Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #447: Wandering Planets, Dark Matter Controversy, and the Fermi Paradox Debate

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#447: Wandering Planets, Dark Matter Controversy, and the Fermi Paradox Debate · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts where
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: we talk astronomy, space science and all the problems of
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: the world that we cannot solve, and a few other
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: things as well. But coming up on this episode, in fact,
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  Speaker 1: we are going to look at some new information that's
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  Speaker 1: come from Yes, you're right, the James Web Space Telescope.
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  Speaker 1: It has found six new rogue planets. Rogue or orphan planets.
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  Speaker 1: They're out there floating around. They don't have a star,
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  Speaker 1: no mum, no dad, They're just hanging around on street
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  Speaker 1: corners smoking joints. But we're going to find out more
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  Speaker 1: about these ones. We're also looking at doubts that have
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: been raised about the existence of dark matter itself. Well,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: if it's not dark matter, what is it? And if
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  Speaker 1: it's dark matter, I don't know. There's been a study
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  Speaker 1: done and they've gone nothing to see here. And we're
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: going to look at some new ideas around the Fermi
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  Speaker 1: parad and life in the universe. It's all coming up
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: on this edition of Space Nuts fifteen.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: In Channel ten nine ignition sequence Space Nuts or three two.
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  Speaker 1: One Space Nurse and I reported Neils Good and unraveling
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  Speaker 1: the ravelment that is astronomy and space science is professor Fred.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: What's a hello bread?
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Hello Andrew, good to see you, Good to see you.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: To you today, you're looking rather dapper, dapper pinstrop suit
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: you Well, yes, yes it's the shirt you see that
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: because I spent the morning in far more official meetings
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: that were in I spent the morning on the golf course.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Well there you go, yes, do share, because see I'm
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: a bit red in the face.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Got some sun. Yes, we had a beautiful day today.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: It's spring has just gone. It's like drop gone us,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: like a giant ball, and it just all the cold
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: weather just suddenly vanished. Yes, very very enjoyable. I spoke.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I've probably spoken too soon. Next week we'll have snow.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Except it is coming back. The cool weather's coming back,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: of course it is. We've got twenty nine degrees here today. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: we've been up in the ridiculous for winter.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're expecting. I think we're sespecially get twenty five
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: today and twenty eight on Friday. Yes, it's insane, and
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: yeah we're still technically in winter. Yeah, I wonder what's
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  Speaker 1: caused all that. Let's not go there, but we have
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  Speaker 1: got a lot to talk about. Fred and the first
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  Speaker 1: thing is a story that's gained a bit of traction
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  Speaker 1: in several on several websites, and that is a new
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  Speaker 1: thing from the James Webb Space Telescope. Six Wandering rogue
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  Speaker 1: Planets is one headline. Another one says James web Spot's
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  Speaker 1: new rogue Worlds or Planets. I guess we could start
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  Speaker 1: off by explaining exactly what a roague planet is. I
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  Speaker 1: think most people have got it in their minds well
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  Speaker 1: and truly, but a few might be going, what what
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  Speaker 1: on Earth is that? It's Yes, it's some. There's all
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  Speaker 1: sorts of reasons for them, but they are out there.
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  Speaker 2: That's correct. And I mean I always think rogue planets
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  Speaker 2: is a it's not a good name for these things.
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  Speaker 2: The sound naughty, yes, that's right. It gives them a
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  Speaker 2: bad look. Whereas you know, if you call them orphan planets,
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  Speaker 2: then your sympathies are much.
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  Speaker 1: More with them. Just so sad.
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  Speaker 2: Sad planets. Yeah, there's an afterronym that I remember writing
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  Speaker 2: about a long time ago. They were called f flops.
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  Speaker 2: F flops was free floating low something, but I can't remember.
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  Speaker 2: I can't remember what it was. I'd have to look
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  Speaker 2: look it up. And I've got time to do that now.
