Renaming Constellations and Modern Mythology

Our listeners love puzzles, paradoxes and hidden patterns almost as much as we do On TikTok, those fascinations come to life. People are breaking down physics, exploring geology, and explaining why the world works the way it does You'll see impressive experiments, explanations that finally make sense, and connections you didn't expect. It's like having a lab, a lecture hall and science museum in your pocket TikTok is where Wonder is shared where curiosity turns into discovery and where millions learn something new every day Rosetta Stone Sapphire is designed for personal learning, helping you go beyond generic lessons and focus on the topics that matter most to you You've heard me talk about Rosettaestone before, you know that I love the fact that I can learn on the go, anytime, anywhere, easily, integrate it into my schedule. and more importantly, it helps me learn the language like a native. And that's why I love it because I can secretly sit at the table and listen to my mother in law talk about me in Spanish and she doesn't even know that I she's saying. Go ahead Be a stealth bilingual spy like me, visit roosettastone dot. com slash Star Talk too get twenty percent off your Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when you sign up today. You'll get unlimited access to all twenty five Rosetta Stone languages plus all new Sapphire learning tools. Josh Laer andigles They areoseta stone away Mismo Hey St talkings, Neil You're about to listen to an episode especially drawn from our archives. to serve your cosmic curiosities. Their archives run deep. If you enjoy this, take a peek at the full catalogue on your favorite podcast platform There's a lot there to tickle your geek underbelly. Check it out. Welcome to Star Talk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. Star Talk begins right now This is StartT, CosmicQueries edition, ever popular with all of our audiences. And I got with me my host today Matt, Kirerson, Matt, welcome back to Star Talk Thanks Nil, It's good to see you. So Matt,' your host probably science. I was a one time guest on there. Absolutely. callall me I will., I'd love you to come back. Weill one of our most popular episodes Today topopic He is like to war in astrophysics. It's like And how do they relate And who connects a line between modern or even ancient astrophysics and cultures and folklore. This is like There aren't many people who do this And when you think about it The sky was really accessible to everyone at all times Forever, right? I mean, unless it was cloudy, but ces cave dwellers saw the night sky So of all the sciences modern astronomy and of course, astrophysics would have connections that maybe other sciences don't So if anyone is going to tackle this, it's going to be on Star Talk. And we have an expert in this In the name of Mooyia McTier. Moyia, welcome to StartTalk. Hi, Neil. Thanks for having me. This is a goal of mine. It has been for a long time. I'm happ. I'm really happy to be here. Thank you. So you're an astrophysicist folklorist and a communicator I love that that that can be a title today because it's so necessary to move information and knowledge and wisdom from one place to another that requires communicators. And so You have your own podcast What's it edit? Podcasts If I'm busy, here is me.cuse Excuse me. okay, podcasts. tellell me their names so the one that is my my favorite brain baby probably just because its's oldest, is called exolore. It's a portmanteau actually of exoplanets and folklore because the whole of the show is building fictional worlds based on facts and science. Usually that means I start with some astronomical difference, like what if this planet didn't orbit a star? And we know that those types of planets exist. They're called rogue planets. There are probably tens of thousands of them out there. Or what if a planet had two suns? or what if it got hit with asteroids all the time? And then we just imagine the consequences of that difference. My other podcast is more straightforward more obviously about science and it's called Pale Blue Pod. It's actually quite new. It just launched in November and it's a show for people who are November twenty of twenty twenty two. Yeah. so it's a little baby. and it is a show for people who are overwhelmed by the universe, but still want to be its friend. have Take in some notes On your show and the way that you do things, I have a comedian co host. Her name is Karine Caputo. She's very funny, very smart. The whole vibe of the show is extremely cozy. We want to make space feel very warm and familiar for people. Oh, so the microphones are closed as Welcome to A L Pod. We get very ASMR about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah so both of you just then. there are some listeners you got probablyper tinkly right then. and you're welcome Oh yeah. Oh yeah. This is the universe. Yeah. I love it. I love it. So tell us about your this strand this thread that multiple threads that you've woven to connect astrophysics which was one half of your major in college to folklore Yeah, let me tell you a bit about how I came to major in both of those things because you might know this Neil having gone to Harvard yourself, but you there's a pre approved list of double majors at Harvard. and they're normal things like government and ecOon or psychology and computer science Surprisingly Astrophysics and focal or mythology, not on that list of stuff that Harvard administrators thought people would want to study together So I actually had to do some negotiating and go to the heads of both departments, which are very small. They're two of the smallest departments at Harvard. And I said You can't afford to lose bodies. Let me study both of you and then everyone wins. So they