Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Extreme Winds, Martian Clays & Hidden Stars: #491 - The Interstellar Exploration

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Extreme Winds, Martian Clays & Hidden Stars: #491 - The Interstellar Exploration · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

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Speaker 1: Hi there, thanks for joining us, and welcome to a
0:02
Speaker 1: fresh episode of Space Nuts.
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Speaker 2: My name is.
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Speaker 1: Andrew, Uncle, your host. It's always good to have your company.
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Speaker 1: Coming up, we are going to look at the windiest
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Speaker 1: planet ever discovered. This is planet Baked Beans. No it's not,
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Speaker 1: it's called something else, but yeah, it's it's quite extraordinary.
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Speaker 1: The numbers will blow your mind. A strange area of
0:23
Speaker 1: terrain has been identified in Mars, which tells a very
0:26
Speaker 1: interesting tale about the planet's history. We're going to look
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Speaker 1: at a protostar that we won't be able to look
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Speaker 1: at soon and it's also part of a triple star system,
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Speaker 1: and time permitting, we are going to bring up that
0:39
Speaker 1: old chestnut again, light pollution. That's all coming up on
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Speaker 1: this episode of Space Nuts. Fifteen second, Channel ten nine
0:50
Speaker 1: ignition Space Nuts or three two one Space Nuts. But
1:00
Speaker 1: it meels good, indeed it is now. Fred's still away
1:04
Speaker 1: gallivanting around with reindeer in the Northern Hemisphere somewhere, and
1:09
Speaker 1: joining us in his place is Professor John D. Horner,
1:13
Speaker 1: Professor of astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland.
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Speaker 2: Hi, joundy, how are you going good?
1:19
Speaker 1: Good and you.
1:20
Speaker 2: Getting that slowly, a little bit sniffy. We're having the
1:23
Speaker 2: joys of summer around herese It's been nice and dry
1:25
Speaker 2: and warm for the last few dar I saw the
1:27
Speaker 2: plants have been getting too excited, and I think couple
1:29
Speaker 2: are a little bit from their excitement.
1:31
Speaker 1: Our plants are very unexcited because we're going to hit
1:34
Speaker 1: forty two celsius today and I've got the air conditioning
1:38
Speaker 1: on and it usually cuts itself off pretty quickly this
1:41
Speaker 1: time of the day because you know, it equalizes through
1:46
Speaker 1: the thermostep. It has been running NonStop for forty five
1:50
Speaker 1: minutes now because it cannot keep the temperature down.
1:53
Speaker 2: Because it's so hot outside right right at the moment.
1:58
Speaker 2: One of the beauties of the Darling Downs is that
2:00
Speaker 2: our heat wears don't get quite that extreme. I think
2:02
Speaker 2: further west they do, but this area around to One
2:05
Speaker 2: was just really lovely. So our summers are pretty much
2:08
Speaker 2: thirty to thirty five most days, but gets cool enough
2:11
Speaker 2: at night. Sleep still a very rare that we'll get
2:14
Speaker 2: up near to forty. I think in the couple of
2:16
Speaker 2: years I've been in this house, we've not hit forty yet,
2:19
Speaker 2: and yet we don't have all the humidity that make
2:21
Speaker 2: Brisbane the kind of world's armpit. The sound of it, Johnny, Yeah, well,
2:27
Speaker 2: I tell you who likes this kind of weather. It's
2:29
Speaker 2: the local snake population. I drove into our we live
2:35
Speaker 2: in a gated estate. We drove in.
2:37
Speaker 1: I drove in yesterday and saw what I thought was
2:39
Speaker 1: a piece of plastic hose on the road. It wasn't.
2:41
Speaker 1: It was a five foot Eastern brown snake crossing the
2:46
Speaker 1: road mining its own business. But that's the third time
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Speaker 1: we've seen one this summer. If you want to have
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Speaker 1: a look at it, I've put photos of it on
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Speaker 1: Instagram and TikTok. So yeah, it's it was a big one.
2:57
Speaker 2: I let him go, I let you go, or the
3:00
Speaker 2: old sayings say, you know, they're not scared of you
3:02
Speaker 2: than you are of them. Out of the Australian But
3:04
Speaker 2: when I moved out here from the UK, everybody was
3:06
Speaker 2: kind of oh, no, you're going. All the animals will
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Speaker 2: kill you. You know, the drop pay will get you
3:10
Speaker 2: all this. And so I got a book called Australia's
3:14
Speaker 2: Most Dangerous Animals, which is only a little one. Turns
3:18
Speaker 2: out the most dangerous animal in Australia have gone to
3:20
Speaker 2: that book is not sharks or snakes. I mean, obviously
3:22
Speaker 2: it's people. But aside from people, it's European honeybee because
3:27
Speaker 2: people would allergic to them and they are in and
3:30
Speaker 2: that really puts it in perspective. It's the case that
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Speaker 2: Australia has all these animals that can be dangerous, but
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Speaker 2: they're also nearly all cowards, so they'll typically get out
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Speaker 2: of your way. It's not like the you know, rattlesnakes
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Speaker 2: in the US, or I think is it cobra's in
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Speaker 2: the subcontinent, where they'll actually aggressively defend themselves, but they
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Speaker 2: just want to run away. It's tail between the legs,
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Speaker 2: shoot off.
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Speaker 1: Yes, if they had legs, I could probably do that.
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Speaker 2: Yep.
3:56
Speaker 1: Now we should get on with it because we've got
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Speaker 1: a lot to talk about. We're going to focus firstly
4:01
Speaker 1: on the windiest planet ever discovered, planet Baked Beans. It's
4:07
Speaker 1: not it's it's WASP one two seven B tell us
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Speaker 1: all about it.
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Speaker 2: The joys of catalog numbers that do exactly what they're
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Speaker 2: saying on that in incidentally, for those who are not
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Speaker 2: sucking on the catalog numbers that are given to exoplanets,
4:22
Speaker 2: which are really useful to astronomers, but not really good
4:25
Speaker 2: for everybody's imagination. The International Astronomical Union are slowly naming
4:30
Speaker 2: planets and their stars, and they're doing it in a
4:33
Speaker 2: very kind of democratic, global community type fashion. And this
4:37
Speaker 2: one hasn't yet been named, but it may well be
4:39
Speaker 2: in the future, so names coming soon. Probably people will
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Speaker 2: nominate make beans given this story, but we'll just have
4:46
Speaker 2: to see how that ends out. What's one twenty seven Bees,
4:49
Speaker 2: a planet that was found using the transit methods. So
4:52
Speaker 2: the WASP program is a wide angle search for planets,
4:55
Speaker 2: and they've got this array of essentially pretty good the
4:58
Speaker 2: SLR cameras with wide angle lenses all strapped together that
5:02
Speaker 2: have been staring at the same patch of the night
5:04
Speaker 2: sky whenever it's above the horizon for a long long time.
