S2E05 - The Search for Planet X (Planetary Science)

#PlanetX #PlanetaryScience #ExtrasolarPlanets #SolarSystemEvolution  #Telescopes #Observatories #ScienceGames #BoardGames #Science

Overview

We're going back into space this episode with The Search for Planet X, by Foxtrot Games and Renegade Game Studios. Join us with our guest, Addie Dove, planetary scientist and co-host of the Walkabout the Galaxy podcast, as we search for the mysterious Planet X while juggling the issues of scheduling telescope time, publishing papers, and attending conferences. 

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Introductions
• 03:02 - Space smells and asteroid threats
• 07:28 - Game overview
• 16:46 - What is Planet X?
• 20:22 - Hunting for things in our solar system
• 27:14 - What do we learn from planetary science?
• 31:56 - Extrasolar planets
• 38:03 - Logic rules and real bodies
• 43:39 - In-game publishing & real-world controveries
• 47:18 - Nitpick corner
• 50:17 - Final grades
• 55:49 - Wrap-up

Links

The Search for Planet X (Renegade Game Studios)
Walkabout the Galaxy Podcast 
Article on Planet X history (The Planetary Society) 
Citronaut Dave (Addy's instagram)

Find our socials at https://www.gamingwithscience.net 

This episode of Gaming with Science™ was produced with the help of the University of Georgia and is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.

Full Transcript

(Some platforms truncate the transcript due to length restrictions. If so, you can always find the full transcript on https://www.gamingwithscience.net/ )

Unknown Speaker  0:00  
Music.

Brian  0:06  
Hello and welcome to the gaming with science podcast where we talk about the science behind some of your favorite games.

Jason  0:11  
Today, we'll be talking about the search for Planet X by Fox Trot games. All right, everyone, welcome back to gaming with science. This is Jason, 

Brian  0:20  
this is Brian,

Addie  0:22  
and I'm Addie Dove. 

Jason  0:23  
All right, we have the inestimable, incorrigible Addie Dove, who told us just before recording, that she comes from the best podcast walk about the galaxy.

Addie  0:33  
I have the shirt on today too.

Brian  0:35  
Oh, cool, 

Jason  0:36  
which, sorry, listeners. We can't show you that. It's an audio podcast. You can look it up. I'm sure they have it for sale somewhere. Anyway, Addie, can you introduce yourself to our audience, let them know who you are and why you're on the show about finding Planet X.

Addie  0:48  
Happy to Yeah, hi. I'm Addie Dove. I'm a planetary scientist and physicist at the University of Central Florida. So My day job is that I do research understanding planetary surfaces. I study dust in space, so dust, specifically on the moon and asteroids, and how it behaves and how we understand it. I'm involved in a number of experimental projects and missions, and my favorite part about my research is that I've done things on on orbital assets, so on the ISS, on cube sats and on the vomit comet. So I've actually flown on the parabolic airplane flights. 

Jason  1:25  
Fun or, well, I don't know I've heard about the vomit comet, maybe not so fun, but it's fun. 

Addie  1:31  
I love it so much. 

Jason  1:32  
So you are an astro quark. That's what the host of the walk about the Galaxy podcast call themselves. 

Addie  1:36  
Yes, it is. 

Brian  1:38  
Yes. Are you bottom quark or charm? You are. Charm. Quark, Jason was right, He's right,

Addie  1:45  
Yeah. So we have strange and charm, and then we also have bottom. And lately, our newest Astro quark is down. So this is a, this is a clever name that we have because we're mostly astronomy folks, and it's astronomy podcast, and quarks are sort of like the fundamental units, right, of matter. And so there's strange charm, top bottom or truth and beauty, if you like those names a little bit better, instead of top and bottom, and then up and down.

Brian  2:11  
Truth and beauty are substitutes for which ones then?

Addie  2:14  
top and bottom. 

Jason  2:15  
Yeah, same initials, but more poetic, yes. 

Okay, one of our quarks enjoys being beauty, not bottom. 

Brian  2:22  
So are you allowed to have more than six hosts? Then do you just have to nominate people on and kick people off? 

Addie  2:29  
We've had two tops technically. So as we've had people iterate through, 

Jason  2:34  
well, you can get someone to be the gluon, holding them together. 

Addie  2:37  
Yeah, exactly. And some quirks have lasted longer than others. So we've, we've had a couple of replacements,

Jason  2:43  
All right, well, I think that's already given us one fun science fact is the quarks in matter, but let's go on. 

Brian  2:48  
I guess it is. 

Jason  2:49  
We'd like to start with some fun science fact and Addie as our guest. You get priority. Is there something fun about science that you've learned or run across lately you want to share?

Addie  2:58  
Oh, man, let me go. Let me go. Second, I have to think about it a little bit

Brian  3:02  
more. Okay, then I will go first. But I think this is probably something you already know. So if you want to hop in, that's fine. So my challenge is always, how can I make this about onions in some weird way? So what does the moon smell like? I learned what the moon smells like from the people who have been there. And I know Addie, you definitely know this for the people who have been to the move lunar regolith smells like spent gunpowder, evidently, although it doesn't last, because when those samples were brought back to Earth, it's now odorless. So there's been some speculation about why it's like that. Now I have another question for you, Addy, I again, you probably already know the answer, so I'm going to make Jason guess we're going to do a stump question, like you guys do 

Addie  3:40  
a stumper,

Brian  3:41  
 yeah, what astronomical body smells like a combination of cat urine, burnt matches, and rotten eggs?

Jason  3:48  
Okay, cat urine, burnt matches and rotten eggs. So cat urine is going to be like ammonia compounds, probably urea. Burnt matches is phosphorus and rotten eggs is sulfur. So we've got ammonia, phosphorus and sulfur, I'm going to guess IO Jupiter's volcanic Moon 

Brian  4:05  
comets stink like that, according to the organic molecule. So of the we've found organic molecules in lots of astronomical bodies in asteroids, in dust, yes, in planets, of course. But the missions that went to the asteroids picked up glycine, which is an amino acid. They also picked up hydrogen sulfide, which is one of the flavor components of onion. So if you were to have a human mission to an asteroid and go inside, it would smell really, really bad. 

Addie  4:30  
Oh yeah. I was trying to think, is it Titan? Is it Venus? Interesting? Okay, okay. 

Jason  4:35  
I mean, I guess you're protected by the spacesuit until you bring the samples inside with you, and then you've just contaminated your entire spaceship with rotten onion smell 

Brian  4:44  
and cat urine,

Addie  4:48  
which like future safe spaceships, maybe you're gonna smell like anyway, I can hope, in some ways. 

Brian  4:54  
So that was, that was my, that was my science fact, yeah. Comets smell bad. 

Addie  5:01  
I like it, 

Jason  5:02  
How about you addie, you come up with one?

Addie  5:03  
Yeah, I'm starting to think there's been a bunch of interesting JWST results out lately. So the James Webb Space Telescope, so I've been, I feel like a lot of my sort of like new science things are from that, but I don't know if they're facts. They're like new things we're seeing that are, that are sort of like blowing our mind, right? 

Brian  5:19  
Can I? Can I pitch something you guys were so excited about on your own podcast? Yes, you talk about here?

Addie  5:24  
sure.