did. They did let me study both of them, but only after I gave a list of potential thesis topics that I could write. Because when you do a double major at Harvard, you have to write a thesis that sits at the intersection of your two fields What I ended up doing was writing a science fiction novel that was set on a real exoplanet that I studied. I characterized it with data from Kepler and I The Kepler mission to find exoplanets, right? Yes. a very good data set there. Well, it was K two. So the data was a bit noisier than from the Kepler primary mission The plot of the novel was K kind of an allegory or like a parallel to the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. I got to go to Hawaii. I talk to the protectors, the people demonstrating on Monakea when the thirty meter telescope conflict was happening. and that was a really fun project But it's taken me many years to figure out you in the middle of total cultur turbulence. That was a fun project for you? I like talking to people. I like hearing their sides of things. Yeah just to catch some people up on that. So the largest plans to build the largest telescope in the world in the best observing site of the world, which is in the big island of Hawaii met resistance from Indigenous communities Hm. view the mountain as sacred in a way that should not allow this kind of construction. And so it was very it's fascinating cultural political confrontations that unfolded. and you just drop yourself in the middle of it, damn. So so so you wrote a you wrote a novel, interesting as as in as a in place of, but that was your thesis. It was my thesis. Yeah. I had the creative part and then I also had an appendix with all of my research notes and's arillantrillant waited stitch those two together Thank you so much. R. But you have a was that published No, it's in a Google dririve somewhere up on my website that people knowad.body's gott to make a movie out of that. I mean, I'd being Hollywood If anyone wants to approach me for TV or movie rights to lie hards, please, please let me know. Yes, definitely. We'll make that happen. Yeah. you have another book? I do. Yeahah, that this book my out of control. Lest. You know what, Neil, I like to stay busy . All right, on This latest book is called The Milky Way and Autobiography of our Galaxy. Please pay close attention to that word autoobiography because this entire book is written from the point of view of our Milky Way galaxy. It tells its story from its birth to, you know what might happen when the universe ends. It talks about its life It's adolescence and how it feels to make stars. It talks about the galactic neighbors that it has. about the collision with Andromeda? What does that feel like? Oh. So in the book, did you like it?. It hasn't happened yet. So the Milky Way is going It's only in autobography up to today. Up to today. Yeah.. And so the Milky Way forward to. had to merge with in drrameda. How does it feel about that? Oh, it is quite excited. So in the book I frame galactic murders as like Romance almost, or you know, like interpersonal relationships. And so there are minor mergers and major mergers. Minor mergers happen between galaxies where one is much more massive than the other. And so I think of clings. wait, wait, so we Those who study this call that galactic cannibalism when a big galaxy eats a little one, but you're calling them romances. Okay such a different take on the situation. You know what, Neil? whyy do the two have to be mutually exclusive? Like sometimes the galaxies are eating each other and at the same time, it's romantic. So like whatever. Okay. All right. then that happens to be sexes Sometimes the female meets the male afterwards, you know, it's Yeah. Wh these are just praying mantises. But no The merger, the eventual merger between Andromeda and the Milky Way will be a major merger because their masses are much more similar. And that's more like a marriage. So for billions of years, the Milky Way and Andromeda have had this long term courtship They've been sending love notes back and forth to each other in the form of hyper velocity stars where they encode their messages into the spectra of the stars and it's very nerdy and very cute. Wow. Wow. Okaykay, so this just came out in twenty twenty one. Is that correct? twenty twenty two, just a few months ago in Austa. Oh, just came out o mid twenty twenty two just just emergeed from COVID.. Very nice. Okay. So we'll look for that. Damn Yeah It's a good story. It's very sassy. I feel like I should prime people. The Milky Way has a healthy ego. And some might say it's a little condescending to us humans, but like who wouldn't be lookook at us or' so tight Every alien would be condescending. Exactly. That's clearly the case. Yeah clearly And one last question. so we got your astrophysics, we got your folklore What about your science communication, science education part Um What do you think is missing that you can bring to it Ooh, I think the folklore connections that I can help people make are really important because I know that people will feel better about learning science if they can connect to it personally and one of the strongest personal connections or Yeah, culturally or personally. I was getting there. like the cultural connection is a great way to make it feel more personal U People might grow up hearing stories and legends and myths from their grandparents, from their elders. And if you can learn about science and tuck it into what you've already heard from your people thenen it makes it a lot more a lot more familiar Got it, gotot it So that's a gap that needs filling. Very good. I think so. yeah. And I'm not a comedian like Matt, but I think that sometimes I can make people laugh. And so I try to bring that into my Csycom too There's been some movement