5:08
Speaker 2: And they have a couple of stations around the world.
5:09
Speaker 2: And what this lets them do is monitor the brightness
5:12
Speaker 2: of all the stars in that field of view and
5:14
Speaker 2: look for any of them that periodically winked us. And
5:17
Speaker 2: this is the same technique that NASA's Kepler mission used
5:19
Speaker 2: that the Test mission uses as well, and they find
5:23
Speaker 2: planets by looking at the planets passing between us and
5:26
Speaker 2: the star blocking out some of that light and causing
5:28
Speaker 2: the star to dimm and then brighten. And it's a
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Speaker 2: technique that is really effective, but it's very biased towards
5:34
Speaker 2: finding planets that are big because a bigger planet blocks
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Speaker 2: more light, and finding planets that are nearer to the
5:40
Speaker 2: star because the planet that's nearer to the star goes
5:42
Speaker 2: around more quickly, so you get more winks in a
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Speaker 2: given period of time. And that's very true of this planet.
5:47
Speaker 2: This is a planet that's big. It's one and a
5:50
Speaker 2: third times larger than Jupiter in terms of diameter. It's
5:53
Speaker 2: also quite light. It's less massive than Saturn. It's about
5:57
Speaker 2: a fifth of Jupiter's mass, which means it's one of
5:59
Speaker 2: the least planets we know. People describe it as a
6:02
Speaker 2: super puff. But because it's big, it's got this big diameter,
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Speaker 2: it blocks quite a big chunk of its stars like,
6:09
Speaker 2: making it relatively obvious for people to detect. And it
6:13
Speaker 2: goes around every four days, so this star winks at
6:15
Speaker 2: as every four days or so, and that's how this
6:17
Speaker 2: planet was discovered. Now, because it's big, because it stars
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Speaker 2: quite bright, it's a really prime target for people to
6:24
Speaker 2: look at to see if they can learn more about it.
6:27
Speaker 2: We want to develop the tools to study the atmospheres
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Speaker 2: of planets around other stars and learn more about them,
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Speaker 2: so not to just know that they're there, but actually
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Speaker 2: characterize them, and that helps us understand how planets form,
6:38
Speaker 2: what the diversity of planets is, and all the rest
6:40
Speaker 2: of it. And this has been a prime target for
6:43
Speaker 2: that kind of work for a few years. The new
6:45
Speaker 2: results that have come out are the results of people
6:48
Speaker 2: trying to study the atmosphere of this planet. They used
6:50
Speaker 2: a very large telescope which is remarkably imaginatively named, and
6:54
Speaker 2: they were getting oblimations with this huge ground based telescope
6:57
Speaker 2: to study the spectra of this planet. So to take
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Speaker 2: the light that we get from the planet separately from
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Speaker 2: the star, break it into its component colors and look
7:08
Speaker 2: at what spectral lines are in there. Because the spectral
7:10
Speaker 2: lines give you the fingerprint of the competition of the atmosphere.
7:14
Speaker 2: They also tell you things like how quickly the atmosphere
7:17
Speaker 2: is moving, how hot it is, and with enough information
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Speaker 2: you can even start inferring things about the structure where
7:22
Speaker 2: the clouds are, things like that. Now this is really
7:26
Speaker 2: cutting edge, So even with the biggest telescopes in the world.
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Speaker 2: We can only really do it for big, fluffy planets
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Speaker 2: that are very near their starts. We know when they're
7:32
Speaker 2: being able to do it for planets like Earth yet,
7:35
Speaker 2: but it's a step on that journey. So that's the
7:37
Speaker 2: background here. What happened with this planet is that the
7:40
Speaker 2: observations when they got the spectrum, it revealed something really
7:44
Speaker 2: weird for the different things in the atmosphere. Instead of
7:48
Speaker 2: having a single peak in the spectrum that said, hey, okay,
7:51
Speaker 2: we've got hydrogen or whatever, they found two peaks quite
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Speaker 2: close together but certainly quite separate from one another, distinctly separate.
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Speaker 2: Are this puzzle for a little bit, And there was
8:01
Speaker 2: a bit of a continuum between them as well, So
8:03
Speaker 2: it wasn't just like one narrow spike and a gap
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Speaker 2: in another narrows bike. But what they realized was that,
8:09
Speaker 2: thanks to the Dopper effect, just exactly the same kind
8:12
Speaker 2: of thing we use for the radial velocity measurements that
8:15
Speaker 2: we do have starts to measure their wobbles. If you've
8:19
Speaker 2: got gas that's coming towards here, light that it emits
8:22
Speaker 2: and light that it absorbs, that light will be blue shifted.
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Speaker 2: The wavelength will be shorter than it would be if
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Speaker 2: that was stationary. If that gas is moving away from us,
8:32
Speaker 2: the light stretched out, and so the light's red shifted,
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Speaker 2: And the degree to which the light is blue or
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Speaker 2: red shifted tells you the speed. The quicker it's moving,
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Speaker 2: the bigger the shifts. You know, this is the same
8:42
Speaker 2: thing you get if a police carra and ambulance comes past.
8:44
Speaker 2: You know, you hear the siren when it's approaching, and
8:46
Speaker 2: it's high pitched and fast, you like n n no Nino.
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Speaker 2: And then it goes past and it's going away in here,
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Speaker 2: Nino Nino. And the fact that it's going the bigger
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Speaker 2: the shifted. So when they're in a real hurry, it's
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Speaker 2: really distinct. That allows them to figure out what's going
9:03
Speaker 2: on here. So it turns out that this planet is
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Speaker 2: the victim of incredibly high wind speeds. There's extreme weather
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Speaker 2: going on, and what they think it is best described
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Speaker 2: as is like an equatorial jet, where we've got winds
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Speaker 2: going around the planet at ridiculously high speed. Now, this
9:19
Speaker 2: is a planet that goes around its star every four days.
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Speaker 2: Its surface temperature of the cloud tops is like eleven
9:25
Speaker 2: hundred degrees sea, so it's really extreme anyway. But the
9:28
Speaker 2: wind speed to explain these two peaks, must be about
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Speaker 2: thirty three thousand kilometers per hour, so that's nine kilometers
9:36
Speaker 2: per second, which is just ridiculous. And you've got the
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Speaker 2: blue shifted peaks on one side of the planet the
9:42
Speaker 2: wind's coming towards us, and yeah, the red shifted peak
9:45
Speaker 2: because on the other side of the planet, on the
9:47
Speaker 2: other edge of the planet, the wind's going away from us.
