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Rocket Science Setbacks, Skynet's Secret Move & Aurora Mysteries Unveiled: #475 · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi there, thanks for joining us again. This is Space
0:02
Speaker 1: Nuts where we talk astronomy and space science. My name
0:06
Speaker 1: is Andrew Dunkley. Thanks for your company. Coming up today,
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Speaker 1: we have some sad news about a company that was
0:13
Speaker 1: developing what would probably have been one of the great
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Speaker 1: leapforwards leaps forward in rocket science. Unfortunately it's gone the
0:23
Speaker 1: other way. And we'll explain why the UK's oldest satellite,
0:28
Speaker 1: which was launched not long after Neil Armstrong set foot
0:32
Speaker 1: on the Moon, has done something weird. We don't know
0:35
Speaker 1: who did it, we don't know why. And wait till
0:38
Speaker 1: you hear the name of this thing. It'll make you laugh.
0:42
Speaker 1: And citizens scientists have proved their worth again by explaining
0:48
Speaker 1: why Magenta Aura appeared over Japan earlier this year. That's
0:52
Speaker 1: all coming up on this episode of Space Nuts.
0:56
Speaker 2: Fifteen, Channel ten Ignition Space Nuts or three two.
1:08
Speaker 1: One Space Nurse and I recorded real good and he's
1:12
Speaker 1: back again for more. Gruelmut It is shred Wat's in
1:16
Speaker 1: Astronomer at Large Professor Freid.
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Speaker 3: Hello, you're on a roll today, Andrew with inventing new word.
1:22
Speaker 3: I love groulnuts gruelmout.
1:25
Speaker 1: I'm going to write that one down too.
1:26
Speaker 3: I'll write this one down to you.
1:28
Speaker 1: When we were recording the TikTok, I had a slip
1:31
Speaker 1: of the tongue and I created a word called web spite.
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Speaker 3: Yes, webspites. It's when you use the World Wide Web
1:37
Speaker 3: to get back at somebody.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, what did I just say?
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Speaker 3: Gruelmot Yeah, yes, which is I can't read my own writing,
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Speaker 3: so you'll have to tell me what that was. No,
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Speaker 3: thank you, I do. It's a pleasure to be here
1:51
Speaker 3: and I you don't mind being grueled from time to
1:53
Speaker 3: time as long as it doesn't get too often.
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Speaker 1: No, No, it's usually once a week with their Q
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Speaker 1: and A edition. So all right, we've got a lot
2:03
Speaker 1: to talk about. And first up is some very sad
2:06
Speaker 1: news about a company that they've been operating for quite
2:11
Speaker 1: some time, and they've been trying to perfect a system
2:14
Speaker 1: that enables you to get into orbit without having to
2:17
Speaker 1: actually launch rockets, which is very expensive, and they were
2:21
Speaker 1: making incredible inroads, but all of a sudden it's ground
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Speaker 1: to a halt because well, money, money.
2:30
Speaker 3: They've run out of money, that's right. And yes, the
2:33
Speaker 3: reason why I picked this story to cover today is
2:35
Speaker 3: that I've been following this for thirty years the story.
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Speaker 3: This company, Reaction Engines in the United Kingdom, had division
2:45
Speaker 3: back in the nineties of building a space plane, which
2:51
Speaker 3: at that time was called hotel and hotels an acronym
2:55
Speaker 3: for horizontal takeoff and landing. And that tells you basically
3:01
Speaker 3: what you need to know about this thing. It flew
3:04
Speaker 3: like a plane, took off from a normal wrong way,
3:07
Speaker 3: no need for a spaceport, climbed with its two very
3:13
Speaker 3: highly specialized engines to the place the region of the
3:18
Speaker 3: atmosphere where you're really not getting very much oxygen into
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Speaker 3: the air intakes and then clicked over to liquid oxygen,
3:26
Speaker 3: so it became a rocket motor and from then straight
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Speaker 3: up into orbit.
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Speaker 1: Now that.
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Speaker 3: Vision of that spacecraft has got a different name now
3:37
Speaker 3: it's called Skylon, but it's the same sort of idea.