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  Speaker 2: But I thought, yes, flops kind of. I think it
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  Speaker 2: gave them a you know, a sort of tick of
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  Speaker 2: failure across of failure. Really, didn't it that they just
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  Speaker 2: haven't made it? They're flops, Really, they're not. They haven't
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  Speaker 2: made it. And in a way, that is what this
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  Speaker 2: story is about. Because whilst we've known about roade planets
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  Speaker 2: or often planets for several decades now, some of the
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  Speaker 2: first were discovered actually using the Angle Australian telescope if
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  Speaker 2: I remember rightly here in Australia, in the Orion Nebula.
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  Speaker 2: So the irin Nebula is a place, it's a region
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  Speaker 2: of staff formation. It's a place which became sort of
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  Speaker 2: reasonably well known for its orphan planets. But the question
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  Speaker 2: about them is where they came from. And there are two,
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  Speaker 2: basically two possibilities. One is that they formed in the
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  Speaker 2: normal way that planets form, from the proto planetary disc
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  Speaker 2: around a young star. And so you know, rogue planets
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  Speaker 2: sorry often planets, would have formed along with their siblings
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  Speaker 2: in that protoplanetary disc and then something happened that basically
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  Speaker 2: kicked them out, sent them wandering off into interstellar space
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  Speaker 2: with no Sun to orbit around. Maybe we should call
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  Speaker 2: them banished planets planets looking in the school toilets.
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  Speaker 1: That's what it was.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's the I suppose that's the equivalent of
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  Speaker 2: a gravitational interaction with another planetary body, which as the
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  Speaker 2: same thing. Really you still get you still get kicked out.
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  Speaker 2: So did they form in the way that all planets
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  Speaker 2: formed the normal planetary formation, and then get kicked out
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  Speaker 2: by some gravitational interaction, or did they form as the
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  Speaker 2: bottom realm if I can put it that way of
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  Speaker 2: the star formation process. So when stars four in clouds
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  Speaker 2: of gas and dust, which is where we know they
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  Speaker 2: are formed, and you know they form by these blobs
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  Speaker 2: of this gas and dust collapsing under its own gravity,
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  Speaker 2: and eventually that collapse produces a high enough temperature because
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  Speaker 2: of compression that you will get nuclear reactions taking place. Now,
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  Speaker 2: the clouds of gas and dust where we know stars
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  Speaker 2: form are multi faceted, and there is a suspicion that
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  Speaker 2: perhaps some of them, you know, you get little globs
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  Speaker 2: of gas and dust which collapses as though it was
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  Speaker 2: going to form a stun a sun, not a stun
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  Speaker 2: a star or a sun, but it doesn't have enough
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  Speaker 2: mass in there, so the compression never reaches the temperatures
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  Speaker 2: that you need to click nuclear reactions into being. So
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  Speaker 2: that's what you might call the top down model, where
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  Speaker 2: you've got you start off forming a star, but there's
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  Speaker 2: not enough material to form that star, and what you
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  Speaker 2: get is something with the mess of a planet. And
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  Speaker 2: that is, you know, a perfectly reasonable explanation for why
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  Speaker 2: these orphan planets or roade planets exist, and in a
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  Speaker 2: way that gets rid of the orphan bit because they've
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  Speaker 2: never had a parent star. They've always been objects that
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  Speaker 2: have formed directly from the raw material of stars, that's
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  Speaker 2: gas and dust. So this new observation has shed some
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  Speaker 2: light on that and it comes, as you said, from
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  Speaker 2: the James Webspace telescope. About half a dozen of these
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  Speaker 2: orphan planets, road planets, flops, whatever you want to call them,
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  Speaker 2: have been found without a star to orbit, and they
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  Speaker 2: are in the perseous molecular cloud. It's a region of
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  Speaker 2: oll ocules, is that as the name implies, which is
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  Speaker 2: basically gas, cold gas and dust, and it's in the
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  Speaker 2: constellation of Persius, the Northern Hemisphere constellation. So the planets
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  Speaker 2: which have been found have ranged between five and ten
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  Speaker 2: times the mass of Jupiter. And this is a sort
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  Speaker 2: of critical measurement because there is thinking that suggests anything
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  Speaker 2: less than that than five times the mass of Jupiter
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  Speaker 2: would have to have been formed in a bigger planetary
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  Speaker 2: system and then kicked out. So there's a sort of
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  Speaker 2: lower limit there on the formation of these And so
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  Speaker 2: what you're saying is that, you know, if there were,
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  Speaker 2: if you were seeing them less than five times the
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  Speaker 2: mass of Jupiter, then you could point to them having
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  Speaker 2: been formed elsewhere in a solar system and then kicked.
