don't need to bring Sparks to the table, because it's not costly enough. Is that correct?

• 28:33Speaker 05

  Yes and no. Sparks as an individual space telescope does not need to go through the process because it's, it's far too small. But we did-

• 28:42Speaker 03

  And the total cost?

• 28:43Speaker 05

  About 10 million.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  And the total cost of Habitable Worlds Observatory?

• 28:46Speaker 05

  Is a few billion. Yes. It's in the noise of a giant telescope, 100%, which, you know, if you ask me and really anyone who, who has built a small satellite, is that could totally punches above its weight. Right? Because it's important to study the stars, right? In this, in Sparks' case, what we're doing is we're studying the ultraviolet from the stars that host exoplanets to understand the context in which all these biosignatures are going to be evaluated, right?

• 29:15Speaker 03

  But if ultraviolet is hostile to life, last I checked, because it has energies that'll bust out- Bust a move on your DNA. Why is that a useful wavelength for you to see in the search for life?

• 29:29Speaker 05

  Well, it's only damaging if you have so many UV photons that you're chemically modifying the atmosphere or eroding the atmosphere completely such that you don't have an atmosphere anymore and therefore no liquid water. So, but we want to understand all this, right? But it can also, even if you have an atmosphere, it can chemically modify the atmosphere such that it can indicate that there is life when there isn't any or destroy biosignatures when there is life. So there's an opportunity for both a false positive and a false negative detection if you don't understand the UV of.

• 30:05Speaker 03

  Okay, so you want to characterize that part of the spectrum?

• 30:09Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 30:10Speaker 03

  A question. This specializes in low mass stars? Sparks?

• 30:16Speaker 05

  Sparks does specialize in low mass stars.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  But if it's a low mass star, where are you getting your UV from?

• 30:21Speaker 05

  The star still emits in the UV.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  It's still enough for you to care about?

• 30:25Speaker 05

  Yes. Enough for us to care about.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Because low mass stars are very, they're not very hot.

• 30:30Matt Kirshen?

  Okay.

• 30:31Speaker 03

  In fact, they're quite cool. In fact, they're even called cool stars.

• 30:36Matt Kirshen?

  Okay.

• 30:37Speaker 03

  Even though you would still vaporize in it.

• 30:39Matt Kirshen?

  Right.

• 30:40Speaker 05

  And they're sometimes called red dwarfs.

• 30:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, red dwarfs, yeah. So, okay, so you're looking at the little bit of UV that they still emit.

• 30:49Speaker 05

  That's right, and it is true. We call them red dwarfs because there are literally a million more red photons than there are UV photons. So that is true. But the UV, as I said, not every wavelength is equal. The UV is super important. And so developing a space telescope just to study the UV is very valuable.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  Okay, now also, these, because I was, a lot of my professional research was in stars and stellar evolution. So I remember that these low mass stars are highly turbulent in their atmosphere. They're busting a move every time you look away and look back. You hear about solar flares here every now and then, you know, coronal mass ejections, all right? They'll show up in the news every few months.

• 31:38Matt Kirshen?

  Yes.

• 31:39Speaker 03

  That'd be an hourly weather report around these stars, wouldn't it?

• 31:42Matt Kirshen?

  That surprises me because, again, from my complete layperson, because I would have thought the more energetic stars would have a lot more of that going on.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  I know, so get us out of that.

• 31:50Speaker 05

  Sure. It is true, what you say, that these low mass stars are far more active. They have stronger magnetic fields at their surfaces. They can create more flares, more energetic flares, potentially more coronal mass ejections. We actually don't know because we've never really confirmed a coronal mass ejection on any of these stars before.

• 32:09Speaker 03

  But we expect it.

• 32:10Speaker 05

  We expect it.

• 32:11Speaker 03

  Yes. And just to be clear, the star is a plasma, so it's got free electrons that can lock into a magnetic field.

• 32:19Matt Kirshen?

  Okay.

• 32:20Speaker 03

  So if the magnetic field does things, so does the gas with it. So if the magnetic field pops off the surface, it takes material with it.

• 32:27Matt Kirshen?

  Okay.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're locked together. It's a maelstrom. It's an awesome maelstrom. Okay, so now you want to have stable life around a planet with an unstable star. That's a tall order.

• 32:41Speaker 05

  Well, we don't know. We don't know how unstable those environments really are until we go and look and characterize them and we also.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  That's the answer. I'm trying to say theoretically, that's your net. We don't know, we're gonna look.

