Here is the cleaned-up transcript with time stamps and filler words removed:

Welcome to the Starcast for the week of November 9th, 2025. I'm your host, **Jay Shaffer**, and with me is my co-host, **Mike Lewinski**. Good morning, Mike. How you doing? So, let's go ahead and take a look at **space weather**. I guess there's something going on with the sun.

Hi, Jay.

That's right, Jay. **Sunspot 4274** has been unusually active. We have had some **Northern light displays**, even on the full moon this past week. I caught just a hint of **Aurora Borealis** in southern Colorado. And 4274 is an interesting sunspot. Mentioned earlier this week on space weather, the normal distribution of poles, positive and negative, would be left negative, right positive, but this sunspot is **twisted**. The positive poles are above, and the negative poles are below, so twisted 90 degrees, **breaking Hale's Law**, and this is creating tension, and this sunspot is just spitting out flares and **CMEs**. We are now directly in the line of fire. So, we have a strong chance of **M-class flares** at about 70% for the next 24 hours, 48 hours, and at least a 20% chance of **X-class flares** in the same window. As far as geomagnetic storms go, there's a 40% chance of active conditions at mid-latitudes, then diminishing down to just 15% chance of severe storms in the next 24 hours. But if this sunspot continues to act up, that could very well change in the coming days ahead. At higher latitudes, a chance of severe storms is bumped up to 70% to 80% over the next 2 days. So, what's happening in space news this week, or what's up in space this week? Jay?

So, yeah, maybe I came across my feed this morning that there was an **X-Class flare** this morning, so I'm not sure if that was accurate. I just came across one of my news feeds, and so that does bode to a possible CME and some stuff happening this week in the Aurora category. So, we had a full moon last Thursday, November 5th and 6th, called the **Beaver, or Super Hunter's Moon**. And the current lunar phase is **waning gibbous**, meaning that the moon is now rising and setting progressively later each night.

Waning gibbous, right? Yes.

Yes, did I say waxing? Oh, thank you. Waning gibbous, meaning that it is getting darker. Okay, and so it's setting progressively later each night. This shift offers a unique viewing opportunity in the week ahead: the **daytime moon**, which will be visible over the western horizon after sunrise and appear pale against the blue sky. So, if you look to the west this morning, you'll probably see the moon about to set. Observers may experience the **moon illusion**, which is basically as that moon gets closer to the horizon, it looks really large, making the moon look remarkably large as it dips toward the horizon. As the cycle progresses toward the **last quarter moon**, coming up here on Wednesday, November 12th, then at that phase, the moon will rise about midnight, and then, of course, at dawn, the moon will be basically overhead.

In today's news or news from today, Sunday, November 9th, **Blue Origin's powerful New Glenn rocket** is set for its second-ever launch this weekend, carrying a **NASA mission to the Red Planet**. The **TWINS ESCAPADE** (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) probes are scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today, Sunday, November 9th, during a 2.5-hour window opening at about 2:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. I think that's an error on that news story; it should be 2:45 Eastern Standard Time. This marks the first Mars mission launch in over 5 years, following the departure of the Perseverance rover in 2020. The **$800 million ESCAPADE mission** consists of 2 identical **Rocket Lab-built spacecraft** named **Blue and Gold**, after UC Berkeley's colors, and is designed to study the **loss of Mars' atmosphere**. The probes will be initially sent to the **Earth-Sun Lagrange point 2** to study space weather for a year. Then they will use the Earth's gravity assist in November 2026 to slingshot toward Mars, arriving about 10 months later. So once there, the orbiters will spend at least 11 months flying in formation to create a **3D map of the red planet's near-space environment**, providing vital information about conditions that could affect future human settlement. So this is kind of—they're taking the long route to Mars. Mars is not in the optimal position for launching right now, and so these probes are actually going to take almost 2 years to get to Mars, and it's kind of the slow route, using gravity assist and the Lagrange points. So that's pretty interesting.