Brian  5:25  
 So there was that asteroid that we thought would hit the Earth, and now it's, oh, now it's gonna hit the moon, or at least there's a better chance it's gonna hit the moon, right? 

Addie  5:33  
Yeah. So there's an asteroid that's great. Yes, I love talking about YR4. So there's this asteroid, YR4 2024 YR4, which has to do with like when it was discovered, and what discovered it. And it's this like asteroid that has a very elliptical orbit. So it came near the earth back in 2024 and it's going to come back in 2028 and 2032 based on its orbit, we hadn't seen it before, and then we discovered it. And the predictions were that when it comes by in 2032 it was going to hit the Earth, and it was a 3% chance that it was going to hit the Earth, which is actually a staggeringly high percentage chance for asteroid encounters like we just that's the highest we've had in a really long time. But then we looked at it with more telescopes and got more data about it, and it's not going to hit the Earth, which is great in a lot of ways, but also kind of disappointing we get to study so much. Yeah, 

Jason  5:36  
How big is this asteroid? 

Addie  5:46  
It was, it's pretty small. So, like, it would, it would be something that, like, if it hit in a city, it would be really bad news. But like, statistically speaking, it would hit in the ocean, and we'd be able to, like, observe it coming in and see it disintegrating, and see the big splash. And it wouldn't be, it's not like a dinosaur killer asteroid. It was more of like a Tunguska event kind of thing, where it wipes out a big area, which is this old location that it hit. It was an old meteor that actually, like, sort of disintegrated in the atmosphere, and so it created a shock burst and leveled trees for miles, but didn't destroy anything. So probably something more like that. So now, so we don't think it's going to hit the Earth, but there's a small chance now that it might hit the moon, which is even which is kind of exciting.

Jason  7:04  
that I agree is going to be cool, because if we can see that and not be in any danger from it, that sounds great. 

Addie  7:10  
Exactly, right. Yeah,

Brian  7:12  
yeah. You guys were all bubbling with excitement about the idea that it might hit the moon, and what it would mean for study, like knowing it was going to happen, being able to point every telescope at the moon when this happened.

Addie  7:21  
for so long, and we'd see the impact and we'd learn a lot about it, and the moon so much data.

Jason  7:28  
All right. Well, let's segue onto this game, which also actually involves asteroids, not impactors, just trying to find them and point a bunch of telescopes at them. So game for today is the search for Planet X. So quick background. This is by Foxtrot games and Renegade games studios. I assume Foxtrot is like the creator of it, and Renegade is more the distributor of it. It's actually very highly rated. It's 107 on Board Game Geek overall. So 107 out of all the games there, which is actually really, really high basic stats, plays for one to four players. Again, the obligatory single player mode, about an hour run time, ages 13 plus, which, as we now know, means that they didn't test the pieces for safety for eating. So do not eat the pieces of this game. We don't know what will happen. 

Brian  8:11  
Yeah, something bad. 

Jason  8:12  
Retail Price is $45 currently on Renegade's site. And what does this game consist of? So this is a deduction game, which for having two of these in the past three episodes. I didn't know about this genre as a genre until earlier this year. So we when we're choosing these games, we don't choose them based off of the type of game. We choose them based off of the science and the field of science we're talking about. And so this is complete coincidence. We've had two out of the last three be the same genre, but the idea is similar to Turing machine. You are trying to find something out. In this case, it is the location of Planet X, which is this mysterious 10th planet in the solar system, maybe ninth. Now, due to Pluto getting demoted, you're trying to find it, and you're trying to figure out other things like asteroids and comets and gas clouds and their relationships to each other. So the board is this large, circular board that if you're playing normal mode, it has 12 sectors. If you're playing advanced mode, it has 18 sectors, and each sector has something in it. That something can be Planet X, or it could be asteroids or comets or gas clouds or a dwarf planet or nothing. Some of them are just empty. And the thing is, there are logic rules that control where certain things show up. So comets can only show up in sectors that are prime numbered. Dwarf Planets can't be next to a gas cloud or something like that. I don't remember what all the logic rules are, but they have logic rules that connect where certain things are in relationship to each other. And your job, you have a little these cute little telescope shaped meeples, which are actually based off of four real telescopes in the world that represent your players. And you're going around the circular track that represents time. And so the idea is that as you go around the track, you're doing one of several things. You are usually surveying the sky, looking for a certain type of object, or you are doing a targeted analysis, where you get a lot. Of data on one specific sector. Or you're doing research which doesn't tell you anything about the sky, but gives you some more logic rules that help you kind of figure out the relationships among individuals. Or you're trying to figure out you say where Planet X is, and importantly, to win, you have to know not only where Planet X is, but you also need to know its neighbors to the right and to the left. So you can't just guess randomly and hope to have it, the odds of that are just too small. And if you guess wrong, there's actually a significant time penalty in terms of moving your piece ahead. And so it's guessing is bad like guessing generally is a bad thing. Other various components of the game, there are little player screens that tell you all the logic rules. They actually have a clever little card insert that will replace the basic rules with the advanced rules. If you're playing the advanced version, it has the highest quality score pads I've ever seen. They're all in full color. There are four different ones for which side of the board you're sitting on, and they're front and back for basic and expert mode. So like, these are high quality stuff like I've I've never seen so much effort put into a score pad before. I was impressed. 

Addie  11:00  
They looked nice. 

Jason  11:01  
And then the one other thing in the box which I was not expecting is actually an advertisement for the Planetary Society, which is a non profit organization that funds space research. And I thought that was cool. I actually used to be part of the Planetary Society. I think I let my membership lapse a few years ago, sorry, Bill Nye, I need to start that up again. But I thought that was cool. The Planetary Society is doing a lot of good public science outreach, including on, I know asteroids that might impact Earth. That's one of their major things, is looking for potential impactors.

Brian  11:29  
Was there a deeper connection there, other than just like, this is something we want people to know about, or was the Planetary Society involved in the game in some way?

Jason  11:37  
I don't know if the Planetary Society was involved. They might have been consulted for it. I couldn't find any evidence that they were involved in the creation of the game. There is one other very important game component, though, that's not in the box, and that's the app. So if you remember from our discussion, from Turing Machine two episodes back, the whole thing is like, who has the information you're trying to get out? And that game trying to solve it by saying, Okay, we the game has the information, and we have these fiddly little boards with holes. This is how you get that information out of the game. The search for Planet X has the same ideas like the players don't have information the game does, but they just use an app to tell you where things are. Now, if you don't want to do that, there is actually a free download on their website where you can download a game master kit where you can have one of your friends play the role of the app. And essentially, you ask them questions, they give you answers, and you just really hope that they're right and they don't mess up, because if they do, they're gonna mess up your game. So I'd probably stick with the app, just because I trust the computer to not make a mistake. So that's basically the game. As you go around, you spend your turn making observations, doing research, different actions have different time costs, so you can actually take different number of turns over the course of the game. One kind of nice little aspect of the game I liked is that there's a little turn tracker thing that goes around the board that tells you which half of the sky is visible right now. Because the idea is that you're all astronomers making observations. You can only look at the side of the sky that is dark, the side that has the sun, you can't see anything. And so you can only make observations in the half of the sky that's currently dark, and as you move around, that position changes. And so it kind of limits what you're able to look you can't just look at any sector anytime. You have to think ahead of like, Oh, if I do this, suddenly these sectors will go away next turn. I can't do that. There are definitely times when Brian and I were playing that I made some choices based off of which sectors would appear or disappear, based off of what decisions I made on my turn. 