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Speaker 2: So you get this peak to peak with about eighteen
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Speaker 2: kilometers a second, between nine kilometers a second towards us
9:55
Speaker 2: and nine kilometers per second away. Putting that in scale,
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Speaker 2: that is sixteen to faster than the fastest winds we've
10:01
Speaker 2: ever seen in the Solar System, which are the two
10:04
Speaker 2: hundred kilometers per hour winds on net Tune, and is
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Speaker 2: therefore something like one hundred and sixty one hundred and
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Speaker 2: fifty times stronger than the strongest wing gust ever recorded
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Speaker 2: on Earth. So that's just insane remarkable wind speed, and
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Speaker 2: it tells us a lot about the properties of the atmosphere.
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Speaker 2: There's going to be a lot we learn about it
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Speaker 2: in terms of how energy is moved from the daylight
10:23
Speaker 2: side to the nighttime side, because this planet should be
10:26
Speaker 2: tidally locked, so it should keep one side facing towards
10:30
Speaker 2: the style, one side facing away, and these winds are
10:32
Speaker 2: probably what's transferring the heat from the daytime side, which
10:35
Speaker 2: is super hot, rather to the night side, which is.
10:37
Speaker 1: Called I was going to get to that. Yeah, that
10:41
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense. So you get getting superheated on one side,
10:45
Speaker 1: and it's just yeah, around and around, absolutely and a.
10:51
Speaker 2: Bit more than anybody would have expected to find. But
10:54
Speaker 2: that's the natural of this kind of exploration. We I
10:56
Speaker 2: always think it's true of most things in astronomy that
10:59
Speaker 2: the also you are to the conditions that are in
11:01
Speaker 2: your room right now, the better we understand it. So
11:03
Speaker 2: the further we go away from standard temperature, room temperature,
11:06
Speaker 2: room pressure, the less understanding we have, the more we
11:09
Speaker 2: have to learn. Now we've got guideposts in our Soul system,
11:13
Speaker 2: so we've learned a bit about planets that are like
11:15
Speaker 2: the Solar System planets. But when it comes to something
11:17
Speaker 2: like this super hot, super puffy planet around this star
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Speaker 2: that is similar to but a bit bigger and a
11:22
Speaker 2: bit hotter than the Sun, it's totally different to anything
11:25
Speaker 2: we've ever seen and experienced and therefore you get results
11:29
Speaker 2: you don't expect, and in understanding those we get a
11:32
Speaker 2: better handle of how planets work.
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Speaker 1: Yes, fascinating. How does it compare to the guest giants
11:40
Speaker 1: in our Solar System? I mean, they've much further away
11:43
Speaker 1: from the star, so further away, but.
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Speaker 2: There's still a lot of interesting things happening. Energy wise.
11:49
Speaker 2: We've got a lot of data for Jupiter and Saturin
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Speaker 2: and more limited data from the Voyager spacecraft that went
11:54
Speaker 2: to your inner selection. We've basically been to Jupiter and
11:56
Speaker 2: Saturn more often. But the highest speeds that we've ever
12:00
Speaker 2: observed in the Solar System of those on Neptune, which
12:02
Speaker 2: were about two thousand kilometers per hour. Now, that is
12:06
Speaker 2: pretty impressive from an Earth based point of view and
12:09
Speaker 2: was a big surprise because Neptune is so far from
12:11
Speaker 2: the Sun, it's got so little energy that that was
12:14
Speaker 2: a surprise. And it turns out it's due to the
12:16
Speaker 2: energy coming from the interior of the planet in part,
12:19
Speaker 2: as well as the solar radiation getting there. Yeah, that
12:22
Speaker 2: was a shock. But this is sixteen times stronger than
12:24
Speaker 2: you get on Nettune. Like I said, it's about one
12:26
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy times stronger than our strongest wind here
12:29
Speaker 2: on Earth, one hundred and fifty times. I think there
12:32
Speaker 2: was a cyclone, a typhoon, be a hurricane because of
12:36
Speaker 2: the base, and it's in Hurricane Patricia a few years
12:40
Speaker 2: ago that rapidly intensified and became the strongest in terms
12:44
Speaker 2: of continuous wind speed on Earth that we'd ever obbed
12:46
Speaker 2: set And that was two hundred and fifteen kilometers per
12:49
Speaker 2: hour as a continuous wind speed, with gusts normally up
12:52
Speaker 2: to fifty percent higher than that.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
12:54
Speaker 2: No, I mean if you said that the gus we
12:56
Speaker 2: was three hundred and thirty kilometers per hour, this is
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Speaker 2: one hundred time up.
13:01
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, the big numbers, aren't they? But what we're
13:05
Speaker 1: thirty three thousand will kill a meter. It's an hour
13:07
Speaker 1: twenty and a half thousand miles an hour for our
13:10
Speaker 1: American rent. That's that's outrageous. Kite flyers would be so
13:15
Speaker 1: very thrill Well.
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Speaker 2: Well, I mean to put it another way. That's basically
13:19
Speaker 2: like the circumference of the Earth every hour, isn't it.
13:22
Speaker 2: It would be close. Yes, I'm just trying to double
13:25
Speaker 2: chap my distance at almost so us circumference is about
13:28
Speaker 2: forty thousand. So if you could travel at the speed
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Speaker 2: of this wind and you'd be able to get around
13:35
Speaker 2: the Earth in about every seventy minutes. The International Space
13:39
Speaker 2: Station goes round about every nine two minutes, so it's
13:42
Speaker 2: speed it's faster than the speed that the space station
13:44
Speaker 2: is opening Earth.
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Speaker 1: Fascinating. Yes, well there it is the windiest planet ever discovered.
13:51
Speaker 1: Edgel Take about now, John Ty, Let's move on to
13:55
Speaker 1: our next story. This is another discovery on Mars. A
13:58
Speaker 1: strange area of rain has been identified. It's not so
14:02
Speaker 1: much what it looks like that is the discovery, although
14:05
Speaker 1: that is true. It's what it tells us about the
14:08
Speaker 1: history of the planet that's even more fascinating.
14:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, this shook me really when I read it was
14:15
Speaker 2: really interesting, but particularly given that it speaks something very
14:19
Speaker 2: similar to the kind of terrain I've got locally. So
14:21
Speaker 2: the dialing downs here are quite striking because you've got
14:24
Speaker 2: these flat topped mess which stand a few hundred meters
14:29
Speaker 2: above the rest of the terrain here, and it's a
14:31
Speaker 2: very flat area. But with these distinct areas that are
14:34
Speaker 2: raised up with flattops, some of them are more hill shaped,
14:38
Speaker 2: and this is a similar area on Mars. It's an
14:41
Speaker 2: area of what are described as butts and mess which
14:45
Speaker 2: date back a huge amount of time. It's in the
14:47
Speaker 2: northern hemisphere of Mars, which is this lowland area with
14:51
Speaker 2: far fewer craters than the southern highlands, So it's a
14:53
Speaker 2: low terrain with lots and lots of well a lot
14:57
Speaker 2: of lack of craters compared to the southern hemmosphere, which
15:01
Speaker 2: has long been argued to be the place that you'd
15:03
Speaker 2: expect to have had an ocean on Mars in the
15:05
Speaker 2: very distant past, and that remains somewhat controversial. Other explanations
15:09
Speaker 2: are available, and in fact, there's a study came out
15:12
Speaker 2: in the last week looking at Mars quakes arguing that
15:15
Speaker 2: the origin of these terrains may not have been a
15:17
Speaker 2: giant impact like we think, but could have been linked
15:19
Speaker 2: to plate tectonics. So there's a lot of discussion and
15:22
Speaker 2: a lot of study going on with this, but the
15:25
Speaker 2: general consensus is that that northern area of Mars, the lowlands,
15:29
Speaker 2: has been heavily resurfaced when Mars was in and that's
15:32
Speaker 2: why you've got fewer creators sex it's had less time
15:34
Speaker 2: to build up the creators and that's kind of the
15:36
Speaker 2: evidence for the ocean, or one of the big bits
15:39
Speaker 2: of the evidence for the ocean. If you took the
15:40
Speaker 2: earth soceans away, you'd honestly see a very similar thing.
15:43
Speaker 2: The ocean floor has far fewer creators than the rest
15:46
Speaker 2: of the Earth's surface. Yea. Now, what's interesting with this
15:49
Speaker 2: area is that the team who studied have used data
15:53
Speaker 2: from a number of instruments, the high rise cameras which
15:55
Speaker 2: are going around Mars, data from Marsh Reconnaissance Orbitter, you know,
16:00
Speaker 2: Mars Express and the X and Mars Stress Gas Analyzer.
16:03
Speaker 2: So they've got loads of data from lots of different
16:05
Speaker 2: sources looking at this area with the butts and the meses,
16:09
Speaker 2: and what the found is that on the sides of them,
16:11
Speaker 2: where it's been weathered away, you've got evidence of a
16:15
Speaker 2: huge depth of material that are clays. So this is
16:19
Speaker 2: very clay material, stretching up to three hundred and fifty
16:23
Speaker 2: meters vertically, so really big depth of clay material. Now,
16:28
Speaker 2: the idea seems to be that originally whatever it was
16:33
Speaker 2: that created that area laid down deposits as a fairly
16:37
Speaker 2: flat layer up to the height of what we see
16:40
Speaker 2: as the tops of the butts and mesas. This is
16:42
Speaker 2: maund of sandy and then over billions of years that's
16:45
Speaker 2: been weathered away, just like what's happening here. So the
16:47
Speaker 2: areas with the flattertops or areas where there's been a
16:50
Speaker 2: slight with stronger material on top and weathering hasn't happened,
16:53
Speaker 2: so they've been weathered around that. Yeah, So exposing these
16:57
Speaker 2: lads of clays is exposing almost like chronlogical sequence of
17:01
Speaker 2: material that has been deposited. So to have three hundred
17:05
Speaker 2: and fifty meters depths of clay materials is really interesting
17:09
Speaker 2: because these clays only form in the presence of liquid water.
17:13
Speaker 2: It needs to be permanent liquid water. It can't just
17:15
Speaker 2: be that you've got a few drops of water on
17:17
Speaker 2: a rock that m doesn't give you clay. So to
17:19
Speaker 2: have this depth of clays is suggesting that there was
17:23
Speaker 2: permanent liquid water above this area for a very long time.
17:27
Speaker 2: You're looking at deposits from that, and that is really
17:30
Speaker 2: strong evidence that there was permanent liquid water over a
17:34
Speaker 2: very lengthy period of time in the area on Mars
17:38
Speaker 2: that everybody has been arguing for ages was once home
17:41
Speaker 2: to an ocean, so it seems to be yet another
17:43
Speaker 2: piece of evidence for the presence of that kind of
17:46
Speaker 2: northern hemisphere, beautiful ocean kind of three and a half
17:49
Speaker 2: four billion years ago in the ancient past. Now that's
17:53
Speaker 2: really exciting in itself, but there's a nice additional twist,
17:56
Speaker 2: which is that this area which looks now so exciting,
17:59
Speaker 2: whether this evidence of clay materials is tied to part
18:03
Speaker 2: of Mars that we call Oxyaplanum, and that's going to
18:07
Speaker 2: be the destination for the European Rosalind Franklin Mission. Now
18:10
Speaker 2: that mission was meant to launch three or four years
18:13
Speaker 2: ago as a joint initiative between the Europeans and the Russians.
18:17
Speaker 2: But when everything that's going on with Russia and the
18:20
Speaker 2: Ukraine kicked off, the Europeans pulled their collaboration with Russia,
18:24
Speaker 2: which meant that they had to rebuild a lot of stuff.
18:27
Speaker 2: They had to now do what the Russians were going
18:29
Speaker 2: to do for them, and that delayed things. So it's
18:31
Speaker 2: now purely a European mission. It looks like it's going
18:33
Speaker 2: to launch in twenty twenty eight, and it is a
18:36
Speaker 2: mission that is designed very specifically to look for evidence
18:40
Speaker 2: of life on Mars, particularly past life and the name Roslin. Franklin,
18:44
Speaker 2: of course, comes from the incredibly gifted researcher who did
18:47
Speaker 2: most of the work that led to Crick and Watson
18:50
Speaker 2: getting the Nobel Prize for the structure of DNA, but
18:52
Speaker 2: unfortunately she passed away before the prize was awarded at
18:55
Speaker 2: a very young age. So it's nice to see her honored.
18:58
Speaker 2: And it's and I seem to go together that the
19:02
Speaker 2: place that that mission is going to go now looks
19:05
Speaker 2: even more interesting than it did before. So it's like
19:07
Speaker 2: lefts are the perfect sact.
19:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, Look, we are learning more and more and more
19:14
Speaker 1: the evidence is stacking up. Are we very far away
19:17
Speaker 1: from saying definitively okay? This was what Mars was like
19:22
Speaker 1: at this time, no questions asked.