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  Speaker 1: Out, but there were the rants of the litter.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, in that sense, that's right. Although five times the
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  Speaker 2: mass of Jupiter is pretty big, it is, I wouldn't
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  Speaker 2: call it that towards space, No, No, you rather, you
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  Speaker 2: certainly wouldn't want to do that. You could get into
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  Speaker 2: all kinds of trouble. So this observation tends to favor
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  Speaker 2: the idea that these things have formed as though there
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  Speaker 2: were going to be stars but haven't got that far.
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  Speaker 2: There is another limit.
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  Speaker 3: That that that applies to these objects, because anything that's
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  Speaker 3: more than thirteen times the mass of Jupiter becomes something else.
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  Speaker 2: That is what we call a brown dwarf star, because
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  Speaker 2: that is the mass in which what you might call
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  Speaker 2: low level nuclear processes kicking. It's basically deuterium burning. They
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  Speaker 2: call it fusion of deuteria. So anything above thirteen times
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  Speaker 2: the massive Jupiter will be a brown dwarf star.
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  Speaker 1: Speaking of woage trade, for those who are watching us,
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  Speaker 1: I've got a brown dwarf.
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  Speaker 2: Hang on, turn my Oh so you do.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, it's a terra Cotta warrior from China.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, there you go.
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  Speaker 1: But it fits in the palm of my hand, brown dwarf.
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  Speaker 2: Is it less than it must be more than thirteen
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  Speaker 2: times a massive Jupiter then if it's that, but just
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  Speaker 2: watch out for that deuterium fusion in the interior.
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  Speaker 1: I hope there's none in there.
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  Speaker 2: At the risk of wondering, if you and I are
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  Speaker 2: talking across purposes here, I'll carry on, yes and so yeah,
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  Speaker 2: So more than thirteen times a massive Jupiter, you've got
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  Speaker 2: a brown dwarf. More than ninety three times the mass
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  Speaker 2: of Jupiter, you've got a star. Yeah, because then you
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  Speaker 2: get the you've got enough mass to create hydrogen fusion.
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  Speaker 2: Fusion of hydrogen. It's to helium the normal nuclear process,
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  Speaker 2: so that it's it's an interesting set of observations that
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  Speaker 2: we've got that might draw a line under the question
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  Speaker 2: as to whether rogue planets often planets, whether they form
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  Speaker 2: alone in a top down process in other words, collapsing
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  Speaker 2: star cloud clouds of raw material of stars, or whether
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  Speaker 2: they're kicked out of their solar systems. And it looks
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  Speaker 2: as though it is the former rather than the latter.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, so they're independently created and then then just float
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  Speaker 1: off into the into the ether. And then I guess
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  Speaker 1: what will likely happen to them is I'll just keep
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  Speaker 1: floating around out there doing not much.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, that's right. They'll indeed, they will, they'll, you know,
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  Speaker 2: they will evolve in a slow sort of way. They
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  Speaker 2: they're almost certainly gas giants. There is just one other
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  Speaker 2: sneaky input into this debate that came from these new observations,
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  Speaker 2: and that is that one of these rogue planets looks
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  Speaker 2: as though it has its own protoplanetary disk, in other words,
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  Speaker 2: a miniature version of what the Solar system would have
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  Speaker 2: looked like in its early history where the planets were formed,
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  Speaker 2: or what a solar system looks like it looks as
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  Speaker 2: though there's a sort of tiny replica of a solar
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  Speaker 2: system being formed around one of these rogue planets, which
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  Speaker 2: again points to the top down formation mechanism. In other words,
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  Speaker 2: they're formed by the collapse of small clouds of gas
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  Speaker 2: in a molecular cloud.
