Dean Regas chats with Justin Spilker, Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Texas A&M, about a recent discovery of complex organic molecules in a distant galaxy. Listen for an illuminating conversation about the James Webb Space Telescope, groundbreaking discoveries, and the incredible chemistry of the cosmos. New episodes of Looking Up release every other Friday!
This star chart for M51 represents the view from mid-northern latitudes for the given month and time.
Image courtesy of Stellarium
This star chart for M51 represents the view from mid-northern latitudes for the given month and time.
Image courtesy of Stellarium
Additional resources referenced in this episode:
- CTV: Webb Space Telescope Segment
- The Simple Lens: An Introduction
- Sight, Light, and Color
- Starfinder, Episode 24: Fingerprints of Light
- Messier 51: The Whirlpool Galaxy
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Looking Up is transcribed using a combination of AI speech recognition and human editors. It may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
Dean Regas: [00:00:00] So one of the cool things about astronomy is just how far away we can see stuff. I mean, we've got these telescopes on the ground, these massive telescopes that can see, you know, to the planets, see to the stars, see to the galaxies. You know, when we look in space, we're also looking back in time. We've got the Hubble telescope up in space and the new James Webb Space Telescope that's peering back to, like, the beginning of these distances sound astronomical.
Like, you know, if we think about the moon, the moon's 240, 000 miles away. On average, it takes light about 1.25 seconds to go from the moon to the earth. So we would say the moon's one and a quarter light second away. Mars is, you know, about, you know, 15, 20 light minutes away. Then we get to stars, and stars are light years away.
There's a star out there called Sirius that's up in the wintertime [00:01:00] sky. You can really see it really bright. It's about 8.6 light years away. So that. Light left there 8. 6 years ago and is now entering your eyeballs, which is kind of cool. But we're going to be talking about galaxies that are millions of light years away, even billions of light years away.
Ooh, stay tuned. This is going to be fun. From the studios of Cincinnati Public Radio, I'm your host, Dean Regas, and this is Looking Up.
A show that takes you deep into the cosmos. Or just to the telescope in your backyard to learn more about what makes this amazing universe of ours so great. Our guest today is Justin Spilker, Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Texas A& M and has been working with the James Webb Space Telescope.[00:02:00]
Yeah, a lot of people do ask me about the, the vastness of the universe. Is it intimidating? Is it scary? I don't know. I guess it doesn't really bother me that much. Thinking about things that are millions of miles away, billions of miles away, trillions of miles away. I just think it's so cool.
[News Clip]: Well, it will detect light from the earliest stars and galaxies in the process of formation. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
Dean Regas: We can't actually physically travel to the stars. Telescopes can let us see what makes up stars, what the composition of, what the elements are, what the molecules are in there. all by looking at light.
[Educational Video]: Different types of telescopes collect different forms of radiation. Optical telescopes collect visible light and infrared radiation. [00:03:00]
Dean Regas: It's been one of the most remarkable fields in astronomy called spectroscopy, where we can take the light of these distant things and almost like put them through like a prism. You know, like when you shine light through a prism, you break up into the colors.
Astronomers can detect What elements might be in there? Hydrogen, helium, carbon.
[Educational Video]: The molecular structure of every element in the universe is very different and can be identified by very unique color patterns of light.
Dean Regas: And so we can know what these stars and galaxies are made of. What astronomers have found recently are these complex organic molecules and the thing about spectroscopy and finding complex molecules and elements is it is incredibly accurate.
And that's where that comes in with the James Webb Space Telescope.
[Educational Video]: When it comes to optical telescopes bigger is better. Why? Large telescopes have a greater light gathering power.
Dean Regas: If these [00:04:00] signatures show up and say, yes, there's hydrogen here, yes, there's oxygen here, it's there, and you can see this even billions of light years away.
That also means that the light left those galaxies billions of years ago. So... What do they look like today? Maybe our guest can help us out with that and think deep thoughts here. Uh, oh man, I can't wait to talk about these organic complex molecules with Justin Spilker. This is going to be awesome.
Well, Justin, thanks so much for joining me today.
Justin Spilker: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Dean Regas: We got this story about these complex organic molecules. Uh, tell us like what they are and what's so cool about them and you know, what makes them so different?
Justin Spilker: Yeah. So these, these molecules are really large. So you might normally think of molecules as something like water, H2O, that has three atoms in it, right?
Two hydrogens and one oxygen. But the kind of molecules that we were looking [00:05:00] for can have hundreds of atoms even. And so that means that it basically takes a lot of complex chemistry in order for them to be formed. These aren't organic molecules like DNA or sugar or something like that. These are more organic molecules like you tried to forget about from your high school chemistry class.
They have a bunch of carbon atoms in them. And since carbon is one of the most common elements in the universe, uh, these, these molecules can grow quite large, which, you know, tells us a lot about the complicated chemistry that's going on out in interstellar space. You actually might be familiar with them a little bit on Earth, because they show up here in the form of things that we typically don't like.