3:41
Speaker 3: It's a long, narrow spacecraft with very stubby wings and
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Speaker 3: a couple of these extraordinary engines that would be powering
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Speaker 3: it up into space. And when you look at a
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Speaker 3: diagram excuse me, or a cutaway model of one of
3:58
Speaker 3: Reaction Engines products, and they were still under development. Sadly,
4:04
Speaker 3: what you've got is something it looks a little bit
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Speaker 3: like the you know, the engine part of a modern
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Speaker 3: air bus or Boeing jet with an air intake, and
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Speaker 3: it's a supersonic air intake because it's got a very
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Speaker 3: pointing nose at one end, but at the other instead
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Speaker 3: of you know, a sort of large diameter exhaust, there
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Speaker 3: are rocket motors and that's what differentiates it. In fact,
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Speaker 3: I think the final in the final version that they
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Speaker 3: were working on, there was just one rocket motor. And
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Speaker 3: so what happens is that when it takes off, it's
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Speaker 3: basically a standard gas turbine, but the air that's coming
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Speaker 3: in through the air intake at the beginning is compressed.
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Speaker 3: It's not liquefied, but it's compressed and then injected with
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Speaker 3: liquid hydrogen, which is the fuel into one of these
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Speaker 3: rocket motor nozzles. Provides a rocket thrust and as the
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Speaker 3: as the space as the craft increases its speed, then
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Speaker 3: the ram effect comes into play because it's you know,
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Speaker 3: it's turning into a ramjet. So there's a lot of
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Speaker 3: the compression is high basically taking place at the front
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Speaker 3: end of the engine. But then when it reaches that
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Speaker 3: height above the atmosphere and you're talking probably in the
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Speaker 3: region of you know, thirty kilometers something like that. It
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Speaker 3: cuts out the intake and it becomes a straightforward rocket
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Speaker 3: motor because you then feed liquid oxygen into it. But
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Speaker 3: it's the same motor. It's got two different modes of operating,
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Speaker 3: one in the atmosphere and one not providing the thrust.
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Speaker 3: Now as I understand it, I'm not an aerospace engineer,
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Speaker 3: as you know. But the really interesting bit of this
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Speaker 3: and what took reaction engines, I think, from just being
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Speaker 3: a kind of vague really into the realm of reality,
6:05
Speaker 3: was a heat exchanger. Because when you're going at two
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Speaker 3: personic speeds, I think it's designed to go up to
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Speaker 3: Mach five or something. Well, it's air breathing five times
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Speaker 3: a speed of sound. The incoming air is compressed very
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Speaker 3: to a very high degree and has a very high temperature.
6:24
Speaker 3: And you and I, I know, I've talked about this thing before.
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Speaker 3: So they had this heat exchanger that reduced the temperature
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Speaker 3: from a thousand degrees to sort of minus five or
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Speaker 3: something in a thousand through a seconds. It's totally heably ridiculous,
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Speaker 3: but they made that work, and in fact, it's had
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Speaker 3: other applications, other industrial applications as well, so that's reaction
6:47
Speaker 3: engines have, you know, had contracts to do that. They've
6:50
Speaker 3: been underwritten by the British government. I think they've been
6:52
Speaker 3: underwritten by Rolls Royce and other companies. Sadly their funding
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Speaker 3: has just basically run out and then is still under development.
7:01
Speaker 3: It still shows promise, Andrew, it's one of these things
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Speaker 3: that it's as you said, it's a tragic story. And
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Speaker 3: I should say the engine is called SABER and that's
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Speaker 3: an acronym for synergetic air breathing rocket engine. It's a
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Speaker 3: very nice acronym and it tells you exactly what it is.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I hope it's saved. I hope someone
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Speaker 1: like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos comes to the forum.
7:26
Speaker 1: Then they've got money to burn. If you can send
7:28
Speaker 1: a Tesla vehicle to Mars wherever, surely you can bankroll
7:34
Speaker 1: something that's probably probably going to change the game completely
7:39
Speaker 1: in terms of getting into space, getting into orbit from
7:42
Speaker 1: the planet's surface at such a low cost in comparison.
7:47
Speaker 1: I mean, I think what I read the other day
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Speaker 1: was that the cost per kilo to send something into
7:53
Speaker 1: space now is about two thousand dollars. It is a take.