Brian  13:26  
and there were times that I made decisions that I ended up immediately regretting, because it's like, oh, well, now I can't get that piece of information. So we talk about when we play games, sometimes like Earth, where it's very fiddly, there's lots of little pieces to manage, lots of little cubes and cards and dice and everything else that you have to do. Search for Planet X is anti fiddly. This is the cleanest board game setup I've ever seen. It's a disc in the middle. It's your little meeples. It's just, I mean, and a lot of it's because you have to, you're handing your phone back and forth so that people can use the app in turn. But this game definitely leaves you with room for a bowl of chips. 

Jason  14:00  
Yeah, that's the thing. We have definitely had games where there is no chip room on the table afterwards. This one's fine.

Addie  14:06  
 Oh no. 

Jason  14:07  
Possibly that simplicity is why they could splurge so much on the scorecards, is because there weren't a bunch of meeples and cubes and other things. So they could just make a really nice, printed scorecard.

Brian  14:15  
If they had to develop an app that could that must have cost something.

Jason  14:19  
True that probably cost a decent amount. Okay, yeah, you don't have to hand the phone around. If you all have the app, then you can just type in the random game code and it will give you the same game each time. But again, make sure you type in the right code, or else you're playing different games and it won't work. 

Brian  14:33  
Yeah, we actually did have to hand the phone around because I was using my phone to record us playing, so we couldn't do that. 

Jason  14:39  
So that's the idea of the game. It's actually, as Brian said, it's a fairly elegant game. I thought it was actually really fun playing. It's nice and simple, like, just try to find this thing. And there's one other part I forgot to mention, is as you go around the board and as the Earth is moving around, it triggers different things. It triggers what's called a theory phase, where, essentially you put out a publication saying, I think this item. Is in this sector, and it takes a few turns for that to work its way in and be revealed. And it's one of those interesting things where you get points for being right. You're penalized for being wrong. So you want to put it out, and you want to be right, but no matter what it is, you're giving information to your opponents, because if you're right, they suddenly know what's in that sector. If you're wrong, they know what's not in that sector. And so there's this little tension of, do I want the points, or do I want to keep that information to myself, but possibly be scooped by one of my opponents? And then there is also actually a Planet X conference event that happens when you reach a certain point, which there's nothing fancy about, you just learn a new logic rule about where Planet X is located, like it's not opposite an asteroid, or it's within three sectors of a comet or something like that. It's called a conference. You don't actually confer as a group, but it's a fun little thing that they put that in to kind of keep up the appearance of you're actually scientists doing scientific things like putting forth theories and publications and going to conferences.

Brian  15:55  
Yeah there was a keynote address, and everybody's like, looking at their own data. Now it's like, Oh, wait. How does this inform my logical deductions about which sector's actually empty?

Addie  16:04  
Yeah, I really appreciate, I mean, there's a lot of mechanics that we can, we can talk about, but I really appreciated some of those, like, additional features that sort of give you. There's like, oh, there's a community knowledge aspect, and then there's, yeah, you have to publish your results to get the points for them. It's so true to the scientific endeavor.

Jason  16:22  
It is. And that's the thing. Like, if you go into actual scientific fact, there's almost none in this game. I mean, there are logic rules of which things have to be next to each other. Maybe, well, maybe we can talk about that later. There's not that much science. And yet it feels like science, which is an interesting thing, yeah. And so now we're going to pivot to talking about that science, and maybe not so much the science in the game as the science that the game is representing. And so Addie, I have a very crucial critical question for you to start us off. What is Planet X and why haven't we found it yet? 

Addie  16:54  
Yeah, it's a trick question. So Planet X is, I guess, I would say the most recent incarnation is sort of this hypothetical planet, right? And even in the game, right? It's in a blank sector of space, and you're hypothesizing that it's there. And the most Yeah, so I said the most recent incarnation because there actually was, think when, oh, man, I'm totally blanking on his name right now, when Lowell was looking for something that was like Neptune. 

Jason  17:22  
Percival, Lowell?

Addie  17:23  
 Percival Lowell, sorry, was first looking for another planet that would sort of explain irregularities in Uranus and Neptune's orbits they called sort of a companion planet, Planet X. So they ended up finding Pluto, which actually didn't explain the irregularities that they were looking for because it needed to be something with a higher mass. So that's sort of, I think, where the name potentially comes from. And so in the in the most recent incarnation, there's sort of this hypothetical planet X or Planet Nine, or, I don't know, we've called it Egotron A few times on our podcast, and there's other fun names that you can come up with for it. 

Brian  17:59  
Why is it egotron? 

Addie  18:00  
Why don't even entirely remember the the full etymology of that name, but it has to do with the fact that, like sometimes when people are saying these things about discovering planets, it has to do with egos. But I think that there's additional etymology to it that I have to would like go back in the catalog and remember why we called it that. Okay,

Jason  18:20  
I assumed it had something to do with Unicron from Transformers The ego, doesn't

Addie  18:24  
it doesn't. You have to. I think if for our podcast, you probably have to assume some sort of Star Trek reference. But I actually don't think there is one for this. So, so Planet X or Planet Nine is a, is a hypothesized additional planet that is sort of Neptune sized, that is far, far out beyond Pluto's orbit. So this is the planet that would be in the outer solar system, and it would have to be like, really far out. We think that it's there potentially, based on a number of lines of evidence. And this is one of the fun things about the existence or non existence of it is there's different hypotheses. And we trade, that the community trades papers about whether or not it exists based on new observations all the time. And so the original observations are based on some dynamical observations of smaller bodies in the solar system. So there's a couple of astronomers, including Mike Brown, the Pluto killer, who have have had some observations of a bunch of other small bodies that are further out in the solar system that sort of have these interesting groupings dynamically. So like, if you look in in space and you're just looking out, they sort of okay, they're distributed. But if you plot them in interesting ways, they sort of group together. And so that could potentially be to the existence, due to the existence, of another large Neptuneish sized body that influences the gravity and gravitational perturbations of those planets. And so that's some of the original observations. And I think that was in like 2019 that sort of inspired this. There's some other folks who have said, like, well, those orbits that they're on could happen due to these other reasons also. And there's also. So other things that would happen if you had something that large out there. So where's the observations for that? And then there's been some more recent observations. It's like, Nope, it probably is there, because this other line of evidence. So there's been really interesting sort of training of why we think it might be out there. If it's out there, it's really far out so it's hard to see. But if it's as large as Neptune, there should be some observational evidence of it so, but we haven't directly ever observed it. 

Jason  20:22  
That was going to be my next question, actually, is, if we're when we're looking for this or for other bodies out there, how do we go about looking for them? Like, what do we use to try to spy new bodies? I know the Hubble Space Telescope, I imagine it's not used for planet hunting, but what do we use? 