• 32:55Speaker 05

  That is the scientist's answer. We can assume, or we can go check. But there are many reasons to focus on the low mass stars initially. And of course, we want to look for planets around sun-like stars because we know that a habitable planet can exist around a sun-like star.

• 33:13Speaker 03

  How do we know that?

• 33:14Matt Kirshen?

  I feel like I should get this one wrong. Look, I'm looking around the room, I can't be in for clues, is there?

• 33:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, we have at least one data point on that. Yeah.

• 33:26Speaker 05

  That's right. So we know, we know that that's possible. We don't know if the answer around the M stars yet, but the reason why it's important to understand this is because 75% of all the stars in our galaxy are these low mass stars. They are the dominant hosts of habitable, potentially habitable planets. So most of the habitable or potentially habitable real estate is in fact around M stars in our galaxies.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  And so that's the coolest category of stars.

• 33:53Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 33:54Speaker 03

  And the letter means absolutely nothing, okay? Don't try to give meaning to it, all right? M stars, and there's a sequence of letters that has historical accident to it. O, B, A, F, G, K, M, in downward sequence of temperature.

• 34:08Speaker 05

  So these M stars dominate the galaxy and therefore their planets dominate the planet population. And so, like me, even though I haven't been working on Habitable Worlds Observatory for two decades because it hasn't existed, I have been thinking about habitable planets. And I've been guided by one giant science question my entire career, and that is, what is the habit, what is the distribution of habitable environments in our galaxy? And in order to answer that, understanding planets around these low mass stars is a huge part of the question.

• 34:41Speaker 03

  Now, you said that very broadly, habitable environments in the galaxy. So that blows open the Goldilocks concept into, I presume, you can have a habitable region in a moon around a planet.

• 34:56Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 34:57Speaker 03

  For example, right? It doesn't require a distance from the sun if you have a heat or energy source from somewhere else. So you're open to anything and anywhere that could happen?

• 35:06Speaker 05

  Well, I'm open to it because I want to understand it. Now, different experiments have to focus on different regimes. So for instance, the Habitable Worlds Observatory is looking at surface life as opposed to subsurface life, right? There's an extent.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  How are you gonna look at subsurface life?

• 35:23Speaker 05

  That's right. Therefore, we're not working about it. We're not worrying about it. Exactly.

• 35:27Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 35:28Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah.

• 35:29Speaker 05

  So I'm curious, I'm certainly interested.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  I thought I had a gotcha question. No, of course not. We're not looking at the surface.

• 35:35Speaker 05

  Not with HWO, that's right. Not with HWO. I mean, we could potentially think about, you know, in our own solar system, right? Studying the plumes of Enceladus as an example. But we're not going to do that with HWO.

• 35:48Speaker 03

  Enceladus, remind me, that's Jupiter or Saturn?

• 35:50Speaker 05

  Saturn. It's a moon of Saturn.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  Right. And that's under, those are plumes that come from beneath the surface.

• 35:55Speaker 05

  That's right. That's right. So there's some speculation that there might be conditions for life there, but we're not going to study those on moons in other solar systems.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  So tell me about magnetic fields and planets. Do you guys think about the need for those?

• 36:14Speaker 05

  The Earth has a magnetic field and that we think that it protects our atmosphere from ejections from the sun, like you said earlier, coronal mass ejections and that influx.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  Because of charged particles.

• 36:27Speaker 05

  Because they're charged particles. We're also getting charged particles from the rest of the galaxy. It's not just from the sun, but primarily from the sun. And so we think that the Earth's magnetic field protects the Earth's atmosphere, but it's not necessarily true, or we don't know for sure if that is a requirement of a habitable environment. So it depends, what is the star doing, what, how thick the atmosphere is, what are the conditions on the surface?

• 36:55Speaker 03

  So you're worried that if we didn't have the magnetic field, then these high-energy charged particles might be hostile to life on the surface?

• 37:03Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 37:04Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 37:05Speaker 05

  That's right. It would strip, in a few ways, it could strip away our atmosphere, it could chemically modify our atmosphere, and it could, even the strongest ones would penetrate down to the surface and interact with life on the surface. And that could be very damaging as well, so.

• 37:17Speaker 03

  When she said interact, she means kill.

• 37:19Matt Kirshen?

  Okay.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  Just want to make that clear.

• 37:21Matt Kirshen?

  Gotcha.

