Ask an Astronomer: Daylight Saving Time, Project Hail Mary, Companion Stars and more!

Gina Martin sits down with Dr. Phil Langill with the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory and Earth and space science educator Dr. Stephen Jeans.

It’s a debate many people have twice a year when we have to spring forward or fall back an hour: “is Daylight Saving Time (DST) worth it?”

In the March episode of Ask an Astronomer, Dr. Phil Langill with the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory and Earth and space science educator Dr. Stephen Jeans explain how the shifting of the clocks was meant to capture extra daylight during spring and summer.

But with DST, the argument is many of us are actually missing out on “real” sunlight in the morning, and the full visible spectrum the sun gives our bodies.

“Your body needs all of those colours in order to wake you up otherwise you’re groggy all day long because if you’re in fluorescent lights,” said Jeans. “This is debatable, but the idea is you don’t actually have your clock reset.

“So, people go from darkness into an office building and be under fluorescents, which is not full spectrum and then they go back in the dark so they don’t actually get the daylight they need to wake themselves up.”

Jeans and Langill also answered a lot of great questions from our viewers.

Ron P. from Saskatchewan wanted to know more about Betelgeuse’s hypothesized companion star Siwarha.

“It’s very difficult to see (Siwarha),” said Langill.

“Betelgeuse is so bright and the two things are so close together but Betelgeuse has been known for many of hundreds of years to go through a time where it gets dimmer. So, it had this real anomalous behavior in its light and I think that’s what prompted people to get a good close look at it to see, people had hypothesized there was a companion doing something weird to its light and sure enough its disturbing the light of Betelgeuse as it goes around.”

You can watch March’s full episode now on ctvnews.calgary.ca and on our CTV News YouTube page.

Here’s a breakdown of the topics discussed in this episode and what time they are brought up:

• 2:53 - Daylight Saving Time and how it works;
• 9:54 - New sci-fi movie Project Hail Mary;
• 13:46 - Betelgeuse’s companion star Siwarha;
• 16:14 - Can we go to Ceres?;
• 18:48 - The difference between dark matter and regular matter; and
• 22:05 - What are black holes and where are they?

If you have a question to ask an astronomer please send us an email at [e-mail], you can also text your question to 10400, or feel free to post your question in the comment section on YouTube.

Questions can be anything in the realm of space, astronomy and Earth science!