Cosmic Queries – Astro-lore with Moiya McTier

27:36And so that's in the Hayden Planetarium's Star Theater. 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 folkloric knowledge is just as valid as what came before. It's not that you're changing. You're just, you're evolving. You're accreting, accreting new insights. Yeah. Okay, so next one. Matt, I love these. All right. Well, you mentioned Orion. FX Flynn says, Moya, I was struck last week. From where? Do we know where they're from? I don't know where FX is from, but Moira says, Moira, I was struck last week by the magnificent sight of Mars atop Orion as it lay due south.

28:18Oh, here we go. It is actually mentioned in the thing as it lay due 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 War 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 Against Time. Here'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. Wow. I love that. So the question I think, Moya, would be, was Orion a hunter in other cultures?

28:51Or because, and is Mars the god of war in other cultures? That's a great question. Juxtaposed on the sky, you know, that could mean war. Yeah, yeah, the god of war over the hunter. In a lot of cultures, remember 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 nothing to do with Orion. I mean, they're still hunting, but it's different. I guess so. I love, sorry, side note, but I just, I love that in every culture still, wherever they are, growing up on a completely different size of the world, independently, they've still thought to just look at the stars and draw pictures between them.

29:40Draw. Yeah. What patterns do they make? I mean, it was the main source of entertainment that we've had for hundreds of thousands of years. They didn't have HBO, right? They didn't have streaming services. I guess it's the same as looking at clouds, but the clouds, these clouds don't move. These clouds stay the same every night. Correct. They do move. I mean, they would look at the differences between the fixed and the moving stars, actually. So the stars in 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.

30:12But 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 did, if they could see the Pleiades. That's an interesting thing, because so many cultures around the world saw the Pleiades, this little cluster of seven stars, as like seven sisters or seven, I don't know, swans. Like they associated them with very feminine qualities.

30:50And because Orion is pointing towards the Pleiades, a lot of them also said that like 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, but— Or if you're on drugs, then you'll see them differently. Or if you're on drugs, yeah. Not everybody sees them. Can't forget to mention the drugs. I'm certain that the Greeks were on something for half the constellations that they named. Oh my God, they must have been. They must have been. People back then, I'm sure, were doing so many drugs.

31:27That's my headcanon for the ancient world. Here's a question for you. And 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, did they, how did 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.

32:22Because Pegasus does look, it's got some stars that resemble a horse's head. It's got that angle and 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 a better half of the Pegasus. 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 question that comes from Matt Kirshen from Los Angeles, California.

32:59Oh, wait, are you a Patreon member? Is Matt Kirshen a Patreon member? I'm going to check the files right now. Oh, you're going to have your rights revoked. I'll give you a hall pass for this one only. I just wanted to, am I right in thinking constellations, the stars are not necessarily anywhere near each other? Or are they? Yes. Okay, so they look at… Short answer, yes. So there is sort of, there isn't a sort of astrophysics relevance to constellations other than helping to know where things are? Because the two stars could be in completely different clusters. That's a great question. Huge differences.

33:34I think, Moira, 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 this area of the sky. Why 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 2D, but they might be very distant from each other in that third dimension.

34:15Except for the Pleiades, which you mentioned, which is a cluster. It is 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 looked at the Pleiades cluster. Right, so in rare cases, they are related, but those are the exceptions. Yes, most of the time, they are separate. So that question was from Matt Kirshen of Los Angeles? Yeah, and I'm sure Matt's very grateful for that answer. I'm going to quickly squeeze in this quick question, because you did mention the ancients being on substances, and Gina Martin from North Carolina just hit, said, I just hit my THC pen, so bear with me.

34:55But 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 to cut it short to there. Well, let's hold that for the break. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, segment three of Astrophysics and Folklore on StarTalk with our expert, Moya McTeer, when we come back.

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38:08We're back. StarTalk, Cosmic Queries, Maury McTeer knocking it out with... We're trying to find out how people think about the night sky and what the relevance of that is to science and culture with Matt Kirshen. And Moya, where do we find you on social media? I've made it easy for you because I know my name isn't that easy to spell. I'm GoAstroMo on everything. Love it. GoAstroMo. Yes. Whoa. I picked it in 2014 and I felt weird about it then, but now I kind of love it. Yeah, yeah, it's your moniker. So Moya, M-O-I-Y-A, and McTeer is what it sounds like, but go Astro Mo. I love it. I love it. So let's keep this up.

38:52Oh, one thing I wanted to add to that previous segment, when the questioner commented on Orion and Mars, what was implicit there is that the star Betelgeuse, 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 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, red is blood. So if we see it in the sky, then the gods are angry. Exactly, exactly. All right, Matt, keep them coming. Oh, 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.

39:39And then the THC started to kick in and the question continues. Wow, Gina, I hope you're having a great time. And I'm going to 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. So it 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.

