Thanks for watching, and thanks to LMNT for sponsoring us. Make sure you hit DrinkLMNT.com/coolworlds for a free sample pack with any order. Let me know your ideas about this weird star - what do YOU think is going on? One idea I didn’t discuss is that of a companion neutron star enriching the atmosphere through a high energy wind, which Gopka proposed (ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008AIPC.1016..460G). This idea has been excluded by radial velocity measurements though (ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008A%26A...490.1109M) hence why I didn’t include here. Curious to hear your imaginative solutions! EDIT: A few of you asked about the total mass of these radioactive elements (actinides). I haven't seen this calculated anywhere, but I will attempt a *rough* calculation here. Gopka (ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008KPCB...24...89G) doesn't provide abundance measurements but suggests that the actinide abundance is comparable to that of the lanthanides. In the same paper, the lanthanides are quoted as being 10,000x more abundant than that found in the Sun. For the Sun, the lanthanides have a total abundance of ~2*10^(-5)% (periodictable.com/Properties/A/SolarAbundance.an.log.html). So x10000 gives an abundance of ~0.2% for Przybylski’s Star. Now that's just the number count relative to other elements, not a mass. To get a mass, let's assume they are only present in the photosphere, and let's further assume the photosphere has a similar depth to that of the Sun (~100km). The photosphere volume is then pi*R*^2*100km = 5.5 * 10^23 m^3 (since R* = 1.9 RSun). The mean density of the Sun's photosphere is about 0.3 g/m^3 so assuming the same here, the photosphere has a total mass of 1.6 * 10^20 kg. Now we can use the abundance, but remember its by particle number, not mass. So the mass fraction will be 0.002*245 / (0.002*245 + 0.75*1 + 0.23*4), where the 1 is hydrogen, 4 is helium and 245 is roughly in the middle of the actinides (mass numbers). This gives 0.23, so thus the total mass of actinides in the photosphere would be around 0.23*1.6*10^20 kg = 3.7 * 10^19 kg. That's about 4% the mass of the asteroid Ceres. Obviously, this is very rough, and assuming a Sun-like photosphere, and actinides only in the photosphere, so take with a pinch of salt, but at least gives you an idea about what scale we're dealing with here. (Feel free to chime in if you have a better calculation than this rough one!)

It's a brave man who admits to the whole internet that he's seen 'Superman IV'.

Hey, I'm Polish. Your pronounciation of Mr Przybylski name was absolutely perfect! Thank you for the effort!

10:36 In medicine, there's a saying, "If you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras": Uncommon symptoms are more likely uncommon symptoms of a common illness than common symptoms of an uncommon illness.

Super underrated aspect of your videos is how good the editing has gotten! It's just been improving and improving. All your videos have a very characteristic "feel" to them, but that theme and identity has only gotten stronger with time :)

"It's never ever aliens, it's always dust."

The question that first presents itself with the salting hypothesis is... how much material would be needed to change the spectra of a star in a way that is consistent with what is seen in Przybylski's Star?

6:36 yooooo! Bro is ripped. Excellent shape my friend 💪

FASCINATING stuff without the fluff. I love your delivery, no pandering to the lowest common denominator but just explaining it how it is. I'm sure you could go into far more detail but I think you hit the perfect balance of actual science and what people will understand while at the same time being able to learn something. This is my new favourite channel. I also love you giving credit to MelodySheep. That channel's creators are incredible bringing deep science to the masses in an amazing visual way. You got a new subber : ]

Oh. An excellent intro into magnetic Ap stars. They were the topic of my phd.

How much "stuff" would you need to dump into a star to see a difference? A planet mass? I'm just wondering if it is a feasible amount or if we are talking about dismantling solar systems?

0:49 - Przybylski 1:29 - Przybylski 2:30 - Przybylski 2:45 - Przybylski 3:56 - Przybylski 4:02 - Przybylski 4:31 - Przybylski 4:57 - Przybylski 5:28 - Przybylski 7:14 - Przybylski 9:29 - Przybylski 12:22 - Vladimir Zuber 12:43 - Przybylski 13:20 - Przybylski 13:59 - Przybylski 14:25 - Iosif Shklovsky 14:38 - Przybylski 15:40 - Boyajian 16:31 - Alex Nimmerjahn

There are only a few channels in my plethora of subs that I watch the day they come out. This is one of them. Keep up the great content

"Apparently inexplicable phenomena should be examined with much more scrupulous attention since it seems more difficult to admit them", P. S. Laplace. Quoted by Sagan himself as "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" (ECREE), is a good and well applicable aphorism despite its detractors

Anything out there that appears to be a unique object should raise suspicion. Really surprised more attention hasn't been placed on this star.