• 37:22Speaker 05

  Damage, you know? So we are interested in magnetic fields, and so we have so far really have only indications of magnetic fields on Jupiter-sized planets outside of our solar system. We do not yet have any measurements of magnetic fields on small Earth-sized planets outside of our solar system. So this is also another bit of research that I'm very excited about in the future.

• 37:48Speaker 03

  Are there other CubeSats that will be in tandem with this current one? You're at Sparks?

• 37:52Speaker 05

  Right now, no, Sparks. No, you got it right. Sparks has launched and it's already up and running and doing its job. In the future, what we want to do is potentially put together hundreds of these small satellites, say in the radio wavelength range. We have this concept called the Megawave Radio Surveyor, where one of the driving science cases might be to look for Earth-sized magnetic fields around Earth's inhabitable zones. So this is something that is even beyond the Habitable Worlds Observatory.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  They really want to listen for TV on other, those are the radio waves they want to look for, but she's not letting on to that.

• 38:30Matt Kirshen?

  I mean, I'm all for TV credits.

• 38:32Speaker 03

  Wait, but if it's radio waves, the wavelength of a radio wave is much bigger than that of ultraviolet. So your detector has to be bigger.

• 38:43Speaker 05

  Well, that's because, that's why we need so many working together.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 38:46Speaker 05

  Right? So you have lots of them working together and they kind of work like one observatory.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 38:51Speaker 05

  Right? In partnership, so you can make a giant array of these small satellites.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  Basically fake a large telescope.

• 38:59Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly. You fake a large telescope. And you can do that in the radio relatively cheaply.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:07Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  So you know the VLA, the Very Large Array? We call things what they are. VLA, Very Large Array. It's in New Mexico. That's where they showed, that's where Jody Foster filmed a lot of her.

• 39:21Matt Kirshen?

  Right, oh, so I've seen.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And they all act in synchrony with the right software.

• 39:26Speaker 05

  They simulate a giant radio dish.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  The size of the grid itself. It's very cool. We got some clever people. My people are clever. Does this telescope have a serendipity mode?

• 39:39Speaker 05

  You mean like a fast response?

• 39:41Speaker 03

  No, I'm just saying, if you're only looking for what you expect to be there, you might miss the forest for the trees.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  Are there observations that are not targeted by some prior knowledge of what you expect? Just, just to see if something shows up.

• 40:03Speaker 05

  Um, well, there are survey modes.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  Thank you, the survey mode.

• 40:08Speaker 05

  The survey modes are something where you are going out looking for something, but always something surprises you. If you spend time staring at anything for long enough.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  With a big enough telescope.

• 40:19Speaker 05

  Something interesting will happen.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:21Speaker 05

  It's hard to, um, it's hard to really spend too much time on a giant flagship mission because as we talked about earlier, there's a thousand programs every year. Everyone, everyone wants, if, if you get your, your few little hours, I got six hours on the James Webb Space Telescope. This is very exciting and you can do amazing science. So spending, say, a month staring into space, waiting for some, something exciting and surprising to happen is not very easy to do on a flagship. But this is a place that the small telescopes can't.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  Sort of did that with the Hubble Deep Field.

• 40:55Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 40:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, the head of the Hubble, oh, so here it was, the head of the Hubble Telescope, the director, has what's called director's discretionary time.

• 41:04Speaker 05

  Uh-huh.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  And that it's handed to them to do whatever they want.

• 41:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  For example, if there's a project, if there's a graduate student or they got, well, it wouldn't happen in space, but if they get clouded out and they need extra time, they just hand them extra time out of that pocket, out of that repository. And he said, you know, let's just put the telescope in a blank, the blankest area of the sky, let's point the Hubble telescope to that and open the lens and just leave it there for like days. And people saying, you are out of your frickin' mind. And out came the Hubble Deep Field. That image of nothing was rich with a tapestry of galaxies. And that one spot on the sky, other telescopes have gone to the same place.

• 41:48Speaker 05

  Uh-huh.

• 41:49Speaker 03

  To double up on different wavelengths, different measurements. And so that's kind of what was driving my question.

• 41:55Speaker 05

  Yes. So I don't know what the plan will be for that kind of deep field, but the director's discretionary time is something that you can use when you do have a serendipitous discovery. So, um, so we as astronomers, we run an experiment, you see something that, um, is surprising and you don't want to wait the full year to the next deadline because you can only apply once a year. Then you put a proposal into the director and you say, director, you've got all this time, please, we just discovered this crazy new thing, we don't know, we need to follow it up straight away before, while it's still available. And then they can dole out their time based on that.