In other space news, **space debris has delayed the astronauts' return home from the Tiangong space station**. The three astronauts aboard the **Tiangong Space Station** must now wait longer than expected to return to Earth after their 6-month mission, as a Chinese manned space agency assesses potential damage to their spacecraft. The crew, who launched in April on **Shenzhou 16** mission, were originally slated to land in northern China this past Wednesday. However, their homecoming has been postponed due to suspected impacts from space debris on the **Shenzhou 16 return vehicle**. The **CMSA** is currently conducting extensive tests and assessments to ensure that the capsule is completely safe for the trio to return before settling on a new return date. Meanwhile, a new crew of three, having arrived last week on **Shenzhou 17** spacecraft, has already taken over duties on the station.

So, Mike and I sometimes take ourselves a little too seriously. So, we're trying to lighten things up a bit, and so our friend, **Gack Stone**, has suggested a game show-like segment, which he's calling "**Which is Bigger**." So, we're gonna throw it over to Gack, and he's going to introduce our first contestant in the game show, "Which is Bigger." Gack?

Thanks, Gack. That was very interesting. So, that leads us to another news story and our topic for today, right, Mike?

Yeah, this is so timely, Jay.

Go ahead.

So, a new study is challenging the long-held **Nobel Prize-winning theory that the expansion of the universe is accelerating**, suggesting instead that it is **slowing down or decelerating**. Researchers led by **Professor Yoon Wook Lee** of Yonsei University in South Korea re-examined the key observations of **Type 1A supernovae**—exploding stars that are used as standard candles to measure cosmic distance and expansion. The team concludes that a **systemic error or age bias** in the original data failed to account for variations in properties of stars in the early universe. By correcting this bias and more accurately estimating the ages of the supernova's host galaxies, the team's analysis indicates that the universe has already entered a phase of **decelerated expansion**, and that the mysterious force known as **Dark Energy**, thought to be propelling that expansion, must be **weakening or evolving over time**. If confirmed, these findings will mark a major paradigm shift in cosmology and fundamentally change our assumptions about the nature of dark energy, which makes up approximately 70% of the cosmos. The most profound implication is for the ultimate fate of the universe. If dark energy continues to weaken, the universe may not expand forever into a final, cold **big freeze**, but could eventually reverse course and collapse back in on itself in a **big crunch**—a hypothetical reversal of the Big Bang. While these provocative results are expected to be met with skepticism, they do align with similar independent conclusions reached by other projects, such as the influential **Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI)** consortium, and are sparking fierce debate among astronomers over the true nature of the universe's expansion.

So, this new story leads us directly to our discussion of **dark matter and dark energy** as part of our continuing series about cosmology, and leading up to the current **crisis in cosmology** or the **Hubble tension**. And so, I'm sure before this news story came out this week, we were going to talk just about dark energy and expansion because that's what the crisis in cosmology is all about. So, it's still a very controversial topic, and so can you expand a little bit about dark energy there, Mike?

Sure, Jay. I'm excited by this particular finding, and I hope that it holds up. I'll be honest, I'm **Team Big Crunch**, and I'll explain toward the end of the segment why. But the current standard, what we call the **concordance cosmology**, is the **Lambda CDM model**. Lambda is a Greek letter that looks like an inverted V, and so you'll sometimes see this upside-down VCDM model. The Lambda CDM model has 3 major components. First is the **cosmological constant**, which is denoted by the lambda symbol, and this is associated with **dark energy**. So, when we talk about Lambda CDM, lambda is dark energy. And then **CDM** is **Cold Dark Matter**, and so that's what CDM stands for, and we talked about dark matter last week. And then the third component is just **ordinary matter**. We call this the concordance model because there was a period in the 70s and 80s when disparate properties of the universe appeared to be mutually inconsistent, and so there was no consensus on the makeup of energy density in the universe. But the current standard model of Big Bang cosmology first of all accounts for **cosmic microwave background radiation**, which is where we started this theory, and the **large-scale structure of galaxy distribution** in the universe, and the **abundance of hydrogen, helium, and lithium** throughout the universe, as well as the accelerating expansion observed in the light from the distant galaxies and supernova. So, this model assumes **general relativity** is our correct theory, and that we have dark energy as this lambda cosmological constant. It is worth pointing out here that when **Einstein** originally developed his general theory of relativity, he put in this cosmological constant, and then after some research came about to further define the makeup of the universe, Einstein said, ah, you know, I was wrong; this was actually my biggest blunder. But it turns out that he was probably not wrong; he had to go back after observations said, no, the universe is expanding. So, dark energy is the force that we believe is causing the expansion of the universe, and even if these new findings hold true, we don't get rid of dark energy; we just allow dark energy to evolve over time. That's really what the current findings are suggesting.