19:25
Speaker 2: I'd like to think so. I mean, it's one of
19:27
Speaker 2: the cool things about astronomy and particularly this kind of
19:30
Speaker 2: planetary science that speaks to the kind of detective story fans,
19:34
Speaker 2: because what we're doing effectively studying a crime scene that
19:37
Speaker 2: is four billion years old, and we try to piece
19:39
Speaker 2: together all the clues, and we're trying to piece together
19:42
Speaker 2: a narrative that explains what we see, that makes sense,
19:45
Speaker 2: that fits together, and there will always be other possibilities
19:49
Speaker 2: that can explain it. But with every bit of evidence
19:52
Speaker 2: we get, what happens is that the number of possible
19:55
Speaker 2: explanations gets whittled down because a new observation and new
19:59
Speaker 2: disco will say that while this explanation no longer makes sense,
20:03
Speaker 2: it no longer works. So we're building towards this more
20:06
Speaker 2: robust than the standach. I mean, personally, my instinct is
20:09
Speaker 2: that it looks like an ocean. It looks like what
20:12
Speaker 2: you would expect if an ocean had been there. And
20:14
Speaker 2: the fact we're getting more and more evidence that supports
20:17
Speaker 2: that is really encouraging. When it becomes absolutely indiffinite to
20:22
Speaker 2: the accept that I'm not entirely show but I'm sure
20:24
Speaker 2: Rosalind Franklin will really help with that.
20:27
Speaker 1: I And we're lucky because we've we've got a planet
20:30
Speaker 1: we can compare it to, so we can see evidence
20:32
Speaker 1: here that equates to things there. We can go, Okay,
20:35
Speaker 1: well this is the same, this is this is a
20:38
Speaker 1: piece of history that ears shared with Mars, and that
20:42
Speaker 1: that kind of narrows down the possibilities significantly.
20:46
Speaker 2: We don't have to go there. What we do that
20:49
Speaker 2: we don't have to go there.
20:50
Speaker 1: Directly sometimes to sort of compare notes. It's it's fascinating,
20:56
Speaker 1: it's fabulous. It's a really interesting contrast with exoplanets. So
21:00
Speaker 1: on the one hand, we've got this one planet for
21:02
Speaker 1: a system that we've known since we've known about the universe, essentially,
21:06
Speaker 1: where we've got incredibly fine levels of detail, the fact
21:09
Speaker 1: that we can talk as we are doing here about
21:12
Speaker 1: a relatively small area on the surface of a given
21:15
Speaker 1: planet that we've imaged and where we're sending a spacecraft.
21:18
Speaker 2: So we know the Solar System objects in incredibly exquisite detail,
21:22
Speaker 2: this wealth of information that's sometimes almost too overwhelming for
21:27
Speaker 2: us to actually be able to work out what that
21:28
Speaker 2: planet's all about. For exoplanets, for most of them we
21:32
Speaker 2: only know that they're there and maybe how massive they
21:34
Speaker 2: are or how big they are. But we know about
21:36
Speaker 2: more of them and more diversity. So on the one hand,
21:39
Speaker 2: we've got one system we know incredibly well, with more
21:41
Speaker 2: than a million objects in it that we've studied. For
21:44
Speaker 2: all the others, we know one or two objects and
21:45
Speaker 2: we know a little bit about them, but by learning
21:48
Speaker 2: more about them, we'll learn more about the Solar System,
21:50
Speaker 2: and by better studying the planets in the Solar System.
21:53
Speaker 2: That gives us a ground truth to work from Fred's planets.
21:55
Speaker 2: So it two feels that are very different but linked
21:58
Speaker 2: together really nicely.
22:00
Speaker 1: Indeed, all right, really interesting history, and I suppose just
22:05
Speaker 1: to add a little bit more to that. We look
22:07
Speaker 1: at the history of Earth, and you know, I still
22:09
Speaker 1: struggle to get my head around the fact that there
22:12
Speaker 1: used to be rainforests in Antarctica. You know, these things
22:17
Speaker 1: have taken millions of years to change, or tens of
22:19
Speaker 1: thousands of years in some circumstances. So we shouldn't be
22:22
Speaker 1: surprised by a planet like Mars having had oceans and
22:27
Speaker 1: rivers and all those other things.
22:29
Speaker 2: So, yeah, this is space nuts.
22:31
Speaker 1: You're with Andrew Dunkley and Professor John T. Horna murder
22:37
Speaker 1: your space nuts.
22:40
Speaker 2: Now, Johnny, not.
22:41
Speaker 1: Your area of expertise, but I know you've done your homework.
22:45
Speaker 1: A proto star, which I'll get you to explain, give
22:49
Speaker 1: us a definition of is soon going to disappear for
22:55
Speaker 1: what will be obvious reasons. But it's part of a
22:57
Speaker 1: triple star system. This is all very intriguing.
23:01
Speaker 2: This is a star in the constellation Taurus that is
23:03
Speaker 2: kind of the archetypal example of a protest star that's
23:07
Speaker 2: nearly but not quite a fully grown star. So it's
23:10
Speaker 2: a star that is still in the latter stages of forming,
23:13
Speaker 2: finalizing its formation. It's still condensing under gravity. It has
23:17
Speaker 2: got a bit of nuclear fusion going on, but it's
23:19
Speaker 2: not settled down. It's not become what we call the
23:21
Speaker 2: main sequence star like the Sun yet. Now it's relatively
23:25
Speaker 2: bright and easy to study, so that means amateursterronomers around
23:28
Speaker 2: the world are getting measurements of the brightness of this
23:32
Speaker 2: star all the time. It's about magnitude twelve magnitude eleven ish,
23:36
Speaker 2: which means that it is about one hundred to two
23:38
Speaker 2: hundred times two fancy with a naked eye. But it's
23:41
Speaker 2: well within the reach of amage telescopes, and we've got
23:43
Speaker 2: this long history of observations of it. Now as we
23:46
Speaker 2: got better observations of it and the area that's in
23:49
Speaker 2: it's part of a huge star farming area. When observations
23:53
Speaker 2: started coming in the infrared, it was revealed that there
23:55
Speaker 2: were two other protest stars nearby that you can't see
23:58
Speaker 2: in optical You can't see them with telescopes. So this
24:02
Speaker 2: sem became known as Tetry North, and the other two
24:04
Speaker 2: are t Tory South A and t Tory South B.
24:07
Speaker 2: And it turns out that all three of them are
24:09
Speaker 2: moving together, so you've essentially got t Tory South A
24:12
Speaker 2: and B is a much closer binary with a circumbinary
24:16
Speaker 2: disc of material, a disc from which planets are probably
24:19
Speaker 2: forming as we speak, and that disk is really thick,
24:22
Speaker 2: and it just so happens that that disk is edge
24:24
Speaker 2: on to us, so the light from those stars trying
24:27
Speaker 2: to reach us is passing through the disc and absorbed.