7:58
Speaker 1: This could make a huge, huge difference, and it's so
8:03
Speaker 1: sad that they've run into that brick wall because they
8:08
Speaker 1: were onto something. They were onto something.
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Speaker 3: Definitely now the high it so we go on ahead.
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Speaker 1: I was just going to say, for people who wonder
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Speaker 1: what it looks like, they've never actually produced one yet,
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Speaker 1: have they. They've just been developing the motor. Is that
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Speaker 1: right correct? Yes, the artist's impression what it looks like
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Speaker 1: is a I suppose there was a plane back in
8:34
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties built by Lockheed. It was called the Blackbirth,
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Speaker 1: and it looks it looks a lot like the Blackbird,
8:42
Speaker 1: which was quite a quite an astounding aircraft for its time.
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Speaker 1: I think I've got the statistics somewhere of the Lockheed,
8:53
Speaker 1: but it could achieve multiple speeds of sound capability, as
8:59
Speaker 1: many aircraft have. But yeah, that's I think the closest
9:05
Speaker 1: that I can come to what it looks like is
9:07
Speaker 1: a Lockheed Blackbird. Quite an amazing aircraft. You're going to
9:10
Speaker 1: say something, sorry, just.
9:11
Speaker 3: That you know you're absolutely right. SpaceX HA brought the
9:16
Speaker 3: cost per kilogram down from about twenty thousand dollars to
9:19
Speaker 3: two thousand. This would have brought it down further. But
9:24
Speaker 3: more especially, I think is that it's highly environmentally friendly
9:29
Speaker 3: because the exhaust was just water. You know, you're burning,
9:33
Speaker 3: you're burning liquid, liquid, hydrogen and oxygen, so basically it's
9:39
Speaker 3: water that's coming out. Now, yes, water vapor is a
9:41
Speaker 3: greenhouse gas, but it's not anything like us. But some
9:44
Speaker 3: of the things that come out the back end of
9:45
Speaker 3: some other some other rockets that we know about.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. Another interesting thing, Fred by the Bye I
9:54
Speaker 1: did a little bit of research on some of these
9:57
Speaker 1: high speed aircraft of the past, the X fifteen, which
10:03
Speaker 1: was a NASA creation. It came about in the nineteen
10:09
Speaker 1: sixties as well. I think the X fifteens were built
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Speaker 1: between It operated between nine and fifty nine and nineteen
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Speaker 1: sixty eight. There were twelve pilots, including Neil Armstrong who
10:20
Speaker 1: flew it. Flew the X fifteen and it was the
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Speaker 1: first land based horizontal takeoff aircraft to achieve space wings
10:32
Speaker 1: because it could reach a height of one hundred kilometers
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Speaker 1: sixty seven miles in fact, and it had a top
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Speaker 1: speed of four five hundred and twenty miles an hour
10:42
Speaker 1: of mark six point seven. So it has been done
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Speaker 1: in the past. In fact, in the very early days
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Speaker 1: of rocket science. The North American X fifteen achieved technical
10:54
Speaker 1: spaceflight by reaching what we consider the limit between Earth
11:02
Speaker 1: and space one hundred kilometer limits. So it's been done before,
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Speaker 1: and they were building on something that would have changed everything.
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Speaker 1: And let's hope that they're I mean, there's been nearly
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Speaker 1: two hundred jobs lost as a consequence of this situation,
11:18
Speaker 1: but he's really sad, and I can.
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Speaker 3: Imagine there were very highly qualified people as well.
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Speaker 1: Indeed, and hopefully hopefully someone will come to the fore
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Speaker 1: and carry on this incredible work because it, Yeah, I
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Speaker 1: think it's vital for the future, especially given you know,
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Speaker 1: not so long ago we were talking about the pollution
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Speaker 1: that's getting into the atmosphere from multiple rocket launchers to
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Speaker 1: put up those satellite arrays, this would be an incredible
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Speaker 1: development if they can just finish the job. Anyway, you
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Speaker 1: can read all about it at universetoday dot com. This
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Speaker 1: is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred what's an.
12:07
Speaker 3: Wi space nuts?