So what exactly is dark energy? I know you've got to be wondering this, I certainly do. And at this point, it is a **mysterious force** that is causing an expansion. So...

Couldn't it... Isn't it just like **anti-gravity**?

So, we really don't know, Jay. There are a number of different explanations. This is often described as having the effect of **negative pressure** that is pushing space itself outward. So, we're not just talking about the expansion of matter; we're talking about the **expansion of space itself**. Some scientists believe that this might be **vacuum energy** in the vacuum of space—it's not truly empty. We have continual pairs of particles and antiparticles that are popping into existence and cancelling each other out. Some scientists believe that there could be vacuum energy that is causing this effect and that is filling the cosmos and pushing space outward. However, I will say that the evidence for this is somewhat weak. We believe that either there is so much vacuum energy in the universe, according to models, that the universe should have expanded so fast with so much force that no stars or galaxies could have ever formed, and we wouldn't be here to talk about this, or that the amount of vacuum energy in the cosmos is too small to have caused this. So, vacuum energy is not a great explanation, but it's still kind of floating around out there. Another possible explanation is something called **quintessence**, which was a theoretical fit element discussed by ancient Greek philosophers. Some scientists believe that there could be this thing called quintessence, which would be a combination of dark energy and dark matter, though most scientists believe that these two are completely separate from each other. Another possible explanation for dark energy is what we're calling **space wrinkles**. These would be defects like **cosmic strings** in the early universe fabric that have expanded and continued to create this effect of expansion and accelerating expansion. And finally, the fourth sort of leading theory is not a theory of dark energy at all; it's actually the idea that there's a **flaw in general relativity** and that gravity does not work the way we think it does on the scale of the whole universe. So, we may need to modify our understanding of gravity at the very largest scales in order to reconcile this Hubble tension. Excuse me, Einstein did propose an idea in 1919 called **unimodular gravity**, which would be a modified version of general relativity that wouldn't require dark energy, and so we would get rid of the lambda in the Lambda CDM.

With that, I want to just mention that in this new research, what the Yonsei University researchers have done is they have made additional measurements of very distant galaxies using Type 1A supernova, and they have a much larger sample now of **300 galaxies**. The idea here is that the progenitor stars in these distant galaxies are, in fact, behaving differently than we believe that they should. That these are—sorry about that—that the age of those progenitor stars is, in fact, affecting their brightness, and that what we call the standard candle needs to be revised for at least where it concerns the supernova.

That's what we talked about two episodes ago, right?

Correct. Yeah, even after standardizing the luminosity, the supernova from the younger stellar populations appear to be systematically fainter, and those from the older populations are systematically brighter. So the standard candle needs to be calibrated for the age. And that this would suggest, you know, that there has been a change over time in that dark energy that would be affecting the distance. In other words, that these are not dimmer because they're further; they're dimmer because they're older. And so, and it's not just that they're older and therefore they're not as bright; it's that when they were formed, the force of dark energy was different, and therefore their brightness is different as a result of that. So, once we do this, we start to resolve the **Hubble tension**. We have the **Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument project**, which is using **baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAOs)** and **Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)** data to make a model of the cosmological constant. And the baryonic acoustic oscillations are actually the sound of the Big Bang itself. So, when we correct the supernova data with the BAO and CMB results, they indicate that **dark energy is weakening and evolving over time**. And when we correct the supernova data combined with those results, the standard **Lambda CDM model is ruled out with overwhelming significance**—we're talking about 99.999% confidence that that standard cosmological model is wrong, and therefore that the universe is **decelerating now** and that it may, in fact, crunch back on itself.