24:30
Speaker 2: We can't see it optically. There's more than twenty magnitudes
24:34
Speaker 2: of extinction, which means if those stars would normally be
24:36
Speaker 2: magnitude ten or eleven, they're instead magnitude thirty or thirty
24:40
Speaker 2: one and just way beyond anything we can observe. But
24:43
Speaker 2: if for red radiation can make it through the disk
24:45
Speaker 2: so we can see that they're there, then T Toring North,
24:49
Speaker 2: the star we've always known as t Tory, is a
24:52
Speaker 2: bit away from those stars, also orbiting their common center
24:54
Speaker 2: of gravity, the kind of third component of the triple system,
24:58
Speaker 2: and it too has a product plantar disc. It's got
25:00
Speaker 2: a disc around it where planet's forming as well, but
25:03
Speaker 2: fortunately for us, instead of being edge on, that disk
25:05
Speaker 2: is tilted so that we can see directly to the start.
25:08
Speaker 2: So we see t Tory and it's bright and we
25:11
Speaker 2: can observe it when we've learned a lot from it.
25:13
Speaker 2: But over the last couple of years, those amateur astronomers
25:17
Speaker 2: that have been reporting its magnitude and studying it continuously
25:20
Speaker 2: have seen it fade a couple of times by one
25:22
Speaker 2: or two magnitudes and brighten up again. And that caught
25:25
Speaker 2: people's interesting because you wouldn't really expect this protest start
25:28
Speaker 2: to be variable like that. So there's something interesting going on.
25:32
Speaker 2: And as we've got more information and better images from
25:36
Speaker 2: the professional telescopes, what it appears to be is that
25:39
Speaker 2: that orbital motion of the binary star and then the
25:41
Speaker 2: extra component t Tory that orbital motion, I think the
25:45
Speaker 2: orbital period is about four thousand, six hundred years, and
25:48
Speaker 2: slowly over time, the more distant component, the one we
25:51
Speaker 2: can see, is moving so that it's going to pass
25:54
Speaker 2: behind the disk of material around the binary. And we
25:58
Speaker 2: know that that disk is thick enough tops the binary
26:01
Speaker 2: and tee Tory is going to be ducking behind it,
26:04
Speaker 2: so What that means is that those dimmings we've seen
26:07
Speaker 2: have essentially been the light from that star passing through
26:11
Speaker 2: the outskirts of this disk of material, and in the
26:13
Speaker 2: coming years therefore, it's going to be moving properly behind
26:17
Speaker 2: that disk so long as we've got the orbital Martian right,
26:20
Speaker 2: and we'll gradually dimm to the point we won't be
26:22
Speaker 2: able to see it with the optical insurance, you know,
26:24
Speaker 2: with these telescopes that the amateurs are using, it'll fade
26:27
Speaker 2: away fed to black, still be visible in the infrared,
26:31
Speaker 2: but it'll take about one hundred years for it to
26:33
Speaker 2: traverse behind this disk before it starts to reappear again. Now,
26:38
Speaker 2: from the point of view of optical observers, the next
26:41
Speaker 2: few years will be interesting as it fades out, But
26:44
Speaker 2: for professional astronomers it's a really promising and valuable opportunity
26:48
Speaker 2: because if we can predictly see an advance and we
26:50
Speaker 2: can see it happening, then we can do observations of
26:54
Speaker 2: the light from that protest star as it passes through
26:57
Speaker 2: the outskirts of the disk and as it moves through
26:59
Speaker 2: the day, which allows us to probe different locations in
27:02
Speaker 2: the disc get an idea of what the chemistry of
27:05
Speaker 2: the discs, like, what the particle science distribution is are
27:08
Speaker 2: is it mainly small particles? Are the bigger bits of that?
27:11
Speaker 2: How is the planet formation process progressing? We can almost
27:14
Speaker 2: get a density profile as the star moved through is
27:17
Speaker 2: like scamming at different locations, So it is simultaneously a
27:21
Speaker 2: little bit sound because the star is going to go away.
27:23
Speaker 2: I mean, it's coming back. So it's not the end
27:25
Speaker 2: of the world, but it's also really really exciting because
27:28
Speaker 2: it should be such a wealth of scientific information for
27:31
Speaker 2: us to bedroom understand how planets form. Speaking of the end.
27:35
Speaker 1: Of the world, is this the development of a three
27:39
Speaker 1: body problem?
27:41
Speaker 2: Possibly? Now, triple star systems like this are not that uncommon.
27:46
Speaker 2: I mean A common joke among astronomers, which probably tells
27:48
Speaker 2: you that astronomers aren't very funny, is that more than
27:51
Speaker 2: one in every one star is in a multiple star system,
27:55
Speaker 2: which is a bit species early. So the reality seems
27:59
Speaker 2: to be that around fifty percent of stars give ortech.
28:03
Speaker 2: So this is a handwaving number. It could be as
28:05
Speaker 2: low as forty per cent, as high as sixty percent,
28:07
Speaker 2: but roughly fifty percent of stars are single, which means
28:11
Speaker 2: the other half of stars are all in multiple star systems.
28:14
Speaker 2: So to clarify this, I'm not talking about the individual stars,
28:17
Speaker 2: but I'm on about the systems as we see them. Yeah,
28:20
Speaker 2: fifty percent of star systems are stars on their own.
28:23
Speaker 2: Fifty percent of star systems are not stars on their own,
28:27
Speaker 2: which means that the majority of stars are in multiple
28:29
Speaker 2: star systems. Because of the numbers, even if you just
28:33
Speaker 2: assume that the other fifty percent of double stars before
28:35
Speaker 2: you get to these higher level hierarchical things, fifty percent
28:39
Speaker 2: of systems have two stars, fifty percent have one star,
28:41
Speaker 2: so that means two thirds of stars are in double systems.
28:45
Speaker 2: It's more complex, but yeah, it shows that astronomers don't
28:47
Speaker 2: have a great sense of humor. But what it also
28:50
Speaker 2: points out is that multiple star systems are far from
28:54
Speaker 2: the exception. They're really the norm, and we're seeing planet
28:57
Speaker 2: formation happening in these systems and we're discovering plant in them.
29:00
Speaker 2: We found planets that are almost kind of analogous to
29:03
Speaker 2: Tatooine from Star Wars, where there are two stars in
29:05
Speaker 2: the middle quite close together and the planet's opening on
29:08
Speaker 2: the outside orbiting both of them at once. We've also
29:11
Speaker 2: seen systems where there are two stars that are widely
29:14
Speaker 2: separated and the planet's going around one of them. We
29:17
Speaker 2: found planets in triple and quadruple star systems as well,
29:20
Speaker 2: and this is just going to be another one of
29:22
Speaker 2: those type of systems setting up for the future.