• 42:32Speaker 06

  Everyone talks about how challenging it is to raise kids, but what about protecting them? Outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks, baby gates, where do you even start? Well, protecting your home and auto is a great place to start. Progressive offers customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage. They're basically the baby gates of insurance. Get a quote at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers, not available in all states. Hey, did you know that you're very fashionable? You may not think it, but you are.

• 43:16Speaker 06

  And if you don't think you are, here's what you need to do. Go to quince.com. You know, the best pieces in your closet are the ones you can count on, whether you're heading out to work or going out with friends or keeping things casual. And this time of year, Quince makes finding something great for everyone else just as easy. So if you know somebody who thinks they're not fashionable, or maybe you think they're not fashionable, maybe you should get the Quince because they focus on high quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere. Yeah, that's right. I think I have a closet full of that. Timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long

• 44:00Speaker 06

  after the holidays. And how do I know this? Because it's a staple in my gift giving stable. And cashmere is something that pretty much everybody loves. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, say a very fashionable comedian named Chuck Nice told you all about it. Or you can say StarTalk, or you can say Chuck Nice from StarTalk. Hey, listen, this isn't about me.

• 44:40Speaker 06

  Go to quince.com and tell them that StarTalk sent you because it's the best way to support us and the best way for you to look fashionable too.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Still waiting in line? Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with stamps.com. Over four million businesses have skipped the line with stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90% off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for certified mail, registered mail and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to stamps.com and use code PODCAST for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply.

• 45:22Speaker 07

  This is Ken, the nerd neck zebra from Michigan, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk Radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 45:31Speaker 03

  I've seen the map of the Milky Way where they identified the 6,000 exoplanets that we've discovered. And they're hovered around our spot in the Milky Way. And you zoom out, it's like, dude, we haven't explored anything. It is just all these planets are sitting on our noses. And a lot of them were discovered by, I guess, Kepler and some other spaceborne observatories. None of them is large as the habitable world, world's observatory. So how much deeper in space is that going to take us?

• 46:15Speaker 05

  Well, it depends what you mean by deeper in space. So the goals of the habitable world's observatory with respect to the search for life is really going to keep us still pretty darn close. And that is necessary because the planets we want to look at are super faint. These are rocky planets in the habitable zones of sun-like stars. And so we're still going to be limited by distance. And so we want to see the star, see the planets that are closest because they're brighter ones and also because they will be separated on the sky from their central star. If it's too far away.

• 46:49Speaker 03

  Bigger angle.

• 46:50Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly. We want it to have a bigger angle because if they're very far away, they'll be so close together that we will not be able to distinguish them. And so that is a reason to stay, say, you know, within 50 parsecs or so.

• 47:01Speaker 03

  Okay. And we did a whole explainer on parsecs. I'm not going to explain that here and now. It's a really crappy unit of distance.

• 47:10Speaker 05

  3.3 light years.

• 47:11Speaker 03

  I apologize for it. It's, but we're stuck with it and Star Trek uses it and Star Wars uses it badly. But, um, yeah, 50 parsecs. So that's what like.

• 47:22Speaker 05

  So it's really like 150 light years.

• 47:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, 150 something.

• 47:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, maybe we'll go beyond that.

• 47:26Speaker 03

  That's still a nice.

• 47:27Speaker 05

  But still that little circle of all known exoplanets, it'll still be within it.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  Okay. And since habitable world's observatories, as of this recording, is yet to launch.

• 47:39Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 47:40Speaker 03

  Or even be built fully, right? Then your CubeSat at some level will be part of what's creating some foundational search data for it. Is that correct?

• 47:54Speaker 05

  Absolutely. Absolutely. So right now, the Sparks' primary mission is to study these low mass stars and understand the UV impacts on their planets. But once we are done with that, we will move on to the habitable world's observatory targets, which are much brighter actually than the low mass stars that will be easier for Sparks to do. But that will give us a baseline characterization of the ultraviolet of any of the planets that habitable world's observatory will discover.

• 48:19Speaker 03

  And one other question. The James Webb Space Telescope, that was conceived to explore the early universe where galaxies would be born.