within planetariums to do that, especially in plananetariums that have access to indigenous communities in the southwest in Australia If you go to Australian planetarium, there is an aboriginal storytelling that's often folded in T the show And they have such beautiful stories. I mean, they they have paintings and cultural evidence and like oral storytelling that talks about astronomy going back like sixty thousand years. It's really like' Yeah, old knowledge base. There's a book called Dark Emu Do know about that? Oh, I haven't heard about the book, but I do know about the Emu constellation. Yeah, the Emu, the Dark So Matt Iviously know about this. the sky Western culture is typically describe what they see based on existence of a star and a pattern or sources of light If you look at the dark lanes within our own galaxy, the Milky Way across the sky, there's a stretch of darkness that looks like an emu. So so it's the absence of they go by the the shape of the negative space rather than the shape of the shape of the negative space both. But yeah, that particular constation design as the design person would say, yeah, negative space. Well also just thing The look of the stars because you know, like you say, it was the thing that was accessible always, but more accessible then than it was now. because I grew up in London. We were talking about this just before the show and you f live in New York now And if you look up You don't see much in the way of stars on account of all the light. but The first few times why we have a planetarium? Exactly. first Yeah you have to build you have to artificially build it in a building inside the city. But the first few times I've been somewhere like, you know, I've been to like a mountainous place or a desert or someone that's really in the middle of nowhere and thendenly looked up. on a clear night. you're just going Oh Now I get why they were always writing poems and songs and like this suddenly this blanket of stars that looks truly because when I growre up it's like, oh yeah, there's st, there's another star, there's another star. And then you go somewhere that's properly remote. likeike it would have been everywhere thousandousands of years ago. But you're not assaulted by the sky. This is Yeah it isck out. It's absurd. It's this thing that appears after nightfall is ridiculous And it's I think the number the last number I saw was that eighty percent of the sky is affected by light and air pollution now. So eighty percent of people around the world are not seeing the same sky that our ancestors saw. And that makes me really sad because I think that makes people lose a big point of connection that we could have with the universe Cosmic connection. Wow, this is supposed to be cosmic queries. And so but I delighted in learning everything about you there, Moyes, so that when the questions come in, I mean, people were cued that you were going to be our guest and with that expertise. Soat Load up the questions and we're got a quick break and when we come back, we're going to dive right in to Moya Mcir's expertise, astrophysics and folklore when startart talal turn I am so happy to welcome NoO as a sponsor to Start Talk. Established in nineteen fourteen, NoO provides industry leading battery power solutions including jump starters, tire inflators, battery chargers, lithium batteries, and a wide range of accessories. Through its innovative design, it provides users with dependable power for home business and recreational needs The GB forty is a one hundred A lithium jump starter that weighs two point four pounds, it handles gas engines up to six liters, and diesel up to three liters, covers most cars and SUVs on the road and can do up to twenty jump starts on a single charge. It's not just a jumpstarter, it's a USBC power bank, a one hundred Lumen flashlight with SOS and strobe And here's why I'm really happy to welcome NoO because I have a TriumphT one hundred and twenty and it sits during the winter because I don't ride during the winter. and every spring the battery is dead. And thanks to NokO, I don't have to worry about that anymore. I used to have to take this pretty heavy bike and run it down the hill so I could pop the clutch and start it. And if that didn't work, Let's just say I didn't have to go to the gym for a week because I had to push it back up the hill. But now thanks to Nokco, guess who's jump starting and hitting the open road. that would be me. If you've ever been stranded or worried about being stranded, if you're ever worried about anything dying on you, I mean, aside from your house plants, you need the peace of mind that Noko brings you. Let it live in your trunk in the back of your SUV and then drive with peace of mind eep it in your garage and don't worry about your little bonnie when you have to charge it up and get on the open road. No C. pick it up at no. co slash GB forty That's n o. c slash GB four zero. Use code StarTalk at no dot co for ten percent off while it lasts. That's ST A R T A L K at n O d. C o These days, we're used to getting things delivered on demand, groceries, a new gadget, or the latest book, expanding your view of the universe. And now you can add TMobile five G homeome interternet to that list. Just order from TMobile and enjoy same day delivery with doorDash. And you can set it up yourself in about fifteen minutes, no advanced engineering degree required That means more time doing the things you actually enjoy Streaming a space documentary or going down a rabbit hole about exoplanets, asteroids, or whatever's pulling your curiosity And those online explorations are a lot easier with the fastest five G home internet If you're moving into a new place or just ready to upgrade your connection to something a little more advanced visit tashmobile. com slash home