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  Speaker 1: That's fascinating. I also think during this study they found
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  Speaker 1: a brown dwarf that had its own planet, So that
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  Speaker 1: what would you call that? That's not a they're not
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  Speaker 1: rogue planets.
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  Speaker 2: That's a no, no, that's it might you might almost
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  Speaker 2: call it a binary system because the brown dwarf is
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  Speaker 2: low mass, the planet's probably quite high mass. The difference
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  Speaker 2: between one and the other is one's burning deuterium and.
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  Speaker 1: The other isn't. Yeah, wow, there's so much you know, this,
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  Speaker 1: James web Tap the space Telescope is starting to reveal
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  Speaker 1: to us. And even though it's which I've mentioned before,
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  Speaker 1: opening up so many more questions, it's also managing to
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  Speaker 1: answer some questions. And yeah, and we're only in the
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  Speaker 1: early phases of its role. It's mission. Who knows what
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  Speaker 1: else we'll discover. But if you're interested in reading that
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  Speaker 1: story about rogue planets, just do a search for it.
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  Speaker 1: There are so many platforms. Space dot com has done
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  Speaker 1: something on a Cosmos magazine, or if you want to
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  Speaker 1: put yourself to sleep and read the whole thing, it's
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: in the Astronomical Journal. That's where they published the official paper. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: this is space Nut's Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred
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  Speaker 1: what's a.
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  Speaker 2: Murder you here? Space butts?
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  Speaker 1: Now, for doubts have been raised about the existence of
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  Speaker 1: dark matter. We get a lot of questions, surprisingly about
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: dark matter, people wanting to know what it is, how
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: we've managed to find it. You know, we haven't actually
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: identified it. We just sort of know it's there because
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: it has to be, otherwise things wouldn't add up. But
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: now a new study has been published that's basically said, hey,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: we've looked for this stuff and no, I find it
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: can't exist.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, nobody's saying it can't exist.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: I just threw that in there for topical humor.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Well yes, yeah, yes, don't misquote anybody though, So yes,
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  Speaker 2: So it's some results from a dark matter particle detector
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: which is looking specifically for one candidate particle for the
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: dark matter problem. So quick recap without there being something
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: called dark matter galaxies wouldn't hold together. They'd rotate too
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: fast to hold themselves together. And that's you know, that's
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: one of the main reasons why we think dark matter
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: is present, plus the fact that we see evidence for
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: it with gravitational lensing and things of that sort. But
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  Speaker 2: it's not detectable by normal means because it doesn't seem
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: to interact with normal particles in any way other than
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: by gravity. It doesn't interact, you know, from a nuclear standpoint,
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: it doesn't interact from any kind of electromagnetic interaction, in
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: other words, interact with photons, none of that. Doesn't want
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: to know, but it seems to exist. Now, multiple candidates
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: have been proposed for what that particle might be, and
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: indeed some people think there might be a whole zoo
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: of different dark matter particles like there are with normal
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: matter particles. When you think of the sixteen fundamental particles seventeen,
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: I think if you're throw in the Higgs boson in
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: what we call the standard model of particle physics. So
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: one of the proposals has been something called a WIMP,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: and the WIMP is the weekly interacting massive particle, and
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: a WIMP has particular characteristics sort of particular expected mass
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: in order to provide the kind of gravitational pool that
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: we think dark matter has. And so this particular experiment
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: was tuned to look for WIMPs, specifically to look for WIMPs.