12:10
Speaker 1: Now? Fred? Speaking speaking of orbital satellites, I'm laughing because
12:15
Speaker 1: I love this story for a couple of reasons. This
12:18
Speaker 1: is a story about a satellite that the UK owns
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Speaker 1: and is still responsible for. It went up in nineteen
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Speaker 1: sixty nine. It's still up there, surprisingly, but something weird happened.
12:31
Speaker 1: What the heck is going on?
12:36
Speaker 3: It has the name. You're going to probably say something
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Speaker 3: about this. Let's do the name first, Andrew Gone, you
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Speaker 3: covered that. It's tell everybody what's this called.
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Speaker 1: It's called sky Net. If you listen to our sister
12:51
Speaker 1: podcasts with my brother Steve Astronomy Daily, he often talks
12:56
Speaker 1: to Halle about her uncle Skynett. And yes, Skynit was
13:03
Speaker 1: the self aware evil entity that was created through online
13:10
Speaker 1: systems in the Terminator movie series and basically, you know,
13:14
Speaker 1: saw the near end of humankind because it developed self awareness. So, yes, Skynit.
13:23
Speaker 1: I didn't know there was a real one, but there is.
13:26
Speaker 3: It is, and as you said, it was launched. I
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Speaker 3: think in November nineteen sixty nine was when Skynet one A.
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Speaker 3: There were two apparently or two of the first series.
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Speaker 3: I think Skyine actually still exists as a as a
13:41
Speaker 3: series of spacecraft, but Skynet one A was It's a
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Speaker 3: geostationary satellite that means it's thirty six thousand kilometers above
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Speaker 3: the Earth's surface and always hovers above a particular point
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Speaker 3: on the Earth because the orbital periods, the length of
14:00
Speaker 3: time it takes to go around once he's twenty four
14:02
Speaker 3: hours or was a very neat trick to be able
14:06
Speaker 3: to do that. So when it was lawn. So what
14:09
Speaker 3: was it launched for. It was all about communications for
14:14
Speaker 3: the British Forces. Was a defense relay communications spacecraft and it.
14:20
Speaker 1: Was placed.
14:24
Speaker 3: Basically over the east coast of Africa. That was where
14:29
Speaker 3: its original location forty degrees east. And of course what
14:34
Speaker 3: that meant was that because it's on the equator and
14:37
Speaker 3: that forty forty degrees east, it can see both the
14:43
Speaker 3: RAF base in the south of England where it was
14:46
Speaker 3: being controlled from, and various British Forces deployments throughout the
14:52
Speaker 3: throughout the Asia Pacific one not the Asia Pacific, but
14:56
Speaker 3: certainly Indian Ocean and East Asia. So all of that
15:02
Speaker 3: was part of its original function. Now that spacecraft, I
15:09
Speaker 3: don't think it actually uh worked for very long. It
15:15
Speaker 3: was just a few a few years. And of course
15:20
Speaker 3: that was in the in the the the infancy of
15:23
Speaker 3: this kind of telecommunications, and so I think everybody lost
15:26
Speaker 3: interest andrew until recently when somebody said, well, where's that
15:30
Speaker 3: sky net? One a gone? It turns up actually basically
15:38
Speaker 3: somewhere else, half a planet away, as the BBC reported.
15:44
Speaker 3: And actually it was a very nice article on the
15:46
Speaker 3: BBC website for this. It's it's entitled somebody moved UK's
15:50
Speaker 3: all this satellite and no one knows who Hawaii.
15:53
Speaker 1: Oh she's the story.
15:55
Speaker 3: But they commented all the orbital mechanics and that's the
15:58
Speaker 3: you know, the way that the dynamics of orbit's work.
16:01
Speaker 3: It's what I did my master's degree on. It means
16:04
Speaker 3: it's unlikely that the half done military spacecraft simply drifted
16:09
Speaker 3: to its current location. Almost certainly, says the BBC. It
16:12
Speaker 3: was commanded to fire its thrust us in the mid
16:15
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies to take it westwards. It's now over America,
16:18
Speaker 3: that's the thing. And the question is who was that
16:22
Speaker 3: and with what authority and purpose? And the BBC comments
16:30
Speaker 3: it's intriguing that key information about a once vital national
16:33
Speaker 3: security asset can just evaporate. But fascination aside. You might
16:38
Speaker 3: reasonably also ask why it still matters, after all, we're
16:40
Speaker 3: doing about some discarded space junt from fifty years ago.