Addie  20:37  
Yeah, so when we're looking for planets in our own solar system, or planets and other solar systems, or other planetary systems, we often use indirect observation techniques. So we look at the wobble of a star, for instance, when we're finding extra solar planets, where we see that like we were looking at a star, very bright object. You can see it from really far away, right? So we can observe it from here on earth, from the ground, with our little ground based telescopes in the game even. And we say we can see something that's out there. We can see this star, but it's it's orbit actually maybe wobbles. So that has to do with, like, gravitational tugs. So like, Jupiter actually tugs our Sun, and it sort of wobbles if we were observing it from outside the solar system. So other large planets do that to their stars also, and we've detected a lot of extra solar planets from that wobble. You can also do transit techniques, where a planet will go in front of a star and then the light blinks right. And so that's what Kepler is really well known for, the Kepler space telescope. And so where there's several of those sort of indirect techniques. For planets in our solar system and for asteroids and comets in our solar system, sometimes we do have direct observations. So we see them by either staring a long time into one part of the sky, which I think is one of the techniques you can use in the game, sort of like look, do a deep search in that part of the sky, right? And then you see, like, does something come across my telescope in that time, right? Or you can sort of be scanning all the time. So we have some telescopes on Earth that are like Pan-STARRS. As one example, it's located in Hawaii. That just does, like, sort of observations of large portions of the sky night after night after night, and then you look for changes over night after night to see if we discover new objects, 

Brian  22:12  
like planets are hard to see, right? I mean, I remember when, when New Horizons went out to Pluto. It's like the best picture we had with Hubble of Pluto was terrible.

Addie  22:21  
So most of the sort of canonical planets, right? The traditional eight planets are observable from ground based telescopes and even like binoculars, mostly right. Mercury is very difficult because it's very tiny and very close to the sun, but you can, sort of, you can see them as points of light in the sky. Pluto very, very challenging to see, even with ground based telescopes. The best one we had for a long time was from the Hubble Space Telescope. And even it was not very resolved, so it just sort of looked like a fuzzy blob. It wasn't until we got better, better imaging from that. And then, like you said, New Horizons got out there, and we were like, Oh, wait, this is a full geologically active planetary body. So they are especially when they're as far out as Neptune or Pluto, they're very hard to observe. Just because it's dim out there. Planets don't emit their own light, so the only way we detect them is from these gravitational techniques or from reflected light, right? And the sun is very dim the further out you get. And so it takes a lot of staring at an object for a long time to get to collect enough light that's been reflected back from it. 

Jason  23:24  
Okay, so is it mostly visible light? Or can we also use, I know, radio, infrared or other stuff, to try to see these things?

Addie  23:31  
Sure. Yeah, most of what we think about when we think about looking at these objects is visible light. I know a lot of our ground based telescopes are in the visible part of the spectrum, because that's what gets through our atmosphere. You get a lot of really interesting information. Interesting information about other planets from infrared. So that tells you about the heat that's being emitted and different cloud layers. On Jupiter, for instance, we learn about that in the infrared, but that's hard to do from the ground, because our atmosphere blocks a lot of that infrared light from coming into ground based telescopes. So you have to do space based telescopes for those observations, and then, like UV light also, yeah, there's a lot of really interesting information that comes from the UV but we have to again, thanks, ozone layer actually, right? We like that for our skin cells and everything, but and our DNA, but not for not so much for observing. So like those kinds of telescopes we typically have to put in space, there's really interesting data that can come from radio a lot of asteroids, for instance, and things we've detected we used to detect with the Arecibo observatory. So that was bouncing radio waves off of things, and you can use that to detect objects as well.

Brian  24:34  
I'm picturing some kind of malevolent AI astronomer bot who wants to eliminate the ozone layer and the atmosphere so that they can get a cleaner view of space.

Addie  24:45  
That's right, astronomers are always like "atmosphere!". I was shaking my fist for the listeners. 

Jason  24:52  
I was actually wondering about that, because with visible light, one thing I've heard just kind of scrolling through science news, is that a lot of astronomers are concerned with the number of satellites we're sending up, especially these giant arrays of like Starlink, where there's like 10s of 1000s of satellites that are all reflecting light down to us, and they're making these streaks across the telescopes. How is that affecting observations and stuff, and how can we get around? Because I don't think they're going to take it down internet access, global internet access, anytime soon. So what is the astronomy field doing to adjust?

Addie  25:20  
Yeah, it's challenging. So that's one of those things that like, yeah, what is the the greater good? And all sorts of arguments you can make there. Astronomers are always getting mad about things getting in our light. Just turn off all the lights all the time too, by the way. So it's challenging. It does show up in a lot like so Starlink and other constellations, right? That there's more and more of them do show up in observations and do create streaks across images. The worst time is if you're observing, sort of around sunrise and sunset, because the satellites sort of glint the most during those observation conditions. So like, if you're not observing, then the statistically, you have fewer of these streaks if you are, they show up. There should, in theory, be ways to remove them pretty easily from the data, like, they're pretty obvious, and there's usually several sets of them that go through an image, but if they happen to go right in front of the object, you're trying to view bad news, right? And as they're become more and more and more of them, it just it makes it more challenging to do the observations that you intend.

Brian  26:17  
And we're getting, like, SpaceX photo bombed? 

Addie  26:20  
Yeah, there's a lot of photo bombing. 

Jason  26:22  
Yeah, I almost wonder. That sounds like the sort of thing that AI would actually be a good use for is that, as you're recording the data, instead of just putting it all in a single image, like you stream it through, it's like, oh, that's a satellite going through. I'm just gonna, like, remove that part of it, and so it doesn't get saved in the final image or whatever.

Addie  26:38  
Yeah. And I mean, astronomers have had to do a lot of image processing and removal of of streaks and things like that for a long time, right? So that kind of stuff is like, especially because they're relatively they're going to be linear features, they're pretty easy to like detect. So even without AI, there are techniques to remove those types of things. I think it's, yeah, it's something that you have to have adaptive versions of your analysis pipelines to be able to handle some of this stuff. I don't, I mean, and I think that's going to be the solution, right? I don't think, yeah, like you said, I don't think we're not going to have these satellite constellations so or more space based telescopes. So those are way more expensive and so, 

Jason  27:14  
so I then want to zoom back a little bit, even from from this specifically, but talking about planetary science, people have been staring at the planets for 1000s of years. We've been using telescopes on them for hundreds of years. What's it for? What are we pulling out of planetary science that is worth pouring all this time and energy and papers and conferences and all sorts of stuff to try to find stuff on these planets? 

Addie  27:38  
What? What is it for? That's a great that's a great question. I think. I mean, so planetary science is, for a lot of us and for a lot of people, is about understanding the Earth's place in the universe. So planetary scientists are typically studying other planets in order to understand things about those other planets, but also to understand the basics of how those planets formed and how the solar system formed, and how the earth came to be, and why all of these things are like they are right now, to understand, like, how the earth came to be and how life came to be. A lot of it is just sort of a really innate curiosity, I think, about the universe, right that drives us to be astronomers and planetary scientists, the same as a lot of scientists are just sort of innately curious about the things around them. And so I think that, like, how that's expressed then becomes, like, this thing that is studying planetary bodies, or planetary bodies in our solar system, or in extra solar systems. And yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to, like, why are we here now, in this place in the universe, and how did we come to be here? And what is that, and how might we evolve? Right? Because we can learn a lot about the evolution of planets and the evolution of stars and planetary systems by looking at our own and then at others.