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  Speaker 2: And it's a detector that is called luxe Zeppelin, and
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: I think that's an acronym, but it's usually just contracted
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: to l Z Locke Zeppelin or l Z if you're
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: on this side of the Pacific. So, and the number
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: of scientists have been involved with this US scientist it
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: is basically a US facility. It's located and sorry, I
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: was going to say a mile and a half, but
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: it's actually more like a mile a kilometer and a
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: half underground at something called the Sanford Underground Research Facility,
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  Speaker 2: And it basically consists of an enormous tank of xenon
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: and a lot of very sensitive light detectors for the
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: multiplier tubes as they're called, to detect any collision that
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: might be produced between a wimp and a normal particle
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  Speaker 2: that would produce electromagnetic energy in other words, and so
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: the you know, people might be thinking, wait minute, Fred
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  Speaker 2: just said that, they don't. It doesn't interact with normal
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  Speaker 2: particles and now is saying that it does. And the
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  Speaker 2: bottom line there is that we think it might do,
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  Speaker 2: but very very rarely. In other words, there might be
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  Speaker 2: very sparse numbers of interactions between normal particles and the
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  Speaker 2: fabled matter particles, and that then leads you to be
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: able to predict, Okay, if you've got an interaction between
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: say a proton.
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  Speaker 1: And a wimp, what will you get.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: And the theoretical astronomer, sorry, the theoretical nuclear physicists who
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: think about this stuff, can predict what kind of gamma
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: ray spectrum or light spectrum you might get from such
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  Speaker 2: an interaction. And that's what these detectors are looking for,
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  Speaker 2: those characteristic signatures that you might get from a hypothesized
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: whim hitting a real particle, something that we know is
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: not just hypothetical. Yeah, and well they have run this
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: experiment now for I think two hundred and eighty days altogether, yep,
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: and not found anything. So that means that they can
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: say that these whimps don't have a mass bigger than
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: nine giga electron vaults. So a mass, when you're talking
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: about subatomic particles is measured in electron vaults. Nine giga
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: electron vaults is actually quite high. And for example, the
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: particles that you might detect from the large hundred collider
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: are in the basically they're in the terror electron vault level,
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: so they would detect more than this. But this particular
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: experiment is saying nothing bigger than nine giga electron vaults.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Is a whim.
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  Speaker 2: They don't exist if their mass is bigger than that.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: However, yeah, I knew there'd be a bat.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because a different detector might be able to detect
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: more massive particles. Yet however, however, again one is coming
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: because the university, actually it's a I think it's a
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: consortingum of universities in Australia are putting together a detector
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: known as Saber, a nice name, s A b Are
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: And it's down inside another mine, this time in Sotile
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: in Victoria, well known town in Victoria in the southern
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: part of Australia, and that will come on stream next year.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: The Saber detector will come on on next stream and
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: sorry next year. He'll come on stream next year. And
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: it has a different category of detection for dark matter.
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  Speaker 2: It's looking for something different rather than just collisions. It's
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: still got a target, not liquid zen on like the
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: lock Zeppelin has. It's a target that is a mixture
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: of sodium and iodine, so of different chemicals that might
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: react to some sort of particle interaction that they think
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: they may be able to detect. I think the Stoyle detector, say,
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: but detective scientists are a bit more optimistic that they
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: might find something with their new detector when it comes
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: on stream next year.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: So the bottom line is they've run this two hundred
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and eighty day study and basically said, look, we can't
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: find anything that you could identify as a dark matter
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: particle and it falls within the search area of these parameters,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: but we can't look any bigger than that, so we
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: can't find them. They don't exist in these in this spectrum.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: But there could be a particle that are larger net
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: that we can't find, and we haven't got a machine
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: that can do it yet, but there's one coming.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: That's the bottom line, beautifully put Andrew, you ought to
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: be a journalist, and so so.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: I'm too honest with them.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you probably are. The bottom line is the fact
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: is that we know there is something there because astronomy
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: tells us that we're missing something completely and the best
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: candidate from all the research that's been done is some
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: kind of sub atomic particle. And that's why you've just
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: got to do these experiments and hammered down the maybe
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: open up the space within which you're looking. And as
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: you say, it's these various parameters that are being defined
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: by these different instruments. So I hope we'll talk about
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: style next year when it's switched on. Maybe the first
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: thing it will discover is a darkmatic particle.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Well we hope so, yes, would be good to find one,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: and then we'll ask it a lot of questions because
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: it needs to come up with answers. Yes, we've been
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: sitting here wondering for so long. Now. If you'd like
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: to chase up that story, you can look it up
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: on the ABC News website. That's ABC Australia. But you
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: can also go to the LZ Dark Matter Experiment website,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: which I found while you were talking Fred LZ dot
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: LBL dot gov. Well that's got everything you need to
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: know about the study and how it worked and what
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: they did and all these big numbers that are too
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: hard for my brain. But yeah, check it out. Sorry, excellent,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Yes it is, it is. This is space nuts with
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Andrew Dunkley and Fred Watson broad Pace MutS okay, Fred,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: just as elusive as dark matter, although the difference being
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: we probably know that dark matter exists, we don't know
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: if extraterrestrial life does. And once again, the Fermi paradox
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: has been put under the microscope or the telescope or
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: whatever scope you want to use, and questions are being asked,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: some new ideas about life in the universe or not?