16:44
Speaker 3: And the bottom line there's a space consultant by the
16:48
Speaker 3: name of Dr Stuart Eves who comments that it's still
16:51
Speaker 3: relevant because whoever did move Skynet one A did us
16:54
Speaker 3: a few favors. It's now in what we call a
16:56
Speaker 3: gravity well at one hundred and five degrees west longitude
17:00
Speaker 3: dring backwards and forwards like a marble at the bottom
17:02
Speaker 3: of a bowl. And unfortunately this brings it closer to
17:05
Speaker 3: other satellite traffic on a regular basis. Because it's dead,
17:09
Speaker 3: the risk is it might bump into something, and because
17:11
Speaker 3: it's our satellite, was still responsible for it. That's doctor
17:14
Speaker 3: Stuart e based consultant.
17:17
Speaker 1: That's the bottom line, isn't it. It is these days
17:21
Speaker 1: the responsibility of the country that sends it aloft to
17:26
Speaker 1: deal with it, and they can't because it's a dead satellite.
17:29
Speaker 1: It's stuck in this gravity well, it's bouncing around and
17:33
Speaker 1: it's it's in a traffic zone basically, Yes, that's right.
17:37
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the normal thing with defunct gestationary satellites is
17:42
Speaker 3: they're pushed outwards into what's called a graveyard orbit, yeah,
17:47
Speaker 3: where they are well away from all the active ones
17:51
Speaker 3: and sort of well away from other graveyard of spacecraft.
17:55
Speaker 3: So they're pushed outwards, and that's the standard practice and
17:59
Speaker 3: has been for some time. But clearly sky Net one
18:01
Speaker 3: A hasn't had that. It's in this gravity well, and
18:04
Speaker 3: it probably doesn't have any means of moving it because
18:07
Speaker 3: it's probably out of fuel and you know, fifty years
18:11
Speaker 3: fifty years old, it's more than fifty years old. It's
18:14
Speaker 3: probably a little bit rusty here and there in terms
18:17
Speaker 3: of its electronics and things of that.
18:19
Speaker 1: So, ye, didn't they expect it to just plunge back
18:22
Speaker 1: down to Earth, wasn't they not?
18:24
Speaker 3: Drax segnation No, geostationary is too far away. Okay, it's
18:30
Speaker 3: thirty six thousand kilometers, And I guess when that was
18:35
Speaker 3: launched back in nineteen sixty nine, there really wasn't the
18:39
Speaker 3: concern with space debris that there is now, and there
18:43
Speaker 3: would only be so the way geostationary orbits work andrew
18:49
Speaker 3: that they're all at the same distance. They've got to
18:51
Speaker 3: be at the same height above Earth for them to
18:53
Speaker 3: go around once in twenty four hours, otherwise it doesn't work.
18:57
Speaker 3: So what you've got is the all and it's all
19:00
Speaker 3: on the equator, so it's a single orbit. It's partitioned
19:04
Speaker 3: into stations for the different spacecraft, and I don't think
19:08
Speaker 3: they're very big. I think they're only you know, one
19:10
Speaker 3: hundred kilometers or something like that. Each box that one
19:14
Speaker 3: of these spacecraft sits in. One of our friends, Many's
19:19
Speaker 3: and my friends, actually is a she drives these spacecraft.
19:22
Speaker 3: She's a satellite manager for octas Be, the telecommunications company
19:29
Speaker 3: here in Australia, and she talked to me. It's a
19:34
Speaker 3: long time ago now, but she talked about station keeping
19:37
Speaker 3: and it means, you know, the gravitational pull of the
19:39
Speaker 3: Moon and the Sun and the planets just tweaked the
19:42
Speaker 3: orbit slightly and you've got to keep bringing it back
19:46
Speaker 3: to where you want it to be. So there's always
19:49
Speaker 3: a fuel usage with these geostationary satellites, even though they're
19:52
Speaker 3: in what seemed like stable orbits. You've got to work
19:55
Speaker 3: to keep them there. And eventually that's why you need
19:58
Speaker 3: to get them into a graveyard orbit, because if the
20:01
Speaker 3: spacecraft runs out of fuel and you can't do any
20:04
Speaker 3: station keeping, then you do a risk it wandering out
20:06
Speaker 3: of its box, its imaginary box, and hitting another one.
20:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, you mentioned your friend who works for Optus who
20:14
Speaker 1: tweaks the satellites orbits to keep them where they need
20:16
Speaker 1: to be. This article you mentioned. The BBC article spoke
20:20
Speaker 1: to Graham Davidson, who was the original pilot, if you like,
20:25
Speaker 1: of Skynet one A in the early seventies. He worked
20:29
Speaker 1: for the RAF. He said the Americans originally controlled the
20:33
Speaker 1: satellites orbit and they tested the software, but eventually handed
20:36
Speaker 1: over control to the RAF. This fellows now in his eighties.
20:42
Speaker 1: He said, in essence, there was dual control. But when
20:45
Speaker 1: or why Skynett one A might have been handed back
20:48
Speaker 1: to the Americans, which seems likely. I'm afraid I can't
20:51
Speaker 1: remember us. Yeah, because such a long time, isn't it
20:56
Speaker 1: such a long time, and so much as happened over
21:00
Speaker 1: those decades, and here we are suddenly thinking, oh, hang
21:03
Speaker 1: on a minute, it's still there. It's doing the wrong thing.
21:07
Speaker 1: We can't do anything about it. My theory, fraid, is
21:10
Speaker 1: that somebody at Mission Control saw a pretty girl, sat
21:16
Speaker 1: down on the panel with his Kappa coffee and said,
21:18
Speaker 1: good hey, I'm Fred, and push the button. That's what
21:23
Speaker 1: I reckons happened.
21:24
Speaker 3: It could be well, we might find out, actually, because
21:28
Speaker 3: there's a PhD student at University College London by the
21:31
Speaker 3: name of Rachel Hill, soon hopefully to be doctor Rachel
21:35
Speaker 3: Hill if she does a PhD. And she's been working
21:38
Speaker 3: through the National archives. And there's a speculation from Rachel,
21:45
Speaker 3: which is a Skynet team from Okanger that's the RAF
21:48
Speaker 3: station would go to the usaf USF for satellite facility
21:52
Speaker 3: in Sunnyvale colloquially known as the Blue Cube and operate
21:57
Speaker 3: the sky net during oak out. That this is when
22:00
Speaker 3: control was temporarily transferred to the US while Oakhang was
22:04
Speaker 3: down for essential maintenance. Perhaps the move could have happened then,
22:07
Speaker 3: and maybe your series, as good as her was in
22:09
Speaker 3: that regard to.
22:12
Speaker 1: I can see a Bond film in this herself where
22:16
Speaker 1: uk Sky and its satellite and I six is thrust
22:20
Speaker 1: into action to deal with it because it's up there
22:22
Speaker 1: plotting the takeover of the world. Or I think that
22:25
Speaker 1: story has already been done. But anyway, it is amusing.
22:29
Speaker 1: It is amusing, although it does have some serious consequence
22:32
Speaker 1: cecificates in the way of satellite traffic. You can read
22:35
Speaker 1: that at BBC dot com. This is Space Nuts with
22:40
Speaker 1: Andrew Dunkley and Fred Watson.
22:47
Speaker 2: Space Nuts.
22:49
Speaker 1: Finally, Fred, we look at citizens science and it's come
22:52
Speaker 1: to the fore in Japan because this year has been
22:56
Speaker 1: quite an astounding year in terms of being able to
23:00
Speaker 1: observe aurora, and the sun's been so very active, and
23:04
Speaker 1: the aurora have been popping up in places where you
23:08
Speaker 1: wouldn't normally see them, including where I am, although I
23:10
Speaker 1: haven't been that lucky. But the thing with the ones
23:15
Speaker 1: that have been seen in Japan is that they have
23:18
Speaker 1: been a magenta color and people have gone, wait a minute,
23:23
Speaker 1: that doesn't look right. How is it? So citizen science
23:27
Speaker 1: has come up with the answer.