Jason  28:48  
Yeah. Actually, I was on a road trip with my daughter this past week, and due to some podcasts we were listening to, we ended up talking about the Drake Equation, 

Brian  28:55  
yeah, yeah, 

Jason  28:56  
which is, is basically our place in the universe, and how special are we? Like, What's the odds that we would contact another alien race, essentially, that is at a similar technological level, and has all these factors of like, okay, the number of stars in the universe, the number of stars that are kind of like our Sun, that could host life, the ones that have planets, the ones that have planets in that the right spot, and so on and so forth. Like all these different terms. And so far, no one knows the answer to most of those. So it seems like, while the purpose of it is not to fill out, that I don't think the Drake Equation motivates many people. It seems like it's that same idea of like, figuring out where we fit, for lack of better word, how special are we, and trying to to keep that in perspective, which I feel like the thread of science for the past 500 years has basically been keeping us humble and pointing out that we are less and less and less the center of the universe that we thought we were.

Addie  29:46  
Right, we're definitely trending that direction. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's funny because yeah, the Drake Equation is always a fun one to think about. And like so Frank Drake came up with it in like, the 60s, I think, and it was this sort of, yeah. A statistical probabilistic argument about what the number of civilizations might be, right? And there's occasionally people propose a new term to add to the equation, but like, when he proposed it, we had very we had almost no information about any of the variables that he included in the equation. And so, like, it could be one, right? It's an N, where N could be one. It could just be us, but it has to do with, like, the number of stars in the galaxy. And so every time we discover new things, the statistics about how many planets there are out there, and how many planets there are around stars, right? Like all of that's happened in the last two decades, and that's really given us a lot more knowledge about how to sort of fill out that equation. But there's always this question of, like, how many of those actually have life, and how long does life and civilization last on a planet? And then also, like, if it exists on a planet, how does it move away from that planet? And like, that's another thing. That's the aspect of my interest is in exploration, right? So if we understand how what it's like on the moon or on Mars, and how do we go there as a civilization also, and sort of expand our presence in space, I think that's an ongoing driving theme as well.

Jason  31:03  
Yeah, we've actually done two previous games on space exploration and colonization, Terraforming Mars and stellar horizons.

Addie  31:10  
I love Terraforming Mars. 

Brian  31:11  
Do you love stellar horizons? 

Addie  31:13  
I've never played that one. 

Brian  31:14  
Okay, well, set aside a weekend because the full campaign takes how long to play full eight hours. Eight hours. 

Addie  31:21  
Oh man, it's longer than Mars. 

Brian  31:23  
Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. Because in stellar horizons, each turn is a year, and you play through 200 years or so, you only get your funding every ten. You get your funding every decade, which certainly feels very real right now.

Yeah I should say, too soon.

Jason  31:39  
So if any of you listeners haven't listened to that, you can go ahead, go ahead go ahead back and listen to that. We have a NASA engineer on talking about that, but for now, we're sticking with searching for Planet X and yes, Addie, when I asked you about planetary science and getting information, I was kind of implicitly talking about the planets in our solar system. But you mentioned studying extra solar planets. What information can we get from them? Like, what data can we get about something that, as I understand it, is not even a pinprick of light in our telescopes. What can we get from it when we try to find them and look at them?

Addie  32:08  
Yeah, increasingly, when we talk about planetary science, we do talk about extrasolar planets, right? And planets around other stars, and part of that is those of us who study rocky planetary bodies or bodies in the inner solar system, typically, like those are very specific ones that are close to the sun and like the Earth and Mars and Venus, right? But then we, when we talk about those, we also include things like moons of outer planets. Now, sometimes in those discussions, like I mentioned earlier, Titan is this really crazy moon around Saturn that has a really thick atmosphere, and it has like weather processes similar to the earth, but, like, the rocks are basically ices instead of rock material, right? So it's really interesting to think about, like, what other sort of potentially places we could go, or where life could exist, or where we could go and have habitats might exist in our solar system. And so I'm coming back to your question, which is, like when we're studying other planetary systems that are very far away, right? They're around other stars, they're very far away, we get a lot of secondary information. So I was talking about earlier, the different ways we detect them, is by indirect methods for wobble or transit, but we are increasingly being able to get more direct methods. So if you have the transit method, and there's like an atmosphere of the planet, as the planet goes in front of the star, some of the light from the star goes through the atmosphere, and then you can actually measure spectroscopically some of the some of the constituents of the atmosphere. So you can actually get information about the atmospheres. You can get better information about the sizes of those planets. And so these things all tell us about, like, how many planets are there around other stars, and what's the chemistry of those planets, and do they have atmospheres, or are they rocky? And so all of that can tell us again, about, like, how unique the evolution of our solar system has been. And like, 15 years ago, so when I was in so N years ago, when I was in undergrad, right? We actually didn't have a lot of extrasolar planets we've detected yet. And even, like, 15 years ago, when we'd just been starting to detect them, we're like, okay, these are all weird sort of configurations we're discovering. Like, we're discovering Jupiter-sized planets that are close in and Jupiter-sized planets that are, like, at the location of Earth, right? And like, those are all super weird, but it's because that's the type of thing we can detect. Like it's easier to detect those things. That's not like representative. But as it turns out, as we've discovered 1000s and 1000s of extra solar systems, the like configurations of those planetary systems is statistically not like our configuration in our solar system. So all of our like ideas we've had for I don't know, 60 years about how our solar system is shaped and evolved have had to be restructured in light of these other observations to think like, why is our solar system configuration so unique, and how has it maybe changed throughout the evolution of the solar system to be the configuration we see today, and how would that have affected nacent life on early planetary bodies and how they evolve.

That's interesting to think about, because again, there's this trending of assuming that we are very typical, we are very average, we are very bland. Because that has been the pattern of science as we have gone, is that there is nothing particularly special about us. But as we're learning more about solar systems, that's not exactly true. Our solar system is a little weird, or at least a little atypical.

Yeah it is. It's super atypical. And, like, we still have some observational biases. Like, it's still really hard to find, like, an earth around another star because it's small, so like, it's not you're not going to be able to directly detect it, but also, it's small, so it's not going to cause its star to wobble very much, right? So there's a lot of biases against detecting those things, but we're still seeing, like, way more planets close in. Like, large planets close in than these large planets close out. And we have enough data now to be able to detecting more of those. So it's really interesting. And I think, yeah, there's, like, the cosmological principle, and I think we apply that in other things too. Is like, remember making these assumptions. You have to assume that, like, you're not observing a special place or a special time, because that it makes it hard to like, make broader assumptions about the thing and like and extend those observations. But it does turn out that, like, some parts of where we are in the solar system are special, and some parts about the evolution of our solar system are special. And like, how does that apply to then one of the variables in the Drake equation, right? How does that apply to us understanding, like, how unique we are and how unique the evolution of life is.

Jason  36:23  
Hey and you talked about the evolution of our solar system, you can maybe answer something. I have heard that according to recent models, the idea is that originally, Jupiter and Saturn were in the opposite order. Is that true? 

Brian  36:36  
What?