29:26
Speaker 1: Okay, we do see on Earth that issue of single
29:30
Speaker 1: and multiple star systems. You've got solo artists and you've
29:34
Speaker 1: got bands.
29:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're all.
29:37
Speaker 1: Made up of stars, some of them. Yes, fascinating story
29:42
Speaker 1: and we'll watch with interest. How many billion years before
29:46
Speaker 1: we know the result of this.
29:48
Speaker 2: We should see it happening over the next few years. Now,
29:50
Speaker 2: I should say that this isn't without precedent, and keen
29:53
Speaker 2: amateur astronomers listening for podcasts will be aware of a
29:56
Speaker 2: star called Epsilon Origa, which confused people for ages. So
30:01
Speaker 2: we've known about variable stars for a long time. The
30:03
Speaker 2: traditional owners of the land here in Australia have been
30:06
Speaker 2: very aware of the intrinsic variability of stars like Beetlejuice
30:09
Speaker 2: mel Dabaran, which very kind of spasmodically over periods of
30:14
Speaker 2: a few hundred days. But we're also aware of eclipsing
30:16
Speaker 2: binary stars and a great astronomer called Gudric way back
30:21
Speaker 2: a couple of hundred years ago, figured out the reason
30:25
Speaker 2: for this. He's a fascinating character to read about. He
30:27
Speaker 2: died very young. I mean he was an amateur astronomer,
30:30
Speaker 2: but he explained the periodic variations of the star Algol,
30:34
Speaker 2: the winking Demon star, by explaining that there were two
30:37
Speaker 2: stars going around each other, and when they blocked each
30:40
Speaker 2: other out in the light, wood dim and you get
30:42
Speaker 2: this star dimming every few days by enough to see
30:44
Speaker 2: with anaked eye, and then brightening again. So we kind
30:47
Speaker 2: of understood that, but Ebsil and Aurigi really puzzled people
30:51
Speaker 2: for a long time. It's a star in the northern
30:53
Speaker 2: constellation Ariga. You can see it from Australia, but it's
30:55
Speaker 2: quite low to the north that every twenty seven years
30:58
Speaker 2: or so dims for a couple of years by more
31:02
Speaker 2: than a magnitude. So this again is easy to see
31:04
Speaker 2: with a naked eye. But you can't explain that as
31:07
Speaker 2: a binary star. That isn't one star passing in front
31:10
Speaker 2: of another because it doesn't take two years for the
31:12
Speaker 2: eclipse to happen that so how would have to be
31:15
Speaker 2: immeasurably vast, and therefore should be really bright or really
31:18
Speaker 2: red doesn't happen. Over the last fifty years or so,
31:22
Speaker 2: people realize the explanation for that was probably that this
31:25
Speaker 2: was a binary star system, whether the second star in
31:28
Speaker 2: the system had a really big disc around it, a
31:31
Speaker 2: protoplanetary disc, and this was finally confirmed with the most
31:34
Speaker 2: recent of the dimmings, where we finally got to the
31:37
Speaker 2: technology point where we can do it. So it's a
31:40
Speaker 2: similar story to the one we've just talked about, but
31:43
Speaker 2: that's kind of the archetypal system, where you've got an
31:47
Speaker 2: eclipse caused by the disc rather than the star. And
31:50
Speaker 2: because the disk is big in the case of excellon AIGI,
31:53
Speaker 2: it's probably bigger than the distance between the Earth and Pluto,
31:55
Speaker 2: probably about fifty au in radius one hundred au across,
31:59
Speaker 2: where one au as a distance from the Earth of
32:01
Speaker 2: the th and that takes a couple of years. As
32:04
Speaker 2: it's moving around in it's oh bit pass in front
32:06
Speaker 2: of the background star, the brightest star, causing it to them,
32:09
Speaker 2: causing it that behavior, and this is just another example
32:12
Speaker 2: of that. But in this case the disk is much thicker,
32:15
Speaker 2: so TITORI will it's actually disappear.
32:18
Speaker 1: Okay, but not forever.
32:23
Speaker 2: The MUDs.
32:27
Speaker 1: Let's very quickly look at one more story. I I
32:32
Speaker 1: this is this is something that Fred and I talk
32:34
Speaker 1: about quite regularly, so I'm sure he'll raise it again
32:38
Speaker 1: when he gets back. But there are concerns about light
32:41
Speaker 1: pollute pollution affecting the extremely large telescope. Now this is
32:47
Speaker 1: a real worry because this telescope is probably one of
32:50
Speaker 1: the most significant ones on the planet. And yeah, there
32:56
Speaker 1: are a few people get in their feathers ruffled by this.
32:59
Speaker 2: It is the story here. Like I said, well, just
33:02
Speaker 2: cover it briefly, and I'm sure Fred will dive into
33:03
Speaker 2: it in a bit more detail will hopefully get solved.
33:06
Speaker 2: That's the first thing today. It's still early days with this,
33:08
Speaker 2: but the extremely large telescope is built on top of
33:11
Speaker 2: what's called Sero Amazona, this peak in Chili's at Kama
33:17
Speaker 2: Desert that is basically one of the darkest sites on
33:19
Speaker 2: the planet. And this site was specifically chosen solid light
33:24
Speaker 2: pollution that it would facilitate the incredible work this enormous
33:28
Speaker 2: telescope is going to do. And this telescope is you know,
33:31
Speaker 2: something like a billion dollar project. It's a really expensive thing,
33:35
Speaker 2: maybe even more than that that has been built there.
33:39
Speaker 2: Chili is fully on board obviously building it on their land.
33:42
Speaker 2: The site has been bought. It's going to be an
33:44
Speaker 2: expensive deal to make. But there are real concerns now
33:48
Speaker 2: because there is an American company that is wanting to
33:51
Speaker 2: build a renewable energy plant and it's going to be
33:54
Speaker 2: a huge planet. It's primarily to manufacture hydrogen, but it's
33:58
Speaker 2: also going to have huge amounts of sol and things
34:00
Speaker 2: like that, and that is a ten billion dollar scale project.
34:04
Speaker 2: But they want to build this within just a few
34:06
Speaker 2: kilometers of the site for a lot of these telescopes,
34:10
Speaker 2: like the site for the Redal large telescope stuff like this.