23:29
Speaker 3: That's correct. It has, and you know, it is a
23:33
Speaker 3: really nice story as to how we learned things by
23:38
Speaker 3: virtue of people just doing that thing with their cameras
23:41
Speaker 3: and pulling together all their images. So this was something
23:48
Speaker 3: that happened in May this year, in fact May the tenth,
23:50
Speaker 3: if I remember rightly, there was a very very active
23:53
Speaker 3: auroral display which was seen throughout the world except here
23:58
Speaker 3: in Sydney because the sky was cloudy, we didn't see
24:02
Speaker 3: any of it, and I was very Yeah, my daughters
24:07
Speaker 3: in the UK saw it, and you know, I think
24:11
Speaker 3: that most of Britain were treated to marblous arroy as
24:14
Speaker 3: with Japan as well, and so the photographs that come
24:20
Speaker 3: particularly from Japan, showed the aurory being magenta. It's a
24:26
Speaker 3: sort of purplish color, like a pinkish purple. And normally
24:32
Speaker 3: what we find with the aurora is the colors are
24:36
Speaker 3: quite specific Andrew because they are the colors that are
24:40
Speaker 3: generated by excited atoms in the upper atmosphere. And I'll
24:46
Speaker 3: be looking at the aurora again early next year hopefully
24:50
Speaker 3: and thinking about these things. What causes the green. The
24:53
Speaker 3: green is the most commonly seen color in the aurora,
24:57
Speaker 3: and that comes about because it's a the emission of
25:00
Speaker 3: oxygen atoms in the upper atmosphere. The oxygen atoms are
25:04
Speaker 3: clouded by the electrons and protons too, coming from the
25:08
Speaker 3: sun in a you know, a burst of silver activity.
25:15
Speaker 3: And when the atoms they get excited to a higher
25:18
Speaker 3: level of energy. When they relax, they emit specific colors.
25:22
Speaker 3: And the green light is the specific color of oxygen
25:27
Speaker 3: at a height of between about one and two hundred kilometers.
25:31
Speaker 3: When it gets higher than that, if there's a higher
25:35
Speaker 3: level of auroral activity, and atoms higher than about two
25:39
Speaker 3: hundred kilometers are excited, and these are oxygen atoms that
25:43
Speaker 3: we're talking about then they emit a red light. They
25:46
Speaker 3: emit a different color because the pressure is different, and
25:49
Speaker 3: so that's why we commonly see a rory with green
25:52
Speaker 3: undersides and a red higher region up to usually up
25:57
Speaker 3: to about five hundred kilometers or so. That's that's why
26:00
Speaker 3: here in Australia we tend to see red a rory
26:03
Speaker 3: because people down in Tasmania in places like that, they're
26:06
Speaker 3: looking over the southern horizon. All they're seeing is the
26:09
Speaker 3: highest levels of a rory that are happening well below
26:12
Speaker 3: the horizon. That's why we see the red. But that
26:15
Speaker 3: doesn't explain magenta, and that involves something else that comes
26:22
Speaker 3: into play with very energetic a rory, and we've seen
26:25
Speaker 3: this actually up in far the northern Norway. If you've
26:29
Speaker 3: got lots of highly energetic electrons, they also, as well
26:34
Speaker 3: as exciting the green and the red, they penetrate lower
26:38
Speaker 3: into the atmosphere. And then the principle it's actually a
26:43
Speaker 3: molecule that comes into plays nitrogen. The nitrogen molecule is
26:47
Speaker 3: then excited to radiate in a range of colors, but
26:51
Speaker 3: they include bloom and in fact, sometimes there's so many
26:55
Speaker 3: of these colors come together that you see a white
26:58
Speaker 3: underside on the aurora. There's really high energetic, highly energetic
27:03
Speaker 3: electrons coming in, and we've seen that this sort of
27:07
Speaker 3: whiteness on the bottom layer of the aura, that's caused
27:10
Speaker 3: by several different excitations, if I can put it that way,
27:13
Speaker 3: of nitrogen molecules, but one of the main ones is blue.
