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JOHN YANG: Itús been 
an exciting time for 
astronomers, astrophysicist 
and other scientists

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who specialized in the goings 
on in the far reaches of space. 
Since the beginning of the month

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observations of some never 
before seen celestial 
events have been reported 
in science journals.

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Science correspondent 
Miles OúBrien is here 
to explain all. Miles,

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thanks for joining us. The first 
one is a star swallowing up a 
planet that was orbiting around

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it. And as you talk about, weúre 
going to show some animation 
from Caltech depicting,

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MILES OúBRIEN: Well, John, I 
donút want to ruin your weekend. 
But this is in fact a preview of

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what lies ahead for our 
little planet Earth. 
A team of researchers 
at Palomar Observatory

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outside San Diego, were using 
a Wide Field Camera called 
the Zwicky Transient Facility,

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which looks at a big swath of 
the night sky looking for things 
like comets and asteroids.

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Astronomer Kishalay De at MIT, 
is going through data from 2020.

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Thereús so much data that 
they have a backlog, and 
he noticed a star about

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12,000 light years away 
that grew 100 times 
brighter over the course

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of a week. He thought maybe 
that was a binary star, which he 
studied quite a bit two stars,

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which kind of interact 
with each other. And their 
brightness changes as the 
gravity pushes in polls.

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But the problem was the 
total amount of energy that 
was released by this event

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was way less than it would be 
if it was two stars. And so 
that meant by virtue of that,

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that it was probably a 
black hole swallowing up 
a planet, but itús not 
just any planet 10 times

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bigger than Jupiter. And 
I guess the flash that he 
saw, I guess it amounts 
to a Cosmic Belt, John.

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JOHN YANG: You say this is 
going to happen to earth.

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Does this happen to all 
planets? Do they eventually 
sort of go into their sons?

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MILES OúBRIEN: Not all of 
them I gather planets in our 
solar system are likely to

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be spared. And weúre kind of 
on the bubble. We know Venus 
and Mercury theyúre goners

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eventually. Thereús some 
scientific debate as to 
what will happen to us.

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But basically, the star 
gets bigger and bigger as it 
gets older, like we all do,

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I suppose, and gets hotter, 
and eventually gobbles up 
the near planet. So Iúm sorry

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to give that piece of news to 
everybody here this weekend. 
But we have some time to plan.

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JOHN YANG: Youúve given 
us a lot of lead time. 
The next thing I want to

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ask you about is the largest 
space explosion ever detected.

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MILES OúBRIEN: This one is 
very far away 8 billion light 
years away. So that means what

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weúre seeing in these images 
or animations, or data is at 
about 6 billion years after the

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creation of the universe, 
the Big Bang. This explosion 
lasted about three years.

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So what was it? No oneús really 
sure. The current thinking 
is that maybe the black

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hole in this case, much more 
powerful than ours swallowed 
up a huge gas cloud and in

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so doing created this multi-year 
explosion. So again, the 
universe is rough place, John.

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JOHN YANG: Tough neighborhood. 
Thereús also a neutron 
star that is behaving in

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a way that scientists 
didnút think a star could 
behave. And first of all,

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start off by telling us 
what a neutron star is.

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MILES OúBRIEN: Itús like a 
dead star didnút quite make 
it to black hole status. But a

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neutron star is very, very 
dense object. There are 
limits to how bright they can

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become. Itús called the 
Eddington limit, little bit of 
physics here, but basically,

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itús a push and pull between the 
light photons and gravity. And 
the physicists would tell you

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that given the size of any 
particular object, thereús a 
limit to how bright it can be.

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But this one turns out is 100 
to 500 times brighter beyond 
this so called Eddington limit.

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And they think whatús 
happening here is that 
the magnetic field at this 
particular neutron star is

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actually warping the atoms 
and allowing that star 
to hold together longer 
than it would otherwise.

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So thatús a little bit 
mind-bending and actually 
literally add embedding. 
But there you have it.

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JOHN YANG: This is all 
mind-bending to me. The 
closest instance of a 
black hole tearing apart

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a star, remind us or describe 
what a black hole is. And weúll 
play some animation from NASA.

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MILES OúBRIEN: Yeah, these are 
huge gravity wells that are 
at the center of most galaxies

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is one of the center of 
ours. This one, they say 
close in astronomical terms,

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itús 137 million light 
years away from Earth. 
And we know about these 
tidal disruption events,

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which create this thing, 
what my favorite astronomical 
term spaghettification,

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it pulls things in so 
rapidly that they stretch 
out spaghetti style.

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And this was the closest 
one weúve seen. But as 
you look at this animation 
that NASA made for us,

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this is all a reminder of number 
one, how far science has taken 
us to even understand all of

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this. And the fact that 
we know this all exists. 
We have the Webb Space 
Telescope giving us great

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imagery. We have the 
Vera Rubin Observatory in 
Chile coming online soon,

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all kinds of instruments, 
which are going to take 
us even farther and 
further back in time.

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And, you know, to me, John, itús 
a reminder that we are pretty 
insignificant in the grand

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scheme of things. And 
yet, weúve gotten pretty 
smart at figuring some 
big things out. So,

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as we face our problems here 
on Earth, we do have the 
capability of understanding big

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things. And maybe thatús 
something we can take 
in our daily lives to 
help us understand how

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we solve smaller problems 
right here on Earth. 
Thatús my philosophical 
note for the weekend.

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JOHN YANG: We appreciate 
it, Miles. This has been 
fascinating. Our own -- very

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own master the universe, Miles 
OúBrien. Thank you very much.

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MILES OúBRIEN: John, 
itús a pleasure.