These molecules show up in smog and wildfire smoke. And so there's, you know, people across this planet who right now are breathing in some of these molecules, and we know they definitely cause cancer. But at least in space, they're, they're not nearly as... Uh, dire as that makes it sound, they just kind of form naturally in space.
And so we see them out [00:06:00] there in the Milky Way and now we've seen them out in, in very distant galaxies as well.
[Educational Video]: We can do in effect stellar chemistry as well as physics.
Justin Spilker: It's kind of, I think, cool to link these molecules that we know on earth, even if we don't like them very much, uh, to also be able to see them out in the depths of space.
Dean Regas: So these are not like, uh, like signatures of life, they are kind of pointing to possible signatures of life. Is that a fair statement?
Justin Spilker: Yeah, I think that would be fair. They definitely don't tell us that there's life out there. Believe me, if we had discovered that you would have heard about it before now.
But it does, I think, tell us a lot about how, you know, complicated molecules can form even fairly quickly in the history of the universe.
Dean Regas: Well, and so, you know, I'm, I'm picturing when you say molecules, I'm thinking of, uh, you know, science class and looking through a [00:07:00] microscope and, you know, that kind of stuff and, and the, the diagrams of these things. But how are we seeing these with telescopes?
Justin Spilker: So basically every atom, every element, every molecule has certain colors of light that it, you know, likes to give off. Um, so for example, hydrogen has a really bright, uh, you know, red color to it.
And it has another bright blue color to it. And if you see those two specific exact colors, then you know that there's hydrogen there. We call this spectroscopy, which is also something that you might want to forget from your high school chemistry class.
[Educational Video]: This is the science then of spectroscopy. It's a $50 word, but it essentially means that we're able to study one type of atom to the exclusion of all others.
Justin Spilker: That's the kind of, uh, observation that we're trying to do with James Webb. It has these, uh, you know, prisms on the, on the telescope essentially, and, and other ways to [00:08:00] break light up into its individual colors.
[Educational Video]: Every different element that they looked at had its own distinctive pattern of lines. These lines were just like fingerprints, and each element had its own unique set of identifiers.
Justin Spilker: And then what we do is we basically say, Okay, can I see those specific fingerprint colors that correspond to these molecules? Um, and so we went out because we knew what the fingerprint of these molecules looked like, uh, and then we wanted to go and see if we could find them in this, you know, very distant galaxy.
Dean Regas: Well, I think that, um, you know, one of the other things that's really fascinating about the Webb telescope is, you know, the sheer distance that it can see, the sheer distance to these objects. And part to me that's really fascinating is the, this gravitational lensing. We see this in these images of how things are shifted and duplicated.
It's like things are coming through a funhouse mirror. Uh, how do you describe gravitational lensing and how does that help with our, uh, discoveries of things that are really far away?
Justin Spilker: So [00:09:00] lensing is a real gift to us from nature. We're, we're very fortunate to live in a universe where this happens.
[Educational Video]: Light reveals most of what we know about our surroundings.
Justin Spilker: The basic gist is that if you have two galaxies that are basically lined up almost perfectly from our point of view here on Earth, uh, one in front of the other, then the light from the galaxy that's in the background, the further away one, actually gets bent and distorted and magnified by the gravity of the galaxy that's in front.
[Educational Video]: The bending of light as it passes from one medium to another is called refraction. The light behaves like a set of wheels. On a smooth surface, the wheels move quickly. On a rough surface, they move slowly. When the wheels roll into the rough surface at an angle, they slow down and turn slightly.
Justin Spilker: You can actually show this yourself at home too, if you have a, a tall stem wineglass. And you hold that wineglass up in front of a candle, for example, in the background. As the light from that candle goes into and around the [00:10:00] glass, if you look at the stem of that wineglass, you'll see that it's, it's bent into these arcs and circles and, and other, you know, sorts of patterns.
[Educational Video]: What results is a change in direction.
Justin Spilker: Basically what's happening is that light that should have missed your eyes, that should have gone somewhere else in the room, has actually gotten bent and, and shot back towards your eyes, and so that candle actually looks brighter than it otherwise would.
[Educational Video]: A refraction.
Justin Spilker: And that's basically exactly what happens in space as well, when you have these two galaxies that are almost perfectly lined up from our point of view.
It makes that galaxy in the background much brighter, and much bigger than it otherwise would be. And so that means that our telescopes can observe things faster, we don't have to sit and collect light for quite as long. That lets us understand these, these very distant galaxies in way more detail than you could otherwise.
Dean Regas: Uh, the discovery here, what do you think is next? What are you hoping to see next that, uh, comes from these observations?
Justin Spilker: This was basically a, a first attempt, I would say, to try to find [00:11:00] these complex organic molecules really early in the history of the universe.
So the galaxy that we were looking at is one, uh, that lived when the universe was only about one and a half billion years old, only quote unquote. But you know, compared to 13 and a half billion years today, that's, you know, pretty far in the past. And since that light has taken so long to travel to us, we're basically seeing this galaxy as it was when the universe was very, very young.