internet to check availability and get your home internet delivered Tod. Same day delivery for most internet eligible customers, see if it's an option during checkout. Fastest according to UklA Speed Test Intelligence Data, secondcond half twenty twenty five. All right Alenware's backack to schoolchool event is the perfect time to score top gaming gear with incredible features and advanced engineering to go beyond performance Start your Alienware journey with the Alienware fifteen gaming laptop featuring Intel core processors, game, live stream and multitask for hours on end Pair your incredibly smooth gaming experience with immersive visuals and sound by saving on sleek alienware monitors, headsets and more This limited time saleer awaits you now at alienware. com slash deals. Hello I'm Vky Broke, Allan And I support StTalk on Patreon This is Star Talk with Nailed grass Tyson We're back to Starc Cosm Aquarium. We're talking about astrophysics and folklore with Mooya McTier, who studied both in college and professionally and she is now a freelance podcaster and communicator, author of a book the Milky Way and autobobiography of our galaxy. written by the Milky Way itself because Mat. She's the Milky Way whisperer, right? Y I love the idea. Moya knows what the Milky Way feels. I do. Act if you look at the title page, it doesn't say byy Moya MacTior. It just says via merely channeled the m. That's right you were you were just channeling. Perfect. Milky Way. It's great with publishers can go along with that We get it The book written by the Milky Way with its galaxy sized brain And it there you go There you go So let's break where cosmic queries, Mat from our Patreon. Yeah, well this The questions are this is again, because of the subject matter. The questions are all over the place There some straight As astronomy questions and there's some folklorory questions. I'm going to start with this one because it ties into what we were talking about just before the end of The first segment, Stephen Murphyy from Atlanta says constellations have always been a good way to identify where Stars are But they are hard to remember and teach in the modern world where you know Latin and mythology Can Ursa Major just be the big bear? Would you make the archer haawkeye instead of Sagittarius it would take some getting used to, but so did Pluto not being a planet Oh, I love it. I love it. so Moya, I'm going rephrase that question to ask you Why don't we just update all the constellations to modern mythologies or modern things we care about. That's a great question. Yeah have like the there's some kind I've checked this because I like ice cream. There's some that looks like an ice cream cone. And so we have conus major and cononus minor, for example. or have like the smartphone Yeah or any rectangle that's up there. So what do you say about Why are we so anchored to what people were thinking two thousand years ago? Why don' it make it relevant today? Oh Godd, there's so much here So First of all, if you want to start renaming the constellations, you have to take it up with the IAU, the International Astronomical Union. They are this organization that's in charge of naming stuff officially in space. and they have designated eighty eight official constellations in the sky. And I emphasized official there There's a difference between constellations and asterisms to a modern astrophysicist. A constellation is the region of the sky, like the physical area that we have broken up the sky into, and there are eighty eight of those. Asterisms are the shapes that you can make by connecting dots between the stars. and there are an infinite number of those. So you can choose to rename your constellations, you can choose to focus on onus major or minor. You can make an iPhone constellation. You can just draw connections Samsung totally Samsung would get into that because they make the Samsung get. Galaxy. Yeah, they would that. That's like a total sponsoring opportunity for a new constellation drive. B on. But I mean, you can make up your own constellations. I think that that would be a really cute idea or just something to do with your friends, go out star gazing and come up with new names and new constellations and new stories to go along with them. But the constellations that we do have, the asterisms that we mostly talk about today, come to us from Greek mythology. And so they have these two thousand years worth of act Like they have dug themselves into our cultural memory. And before that, they came from Babylonians. like the crab and the bull constellations both just pulled right from Babylonia. It beancer and Taurus. Yeah, yeah. So even the Greeks were using more ancient constellations and asterisms than what they were making up. So I think we're just following in the grand tradition of using the names that have come before us because it would be really difficult if everyone actually did come up with their own names. You wouldn't be able to talk about it culture wouldn't have shared have shared culture. Exactly.b that. Interesting. because a lot of them are You know, the ancient Greeks called constellations catistterismoi which meant placed by the gods. They believed that a lot of these constellations were messages intentionally put into the sky by their deities to teach us whatever we needed to know. like the story of a. Human ego just knows no bounds. I know I mean life was rough two and three thousand years ago. I imagine it was pretty comforting to know that if you lived I don't know, a heroic or at least a notable enough life that maybe the gods would put you immortalize you by putting you into the sky as a constellation. That's what happened to Orion So I have a fast constellation story Hardly anyone knows. It's not that it's secret, it's just hardly anyone knows it when