40:17Is it stuff coming out of black holes? Probably not. I'm going to, 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. But it doesn't seem like that's likely. All right, 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. Right, right. And so that was a question that came out under the influence of THC?

40:55Yeah, but I think it was pretty good. And also just while we're talking about black holes, Molly Jebson says, who's an American university student living in Paris, says, I'm fascinated by white holes and I recently read that a 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 question too? Yes, it sounds like it. It was not. Molly was aspecific as to what was influenced in that question. It could have just been a sheer wonder of the universe. Yes. That is a force of THC unto itself, right? The wonder of the universe.

41:30So, Moria, what do you know about white holes? I know very little about white holes. I was just going to say we're beyond my realm of expertise here. Yeah, all I know is that it's like a mathematical opposite of a black hole. Yeah, if 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, Moya, someone once told me that there's no such thing as gravity. Earth sucks. And I've believed it ever since. Are you saying, are you trying to disavow me of this understanding of gravity?

42:01Come on now. I like to hold multiple truths in my head at the same time. All right. All right. Matt, keep going. All right. Well, I'm going to combine these two questions. So I think this is getting back more onto home territory for both of you. So Marcus Gustafson 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 we located within it? And also Dylan, who's the physics undergrad, says, I'm wondering how we map the Milky Way. How do we observe something if we're currently in it? Do we just assume our looks from other galaxies?

42:36Wow. Yeah. Plus, Moya, every star we see in the night sky is in the Milky Way, right? So tell us what's going on there. I mean, colloquially, we say, see that band of light? That's the Milky Way. Yeah, we do say that. As though that'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 Earth is a part of it. We are a part of it.

43:13So 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 1920s 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 collection. That was island universe used in the context of a galaxy. Of other galaxies, yes. Right. Not as a separate, not in the multiverse sense. Correct. Right. Yes. They were not having a great debate about the multiverse theory in the 1920s.

43:53But 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 1600s where 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. They assumed we were in the center of it. So what they did was look out at the night sky and map the bright points of light, assuming that they were all like the same size.

44:34And 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.

45:10It'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 1600s. Is it as hard as an unborn child figuring out what its mother looks like? I think it's easier than that. Okay. I do think, because there's no - They don't need like remote mirrors, you know, to look outside the, you know.

45:51I think that the unborn baby could learn about the distribution of organs, but it would have no idea what the mother's face looked like. Right. I feel like we have a pretty good understanding of what the Milky Way's face looks like 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. Right, cool. All right, Matt, keep it coming. All right, well, we have a question about… And plus, I mean, depending on how many questions you have, I might want to go into lightning mode. Yeah. And this will put Moya to the test.

46:32Yes, we've got… See if she has sound bites in her. This is like a great test of the educator. If we go into lightning mode, I'm going to have to do some editing on some of these questions because this is a subject that people have gone deep on with the questions. People have written like mini essays. They babbled on and on about it. Well, they're very excited about it. So the artist formerly known as James Smith from Indianapolis, I remember that name from previous episodes, says, Dr. Moyer, astrology is a very popular subject these days. I think it's fair to say there is a popular subject all days.

47:08But 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 behaviors or even their great luck on? Who were 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. I love that question. And Moya, wouldn't modern astrology be considered folklore by your definitions? I do. 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.

47:43They 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, 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 you would distinguish then astrologers of 500 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, yet they're still doing it.

48:25Yes, I would distinguish them. 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 pretty agreed upon by folklorists 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, by 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.

49:08And 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. Matt, do you think that'd be a badass business card? Yeah. Astrologer, priest, and astrophysicist. That, you know, you're in charge of everything. at that point. 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 didn't know how everything works. Yeah, you're just totally plugged in to everything that matters.

49:44You're a scientist. Matt, we got to totally do lightning round. All right, lightning round. Next question. I'm going to have to summarize this question because Edwin J. Roldan from Lancaster, Pennsylvania asked, what's your opinion on whether the next Mars mission should have life detection experiments on it? The Mars lander didn't contain a life detection test, but the Viking did one. Yeah, back 45 years ago, there were some ambiguous results from the Viking landers. And so you think about exoplanets a lot, Moria. 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, what do you think should be the priorities for the upcoming rovers?

50:23Yeah, I think that if there was kind of cloudy evidence before, let's try and clarify that evidence cloud. As long as there aren't other instruments that would do better science, if it's not going to take up space, then yeah, let's put something on there that could try and detect more directly evidence of life. All right. I like that. Keep going. Matt. All right. I'm combining another couple of long questions and I'm going to cut them very short. Jim from Brooklyn and also James Bennett, both asking about photons coming from stars. So James says, where does the energy of the photons go that have been redshifted due to the expansion of the universe.

