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SphereX is NASA's

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latest explorer mission in astrophysics,
and I'm very excited about it.

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Sphere X is going to answer
some fundamental questions.

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It's going to tell us about the origin
of the universe, the birth and formation

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history of galaxies,
and the abundance of essential molecules

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such as water in the early stages of star

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and planet formation.

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In this catalog,
we expect to have, spectra of

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of order, half a billion galaxies,
hundreds of millions of stars.

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And because we're covering the entire sky,
we can expect some unusual

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objects as well.

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We will expect to see some black holes.

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The first black holes
to light up in the center of galaxies.

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In the early,
early times at the edge of the universe.

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We can also expect to see,

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some rare events and stars
in our own galaxy.

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Stars that are undergoing,
bombardment period where comets

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and asteroids are coming into the inner
solar system in these systems.

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And so it's going to be very exciting.

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And we expect, some discoveries from this.

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SphereX is unique because it,

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does something
that hasn't been done before.

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It covers the entire sky.

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But instead of doing this, like in camera
fashion, where we just take a picture,

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we're actually taking,
what astronomers call a spectrum.

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We're splitting up the light into

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multiple wavelengths, and we take that
spectrum everywhere on the sky.

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So that's a unique tool.

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And it, allows us, for example,
to study inflation

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because we get the distances of galaxies
through their spectra

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and we cover the entire sky that way.

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The wavelengths we're studying

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are out in the, near infrared.

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So, SphereX starts at wavelengths
just beyond where your eye can see,

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the optical, to wavelengths
that are about ten times longer,

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that, than than
what we see here in the visible.

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And so that range is

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the range of interest for,
seeing the fingerprints of galaxies,

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but also seeing the fingerprints
from some important atoms and molecules.

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SphereX isn't a big telescope,
but we can study the

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the imprints of galaxy formation,

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on, on large scales and,

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and we not only can

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see this, perhaps the beginnings of galaxy
formation,

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we can actually map out
its entire history.

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And we're not doing this
in individual galaxies.

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We're kind of seeing the big picture
over, multiple,

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multiple, galaxies.

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And so SphereX is going to study the,

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abundance of, of ices, water,
but also important species

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that are have key materials for life,
such as carbon dioxide and methanol.

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It's going to study
the abundance of those ices

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in the early stages of star formation,
going from the dense

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molecular clouds before there were stars
to the early stages of stars,

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turn on and form these material disks that
eventually turn into planetary systems.