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: What's going on?
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, a paper by a person by the name of
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: I guess it's for King Raki sounds about right, probably
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: really mangling that. Really who is a scientist? Vulkin is
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: a Serbian philosopher. He's somebody who thinks about these things
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: and has published a paper in the Journal of Astrobiology,
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: which I have in front of me at the moment,
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: the International German Journal, sorry, the International Journal of Astrobiology.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: The paper is called a non Anthropocentric Solution to of
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: the Fermi Paradox.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: I like the name of that.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's right.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: So it means.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: We're thinking too too limited a fashion. That's the bottom line,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: that we may the extraterrestrial life may have so different
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: set of characteristics that to human or to terrestrial life,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: that we're just missing it completely. And that's what he
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: means by non anthropocentric solution.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: I you know, I haven't heard the whole story yet,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: but I reckon he's spot on. I think that could
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: well be the answer.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: It's what, Yes, it's sort of what you know, what
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: people urge us to do. We get questions from people saying, ah,
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: but have you thought of life that was based on
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: silicon rather than carbon and things like that, And.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Yes, we.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: Have talked about it, all of those we've we've thought
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: about that. But professor ratchik or Rakic is urging us
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: to be even more broad in our thinking. So so
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: what he what he suggests is that their normal explanations,
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: uh huh, and the several people have proposed explanations, that
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: they're all too anthropocentric. They're putting humans in the center
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: of the picture. As phys dot org is put in
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: their article about this, and suggests that alien life might
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: be unobservable to the senses that we as humans have developed.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: So but the but this philosopher is clearly a study sorry,
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: a very profoundly thinking person in the field of this
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: kind of approach. He's basically at the works at the
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Center for the Study of Bioethics, University of Belgrade, and
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: clearly spent a lot of time thinking about this. I'm
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: trying to think of how we can summarize it. He's
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: got let me just go back to the abstract for
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: his paper, because he's classifying the solutions to the Fermi
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: paradox in four different categories, and this is what his
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: paper discusses. So the categories are, first of all, exceptionality
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: solutions that means we are exceptional, that there isn't any
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: other life in the universe. Number two is annihilation solutions.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: That is that extraterrestrial intelligence doesn't last very long. It
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: gets annihilated one way or another, either by natural causes
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: you know, super and ova wiping out life, or in
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: self inflicted ones exactly the ones that we naturally think about, wars,
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: or even viruses, you know, run away viruses of that sort.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: And then communication barrier solutions. Sorry I said there were four,
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: that's only three. That that means that there's no ability
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: to communicate. And I can imagine one scenario with that
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: might be, for example, if there is extraterrestrial intelligence in
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: the oceans of Enceladus or Europa, where there's no way
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: of penetrating that ice covering the glass ceiling. If I
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: can put it that way, you can't get through that,
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: so we would know about that. So it's a communication barrier.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: But then he says, really, what we've got to do
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: is take humans out of the equation altogether, forget about
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: human life and look at the broader context, what sort
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: of life there might be, whether it's life that exists
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: as in organic matter or you know, some sort of
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: entity that we are not capable of perceiving. And I
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: think what he's doing is setting the groundwork for possible
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: future thinking about this. And in fact, the last line
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: of the abstract of his paper is, in the light
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: of the revolutionary developments in theoretical physics, it is likely
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: that in the future these developments will be reflected in
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: a increasingly non anthropocentric solutions to the Fermi paradox. In
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: other words, people thinking more outside the box.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: You know what, I think that's a great way to