51:00And Jim wants to know, if I stand out in the dark, I can see Vega shining brightly. Photons from Vega are hitting my retinas. But it's also true if I'm 10 feet from my left, 30 miles out to sea, or floating in interstellar space. So all these photons are coming from the same star. So basically, how many of these photons are coming off? This seems a lot of photons. And what's the deal with that? And then it goes on to questions about dark energy and matter, but I think you've answered that already. There's a million photons. Whitney, so many photons. One of my favorite things about light is that it's isotropic.

51:34If you have a source of light, photons are going to be coming off of it in all directions. And as they spread out, they're still going to hit you even if you're 10 feet to the left or somewhere in the middle of the ocean. It's all one of the millions of photons coming from that same star. Millions. So many photons. I feel like that is very separate from the first question you asked. So the first question was, what happens to the energy of the redshifted photons? Yeah. I mean, so the redshift of the universe only happens on very large scales. When we're talking about Vega or other stars within our own galaxy that we're seeing, they are not being redshifted away from us because of the expansion of the universe.

52:15It's light from very distant galaxies that are being redshifted from the expansion of the universe. Neil, do you want to talk about where that energy goes? Oh, yeah, sure. There's still the same amount of energy. It's just now diluted. Okay, so the total energy is still there, but it's now spread over a much larger volume. And so when you dilute the energy, the photon you detect, okay, has lower energy, but the total energy of all of space remains the same from what had been put into it from the beginning. So we think of energy density in the way you can think of matter density. Some things are more dense than others.

53:01You know, a brick is denser than a balloon. So when you stretch out the universe, things just get less energy dense. But you're not losing any energy to some secret place. It's more diffuse. There you go. All right, Matt, go for it. So Sandra Pagliani, who, like many of the questions, that says nice things about the podcast first and then says, can you possibly explain ghosts? Well, can't we hear the nice things? I want to hear the nice things. Oh, I know. We'll just skip over that. I thought we were in a lightning round, Niels. No, sorry. We didn't have time for the whole. Except when people say nice things.

53:36Oh, there's been a bunch of nice things that various people have said. I just said my favorite podcast of all time. Someone else who I can't remember now said thank you for all the science and the humor. People say lovely things about you and the show. Okay, I think they're doing that just to get their question answered. You say nice... Maybe true, but that's a valid strategy. But Sandra says, could you possibly explain ghosts with physics? Since we can only perceive a specific range of the frequency spectrums when it comes to sound and light, we base our reality on these limitations. Could it be that what we call, quote, ghosts is residual energy from past that is reaching us now, filtering into our current state of reality for a brief moment?

54:17Frequences can create resonances of various harmonic intervals, so some of those frequencies can be picked up by humans dot dot dot possibly wow and Moya ghosts aren't they part of folklore ghosts are absolutely part of folklore look I I have never learned anything in any of my science classes that told me ghosts couldn't exist oh oh I see what you did there there's not a chapter why ghosts don't exist I've never read that textbook oh But I, like I said before, I like to hold two truths in my mind at the same time. I would love a world where ghosts and magic and these other folklore things exist.

55:02That's why I study them. I like to inhabit that world. Science can't explain most of that yet. So maybe one day there will be a textbook that says definitively whether or not ghosts exist because of physics. But until I read that book, Science is real, and also ghosts could happen. Oh, okay. What about Frankensteins? No! Oh, that is science, yes. That is a mad scientist. What about vampires? What about— Draculas. Yeah, the list. I got a list ready to come into this conversation. They're specifically calling it Frankensteins just to annoy the many pedants who listen to this show. Yeah, to get away from the Frankenstein versus Frankenstein's monster thing.

55:46Yeah, Frankenstein was just a human. He was just a scientist. So yeah, that exists. The Dr. Frankenstein, yeah. There actually are some very interesting scientific ties to the origin of a lot of these folkloric figures. I've been listening to some podcasts recently about where the various myths about vampires came from because there are animals that suck blood. There are animals that will dig up graves. there are reasons why you might find these stories very present throughout the world. Oh, with natural causes is what you're saying. Yeah, exactly. I mean, this is, so I didn't get a chance to say this in the first segment, but the main interest I have in this intersection between science and folklore is that I really do believe they're two sides of the same coin.

56:36And that coin is something you can buy understanding of the universe with. People weren't just making up stories for the fun of it most of the time. Ancient humans were observing the world around them and coming up with explanations that fit into their worldview. And as we scientifically progressed and we gained tools and we had accumulated knowledge over thousands of years, then our worldview shifted away from magic and gods and folklore. But there's still use. There's still value in the stories and the observations that people made. so what you should do is write a book of today's folklore that one day science will have something to say about yeah I'd love that yeah all the little superstitions and then maybe in a hundred years scientists will be like oh that's why that happens alright well we'll hope to get you back on this show before a hundred years from now please when we have that Moya it's been a delight to finally meet you Matt, great to have you here.

57:39Always great to be here. All right. You've been watching, possibly listening to StarTalk Cosmic Queries, our folklore edition. Loving it. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.

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