we rebuilt the Rose Center for Earth and S space And we got our new projector from Zeiss And they were going to have the constellations built in that you can turn on and off. whenever you're showing the night sky. We use that in addition to our digital projector that takes us anywhere in the universe. Point is, we create the eighty eight constellations. we hired an artist give a modern Um sensibility to the illustrations. Yes, it's still Hercules and it's still Orion, but it he has a modern hand as he draws it, right? It's not these these Renaissance curly constellations that you might see in old maps Anyhow you know that Gemini almost every Cstellation illustration are shown as two infants Okay, two babies They're twins However, in Greek mythology, they were like adults, okay? They were like full grown people But the reason why they were always drawn as babies is because the stars for you to fully flesh out a human being, to be very close to each other. And the only way you could really pull that off is by drawing babies Illustrator. Okay And he said, I'm drawing two full grown men We're gonna be really close to each other on this sket So, so in the Hayden Planetarium O Gemini Cstellation are two full grown men with overlapping shoulders, arms around each other I so much I'. So, so this was his His little, you know, he didn't twist history. He made it real and just said, let's try to put a little wokeness into the night sky And so that's in the Hayden Planetarium Star Theatater. I love that. That's amazing. And one of the things we learn in folklore is that every new telling of a story, every new presentation of this folkloreic knowledge is just as valid as what came before. It's not that you're changing, you're just you're evolving. You're acctingting new insights Yeah. Okay. so let' so next one, Matt. I love these All right. Well, you mentioned O Rion, FX Flynn that says U Moya, I was struck last fromom where do we know where they're from? I don't know where FX is from, but u M says M I was struck last week by the magnificent sight of Mars atop Orion as it lid you south. Oh, here we go. It is actually mentioned in the thing as it as it lid you south of my location in Vermont. So not too far just up the road from you During the wee hours of the morning, God of warar above the Hunter, I immediately wondered if this combination featured in any of the Inca histories we've collected You know, William Sullivan's secret of the Incas, myth astronomy and the War A against Time, H's hoping this particular combination is only remembered for its dramatic combination of bright red, orange, and bluish, white points of light and nothing else. I love that. So so the question I think Moyia would be It was Orion a hunter in other cultures O becausears and is Mars the god of war in other cultures? That's a great Juxtaposed on the sky, you know, that could mean war. Yeah, yeah, the God of war over the Hunter. In a lot of cultures. Um But rememember, not all cultures are going to place the stars that we associate with Orion into the same constellation. So I know that there are cultures in South America where the three stars of Orion's belt are like three brothers fishing in a canoe together and have not very different with Orion I mean, they're still hunting But it's different I guess I love sorry, side note, but I just I love that in every culture still, Whver they are growing up on completely different sides of the world independently, they've still thought to just look at the stars and go and draw pictures between them. draw Yeah or like what are they What cats do they make I mean, it was the main source of entertainment that we've had. didn't have. Yeah right. They didn't have, you know, streaming services. This is the same as liking at clouds, but the clouds These clouds don't move. These clouds stay the same every night. Correct. They do they do move. I mean, I mean they would They would look at the differences between the fixed and the moving stars actually. So the stars and Orion, those would be fixed because they're moving with each other as a whole. and it does really look like the sky is spinning around the Earth. But then there are wandering stars, which is where our word planet comes from because the planets and the moon and the sun were these points of light that appeared to move relative to all of the stuff in the background like Mars would have been a wandering star. So no, not every culture saw Orion as a hunter, although many of them if they could see the plees. that's an interesting thing because so many cultures around the world saw the plees, this little cluster of seven stars as as like seven sisters or seven, I don't know, swans. they associated them with very feminine qualities. And because Orion is pointing towards the plees, a lot of them also said Orion was hunting those sisters You have to think about the fact that not everyone in the world is going to see constellations the same way. Depending on where you are, you might not be able to see constellations, O if you're on drugs orreat them differently. N everybody can't imagine the drg. I certain I'm certain that the Greeks were on something for half the constellations of their. Oh my God, they must have been. They must have been. back then, I'm sure we were doing so many drugs That's my head canon for the ancient world Well hereere's a question for you. Pegasus. a very northern constellation for us to make a horse out of it is actually upside down. So we knowingly made an upside down constellation. I'm just wondering in the southern hemisphere T How do they they have flipped because some are upside down, right? So do they think of upside down constellations or is everything right side up to them I don't know that for specific southern cultures, but I mean, upside down is just a