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: It's a great idea to consider that because I think
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: he went on to say that, you know, some of
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: these entities could exist as made up of dark matter
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: or dark energy or you know, the things we've been
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: talking about that we can't detect. Yes, but that's a possibility.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: And I love the way he talks about how we
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: perceive the intelligence of other creatures on Earth, like whales
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: and dolphins, But what do they think of us? Do
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: they look at us as intelligent? Maybe they don't. Maybe
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: they just go look at these dimwits they can't even swim,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: and and how insect life perceives humans. Did they look
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: at us as intelligent creatures? I think not. They probably
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: just they may not even recognize us as alive. And
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: that's where he's coming from.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's right, that's where he's coming from. And
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: it is I think, you know, you're you're clearly and
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: armored by the ideas that he's putting forward. As I
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: have to say, Andrew.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: It's an interesting it's an interesting way of looking at it,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: and it sort of opens the the whole world of
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: science and technology and astronomy to being more philosophical, being
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: using philosophy as a way of analyzing possibilities, probabilities, and
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: even things that are so far out of the norm
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: that we haven't even looked there, but maybe we should.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: That's right, I feel I've not done this professor a
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: service in terms of my explanation of his theory. But
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: the paper, actually, if our listeners can check it up
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: on the one you can look at online see in
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: the International Journal of Astrobiology, is called a non anthropocentric
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: solution to the Fermi paradox. It's very beautifully laid out.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: I'm not used to reading papers by philosophers, but this
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: is really neat. And the three types of solutions that
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: I mentioned you lists them here. The exceptional exceptionality solutions
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: include the Earth is an exception or intelligent life is
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: an exception, and that's the one that I've tended to
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: trot out a lot in recent times. The annihilation solutions
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: suggest include periodic annihilations of intelligent life caused by natural events.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: Advanced forms of intelligence have the tendency to destroy themselves
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: or to destroy others. And then the communication barrier solutions,
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: of which there are many. They broadcast signals that are
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: only detectable for a short space of time. Extraterrestrial intelligent
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: life may be incomprehensible to humans. That's what the one
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: you were talking about regard to insects and things. Yeah,
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: they may reside too far away from humans. It's a
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: really interesting list of reasons why the family paradox might
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: still be a paradox. And then the alternative solution that
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: he presents is itself a really interesting set of reading.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: I'd urge anybody who's interested in this problem to have
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: a look at the paper.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, Yeah, you can read the story on fizz
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: dot org, phy s dot org as well, so or
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: the International Journal of estro Biology. Yeah, that's it's a
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: good one. It's a really fascinating story, gets your thinking
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: outside the box. Love those love those sorts of theories.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: That wraps it up. Fred, Thank you so much.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: It's a great pleasure. Andrew. It's always good to talk
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: about these things, especially when we get ideas of stimulating
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: as that.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, I'm sure questions will come. Yes, and don't forget
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: if you want to follow us on social media. We've
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: got the Space Nuts podcast group Facebook page, our own
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: specific Facebook page. We're on Instagram and YouTube, and don't
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: forget to hit subscribe if you're a YouTube follower, and
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: thanks for it. We'll catch you real soon on the
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: next episode. Answering some questions, We'll see you then.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Sounds great. Andrew, I look forward to that.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: And thanks to Hugh in the studio who had all
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: the answers to all the questions we asked today, but
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: we don't let him on the show because we just
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: think he's too clever. And from me Andrew Dunkley, thanks
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: for your company. We'll see you on the next episode
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: of Space Nuts. Bye bye. So the Space Nuts podcast
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: You can also stream on demand at Bidestone.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot Com.