My favourite science channel. Full stop. Look forward to each post and ponder each one long after. Thank you Dr Kipping and team.

I loved the way you talked about spectrography and the elements. You made almost poetry with your words, I took many years of chemistry and found it more beautiful and curious than most other things!

One other possibility that you didnt mention... a recent neutron star merger in a trinary system or some other weird interaction between a neutron star and a weird A type star. Maybe two fast moving neutron stars had a glancing collision and one of them got swallowed up in an A type star and is slowly breaking apart releasing large clumps of neutrons which are decaying into the elements we see.

Ive only discoered this channel yesterday and i am binging theough the videos. This is some of the most informative, entertaining channels i have found. I wish I got recommended sooner

Professor Kippling: Your story telling is inspiring 💡🤩 and the highlight of my day is when a new video of yours drops. Kudos to you, to the @CoolWorldsLab, and to the research you do!

Once again you deepen my curiosity. Every time I think I have some sort of understanding, just blown away. Thanks again!

Professor Kipping. Respectfully, you’re jacked my guy. Also, absolutely amazing video.

Really enjoy your videos! They always make me think a lot, and encourage me to go more into detail about the topics, which is the most important thing for a channel such as this

Dr. Kipping, the graphic is wrong at the 11:42 mark. You say 298 Flerovium and the graphic shows 289. Thank you for spreading science with these episodes and your podcasts!

We need to get this video up in the millions of views! You absolutely gotta talk about this on different platforms and get some awareness going!! I’ve been sharing this with everyone and I really hope the research is treated properly…. Especially with how the news is right now. Absolutely incredible video ..

This is one of those mind-blowing concepts that no matter what the outcome will continue to fascinate us until we know for sure...

Loved this!! Probably my favourite video of yours to date!!

I had commented with the proposal found @ ads, but see you have linked it in the pin. The link isn't working but readers now have the address for those interested. Thanks for the video.

I just can't express how much I love your videos. Your way to make almost anything sound plausible, and your way to find all these amazing subjects to make your videos about. I'm feeling lucky every time I see your face somewhere, because it feels like it's storytime and my best friend is about to tell me one amazing new story.

It's so cool to see an outstanding member of Academia taking the time to focus on his physical health. A healthy body leads to a healthy mind and I believe Fitness can make the mind even sharper then it would normally be. Looking good Dr. Kipping.

An intriguing, thought-provoking episode. Warmest compliments. Thank you, sir. :)

My favorite space channel covering my favorite star. Can't possibly complain!

Very Interesting, Professor. I'll have to look more into this Przybylski’s Star you speak of.

this is better than all science documentaries together! thanks for these vids Professor David Kipping!

Professor Kipping got guns lol! An amazing video. Whats the plan for this star in the scientific community? Is JWT or another observatory scheduled to get some extra information about it?

You have to be one of the best astronomy channels out there! Such interesting topics always ✨️

13:23 Ahh this clip. This piece of footage is one of the single most intriguing things I've ever witnessed.

Professor and team, thanks again for the fabulous videos and great work. Your sharing makes one feelas though we're apart of your team. Keep up the phenomenal work! 😊

Love the explanation of this mystery Dr. Kipping! This was fascinating! Loved the exercise montage too 😉!!!

So nice to see a deep dive into one of my favourite stars, by one of my fave physics UKpostsrs. It is "peculiar" to me, that although we have discovered something that looks exactly like Carl Sagan's hypothesized techno-signature, it is casually dismissed as most likely natural. FWIW, I have a few thoughts. The most salient is that the relative abundance of the lanthanides to each other reflects their natural distribution, notwithstanding all of them being heightened relative to iron in this star. This in turn I presume to be a result of relative stabilities of nuclide configurations in the nucleus, somewhat analogous to electron shells. Even Z is stabler than odd Z, for instance. Secondly, the most salient factor for the stability of actinides is neutron numbers. Our lab-made elements are made by firing in neutrons to hope that they stick. Perhaps this method cannot make the large number of neutrons we need for this star to work. As you point out, the whole island of stability hypothesis is in itself mind blowing. It implies basically that we've still got another entire row of the periodic table still unknown to us, and I really liked this video for mentioning it. I would certainly support any large-scale study to really get to the bottom of what's going on here, because it is weird even if it is natural. My expectation is some source of neutrons to make those elements which is more efficient than our current spitball technique.

