That have had a tremendous impact on what we can detect. Equal times Matthew Dziak begins our coverage, about what is known in our universe. Youre outside late one night, look up and you see the endless stars shimmering in the sky. Our universe is a vast infinite space with much that is still left undiscovered. Despite dedicated space centers. I think among the sciences, astronomy is one of the more beautiful sciences. I would say. Just the pictures you can get from the telescope are just stunning. The colors and the shapes you can see and things out in space. But the magnitude of the things youre looking at are so big and far away and old. Its just a mindboggling. One of the things theyre studying is what makes the atmosphere of the sun so hot. Because it gets up to a million degrees in some places. Very sparse plasma but very hot. And the way i look at it is like heating coils extending out of the atmosphere and heating it up like an electric blanket. [laughs] were in a heliocentric environment, where the earth rotates around the sun and people might say well, you know, whats the difference . I see this im going around the earth once, same as the other. In terms of what i can understand. One hundred years ago, einstein came up with the theory of general relativity which describe the force of gravity being caused by the curvature of space and time. This was also a prediction of Gravitational Waves. Einsteins picture of gravity was imagine the earth not exerting a force but instead imagine sitting on some fabric. We call that spacetime, the fabric that it sits on. Now weve got this curved spacetime. The curvature is caused by the earth and thats what general relativity says. And that it says an object in that curve spacetime, like the moon, will just follow the shortest path it can, through that space time. And if the spacetime is flat, that shortest path is always a line. But in this Curved Surface it would be a circular orbit sort of like that. Theres significant real world application for einsteins theory. For example the clock and gps satellites require a correction due to general relativity that allows our devices to be able to navigate us from street to street and around the block. Youve got a gps satellite here and youre at some position on earth and you measure through that the timestamp how long it took the light to propagate to you. Then you would know how far away you are from that satellite. And by having enough signals from enough satellites we can basically solve this puzzle of where in the earth could we be. We would be on each of those spheres simultaneously and that tells us where we are. Asteroids striking our earth have long been a fear of many. But the odds of that happening are extremely minuscule. Beyersdorf explains why. In order for an actual collision to occur the object needs to be traveling more or less directly at the earth, so that it actually interacts with the atmosphere, and slows down and then and then crashes into the earth. Nearly 80 years ago a massive 2,700 pounds meteorite was found in california and its discovery was made possible by chabot education system. What we have here is a plaster cast of the largest meteorite ever found in california. It was found up near goose lake in 1938 so the story goes there were three hunters from oakland out hunting in the forest and they ran across this oddlooking rock. And one of them recognized the meteorite is he had attended a Public Lecture by chabots second director earle linsley, about meteorites. When we come back, well look at what experts are doing to try and understand what we dont know about the endless skies. [music] welcome back. Weve seen what we know about our universe but there is far more out there that is still unknown. Theories have been devised and some even tested by astronomers who work to solve the biggest mysteries. Matthew dziak continues our coverage. A significant advancement in astronomy began in the 1600s, when galileo invented the telescope. With these highpowered telescopes the question remains just how far can these see out into the sky . You can see basically back to the beginning of time, basically for the most part. Thats not really controlled by the telescopes themselves. Thats more controlled by just the way light works. And how the universe works with the universe expanding. So what shouldnt we do when operating a telescope . Youve got to be very careful about. About the sun. The sun can be very dangerous. If you were to look through the telescope at a time when it was the telescope was pointed up at the sun and thats a good way to impair your vision. Astronomer paul lynam explain the Technological Advancements that are you that the Lick Observatory. We have the capability and the intellect available here in Mount Hamilton to take advantage and exploit the new ideas and new discoveries of the early 1900s. Including things like einsteins general relativity. In fact it was astronomers at Lick Observatory that brought general relativity to the united states. Another advantage that we have, even though the telescope dates from the 1960s and electronics and the camera equipment on board the telescope, we can routinely transpose and interchange as technology advances. Its difficult for astronomers to fixate on one star because it is relatively empty in the night sky. Instead they go about seeing these star through a very specific process. And we pointed at technology here by using a laser, a giant laser that we mount to the telescope to inject radiation and energy into the atmosphere. Some 60 miles above the telescope. So we basically injected energy to into a spot of the atmosphere of the telescope which then goes by catalyst. The invention of the telescope has allowed us to capture images of the universe. However, there is a new innovation that could change what we know about astronomy. Theree sort of a second advancement going on right now which is the development of gravitational wave detectors. Which like telescope is something that we can use to look at the astrophysical sources and learn about our universe. But they do it by looking at something other than light. They look at gravitational ripples. That gravitational wave