• 48:32Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 48:33Speaker 03

  Okay? At the time, they would be born. And we know that freshly born galaxies emit a lot of ultraviolet. But they are, they're so far away and the light has been traveling for so long, it has red shifted from the expanding universe so that, that those galaxies would appear in the infrared today.

• 48:55Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 48:56Speaker 03

  Okay?

• 48:57Speaker 05

  That makes sense. I'm on board.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  You're with me. Okay. So the James Webb Space Telescope was an exquisitely designed infrared telescope to snare ultraviolet light from the early universe. Okay?

• 49:10Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  Turns out that's just the wavelength you want to penetrate gas clouds to see where stars are being born right in our own galaxy.

• 49:21Speaker 05

  So again, this was serendipity again?

• 49:23Speaker 03

  Well, it's not, we knew it, but that wasn't its goal.

• 49:27Speaker 05

  Right.

• 49:28Speaker 03

  Because we had other infrared telescopes. This one was specific to just those galaxies, but you get to double up on its utility. So does the habitable world's observatory have another?

• 49:41Speaker 03

  Path of utility to the astrophysics community, or is it all just for yourselves?

• 49:47Speaker 05

  Well, absolutely. I mean, just because the name says habitable worlds observatory, that's only one part of the mission's science goals and actually only drives one of the instruments. We're going to have a suite of other instruments to do lots more science that are driven by completely different science. To go back to your point about the ultraviolet from galaxies, one of the driving science cases that is going to give us the requirements that we need for one or two other UV instruments is to study the UV in this nearby part of our universe, right? So at what we call low redshift, right, where these UV photons that James Webb Space Telescope is

• 50:27Speaker 05

  studying far into the past, we're going to be looking at more recently to study how galaxies evolve, what kind of gases falling in, what kind of gases being blown out and so on. And that is a very exciting part of how

• 50:41Speaker 03

  Okay, this this magnifies, no pun intended, what I did there,

• 50:48Speaker 03

  magnifies its cross disciplinary utility within the field.

• 50:52Speaker 05

  Yes, yes, it will. It's it is a community's telescope, right? It's it's not just for just for one group of scientists. It's going to be for so many, a wide range of science and a wide range of instrumentation. And and anyone, even anyone can apply for the time when the time comes.

• 51:13Matt Kirshen?

  I'll be applying. You don't you don't need to ask me twice.

• 51:16Speaker 03

  But don't do it in crayons, okay?

• 51:20Matt Kirshen?

  I'm growing up now. I'll go felt tip.

• 51:23Speaker 03

  So I think this might be my last question here until you come back when it launches. Okay, and let's get its first data after it arrives at L2.

• 51:33Speaker 03

  The Hubble, which came out of a decadal survey like from the 70s, because it got built and launched, built in the 80s, launched in the 90s.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  The Hubble telescope was in part named after Edwin Hubble. One of its primary objectives was to establish right out of the box what the expansion rate of the universe was, because there was uncertainty within a factor of two at the time.

• 52:01Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 52:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the expansion rate relates to the age of the universe. We didn't know how old the universe was to within a factor of two. It was somewhere between 10 billion and 20 billion. It was embarrassing.

• 52:10Matt Kirshen?

  How accurately do we now think we have it?

• 52:12Speaker 03

  I'm getting there. So Hubble gets launched. And so they had what was called the flagship, there was something, a set of science goals that were prioritized. If you had other ideas, get in line, because we want these answered first. We want to know what the Hubble constant is first. And so so much of the Hubble resources went to that. We got the Hubble constant. We got it down to like 14 billion years, plus or minus one, and it's been sharpened ever since. But notice, it was between those two estimates.

• 52:47Matt Kirshen?

  Right.

• 52:47Speaker 03

  That's science.

• 52:48Matt Kirshen?

  So we were all right. We were correct, just vague.

• 52:52Speaker 03

  We were correct in our uncertainty.

• 52:54Matt Kirshen?

  Yes.

• 52:54Speaker 03

  How about that? That was a good way to say it. There you go. So are there preeminent experiments that will be conducted while everyone else has to wait because we want those known first?

• 53:05Speaker 05

  No, because waiting is not a very efficient use of telescope time. So we do want to survey, say, 100, 150 targets for habitable planets, for sure. But we're not, we're going to have to come back and we're going to have to check them out at different parts of their orbits, and we have to revisit them. And in the time in between, we will have the complete community's creativity, providing all those proposals, and lots of science will be done in between. So yes, there's a prime goal to look for habitable planets, which is an incredible thing to even say out loud, right, that we live in a time that we are seriously taking this.