I've had a laymen's interest in this star ever since hearing about it on John Michael Godier's channel. When I saw the thumbnail for this video, I knew immediately what it would be about and had to watch it. It did not disappoint.

An extraterrestrial civilization salting their home star as way of sending a signal to let any other civilizations looking for anomalies would make a lot of sense I think, because this way the signal can cover a lot more of the universe as the material would be detectable form all the directions (assuming they are capable of dispersing enough heavy elements covering all over or most of the star's surface). So other observers would be able to detect the anomaly irrespective of how they are oriented to their home system.

Love this video, David. Your expression when bringing for the alien hypothesis was hilarious. Kudos to you. :)

I've been curious about this star for year and wondered if any progress had been made. Good to know it's still strange :)

Can't tell you how much we love your videos and wait for them.⭐⭐⭐⭐

Fascinating stuff! This is one of the most interesting channels in UKposts.

Perhaps Przewalski's horses prefer Przybylski's starlight?

This was brilliant, easy to digest, and simply beautiful.

loved the video and this new format!

It's never aliens 👽 until it aliens 👽

I love this. You just made me crack up more than any science video I've ever seen. Thanks! p.s. I love Tom Lehrer, and how you used his "Elements Song" to call out the weirdness of this star. It almost deserves a telescope of its own...

Yo Dr. K a while ago I watched one of your videos on the ending of time and everything. It wasn't the Journey to the end of the universe tho. I was utterly transfixed. About an hour of the most fascinating amazingly well narrated, by your good self. I've since lost it but it must exist somewhere. I'd really love to watch it again or another (by you) just like it lol. Anyway Doc, I'm a huge fan, pls keep up the awesome work. Loveitloveitloveit

I bet there are crazy elements out there with properties that we couldn't even imagine. Another great video again professor

Nice channel, I just discovered it. Thanks for doing the hard work and giving curious people good quality information. In all modesty, I feel that is sometimes missing on youtube astronomy channels, but yours is wonderful.

If it has truly strong magnetic fields, it's possible the reactions don't happen at the core of those starts, but at the magnetic vortexes, so we see them outside the star which might have been a metal rich area.

I'm sure you get this a lot, but any chance you've considered doing ASMR? You've got quite a soothing and relaxing voice, sorry if that's weird. Very rarely do you find people who are both scientists and who can communicate that science effectively to a large audience of laypeople. With a super relaxing voice, fun animations. And a workout video to boot! Man, almost got me sweating with that. A✅+ with extra credit Not that you need my validation Thanks for the excellent content. This is fascinating and I went and rambled to a few friends about it and sent it to a couple of folks. Very grateful to have subscribed, I've enjoyed everything I've seen so far.

IMHO - a very thoughtful & informative presentation

Exciting! Thank you for teaching us.

The pronunciation of Przybylski is quite good sir. 😁

subscribed I love your voice and your delivery 10/10

This is so exciting. Can't wait for more information.

7:24 Ukraine mentioned in a non-war context! ✨🎉

When you said no iron, but there were heavier elements, my first thought was Salted stars. I thought stellar actinides were one of the most sure technosignatures?

Your pronunciation of Przybylski is very good 🙂 cheers from Poland and subscribed!

This is great you made an in depth video about this, remember hearing about it on event horizon 👍

Earned my sub, very good content!

"And for homework, each of you will create your own star. The more interesting you make it, the better score you will get. Then we will stabilize the best star and take it somewhere where others can admire it. That's all for today, kids". :)

The kind of information that blows my mind !!!!... and keep me hoping for one day find the answers to our not knowing just yet... questions !!!... Thanks Amigo !!! 💫💫💫

Awesome and interesting presentation Dr. Without reading all the referenced papers. I would like to forward that an undetected neutron star would likely strip the star clean if near by not feed it. I would argue that the heavy neutron environment may be replenishing neutrons to build and destroy these elements in an ongoing manner out of our understanding. Also, if you would like funding please show us your students works on a cast some time. 😊

357 light years? That is relatively close!

Those pesky aliens. Always messin with my heavy metal! You are talking bout music, right?