[Educational Video]: All telescopes do the same thing. They collect energy or radiation to form an image astronomers can use to study the universe. And, and so since this was kind of a first effort, we picked a galaxy that You know, it was one of my personal favorites that we thought was going to be a pretty good target for this.
And now that we've found these complex organic molecules, now that we've shown that they can form out in space pretty quickly. I'm really excited to try to push this back even further in time.[00:12:00]
Is there some point in time, if we keep looking further and further into the history of the universe, where these molecules just haven't had enough time to form? If we go back to 1 billion years after the Big Bang, 500 million years after the Big Bang, can we find this point where basically the chemistry is so complex, so hard, that these molecules just haven't had enough time to form yet?
That's one thing that I'm excited about.
Dean Regas: All right. Well, I can't let this drop, but you said this is one of your favorite galaxies. I mean, what, what is the name of that?
Justin Spilker: Is that weird to say?
Dean Regas: No, I mean, my, I have my favorites, the whirlpool galaxy, but you know, that's just me, but, uh, what's your, what is the, in your top five favorite galaxies, uh, what's the name of this, this, uh, this one.
Justin Spilker: Oh, yeah. Okay. So the name of this one is kind of anticlimactic. It's more of a phone number than a name, but it's called SPT0418 -47. And it's called that because it was discovered by the South Pole [00:13:00] Telescope, SPT. One guess as to where that's located. Uh, and then the numbers are basically its coordinates on the sky.
So it doesn't have a good name. It doesn't have a very good name, not like, you know, the Whirlpool or the Antennae or something like that, which are also some of my favorites. Uh, but this one's been a long time favorite of mine too, because I've studied it a lot during my career.
Dean Regas: Uh, so romantic, so romantic, but, um, so the James Webb Space Telescope, it's not like anybody's putting their eye up to the eyepiece and seeing this stuff for themselves.
You're getting this data back. What kind of excites you about this, uh, work and, and just being able to work with the, the Webb Telescope?
Justin Spilker: Yeah, it's maybe not quite as romantic as going to an eyepiece and looking through it for yourself, uh, but I would say it's still pretty darn exciting. You wake up in the morning and you see that you got an email that says, hey, your data's ready.
Come download it, please. And so you do, and you start flipping through and trying to understand what all it is that you have. And [00:14:00] especially with a brand new telescope like this one, uh, since there's a lot of stuff that we don't know about how it operates yet, you know, basically everything is brand new.
You are probably the first person in the world to get to see this exact thing that you're looking at right at that moment.
Dean Regas: I fully realize you're, you're getting this email from an actual person, but somehow inside me I want an email from the James Webb Space Telescope directly. So send it to me, JWST, I'd like an email, uh, you know, we can start a relationship. It's fine.
Justin Spilker: Yeah, exactly.
Dean Regas: Well, Justin, this has been great talking with you. Uh, congratulations on the work with James Webb and, uh, continued success. And, uh, Thanks so much for joining us today.
Justin Spilker: Yeah. Thanks so much. It's been a pleasure.
Dean Regas: Yeah. So I was, uh, kidding, not kidding about favorite galaxies with Justin there. Uh, yeah, my favorite galaxy definitely is the whirlpool galaxy. Well, outside the Milky Way that we live in, but, uh, the whirlpool [00:15:00] galaxy is a pretty incredible site. Uh, it's one of those things that you can actually see with a Good sized amateur telescope.
You don't need a professional telescope to see it. Definitely helps to be out in the dark sky. But, I always, uh, debate, you know, like when I want to show people a galaxy in a telescope, I think, you know, you're always picturing these beautiful color pictures that are taken by professional telescopes with long exposure photographs.
And you put your eye up to the eyepiece and look at a galaxy. Looks like a gray smudge. And everybody seems to be disappointed. So I usually get people prepared ahead of time and say, okay, I'm gonna show you this galaxy. You're not going to like it. I mean, you're going to barely see it, but there in the eyepiece, that gray smudge is billions and billions of stars that's millions of light years away from you.
Kind of build it up. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work. The Whirlpool Galaxy, if you get a big enough telescope and you get dark enough conditions, you can actually see the spiral arms of that [00:16:00] galaxy. And it's other galaxy that's right next to it that's kind of being swallowed up by the bigger galaxy.
It looks like a whirlpool. It is really cool. So, check it out. If you have some, uh, telescopes that you can go to. See if you can go to dark sky, see the whirlpool galaxy. And of course, we'll post some pictures of the whirlpool galaxy. Just, uh, check out the link in the description on our website. Looking Up With Dean Regas is a production of Cincinnati Public Radio.
Ella Rowen is our show producer, audio engineer, and wavelength monitor. I'm not positive, but I think her favorite, uh, wavelength might be 91. 7. But our theme song is Possible Light by Ziv Moran. I'm Dean Regas, and keep looking up!