matter of reference. I can't imagine many cultures in the past would have intentionally assigned a constellation to be upside down unless they had traveled to another hemisphere, identified it as the same group of stars but in a different orientation and then went back and was like, whoa, they see this differently. Because Pegasus does look it's got some stars that resemble a horse's head. It's got that angle in the arc But it is completely upside down and Pegasus, the constellation zone has only room for half the horse. So it's an upside down flying half a horse.. And somebody had to think that up. I'm just saying At least it's the front half That's about half of the Pgasus. Yeah, if it was the horse's ass, that's a whole other Can I ask you That's a different mythology right there. Totally different. Can I ask you a quick question? This is a quick question that comes from Matt Kerson from Los Angeles, California. And wait, are you a Patreon member? Is Matt Kerson a Patreon member? I would check the files right now. A have your rights revoked. I'll give you a ha pass. I just wanted. Am I right in thinking constellations The stars are not necessarily anywhere near each other Or are they? yes Okay, so they he answer y So there is sort of there isn't the sort of astrophysics relevance to constellations other than helping to know where things are, like because the two stars could be in completely different clusters. could be that's a great question. Hge differe. Yeah I think Mia, that would be a naive if you just approach this whole subject naively, you would say This is a constellation. It must be something scientifically relevant about area of the sky. Yeah, whyy wouldn't anyone think that If you don't spend a lot of time thinking about the three dimensional nature of space, it is really easy to assume that this tableau of pictures we see in our night sky is made up of stars that are all physically clustered together, but there is that third dimension of distance that we have to think about. So the stars might look close to each other in two D but they might be very distant from each other in that third dimension Except for the plades, which you mentioned, which is a cluster. That. It's a cluster. Yeah. That's true. I did a research project in grad school on identifying moving groups of stars by their chemistry and we we looked at the Pleiades cluster. But So in rare cases they are related but that's not those are the exceptions right. Most of the time, they are separate So that question was from Matt Kirchon of Los Angeles. Yeah and Matt, I'm sure Matt's very grateful for that answer. I'm going to squeezeing in this quick question because you did mention the anents being on substances and Gina Martin from North Carolina and I just hit said I just hit my THC pen, so bear with me But Gina wants to know about dark matter and wonders if dark matter could actually be the matter that escapes from black holes The question then goes on for a little bit, but I'm just going cut it shortter there let's hold that for their break. ' going to take a quick break when we come back segment three astrophysics and folklore on Star Talk with our expert Moyia Matir when we come back for Staralk Radio comes from talkabpd. com Let's talk about a condition many people haven't heard of And it turns out it's more common than you'd think. Carony's disease or PD for short PedD can happen when scar tissue builds up under the skin of the penis This can cause a curve with a bump during an erection and for some men lead to pain during intimacy and may impact mental health. It may also lead to anger and frustration, depression, lower self esteem, and even withdrawal from sexual activity and physical intimacy. becausecause of this, Some men could feel embarrassed or reluctant to talk about PD. The actual cause of PD isn't always known In some cases, it may be linked to a minor injury or repeated injuries during sex or other physical activity Good news is PD is treatable If you notice a curve with a bump Trusted Uurology specialists can help diagnose it and walk you through your options, including nons surgical treatment To learn more about Piron's disease, visit talkalbpd. com was a magic Sorry, at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, we don't do fairy tales. We do real like real adventures to Mars, or real journeys into the future to see how imagination can really take us to strange new worlds and real trips into the past, where we meet heroes and legends way ahead of their time Real rockets, real astronauts, real adventure, all at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Discover something real. Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why drivers have trusted progressives name your price tool for years Just tell Progressive what you want to pay and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Visit progressive. com to find a car insurance rate that works for you. Progressive casualty insurance compompany and affiliates, price and coverage match limited by state law We're back, Start home My McTear knocking it out. with with T trying to find out how people think about the night sky and what the Relevance to that is to science and culture with Matt Kerschen. And Moyia, where do we find you on social media? I've made it easy for you becausecause I know my name isn't that easy to spell. I'm go astro Mo on everything Lllo, Astrro M. Wha Thank in twenty fourteen and I felt weird about it then, but now I kind of love it Yeah, yeah,'s your it's your moniker. So Moya MO I Y A and McTier is what it sounds like, but go astro Mo, I love it. I love it. So let's let's keep this up. one thing I wanted to add previous segment. when the when the questioner commented on Orion and and Mars, what was implicit there is that the star Beteljuice which