Addie  36:38  
Yes, yes. And like Uranus and Neptune, we're in totally different places too. Yeah, so there's this, there's these fun sets of models called the Nice model, but it's nice France, so it looks like the Nice model, and it's a very nice model. Yeah, those jokes are probably a decade old now, 

Brian  36:55  
not to us!

Addie  36:56  
So that model, yay. So that model has and then there's a newer one called the Grand tack. But anyway, they're dynamical models of like the evolution of the solar system. And the current configuration of the solar system is pretty stable, like things aren't moving around very much, but probably way back in the past, things were in different orders, and like Uranus and Neptune were closer in, and Saturn and Jupiter could have been switched. And then due to gravitational interactions, they like, sort of tug at each other, and they would have, like, caused one to sort of move in and one to move out. And then this also scattered a lot of asteroids out to further out in the solar system. Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

Brian  37:36  
Oh, man, all my mnemonics are going to have to change based on the model. You can't be "My Very Energetic Mother", and then everything else is out of order.

Addie  37:43  
I know. 

Brian  37:43  
Oh, geez, 

Addie  37:44  
I know. And then the whole system's out of order.

Jason  37:47  
I'm pretty sure your mnemonics have been valid for at least the past 2 billion years.

Brian  37:51  
OK, all right, fair enough.

Addie  37:53  
It's been a long time. And actually part of this ties to like the cratering we see on the moon and when that happened. And so there's some interesting, very close in ties to this evidence for that, 

Jason  38:03  
Addie I've got a question on some of the logic rules here in the game, because they have rules about what shows up where, and I don't know if any of these represent are somehow reflecting reality, like comets can only show up in prime numbered sectors, but I think just means they can only show up some places, but not others. Yeah, or a gas cloud has to be next to empty space. Or asteroids always appear in clumps. Do these reflect the way our the solar system is actually laid out? 

Addie  38:29  
Yeah, first of all, I don't know why there are glass gas clouds. What is that? I don't know why there are gas clouds in our solar system. That one seemed a little strange to me. There's so many types of objects you could have picked, but

Brian  38:39  
What should they have picked? What should they have picked? We're almost doing our nitpick corner. What would have been better than gas clouds?

Addie  38:44  
Oh, I don't, I guess I don't fully understand what they're supposed to represent. So I don't know.

Brian  38:49  
I hear about clouds of gas being things that exist out in the world, but not in a solar system. Usually, all the gas should be in planets and stuff, right?

Addie  38:56  
Yeah, there's gas on like, there's clouds on planets, and there's gas in planets, and then there are like, gas clouds and molecular clouds and things like that out in the broader galaxy. But, yeah, we don't know, like gas clouds, per se, there are dust clouds,  you could call them dust clouds, So asteroids, I think I understand. So asteroids, there's like the asteroid belt, right, which is in between Mars and Jupiter, and there's like, sort of other groupings of asteroid-like objects that tend to be sort of dynamically grouped together, so in the same sort of place in the solar system. And that has to do with, like, probably how they were formed, and how they broke up from an object and then sort of stayed together. So like, I can, kind of, I can kind of see that rule, I think that's supposed to represent maybe, like the asteroid belt, or like asteroid families, because we do have families of asteroids that we call them. For the comets. Comets come from further out in the solar system, typically, and they have long orbits, and there's different sort of types of things. So maybe that that represents that they can only, yeah, I don't know that we only see them periodically. Right? So like, maybe something like that. You can think of like Halley's comet as the one we think of. It comes by every 86 years or whatever, right? Because they go really far out in the solar system, and they come close in. Maybe it has something to do with that. They're only in prime numbered spots. There's fewer of them. 

Brian  40:15  
It's interesting that we actually didn't even, and I mean, not that you would have to know this, but when we played this other deduction game. They wouldn't use something like, Oh, it must be in a prime number, because they weren't assuming that people knew what that is, right? 

Addie  40:28  
Oh wow. 

Jason  40:29  
Well, this one is easy on the scorecard. They don't print a commet unless it can actually show up there, so I guess they could control that.

Brian  40:35  
Yeah, it's not like design. I'm not assuming people we did have a discussion about whether or not two is a prime number. You remember asking, 

Addie  40:42  
oh,

Jason  40:43  
Two is a prime number. And the last one is that a dwarf planet can't be next to Planet X, and that's part of what you have to use to figure out where Planet X is in the game. Does that reflect like this grouping of planets that you say, some people are using to say where Planet X is, like, would it have, like, gobbled it up, or, like, cleared its orbit, or,

Brian  41:05  
yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. If we, if we find a Neptune like object, is it going to be a planet or not?

Addie  41:14  
If we find a Neptune sized object far out in the solar system, it would most likely be a planet. by the current definition, I'm using air quotes, for definition, even it's a terrible definition. I'm fine with Pluto not being a planet, but I still hate the definition. Anyway. That's my take on that, so I think that would make sense. So part of what the deal is with Planet X is that it's like there are some gaps in where we don't see some of these small objects further out in the solar system. And there are certain like arrangements of some of the dwarf planets we have discovered. And so part of the hypothesis for Planet X is the reason there you see those things the way they are is because of the gravity of this larger planet is sort of pushing them into those locations. So I am okay with that rule.

Brian  42:03  
Can we talk about the dwarf planet definition and how you don't like it, or do you not want to talk about it anymore? No, I'm happy to talk about because our last episode, we had a bunch of controversy too. So evidently, this is the, this is the controversial season of gaming with science. 

Addie  42:17  
I love it. Yeah. So the, the IAU definition of like, what is a planet, right? Has these like, different things. So there's it has to be spherical. So it has to be, like, large enough to sort of make its shape spherical. And that has to do with, like, basically how big it is. And then there's this other sort of, much more controversial rule about it has to have cleared its orbit. And so that's like, sort of a dynamical argument of like, where it's going in space, and there aren't a lot of other things right in that in the same orbit. Doesn't make any sense. That's a dumb rule, because, like, Neptune and Pluto's orbits cross, and there's lots of these other, like, types of objects in both of those orbits, and there's lots of other objects in Jupiter's orbit. There's other things in our orbit. So, like, there's, it's just not a great definition. There probably should be some sort of, like geological definition, potentially, of a planet. Or there's lots of other ways you could go. And there's other other definitions that have been proposed. But I think the idea of having, like, sort of canonical planets, and then dwarf planets and sort of having some size differentiators is fine. We have different types of bodies of water right on the earth, and there are different classifications for, like, rivers and streams and things like that, right? So, like, there could be sort of these different definitions, and I think that's fine. And you have Pluto in the Plutinos which is also a great band name. So there's, there can be a little bit more nuance, or, like, uncertainty and nomenclature, I think.

Jason  43:39  
so, last thing I want to cover about the game here is the aspect of the doing science it covers. So like the you put forth the theories, and Brian had determined that the fact that you put down a theory, but then it takes like, two or three turns for it to work its way towards the center, and you actually see what it is that's peer review. 

Brian  43:56  
That's peer review 

Jason  43:56  
it's like the peer reviewers are doing it, and the 

Addie  44:01  
reviewer number two!