1) The alien megastructure idea was a joke made by Jason Wright that the media than blew out of proportion. 2) The cause of the dips is not dust as there is no infrared excess. The current understanding is the dips are caused by cometary material on the outer edge of the stellar system. This is still unexpected for a number of reasons. The mysteries of Boyajian’s star are not nearly as settled as you seem to indicate.

That spectroscopy animation of the starlight emission was pretty sweet!

If they're advanced enough to "salt" a star they probably already know we're here.

Please Professor Kipping, more workout/gym footage (smile).--Al Newby

Fascinating. I'm surprised this hasn't had more attention

00:06 that can also be caused by a brief but total eclipse due to a traversing rogue planet, asteroid, meteor or comet followed by debris. It may well be lottery odds but, just like playing enough numbers will improve your odds of a prize, watching enough stars will greatly improve your odds of seeing some of the less common phenomena predicted the model of space which includes non-luminous matter as debris - some of which hasn't yet fallen into a stable orbit and provides the basis for the Raleigh Effect to operate in space. Lot's of implications and questions right there. The problem with spectroscopy is that it is strictly superficial and is incapable of addressing more than surface chemistry - as any geologist familiar with remote sensing techniques can tell you. So while there's a lot we can say about stellar surface chemistry, any knowledge of stellar chemistry with reproducible confirmation stops at the extinction depth. 3:38 remember the explanation for the graph at 00:06? Taken across interstellar distances, that explanation predicts sufficient dust and small debris to impose a Raleigh Effect on light coming from stars which, likewise, causes spectral redshift, loss of resolution and provides the simplest explanation for changes in the amount of spectral redshift over time, not to mention background radiation. Probably the best confirmation of the Raleigh Effect, is a sunset or sunrise; bearing in mind that this is not something which is magically limited to an atmosphere but can be reproduced anywhere there is a sufficient amount of disseminated particulate matter. 07:15 Also, if you want to find extraterrestrial life, Przybylski's star is the kind of system you want to look more closely at due to the elemental diversity. Just bear in mind that life need not be carbon-based or even solid. All that is required for life is sufficient elemental diversity to allow the existence of stable chemical systems - and, yes, from the point of view of chemistry, life is defined by the stability of a system driven by chemical reactions which feedback on one-another to perpetuate the system (with or without recognisable structure). If all those elements are present in the stellar corona, then it's likely that the chemistry of the environment has evolved into living, reproducing, localised systems of chemistry as well as clearly defined ecological systems which support a naturally selected interaction of living systems with one another. 09:40 Sometimes we don't explain. Sometimes we wait patiently for more information. Sure, it might be a stellar example of terraforming. There might also be stellar mechanisms which don't know about. In fact, I'd bet the bank on it given that we can only scratch the surface and theorise about what is happening below extinction depth. There could be the stellar core equivalent of vulcanism with plumes that shoot up into the corona; carrying with them an interesting variety of elements or it could be as drab and boring as pollution from an industrialised species that lives in a coronal ecosystem (remember the elemental diversity will drive the evolution of life provided overall entropy starts low enough). And it could well be a species salting a star. It could also be light pollution from large scale space warfare in the vicinity of the star. There are so many plausible explanations, it isn't really sensible to settle on any one of them. Rather, what would be interesting would be to devise some questions about how each scenario would differ from the others in what we are capable of observing - and then see if our observations can narrow things down. Yes, misinterpretation is the most likely given the number of definitive, repeatable observations which can't be made - and Immanuel Kant had a LOT to say about this problem with human thought.

Maybe the elements are indeed there, but they are formed under special circumstances. The star acts as a particle accelerator and 'creates' the rare elements through the bombardment of subparticles.

Could the explanation be generation instead of disposal? A civilization that's figured out how to trigger nuclear reactions in their star that cause it to synthesize and eject large volumes of rare heavy elements

I think a discovery this anomalous is a very, very strong indication that the answer is almost certainly 'Option #1' and something is being misinterpreted or misidentified. However, if the answer somehow _were_ 'Option #3' and it was some sort of alien waste disposal system or an alien-induced, stellar signal flare-wouldn't that necessitate 'Option #2' _also_ being true. I mean, you're not going to be able to send a bunch of waste that doesn't even exist anywhere, _because it decayed like instantly._ It would need to exist long enough to even be waste, which means that in order for 'Option #3' to be true, 'Option #2' would also have to be true.