is Orion's upper shoulder is a red giant star. So you have the red hue of that star near the red hue of Mars And so I think that's contributed to the to the thrust of that question. Yeah. because there's a lot of action, red action over in that part of the sky. And we all know that red means angry Yeah re in the sky, then the gods are angry. Exactly, exactly. Matt, keep them coming. Oh, so so just before the break, Gina wanted to know about dark matter and whether it could actually be the matter that escapes from black holes And no. And CC started to kick in and the question continues , Gina, I hope you're having a great time. And I'm going tell you, we don't know what dark matter is either as scientists. We have a lot of hypotheses. there are things we're trying to test out, but most of what we know about dark matter is how it behaves, not what it's made of. We know that dark matter is something that can interact with other stuff gravitationally it You can feel this gravitational tug, but it doesn't interact with light. so you can't see it. You can't touch it. You can't you know if you shine a light through it, the light's just not going to know it's there Um Is it stuff coming out of black holes?ro Probably not. I'm going I'll tell you now that is not one of the leading hypotheses. There were people several decades ago who thought maybe dark matter was just a bunch of little black holes because we can't see black holes, but they also interact with stuff gravitationally. So maybe dark matter is just like a big clump of tiny little black holes it doesn't seem like that's like Plus, if they were coming out of black holes, the mass of a black hole would be dropping. Yeah. we don't really see that either. rightight. Right. And so that was a question that came out under the influence of THC. Yeah, but I think I think it's pretty good. And also just while we're talking about great black holes, Molly Jebson says who's an American university student living in Paris S says I'm fascinated by white holes, and I recently read that a white white hole singularity exists in the future and a black hole singularity exists in the past. What does that mean? Was THC involved in that quest? Yeah like It was not Molly was a specific as to what was influencing that question. It could have just been a sheer wonder of the universe Yes. That isH a force of THC unto itself, right The wonder wonder of the universe So Moray, what do you know about white holes? I know very little about white holes. I was just gonna say, we're beyond my realm of expertise here. all I know is it's like a mathematical opposite of white holes Yeah. And a black hole you know absorbs everything or brings everything in not actively, it's not like a vacuum sucking. But if that's what a black hole does, then a white hole should be the opposite. It's where stuff comes out Wait Moia, someone once told me that there's no such thing as gravity, Earth sucks And I dont everstand. Are you saying A you trying to disavow me of this understanding of gravity? I now. I like to hold multiple truths in my head the same time All right. All right. Im Matt, keepe going. All right. well, I'm going to combine these two questions. I think this is getting back more onto home territory for both of you. So Marcus Gusterson from Sweden And also Dylan, who's a physics undergrad between the two of them, ask, what are the methods used to map the size of the Milky Way and where are where are we located within it And also Dylan who's the physics undergrad says, I'm wondering how we map the Milky W. How do we observe something if we're currently in it Do we just assume our looks from other galaxies? Wow. Yeah. pllus, Moya, every star we see in the night sky He' in the Milky wayay. right? So tell us So what's going on there? I mean, colloquially, we say See that band of light That's the milky way. Yeah.'s something separate from the stars that are around us. So why don't you unpack that for everybody? Absolutely. Yeah. So one thing that I bring up a lot in my new podcast, Pale Blue Pod is that we are not separate from space. It's not that we're here on Earth. and then there's the Milky Way out there. We are a part of the Milky Way. The Eth is a part of it. We are a part of it So I just wanted to get that out there first. Mapping the Milky way That's something we've been trying to do for hundreds of years. I do think it's really interesting that we only realized there were other galaxies out there a hundred years ago. The great debate in the nineteen twenties was all about are we alone or are there other island universes? And it turns out there are. So that's recent, but we did know that we were in a That was island universe used in the context of a galaxy Of other galaxies. Yes. Right, notot as a separate, not in the multiverse sect. Correct right Yes. They were not They were not having a great debate about the multiverse theory in the nineteen seies. But we did know long before that that we were in this collection of bright points of light. And so the earliest map of the Milky Way was done by the Herschel siblings, Caroline and William. And that was back in the sixteen hundreds where they they made some very simplifying Inaccurate assumptions that one, they could see all of the stars in the Milky Way. We now know that we can't, we actually can't see most of the stars in the Milky Way, and that we were in the center of it Like they assumed we were in the center of it. So what they did was was look out at the night sky and map the bright points of light U assuming that They were all like the same size. and so they tried to figure out the distance to them using their brightness because they were all the same size. Again, lots of very bad simplifying assumptions, but they came up with this map of the Milky Way that just looks