Jason  44:02  
yes, yeah. See our previous episode on Publish or Perish. So yeah, but the interesting thing is that just like real science, it rewards you for being first. So if you're the first person to publish that and get it right, you get a bonus point at the end of the game. If your paper is essentially in peer review at that time, you still get points, but after it's revealed, you don't get any points for saying it again. Because I it again, because, like, that's already no no one cares about you, like you saying I have rediscovered Mars, it's like that doesn't do anything,

Addie  44:31  
although people rediscover water on Mars all the time.

Brian  44:33  
Yeah that's true. You get to put it in your annual performance review. There you go. I complain about this. And I did complain about it when we talked about publish or perish, and I complain about it in general, science is supposed to be repeatable. If somebody discovers the same thing using a different line of evidence, that's a good thing. That means that the system is working. Yeah, so, but you're right. There is this priority. It's like they don't get to be the one to name it. That's just the fact that it's a human. Jobness being on top of the scientific endeavor, right? 

Jason  45:04  
Maybe. But my question is, like in the planetary science field, like, what are the current arguments that are going back and forth in the literature, where people are pushing one way or another, that things haven't been settled? You mentioned that the existence of Planet X is one of them where people argue for or against it based off certain evidence. What other stuff is out there right now that's being debated?

Addie  45:25  
Ooh fun question. All so many things. It's funny, like we have all of this information, but like every time we have new planetary missions, right, it opens up new questions and opens up new debates about things. One of the big ones that's been, I actually haven't seen an update on this in a little while, but that's been going around the last few years. Few years is this question of, like, sort of life producing products in Venus, on Venus and in Venus's atmosphere. That was a popular one for a while. So there was this paper that was published that there was phosphine, which is a specific type of molecule in Venus's atmosphere. Remember that? And the big thing about big thing about that, right was that it's probably produced by biological compounds. Like, it has to be a biologic origin. There had to be something biologic producing it, yes, so this was the paper, but there's been all these other things since then, of like, oh well, there's all these abiotic ways to make it. Or maybe that's not a detection of that line that you think it is. It's like a because it was a spectroscopy, so it was a specific line and an observation. And so like, maybe it was, you're looking at, actually a different line, it was a different molecule, right? So there's been a fun, a lot of fun back and forth about that. And, like, if there's life on Venus recently, that's been a fun one. There's a lot of hypotheses for, so I study the Moon a lot these days. There's a lot of different hypotheses for, like, how different things formed in different places on the moon, and what that tells us about, like, the history of the Moon's evolution, and also the Earth's evolution. And so those are always really interesting, I think, like, yeah, this big question about, like, are there other large planets out, further out in the solar system? Is going to be one we keep having? And then also, like, sort of the astronomical scale, there's all there's all these questions of, like, what is dark matter, and what are, what is dark energy, and what do those things tell us about the evolution of the universe? Big questions that have a lot of, like, different hypotheses that sort of come bubble up to the surface every now and then and get pushed back down, and then another one bubbles up. All right, well,

Jason  47:18  
we need to start wrapping it up. So, Brian, you like doing the nitpick corner. So do you have any nitpicks about this? There's not that much science in this two pick.

Brian  47:27  
I do have a nitpick, and it is as you are proposing your theory, and it advances through the peer review process, and then it gets flipped over. It's always correct. It's just, you know, as it goes through peer review, it is now the truth and it will reflect the truth, and that's all that there is to it. So, so that's my science nitpick. 

Jason  47:46  
Well, I guess, yeah, in reality, we don't have an omniscient app that we can just ask if we got it right. That would actually make our jobs a lot easier.

Brian  47:52  
Yeah, it would be great if we just had an app that had all the answers. My gaming nitpick is not even in a gaming nitpick, it's just the the truth of any kind of logical deduction game, the first time you make a mistake, you're screwed.

Jason  48:06  
Yeah, you cross something off in the wrong in the wrong region.

Brian  48:08  
I did something in the wrong place, in the wrong time. And it's like, technically, if you're really careful, and if you're really diligent about how you've coded all of your all your information, you could go back and figure out, back out again in single player mode, sure, but if you're actually playing with other people, you don't have time to go back and be like re logicing All of your logic. So that's just, you know, again, another example of me being bad at games. So

Jason  48:30  
the scorecard actually has space for you to record all your moves and all your opponents moves. If somehow you have the brain space to be able to think what they're trying to deduce, too. I, I don't know how people can do that, but congratulations to you if you can. 

Addie  48:43  
Well, it's nice to kind of have a place to write it down, actually, because a lot of times you're sort of trying to keep track of those things in your head. So it is kind of nice to have a place to write it down, 

Brian  48:51  
for sure. 

Jason  48:51  
I don't have nit picks. There's not much science to pick at in this game. And I actually really enjoyed it. I thought it was quite well put together.

Brian  48:58  
I guess we already know Addie's. There's no gas clouds in the solar system.

Addie  49:02  
My nit was the gas clouds.

Jason  49:05  
From here on out, whenever we play, they are dust clouds. We find dust clouds out in the solar system. Yes, 

Brian  49:10  
or hey, what else should it be? I mean, if there's something else it should be, we're just going to print up new cards and it'll just be,

Addie  49:16  
well, I love Yeah, I don't know. I'll think about it. 

Brian  49:19  
Egotron radiation.

Addie  49:22  
yeah. Oh, you could have, yeah, you could have, like, solar wind plasma or something. 

Brian  49:26  
OK that sounds cool. I think that one of the things is that, like, that's probably for, you know, people like myself, I wouldn't really know the difference between solar wind plasma and a gas cloud. I would assume that they were the same thing. 

Jason  49:37  
aren't they the same thing? 

Addie  49:39  
Oh, no, no.

Jason  49:41  
See what happens when you ask a biologist space questions?

Brian  49:44  
Well, every time you're saying evolution, I'm having to recalibrate my brain. It's like, okay, not that kind of, yeah, it's a different type of evolution. But no, I mean different type. I kind of appreciate that. The challenge is, they were trying to use stuff in the solar system that is hard to see, hard to observe. Right? So, but that people would also know, so I think that's why we ended up with gas clouds. 

Addie  50:06  
Probably, yeah, 

Brian  50:07  
but they're, they're cool with people knowing what Prime numbers are, but they're not going to say plasma,

Addie  50:11  
right, or different types of radiation.

Jason  50:17  
All right? Well, let's go on the grading. So we're all university professors here, Addy, you can participate or not if you want, but we like giving a letter grade for just how well did it do for the fun and how well for the science? Let's start with science, since that's what you're just talking about. Brian standing on your plasma clouds and peer review and everything, what would you give this for the science?

Brian  50:35  
Let me think. Let me think. Let me think. Let me think. So. My biggest concern is, are you going to come away with something fundamentally wrong from the way that the science is being depicted in this game. I don't think you will. I think like this one sort of, again, leans a little bit more towards the process and a little bit less towards the like, okay, asteroids are not going to be necessarily be found right next to each other. I don't have a problem with a B. Does anybody think I'm being too harsh? Am I going to get a request for a regrade. If I give this a B, should this be a B+? 

Jason  51:04  
I was going to put forth a B plus. Okay, similar things in that there's not, it's not trying to convey a bunch of science fact, but there's all those little things It didn't have to do, like the whole the papers and the peer review and the conferences and stuff. Those help make it feel like science. And so I want to bump it up a little bit for that, 

Brian  51:23  
modeling the little meeples after actual telescopes, making sure that the night sky had to move and that you couldn't observe everything at the same time, which makes it very tactical, but also brings in this not realism, but because you can't do realism, but a fun metaphor for what you're actually trying to do.