27:17
Speaker 3: And so what the conjecture is here in Japan, and
27:22
Speaker 3: this is where the cities and science comes in. All
27:25
Speaker 3: these photographic observations tell you that the magenta color you
27:31
Speaker 3: can be knowing where the photographs were taken and what
27:34
Speaker 3: direction they were taking in and how high above the
27:36
Speaker 3: horizon these colors appear. They tell you that the magenta
27:42
Speaker 3: aurory are at a height of round about a thousand
27:45
Speaker 3: kilometers and that is a very high level. So this
27:51
Speaker 3: is because we've got this so much excitation and what
27:55
Speaker 3: they're suggesting, So yes, a thousand kilometers you'd get red
28:01
Speaker 3: from the oxygen. But the fact that this occurred in
28:06
Speaker 3: May brings the weather into play as well, and it
28:11
Speaker 3: means that the atmosphere was in a sort of what
28:16
Speaker 3: they call a preheated state, which means you get this
28:21
Speaker 3: molecular nitrogen which is normally emitting at a very low
28:25
Speaker 3: level in the atmosphere below about one hundred kilometers, it
28:28
Speaker 3: bubbles up into the upper atmosphere and that when the
28:32
Speaker 3: electrons hit, it gives a blue light. And so what
28:35
Speaker 3: you've got at a thousand kilometers is a mixture of
28:39
Speaker 3: molecular nitrogen, it's actually ionized, it's lost an electron and
28:44
Speaker 3: the oxygen. So molecular nitrogen is giving a blue light,
28:47
Speaker 3: the oxygen's giving a red light, and what you get
28:50
Speaker 3: is purple or this magenta and this. Basically there were
28:54
Speaker 3: seven hundred and seventy five cities and science observations which
28:58
Speaker 3: were combined with satellite observations in research done by one
29:03
Speaker 3: of the Japanese institutions. It's a very nice piece of work,
29:07
Speaker 3: and it's lovely that involves folk in the street like
29:10
Speaker 3: you and me.
29:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so it's as simple as being where they were,
29:15
Speaker 1: what was happening in the atmosphere and the mix of
29:18
Speaker 1: colors from that stet From that point of view.
29:21
Speaker 3: That's right, due partly to the time of year as
29:24
Speaker 3: well as the you know, the highly energetic electrons coming in. Yeah,
29:29
Speaker 3: very nice story.
29:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, it's interesting because a lot of the photographs
29:34
Speaker 1: of arore that were taken from my part of the
29:37
Speaker 1: world around Dubbo in central New South Wales earlier this
29:40
Speaker 1: year had multiple colors like we had greens, we had purples,
29:45
Speaker 1: we had we had reds, and even some blues. So
29:51
Speaker 1: all of that was happening here as well. So yeah,
29:53
Speaker 1: there were a brilliant mix of colors in our part
29:56
Speaker 1: of the world, and I'm so disappointed that I missed
29:59
Speaker 1: that because it looks spectacular, truly spectacular. Yeah, maybe it's
30:05
Speaker 1: maybe maybe a similar effect for it to what they were.
30:09
Speaker 3: It could be, Yes, it's probably. It's probably right, Andrew,
30:13
Speaker 3: you were probably seeing similar phenomena. That's right. While I'm
30:16
Speaker 3: as colors, I do, I was by you, I mean
30:20
Speaker 3: you in a sort of general Yeah, that's right, although
30:26
Speaker 3: you saw them on the photograph, so that's well, that's
30:28
Speaker 3: fair enough. But yes, I think these will be related
30:32
Speaker 3: related issues.
30:34
Speaker 1: Indeed. All right, it's a great story. You can read
30:38
Speaker 1: all about it at fizz dot org. That brings us
30:41
Speaker 1: to the end of this particular program. Thanks for your company.
30:45
Speaker 1: Don't forget to visit our website if you're trailing around
30:48
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30:53
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Speaker 1: happening on our website Space Nuts dot iOS probably the
31:10
Speaker 1: easiest one to remember. We're all done, Fred, Thank you
31:13
Speaker 1: very much.
31:14
Speaker 3: It's a pleasure. Andrew always great to talk and I
31:16
Speaker 3: look forward to the next time.
31:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, it could be minutes away, you never know. Thanks
31:21
Speaker 1: for Fred, to see you soon. And I would say
31:25
Speaker 1: thanks to here in the studio, but we changed the
31:28
Speaker 1: recording time at the last minute and didn't tell him.
31:31
Speaker 1: And for me Andrew Dunkley, thanks to your company. We'll
31:34
Speaker 1: see you soon. Bye bye. You'll be listening to the
31:38
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31:51
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