awful. but I encourage you to look it up. That was the first attempt. These days, what we're doing is using much stronger telescopes and much better assumptions about how things should be distributed throughout the Milky Way We've made observations of other spiral galaxies, so we have an idea of what the rough shape should be. But you're right, It is pretty hard to take a picture of a house when you're inside it. Like we don't it's hard for us to get a full view of what the Milky Way looks like, but we have models. We have telescopes that can see through the dust, so we now have a better view of the center of the Milky Way. We know where We are in the Milky Way because we can see that there is more light in one direction than there is in the other So yeah, it's a matter of meticulous mapping over time and trying to make sure our assumptions aren't as wild as they were in the sixteen hundreds Is it as hard as an unborn child figuring out what his mother looks like? I think it's easier than that Okay. I do like because there's there's no You need like remote mirrors, you know, to look outside the, you know because I think that they're they're like the baby The unborn baby could learn about the distribution of organs, but it would have no idea what the mother's face looked like. R I feel like we have a pretty good understanding of what the Milky Way's face looks like U because there's not much variation. really. when you boil it down to the different body parts of a galaxy, there's not that much diversity. So we have a pretty good idea Iim Matt, keepe it coming. All right, well we have I have a we have a question about And plus, I mean, depending how many questions you have, I might want to go into lightning mode. Yeah. And this will put Mooyia to the test. we've got She have sound bittes in her. This is like great test of educator. I. If we if we go into lightning mode, I'm going to have to do some editing on some of these questions because this is this is a subject that people have gone deep on with the questions.e have really like People have written like many essays and because they' babbled on and on about it. Okaykay? Well they're very excited about it, but so. The artist formerly known as James Smith from Indianapolis. I remember that name from previous episodes says Dr. Mooyir, astrology. astrology is a very popular subject these days. I think it's I think I's fair to say there is a popular subject. All dayays it but James says, Do people believe that the stars are influencing their lives because of tradition? or do you think it's because they have something to blame their rational behaviourors or even their great luck on Who are the first to see the stars for more than what they truly are I'd actually say for less than they truly are as well. but I love that question. and Moyia Wouldn't modern astrology be considered folklore in by your definitions? I do consider it folklore. We are creating folklore and mythology in the modern day. I think both of those reasons resonate with a lot of astrology practitioners, people who follow it. They need something to reason. They have been told that the stars dictate events in their lives. And I think it's very comforting for them. I think a lot of people use it as a way to feel connected to the universe larger than ourselves Okay. As a scientist, it's don't I don't follow it. I don't believe in it. As a folklorist, I love looking back at ancient astrology to see the real and practical ways that humans knew the sky did dictate their lives. Okay, so would you would distinguish them astrologers of five hundred years ago who didn't know any better, and that was like their best way to account for their reality versus today where we actually do know better that they're still doing it. Yes, I would distinguish them U I think that Ancient astrology was extremely practical It had to do with when were you planting your crops? When were you moving because of seasonal flooding and stuff like that There were also people who read information from the sky that was less practical. I think it's It's pretty agreed upon by folklorist now that ancient Babylonians were among the first to not just track the motion of stuff in the sky, but to assign divine meaning to it. byy which I mean they had priests, they had astrologer, priests who spent their lives learning how stuff in the sky moved because that was their way of interpreting the will of their gods If there was an eclipse or something, they wouldn't go to war. Or if there was some alignment of planets of these wandering stars in the sky, then that would tell them how they needed to make, I don't know, government decisions in that time Mat, do you think that'd be a badass business card? Yeah astrologer, priest, and astrophysicist That's that, you know, you're in charge of everything That's kind of the business card I have. Like people assume that because I studied the universe and because I studied folklore that I just know how everything works. Yeah, you're just totally plugged into everything that matters. You're a scientist. Totally do Lightning around. All right lightning around next question. I'm going to summar this question becausecause Edwin Jay Roldam from Lancaster Pennsylvania asks what's your opinion on whether the next Mars mission should have life detection experiments on it The Mars landord did retain a live detection test, but the Viking did Yeah forty five years ago There were some ambiguous results from the Viking landers And so you think about exoplanets a lot, Moyah. And If you think of Mars as a kind of an exoplanet, because we're looking and we might have life, except we can also go there U what do you think should be the priorities? for the upcoming Rvers. Yeah, I think that if there was kind of cloudy evidence before, let's try and clarify that