Q&A 150: What is Space Dust, Anyway? And More...

In this week's questions and answer show, I explain how all the dust in space forms, could life be Von Neumann probes, why do people think black holes lead to another universe, and more...

00:00 Start
00:57 What is space dust?
05:14 Does the Kardashev scale make sense?
08:43 Could life on Earth be Von Neumann probes?
11:31 What should I point my telescope at?
14:23 Why do people think black holes go somewhere?
16:36 Why are we seeing so many asteroids?
19:36 If we can track space debris, shouldn't we be able to detect UFOs?
21:42 Would a warp drive be able to travel within the event horizon of a black hole?
22:59 Could we investigate the atmosphere of gas giants?
26:41 What's the first resource we'll mine off Earth?
29:05 How big is a galaxy?
30:42 Any benefit to stationing a telescope in the outer Solar System?
33:07 What will Space Force accomplish?

Want to be part of the questions show? Ask a short question on any video on my channel. I gather a bunch up each week and answer them here.

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[ztechrepairs]

Im suprised more people dont watch these. I love them

[RockawayCCW]

What happens to the gasses that get stripped away from Earth's atmosphere? Do they fly away forever? They get collected by Jupiter? Do they get stuck in the heliopause?

[jasong]

Every time an astronomer says gas and dust, I asked myself this question. I appreciate you addressing it!

[truebaran]

16:02 but as far as I know it IS known that the surface of the event horizon is not the surface of the ex-star which turned into black hole. In other words, from the point of view of experiencing gravity, you wouldn't notice the moment of crossing an event horizon

[Chumfin]

Could the effects of mass be inconsistent across the universe

[onderozenc]

Extraterrestrials are using tremendous of energy, beyond the scope of ours, to induce warp drives. So, this hypothesis is extremely correct.

[AbqHalsey]

what exactly is in those little air conditioners that astronauts carry on their way to a launch?

[microschandran]

Hi Fraser, can we detect primordial gravitational waves, or neutrino background that occurred in early universe? What technology do we need for this detection?

[markus]

Hi Fraser, Question:
Will it ever be possible to directly measure Hawking radiation? Right now, the wavelenght of light emitted by stellar mass black holes should be very long, somewhere in the km range, much longer than light by any other sources in the Universe. So could we just build a sub-radio telescope with a few km size and look at black holes?

[forcedave]

Hi Fraser 👋🏼 I crossed this channel and a question popped up, What is the big impact starship can make in the planetary science?

[ddude]

Do you only do Q&A and Interviews or is there just not a lot of space news? I miss the new space discovery and news videos. The last one I can recall was about Venus, 9 months ago.

[idodekkers]

Hey Fraser
I always hear that gas evaporates to space (i.e. the dwindling Helium), What I don't understand is - even though it is very light, shouldn't it still be pulled by gravitation?
it's not like the sun that has a flux of energy leaving it?

[kk]

33:33 were those camouflaged solar panels?!

[CarFreeSegnitz]

Kardashev alternatives:

Sagan information mastery. Rating based on the amount of information routinely transmitted.

Barrow microdimensional mastery. Rating based on mastery of small things. Trees & rocks -> precision milling -> DNA -> nanotech -> femtotech -> manipulating properties of spacetime.

[dwayneduval]

When I look at M31 (through a reflecting scope) which edge is closer to us? The top or the bottom? Curious which edge is a hundred thousand years younger...?

[aaron]

What does 'using all of the energy of all of the stars in an entire galaxy' even mean? It's like saying, 'I've eaten everything edible on Earth.' It really doesn't make sense. My problem with the Kardashev scale is the assumption energy use keeps going up. After a few Dyson spheres, I imagine consumption leveling off. It's like eating... at some point you don't need any more, even if it's available.

[doncarlodivargas]

Q: we hear about black holes creating ripples in the universe, but why ripples, what is the reason we get those ripples, is the some kind of pulsating force somewhere? Is it something with the black holes in elliptical orbitals around its other?

[laughlinflyer]

Has anyone theorized what a mostly evaporated black hole will look like when it finally goes past the Schwarzschild radius? Eons of collected light, cosmic debris and single socks suddenly spilling out?

[eduardxirinachs]

Hi Freiser, how far away can our inadvertently sent radio signals be detected?
Or vice versa, what is the maximum radio wave distance of an advanced alien civilization that can be detected by us?

[nocallnoshow]

Hey Fraser! I'm just curious--why is the heliopause considered the boundary of the solar system when the oort cloud is focused around the sun? Also, is most interstellar space just a field of oort clouds that might be impossible to navigate?