34:13
Speaker 2: Now that is a real concern because this will generate
34:15
Speaker 2: a huge amount of light pollution because it will build
34:19
Speaker 2: up essentially, and that it is thought, would possibly reduce
34:24
Speaker 2: the effectiveness of both the telescopes that are already there,
34:26
Speaker 2: but also the extremely large telescope by ten percent or more,
34:30
Speaker 2: which is a huge impact, and it really lessens the
34:34
Speaker 2: relevance of that telescope when he's trying to do cutting
34:37
Speaker 2: edge stuff, when it's trying to compete with the giant
34:39
Speaker 2: Magellan telescope, and if it ever gets big, built the
34:43
Speaker 2: one that they were going to put on Hawaii as well,
34:44
Speaker 2: although that's still under debate. The thirty meter telescope, Now,
34:49
Speaker 2: this isn't insurmountable. The Chileans have said that this project
34:53
Speaker 2: is only in the early stages of proposal. The people
34:56
Speaker 2: involved with the building and the telescope have pointed out
34:59
Speaker 2: that there is no specific reason why the site that's
35:02
Speaker 2: proposed for the renewable energy clouds, it's the only class
35:04
Speaker 2: that could build it. They could build it somewhere else.
35:08
Speaker 2: But it's a real challenge because you're talking about a
35:10
Speaker 2: one and a half billion dollar telescope versus a ten
35:14
Speaker 2: billion dollar industrial path that'll create jobs. So I can
35:18
Speaker 2: understand the conflict for the Chilean government, but also if
35:22
Speaker 2: you can find a happy medium, whether two don't interfere
35:24
Speaker 2: with each other, that'll be brilliant, particularly if the observatory
35:28
Speaker 2: can then make use of the renewable energy and cut
35:30
Speaker 2: its energy budget. It's one of these situations, like many,
35:34
Speaker 2: that isn't truly black and white, but there's a lot
35:37
Speaker 2: of complexity, a lot of shades of brain in it,
35:39
Speaker 2: and the hope is that it gets sorted. The Chilean
35:42
Speaker 2: impact agency that assesses these things put a statement out
35:46
Speaker 2: at the end of last year saying that the projects
35:48
Speaker 2: in its only stages. No decision has been made, and
35:51
Speaker 2: I suspect the information has come out now to help
35:54
Speaker 2: ensure that people are aware of the problem so that
35:57
Speaker 2: the right decision gets made, because if you don't talk,
36:00
Speaker 2: if nobody's aware of it, mistakes get made, and it's
36:03
Speaker 2: very hard to change it after the fact.
36:05
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, indeed, but it would be fairly tragic for
36:09
Speaker 1: the telescopes in the area because they're estimating that that
36:14
Speaker 1: renewable energy project would increase the brightness of the area
36:17
Speaker 1: by ten percent. That is a huge increase.
36:20
Speaker 2: Well, absolutely, and I mean you see it everywhere. I'm
36:23
Speaker 2: very aware where alive. I've moved out a couple of
36:26
Speaker 2: years ago to this beautiful house that we're in now,
36:28
Speaker 2: and it's got quite dad skies. But they have built
36:31
Speaker 2: a new industrial park about fifteen cares aware that I
36:35
Speaker 2: pass every day going into work. And one of the
36:37
Speaker 2: things plus is they're self tractors because we're a big
36:40
Speaker 2: agricultural area, and their building is surrounded by floodlights to
36:45
Speaker 2: obviously illuminate things to prevent thieves. I always think that
36:48
Speaker 2: when you're illuminating things like that, what you're actually doing
36:50
Speaker 2: is giving your shopping list to the food thing. Look
36:52
Speaker 2: at all this fabulous stuff you could take away with you.
36:56
Speaker 2: But these floodlights have really noticeably from about fifteen cares
36:59
Speaker 2: of increase the brightness of the sky from my house
37:02
Speaker 2: to the southeast. Now I want to be looking to
37:04
Speaker 2: the north hest. So it's not the end of the
37:06
Speaker 2: world for me personally, but it's a really good example
37:09
Speaker 2: of how a single piece of building, a single project,
37:12
Speaker 2: can hugely impact the light for a very large area
37:15
Speaker 2: around with no indication of malice. People aren't doing this
37:18
Speaker 2: deliberately now, but they're doing it in ignorance of the
37:22
Speaker 2: impact they have because they're not there themselves looking, and
37:24
Speaker 2: when they're looking, they're looking at their products their local area.
37:28
Speaker 2: It's a challenge and it's hard to get people's hearts
37:31
Speaker 2: on mind on board. If you get aggressive and combative
37:35
Speaker 2: with it. It's a lot better to try and discuss
37:36
Speaker 2: it and let people know it's at the end of
37:38
Speaker 2: the day, if they turn those spotlights and point them down,
37:43
Speaker 2: that will mean less light pollution, and the only thing
37:44
Speaker 2: it will mean from their point of view is that
37:46
Speaker 2: burglars coming in by helicopter have a slightly easiest pan.
37:51
Speaker 1: Yes, good point, good point, and that happens a lot. Oh, absolutely, Yeah.
37:57
Speaker 1: I'm sure Fred will be kind to talk about this one,
38:00
Speaker 1: having visited the area himself and yes, did the work
38:03
Speaker 1: going on there? Yeah, this will really be something that
38:07
Speaker 1: will bother him, I expect anyway. Yes, it's a work
38:12
Speaker 1: in progress. But if you'd like to chase up any
38:15
Speaker 1: of the stories we've talked about today, I think you'll
38:17
Speaker 1: find all of them on space dot com fabulous website,
38:21
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38:28
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38:30
Speaker 1: by all means, go to our website. You can check
38:32
Speaker 1: out the notes on each episode at space Nuts podcast
38:36
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38:39
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Speaker 1: you'd like to become a supporter of Space Nuts whatever,
38:54
Speaker 1: floats your boat, John Dy, thank you so much. We'll
38:58
Speaker 1: catch you on the very next.
39:00
Speaker 2: Episode, absolutely looking forward to it. Thank you for having
39:03
Speaker 2: me Professor John D.
39:04
Speaker 1: Horner, Professor of astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland,
39:08
Speaker 1: our expert voice on this episode of Space Nuts. And
39:11
Speaker 1: to Hugh in the studio he couldn't find his way
39:14
Speaker 1: in because of the light pollution around his place.
39:18
Speaker 2: And from me Andrew.
39:18
Speaker 1: Dunkley, thanks for your company. I'll catch you on the
39:20
Speaker 1: next episode of Space Nuts. See you then bye bye.
39:24
Speaker 3: You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast, available at
39:29
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39:35
Speaker 2: You can also stream on demand at bites dot com.
39:38
Speaker 1: This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot Com.