spectrum can tell us a huge amount of information beyond what were able to get through just optical measurements and and light measurements. Its impossible to put in enough energy into an experiment to generate the detectable signal here on earth. Instead the limitations are broken through physics and what happens in the universe. Nature has this laboratory all around us. Its the universe, right, thats really the connection between astronomy and physics. There are experiments going around going on in the universe at extremely high Energy Levels. Where the differences between, for example, newtons theory of gravitation and einsteins theory of gravitatiom give wildly different predictions as to what will happen. So if you want to probe those differences you can look to the universe and let nature do the experiment for you. Using things like black holes accelerating around each other moving at near the speed of light while some experiments are not possible on earth, others are coming to fruition. Some scholars are studying how we can improve travel here on earth. But theyre experts focusing on the vast unknown of our stars. So black holes, theyre. Theyre exotic objects. But they actually work with pretty simple, they work with gravity. What happens is you get the typical way this happens is you get a very massive star. Much more massive than our sun. And it reaches its life the end of its life which they they sort of live fast and they die young. Our sun last a bill 10 billion years. These stars lasts only a hundred million years. And they grow really large explode. And the center of it will collapse after there during the explosion, to perform a black hole theres another type of black hole in each galaxy. One that is much larger than any other but still relatively a mystery. Another category of black holes are called the supermassive black holes. And this is the idea that the center of every galaxy including our own Milky Way Galaxy has a black hole. Which is not the mass of a star its about a million times the mass of the star. Some of them even a billion times the mass of the star. We dont know where those come from. Thats like one of the great mysteries of astronomy right now. Theres a lot thats the more we know the more we realize we dont know and we sort of whats interesting is finding out about the unknown unknowns. The things we didnt know we didnt know. The reason we think there might be another planet is some some patterns in the orbits of other things in the solar system comets and things like that. And they all their sort of lining up in a certain way that suggests that something is perturbing them. Somethings moving them around and the theory is that there might be a large planet thats doing that. Our solar system is only one microscopic portion of the fractal universe. And even all that we can see is still rather unknown. The evolution of technology and space center help our advancement in understanding the universe. Still we may never know whats out there. And when we come back well sit down with experts, astronomers and graduate students. All searching for solutions. Stay with us. [music] welcome back to this edition of equal time. Today our focus is on the new discoveries and the impact on astronomy. Lets meet our guests. Im peter beyersdorf. Associate professor of physics and astronomy at san jose state. Ive worked for the past 20 years or so on the design and development of gravitational wave detectors. My name is our aaron romanowsky. Im assistant professor of physics and astronomy at san jose state. And i worked on galaxies, dark matter, and black holes. My name is maria stone. And im a graduate student in physics and astronomy. And i work with dr. Romanowsky on galaxies as well. And im Matthew Dziak. Senior journalist correspondent for this show on equal time. Thank you all for being here today and joining us for this discussion. People at home are probably saying well, wait a minute is this about star wars or star tracker is this pure science . How would we explain this to people what youre talking about in terms of the new research and new discoveries nothing . Yeah, well one of the big new discoveries was the detection of Gravitational Waves from black holes. And black holes are something that has been interesting to the public for some time. And it actually connects a little bit to star wars and star trek and things like that. Very recently, there was a movie interstellar that featured a black hole as its sort of main character. And its fascinating to see like real science and the types of things that weve been studying in classrooms and through equations come to life on the big screen. And kind of engage the public in a way, that you know, classroom discussions and in textbooks just cant. And hollywood intelevision are very good at bringing it home for people so they understand it. But aaron ,what is the difference between the depictions we see in the images versus whats actually being studied . It depends on on the movie or the tv show. Some of them take a lot of liberties and you can never get the science exactly right, some of them are wrote much closer to reality than others. Things like the martian or things like gravity or interstellar theyre making some efforts to be as true to life as you can. And course for dramatic effect you have to do things like put sounds and space sometimes and things like that some of them are pure fantasy star wars, i love star wars. its its kind of pure fantasy but to me, i was inspired and growing up why why am i an astronomer in the first place . Partly it was my dad took me to see star wars on opening weekend, 1977. Little kid watching that, you know, i dont didnt understand the science. And but i really got enthusiastic about space and gradually learn the science. So i think theres a real nice connection potentially between hollywood and science. Very good, and maria did this get you started in life . Starting with the hollywood and the creative and now into more nonfictional approaches . Well, i want to kind of also state that a little bit to say first that, humanities and movies not all always get inspired from science, but inspire science. Because i think human thought