There certainly is. And traditionally, I've been in kind of the **big crunch school** too, because it's elegant in the sense that then the universe is basically a cycle, and that there are other universes to follow after the Big Crunch turns into another big bang. So, I've always thought that that was the more elegant than the big freeze.

Yes, and I mentioned that I was also in Team Big Crunch. So, this news story is very heartening to me, and I wanted to just read a little bit from the beginning of **Robinson Jeffers' poem, *The Great Explosion***. I think that there is a very beautiful metaphor used here. So, that's alright with you, Jay, I'll take about 30 seconds or so here.

*The Great Explosion* by Robinson Jeffers: "The universe expands and contracts like a great heart. It is expanding the farthest nebula, rush with the speed of light into empty space. It will contract the immense navies of stars and galaxies, dust clouds and nebula are recalled home. They crush against each other in one harbor. They stick in one lump. And then explode. Nothing can hold them down. There is no way to express that explosion. All that exists roars into flame. The tortured fragments rush away from each other into all the sky. New universes jewel the black breast of night. And far off the outer nebula, like charging spearmen again, invade emptiness. No wonder we are so fascinated with fireworks and our huge bombs. It is a kind of homesickness, perhaps, for the hollowing fire blast that we were born from. But the wholesome of the energies that made and contain the giant atom survives. It will gather again and pile up the power and the glory, and no doubt it will burst again, diastole and systole, the whole universe beats like a heart."

Great. So, next week, we'll probably sum up this whole crisis in cosmology and Hubble tension, using all the kind of building blocks that we've built over the last couple of weeks. And so, that will kind of—we'll kind of wrap up this series. Is that right, Mike?

Yes, and we almost got an anti-climax here with this new research, but of course, we need more confirmation, so we're gonna hedge our bets.

That's the thing about science, is that uncertainty and science go hand in hand, as well as poetry, apparently. So, we will go ahead and thank all of our listeners for checking out this podcast and our game show segment, and please be sure to **comment, like, and subscribe**, and let us know what you'd like to hear more about. You can also check out our individual websites at **wildernessvagabonds.com** for Mike's website and **Skylapser.com** for my website. And if you'd like to help us out, you can buy us a coffee at **[buymeacoffee.com/skylapser](https://buymeacoffee.com/skylapser)**. And the intro music is "Fanfare for Space" by Kevin MacLeod from the YouTube Audio Library. From the Deep Sage Nine Observatory, this is **Jay Shaffer**, and **Mike Lewinski**, wishing you all clear skies.

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The core topics discussed were:

* **Space Weather:** Activity from Sunspot 4274, leading to Aurora Borealis displays and a high probability of M-class and X-class solar flares.
* **Lunar Observations:** Discussion of the past full moon and the current **waning gibbous** phase, noting the visibility of the **daytime moon** and the **moon illusion**.
* **Space News:** Blue Origin's **New Glenn** rocket launching the **ESCAPADE** mission to Mars, and the delayed return of Chinese astronauts from the **Tiangong station** due to space debris.
* **Cosmology Discussion:** A new study challenging the accelerating expansion theory, suggesting the universe is **decelerating** due to potential evolution in **Dark Energy**. The hosts discussed the **Lambda CDM model** and various explanations for dark energy (vacuum energy, quintessence, modified gravity). The discussion strongly leans toward the **Big Crunch** scenario based on the new findings, which may help resolve the **Hubble Tension**.

Would you like me to elaborate on any of the cosmological models or space weather phenomena mentioned?