• 53:45Speaker 03

  That's an answerable question.

• 53:46Speaker 05

  But that is an answerable question. Amazing. But in the time that in between all that time that it's going to take, we'll be doing amazing other science, answering other equally fundamental science questions.

• 53:58Speaker 03

  I like the way you said that, that in the in the interstitial time, the creativity of the rest of the scientific community can manifest.

• 54:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:08Speaker 03

  And that's beautiful.

• 54:12Speaker 05

  It is beautiful. Science is this creative, this creative activity for all of us.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  And those on the decadal survey committees, they they know that whatever comes out of that, those funding priorities, if it didn't serve us all, then what are you doing? You're just bullying the funding into your own into your own interests. Well, Evgenya, it has been a delight to have you here from Arizona.

• 54:41Speaker 05

  Wonderful to be here.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  Thanks for coming through New York. And don't let this be the last.

• 54:46Speaker 05

  I'll come back anytime. Thanks so much.

• 54:48Speaker 03

  Okay, Matt, thanks for thanks for being here.

• 54:51Matt Kirshen?

  Oh, it's always a pleasure.

• 54:51Speaker 03

  If you're going to find you, MattKirschen.com?

• 54:53Matt Kirshen?

  MattKirschen.com is my tour dates, and ProbablyScience.com is the podcast.

• 54:57Speaker 03

  Probably Science, which I've been on, I think, a couple of times.

• 54:59Matt Kirshen?

  You've been on it. We've had you.

• 55:00Speaker 03

  Probably Science.

• 55:01Matt Kirshen?

  It's been a treat.

• 55:02Speaker 03

  But I wanted you to change the name while I was on the show to be certainly Science.

• 55:06Matt Kirshen?

  We'll do it for you, just for you.

• 55:10Speaker 03

  All this talk of habitable worlds has got me thinking.

• 55:15Speaker 03

  What a luxury it is to even have those thoughts.

• 55:25Speaker 03

  In fact, any active generation of scientists are having thoughts that a previous generation had not even imagined were possible.

• 55:35Speaker 03

  And this is the hallmark of an active, productive scientific research program, be it at a university, a nation, or collectively, the world, as the world's astrophysicists tell you. And so I remember being in graduate school, people said, here's the one answer we need to know. And what is the expansion rate of the universe? And that'll make my day. And that then that's then I can die. And then we get the expansion rate of the universe and say, wait a minute, we are now standing on a new precipice, seeing where no one has seen before, because the information and the knowledge and the

• 56:15Speaker 03

  wisdom and the models took us to a new place. And now I can think questions undreamt of before we arrived there. And so now I'm not asking, what's the size and age of the universe? I'm asking, is there more than one universe? I'm not asking, is there life on Mars? I'm asking, is there life on 6,000 exoplanets orbiting the galaxy? So I don't even know if I can come up with a question that we might be asking 10 years from now.

• 56:53Speaker 03

  It's frustrating, but that's a good fact. It's a good fact because, no, I can't predict where our next paths of curiosity will take us. Because as I've said before, as the area of our knowledge grows, so too does the perimeter of our ignorance. And it may be that this is an endless frontier, never ending, never coming to a stop. If it ever comes to a stop, I would be

• 57:26Speaker 03

  joyous and disappointed at the same time. But I'll tell you this, right now, I lose sleep at night, not wondering what the answer is to questions I have posed. I lose sleep wondering what questions I do not even yet know to ask. And that is a cosmic perspective. Until next time, Neil deGrasse Tyson, bidding you to keep looking up.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  No two businesses run the same. So banking for your business shouldn't be one size fits all. That's why Atlantic Union Bank offers knowledgeable guidance and tailored solutions designed around your goals. Whether you're managing cash flow, moving money, or protecting your business from fraud, we make banking for your business both personal and easy. Call, visit us online at AtlanticUnionBank.com or stop by one of our local branches today. Atlantic Union Bank, any way you bank. It's the early mornings, the long shifts, packing two days into one, helping your kids with homework, and finishing your own before bed. Where others see obstacles, you see opportunity, collecting wins even when

• 58:52Speaker 01

  no one's watching. This is what hustle looks like. Capella University keeps up with the way you move, letting you do work in life and learn in between. So go chase that degree and let your hustle make it happen. Capella University, what can't you do? Visit capella.edu to learn more.