Always a joy whenever cool wolrds releases a new video

If this was indeed some sort of technosignature, I would guess the aliens would be from a different star system, who have traveled there and set up shop. I figured if this was some sort of A star, it's Main Sequence lifespan would be short (on the order of a few hundred million years), allowing little time for life to evolve to point of having a technological species. I looked into this a bit, and found that it's actually thought to be at most a small A star, or more likely an F star, and thus has a somewhat longer lifespan (estimated to be ~ 1.5 billion years old now, and near end of Main Sequence period). In any case, IF it were aliens, AND they were from elsewhere, perhaps they are there to do "star-lifting", harvesting elements from within the star for, say, building a Dyson swarm around it. Could that perhaps allow for dredging up peculiar elements from the core, that would otherwise never make it to the surface? I still don't see how such heavy and short-lived elements could be produced even in the core. But hey, once you open the can of worms labeled "Aliens", all kinds of weird stuff can be considered. Personally, the mundane reason (we got the spectal lines wrong and these elements are not even present) seems the most likely. But if it DID turn out to somehow result from decay of elements from the Island of Stability, that would be very exciting. Maybe not megastructure-building-aliens-only-350 ly-away exciting, but still a major advance in science.

I absolutely love your channel. Just never give up for us folks

Mr. Narrator, I think you should go on to read e-books or narrate horror games or something. The intent to pronounce Przybylski is clear and sharp that I can't imagine your voice outside of a narrative setting. The pace, the tone, the "accent I almost hear but I'm probably just hearing things". A mix of "comforting" but "hold on I don't know this guy!", and yet not with an annoyance or drama, lacking ham-iness, or dare to say, a pretense of... anything. That's what seems like what it is, like we just observed half the universe explode and you're worried about whether you'll make it to a store before it ceases to exist.

I'd be interested to check its neighboring stars for anomalies.

Is it possible that Stars are “trading” Elements through a type of entanglement, like trees trade minerals and sugars? (ie. a more modern “alchemical transmutation”) Great video!✌🏼😊

Great video, just one small technical error in your use of stock footage, @4:19 where you mention the lack of iron in the star, the footage shows a lot of metal bars marked as D16T, which is an Aluminium Grade, not iron

13:08 I appreciate the disclaimer, and that you mention aliens as a last ditch option. Too many folks jump to aliens to describe that which they don't yet understand. Cheers and have a nice day.

Enjoyed this 😃

Dr. David Kipping would have to be one of the best communicators of the sciences, especially when it comes to the Cosmos. He is Carl Sagan Fellow at Harvard College Observatory. He is one of the best teachers of Science I know.

Thanks for this video, I have always been fascinated by the Przybylski's star and how it has these elements. I have always wondered if perhaps it has been used as a nuclear waste furnace by another civilization. It will make sense if we do the same with the sun🤷🏾‍♂️

So the star has recently swallowed a planetesimal and is now chewing it up🤗

I love this channel, so informative.

Mirage is probably the best descriptor; remember that wavelengths are measured against time, and despite our best efforts to define it as such, time is not a constant.

I am glad that even for the smallest snippets you use in the video, you give proper credits, whether it is a movie or another creator. Not only it is fair, but it lets me, and probably many others, find channels that cover these same fascinating topics.

The Herzsprung-Russell chart only shows 1+ solar mass units and their extinction cycles. There needs to be the corrected Herzsprung-Russell-Lord chart adding in the sub-solar masses of cosmogeny of sub-stars, planets, and moons having gravitational cores (being the star core fragments of prior stellar supernova objects). So finding other anomalies only shows that the current understandings and statements of stellar science and physics is incomplete, potentially inaccurate, and needs reformation.

We're considering using nuclear waste to power starships. So what is the byproduct of nuclear waste falling into the sun do to our star?

With everything going on in the world, the recent data dumps by the National Archives following the NDAA bill passed by Congress in the USA last year, I've never been more confident that we are not alone. This star is just part of a long list of glaring points that when all viewed together, just prove it to me.

When you first started listing the elements in the star, I first thought of Superman. Then you said fission, I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for you to say it. You did not disappoint me. One thing you forgot to mention, a Stargate wormhole might of picked up heavier elements in a nebula, passed through the star, and deposited the elements as it passed through. I watch too much sci-fi 😂🤣 Stargate SG1, season 5, Red Sky for reference

Loved the Tom Lehrer reference