Addie  51:41  
Yeah, I think even, like, the turn mechanics, right, where they it took, it took different amounts of time to do different types of observations and like that would give you different amounts of information. I think that that added, like, an interesting realism to, like how long it takes to do science, 

Jason  51:56  
oh, yeah, and how you have to declare what you're doing to everyone, because

Brian  51:58  
 you got to book that telescope time. 

Jason  52:00  
Yeah, you're booking the telescope time. I was actually just looking at the board to see if there were any actual constellations on the background. I couldn't spot any. So I think it's just an artistic star background. But that would have been cool if they put a few of those into All right? What about gameplay? So I guess I'll go first. Addie, you didn't have a chance to play this, right? You were able to watch some actual plays and stuff. Yeah, it

Addie  52:20  
looks fun. I would like to play it. I'm gonna try to find a if I can find it around here somewhere.

Brian  52:25  
I'm sorry we didn't get to play. I was in Florida, but our schedules just did not align.

Addie  52:30  
Yeah, that would have been fun. 

Jason  52:31  
Appropriate enough. It's only when the planets align we're actually able to play a game with someone. Sorry, I couldn't pass that up. 

Brian  52:38  
Addie, Are you cool with the B+, because I had one of my, uh, somebody listened to the podcast, I got a comment that said that we didn't let the guest give a grade last time we had a guest on not on purpose. But I think the conversation just moved away from it. 

Addie  52:52  
I think I'm okay with a B+. I also don't have, like, the grading scale, right? So fine with with this be that being a B+

Brian  53:00  
okay, yeah, we definitely do great inflation. We start at a B, and you could do better or worse than that.

Jason  53:06  
Okay, all right, so fun. I'll take the lead on this. And I thought this was really fun. I actually really enjoyed playing it. I think the little fun science touches were good. I think the play balance of like, Oh, I'm using this many turns and trying to find things, it just felt fun. And this is weird, because last time we when we talked about Turing machine, we talked about going for the pure mathematical abstraction and not skinning something else on top of it. And this is the complete opposite. This has totally been skinned about science and finding things that has nothing to do with the logic rules behind it. And yet I found it really fun. I actually found it more fun than Turing machine, I think because it resonated with me of like, Oh, I'm hunting for this thing, and there's comets and asteroids and stuff, rather than this logic rule about triangles and squares being more than circles or something like that. So I'm gonna give it an A like, this is a game I would gladly play again. So I definitely give it an A, A minus at the lowest, it's

Brian  53:56  
Addie. You didn't get a chance to play, so I guess you're gonna abstain. I haven't

Addie  53:59  
Okay. Mine's a pending. I

Brian  54:02  
have an incomplete grade. Okay, all right,

Addie  54:04  
I'll have to update it next semester. Okay, oh,

Brian  54:07  
Jason, this is hard because I crapped out at the game like I screwed it up. So maybe, maybe I'm gonna give it a B, because I want to give it another try. And I actually do legitimately feel bad, because we were very complimentary about what Turing machine did. It's like, oh, it's just pure deduction. It's just a puzzle. But you're right. It's so much more fun if you get to pretend that you're doing something. The role play is so much more fun to be. Like, well, I am an astronomer looking for a planet. Now I'm going to publish that information.

Jason  54:36  
I respect the people who did Turing machine for making that choice, and I think for what they wanted to do, it was the right choice. I enjoyed this one more. And I think for this game, it was the right choice, like they wanted it to be fun. And I mean, it seems to have worked, like I said, 107 on Board Game Geek, they've seemed to have cracked the code to get a really high ranking deduction game. 

Brian  54:55  
And where is Turing machine on that ranking? Not that I want to apply appeal to the masses to see which game is. Better, but I am curious.

Jason  55:01  
Let me look that up. Okay, I think Turing Machine probably has a much smaller distribution, so I don't know that that's necessarily fair. 

Brian  55:08  
and Turing machine also has a very ardent group of supporters.

Jason  55:13  
Okay, Turing machine is 324, okay, so lower, but actually not that much lower, yeah, like when you're talking about the 10s of 1000s of games on Board Game Geek anywhere in the top 500 to 1000 I consider good. So, yeah, Turing machine is also up there. 

Brian  55:27  
OK, now I'm curious if there anyway, this is, this will be extra credit. I'll see if there are any deduction games that are higher on the list that we haven't looked at yet. 

Jason  55:35  
Yeah, they probably have nothing to do with science, unfortunately. Yeah, so we can't talk about them. Nope. They're both, at least on this podcast,

Brian  55:41  
until we have that like gaming without science bonus episode that we've been talking about.

Jason  55:49  
All right? Well, I think we're going to wrap it up there. Addie, if people want to look you up, where can they find you? 

Addie  55:54  
You can find me on Walkabout the galaxy, or wherever you get your podcasts or walkaboutthegalaxy.com, you can also find me at the University of Central Florida. And let's see, I'm on Instagram as Astro Addy. And I also have a mascot that has an Instagram. He's his name is Citronaut, underscore Dave, C, i, t, r, o, n, a, U, T, underscore Dave. And he goes to space and does fun space things, so he's fun to follow too.

Brian  56:22  
Like for like for realies. Like he really goes to space? Oh, she's going to fetch something. Awwe, 

Addie  56:28  
Dave,

Jason  56:30  
we're looking to a cute little stuffed green faced person. Yes, I'll see if I can find a picture that I can link in the show notes. But otherwise, look up Astro Addy on Instagram, and hopefully she has a link to Citronaut, Dave, Citronaut Dave and I have to ask, so your Instagram is basically consists of cool pictures of planets and stuff?

Addie  56:48  
No, that's actually my personal Instagram, and it consists of not a lot of things, because I don't use it very often Citronaut Dave's Instagram is much better because it consists of the my space flight projects. 

Jason  57:01  
Okay, I was asking because my family's card against humanity, one of the cards is cool pictures of planets and stuff. And I was hoping I could connect another game. Oh, well, all right, we should probably wrap this up before it goes completely off the rails. 

Brian  57:15  
Where the heck is the stock outro that I wrote? Where is it? I don't know where I left it. Do you know where it is?

Jason  57:19  
 I'm looking at it. 

Brian  57:19  
Okay, good, good, good look. We could never end the episode properly, so we actually finally wrote it down, and now I don't know where it is.

Jason  57:21  
OK So thank you, Addie, so much for coming on. Hopefully we get to see you at Dragon Con again, if you're gonna be there again this year. And with that, we're gonna wrap it up. So thank you everyone for listening. Have a great month and great games

Brian  57:42  
and have fun playing dice with the universe. See ya, 

Jason  57:44  
this has been the gaming with Science Podcast, copyright 2025 listeners are free to reuse this recording for any non commercial purpose, as long as credit is given to game with science. This podcast is produced with support from the University of Georgia. All opinions are those of the hosts, and do not imply endorsement by the sponsors. If you wish to purchase any of the games we talked about, we encourage you to do so through your so through your friendly local game store. Thank you and have fun playing dice with the universe.