went further in novels and scifiction that maybe science got those ideas and tested them from there. So starting this jules verne from france. But yeah, i think i got excited by the start, i mean mostly, from people who do this, did astronomy. Not from hollywood. I didnt grow up in america. So you have a different perspective . Yeah. When i was growing up i was telling everybody earlier, the 60s and 70s, you know, we had the space program, and president kennedy says we have to get to the moon. And were going to reach further. And since then would your generation, how does your generation see space and space travel and exploration . Yeah, i think it is very glorified. A way of seeing it because as you talked about hollywood. Hollywood does do some, you know, overexaggerating of the actual things that are happening out there. But at the same time it sparked our interest. And sometimes it takes a little bit of exaggeration of something for people to get interested in it. And i think that you know like so weve got away from the big informative things that nasa might be doing. That you really gotta dig to find out as opposed to being Headline News all the time. But hollywood does a great job of at least introducing some of the ideas and people go, wow thats how that is. And then now you have documentaries and netflix, and anything that you can see on maybe a e. And that you start seeing that they theres more and more coverage for the students and for just young people in general. They get involved in this sort of thing. Dont you love hearing young people talk like that about science and space and all that . But now gentlemen lets talk about your research. And what is the big discovery right now . But the big news that recently was the discovery of a Gravitational Waves. These are things that people have looked for, for the past hundred years or so. Ever since einstein predicted them in 1916. So its literally been a hundred year search. And just recently february, they were announced that, in september 14th 2015 there was a discovery that two extremely massive black holes collided with each other. And gave off more energy than the rest of the entire universe combined. For a brief period of time a fraction of a second and admitted these waves that traveled for billions a billion years. Before they reach the earth and we were fortunate enough to have detected those. And it gave us an insight into sort of what might go on in these very highenergy extreme events and its its given us a lot to think about what might be out there beyond sort of just the stars and planets and things that we can normally see using normal light and traditional means. Very good. Gravitational waves. The audience may be wondering whats the benefit for humanity . How will we harness this energy you talked about . Or whats the goal . Well you never know. With purse science at all it often starts off pure. You dont get the benefits until much later. Nuclear power, for example, would have had its origins very pure science. What was the what was the reason for it, at the time people studied it. So we just dont know until we start unpacking the implications of these discoveries. But partially its also just understanding our place in the universe, understanding where we fit in the cosmos. Sometimes theres dangers in the cosmos, we need to know about things like worrying about asteroids impacts, things like that. We need to make sure that that theyre out there and theyre not out there i think aaron hit on it perfectly because thats exactly what you know as humans we seek this sort of understanding of where we came from and who we are. And you know theres the religious plays a factor, science plays a factor. Everyone has this creationism. But theres a whole totality of where it all began. You know, we talk about the big bang. And i know that theres some Research Going to try and even replicate that over in europe as well. I dont know if anyone has any thoughts on that. Trying to rereplicate. I think you might be talking about the talking about particles that might make up the dark matter that may be reformed in the big bang, Something Like that. That is correct. Yeah, so theres a lot of this is i work on this area of dark matter. Its this great mystery that of that 80 of the matter in the universe seems to be some mysterious form we havent discovered yet directly. We can tell that its out there for this gravity pulling things around. But we just dont know what it is. It could be some kind of subatomic particle like, you know, you have electrons that are particles its Something Like that. But very hard to detect. So theres various theories out there. What it might be. And this was a related story from someplace in the uk that had a another theory about that. But until we detect them in the lab, were not really sure what they are. Its interesting though that when you have that something that you want to observe and see and some physics you want to explore, you sort of have two options. One is to try to create the conditions in the lab that produce this. So if you want to produce your own dark matter, youd like to be able to crash particles into each other. And generates a new particle or Something Like this but you find that theres these limitations that we have here on earth. I mean theres only so much power you can put into these things youre slamming together. Theres only so much mass that you can collide and it turns out out nature has this this Great Laboratory for us. Its our universe, right . And sometimes the things that we just cant do here on earth, we can look out into the universe we find these events that are just amazing. And have Energy Levels and interesting physics going on,. Its beyond what we can do here on earth that allow us to test some of our earthly theories without having to build the experiments. And and find a way to to do them as nature has already done for us maria, we havent heard from you about this concept of the history of science weve had periods of time in Human History where we saw sciences debunked and we dont value it. And its anathema and all of that. And now were getting into it. But are we getting into it in the substance of where peopl