Going Interstellar | NASA Science Live Episode 2
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| Going Interstellar |
Hello and welcome to NASA science life and opportunity for you to come behind the scenes.
This show is really all about you being able to interact with NASA scientists and get your questions answered.
Let's get started with some of the latest from around the galaxy. scientists were surprised to learn that near asteroid is not more rugged than expected but actually erupting plumes of particles.
Two facts are sure to give spacecraft navigators a little asteroid indigestion. NASA is up to the task of collecting a sample from this asteroid and sending it back to earth.
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In other news, the agency rolled out its moon to mars program that will see astronauts living and working not only around the moon but on it.
Before you know it, we'll all be like Matt Damon, making space potatoes, maybe let's bring our own fertilizer.
All right moving on to matters of international appeal. NASA signed on agreement with the Brazilian space agency in the form of a teenie weenie satellite.
It's the size of two loaves of bread it will investigate two phenoms that disrupted GPS signals. I need me some GPS.
I wouldn't have been able to find the studio without it. so go brazil! that is all the news we have for now.
Today's episode is all about interstellar space and we'll take you to the edge of the solar system and beyond.
We'll show you how big our galaxy is and explore the region beyond our bubble and you'll meet a special student.
Interstellar space begins where the sun charged particles end and we call it the solar wind.
It extends well beyond the orbit but not all the way to the edge of the solar system. it continues all the way out to the cloud where billions of comets still cling to the sun's gravitational pull.
When we leave order sour solar system we're still in the milky way galaxy. join me and 2 is a physician sifts.
Alrightuestion number 1. if the earth was the size of a basketball, the sun would be a-20 feet in alpha diameter or b feet in diameter or c1,000 feet in diameter.
You put about 100 earth across the sun. I'll take your word for it. so 100 feet. is that would of the choices?
Yes! it is 100 feet in diameter.
The sun is huge, but how big is it really and to be more precise since we have scientists with us it would be about 109 earth that fit across the diameter and take 1.3 million earth to fill the sun's volume. that's a lot of earth
Let's move on to question number 2. if the sun and earth were separated by 5 pieces of toilet paper how many would separate the sun where the boundary of voyager one crossed into interstellar space.
Would we have 18 sheets of toilet paper, 302 Morrisonon is 02 sheets of toilet paper?
Toilet paper, yay big and yay long doesn't matter. because we know the distance from the earth to the sun is what we call is 5 pieces of toilet paper and that is one astronomical unit and voyager is about 100 astronomical units outside away from the sun.
So you just do confusion, 5 times 100 is about 500 so I think that is one of your answers.
it's 602 sheets of toilet paper. close enough and just to give you a little more context, using this analogy mars would clock in at 7.6 pieces and Jupiter would be at 25.9 pieces and then you would need a whole another roll to get to pluto at 196.2 pieces of toilet paper.
that's toilet paper. really is. I hope this hopes you understand how large our galaxy is.
Even the closest star is much, much, much further away for that. I wanted to make one and the. I'm a professional astrophysicist and I would normally solve questions exactly the sale way you would.
I would them into Google. for me, the most part of my job is more about coming up with those questions that actually the right questions to actually push the boundaries of knowledge into the unknown.
That's the exciting part and the fun part. thank you both for participating in our game show.
So as you just heard our solar system really is huge. in fact, the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft travelled for 35 and 41 years respectively before they even left the boundary of our suns influence.
at their current speed, it would take the storey manners another 75,000 years to reach the next nearest star system.
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the fact that two spacecraft which were built in the 1970s and located 11 billion miles from earth still working is mind-blowing for me at least.
in a moment we'll be joined by an expert from the voyager mission live from mission control at NASA jet propulsion laboratory in California.
let's look at the amazing milestones of the voyager 1 ad 2 spacecraft. 3, 2, 1... ignition and we have liftoff. they were launched in 1977.
that's two generations ago.
you can think of what the technology was.
your smartphone as 200, not a thousand times more memory than what the voyager spacecraft has.
voyager 2 was the one that was chosen to do the grand tour. to fly by Jupiter and Saturn and then aourpb his and Neptune.
we were all in a path to reach interstellar space while we had the power to transmit the data become.
the team has been looking forward to this for a long time and working hard to make this happen.
it's exciting that we've been able to get it into interstellar space and keep all the instruments on.
we have a working wind solar wind instrument to measure it. the wonderful thing it's still discovering new things because it's going where nothing has been and it will continue that journey for billions of years orbiting the centre of the milky way galaxy
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