Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #469: Ryugu's Magnetic Mysteries, Arecibo's Silent Collapse & Venusian Impact Revelations

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#469: Ryugu's Magnetic Mysteries, Arecibo's Silent Collapse & Venusian Impact Revelations · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello again, thank you for joining us. This is Space
0:02
Speaker 1: Nuts where we talk about all sorts of astronomical and
0:06
Speaker 1: space science things. And coming up on today's show, we're
0:11
Speaker 1: going to get some more information from Reugu, the asteroid
0:15
Speaker 1: that they took some samples from about four four years ago.
0:19
Speaker 1: It's back in the news because, yeah, we talked about
0:23
Speaker 1: it a few weeks ago, and now we're looking at
0:25
Speaker 1: maybe the origins of our outer Solar system. Some new
0:29
Speaker 1: information on what really happened to the Aricibo Observatory and
0:33
Speaker 1: it's a bit of a sad tale. And then we
0:35
Speaker 1: head the Venus. Now, Venus doesn't have many big asteroid
0:40
Speaker 1: impact or impact craters, and they're not very old compared
0:44
Speaker 1: to the rest of the Solar System. However, they think
0:47
Speaker 1: they've found one that breaks the mold, certainly broke Venus.
0:51
Speaker 1: We'll talk all about that on this episode of Space
0:55
Speaker 1: Nuts fifteen Guidance Channel.
1:00
Speaker 2: Ignition Space Nuts or three two.
1:08
Speaker 1: One Space Nurse as when actually bought it. Bill's good
1:12
Speaker 1: and here he is the man of the hour. It
1:15
Speaker 1: is Professor Fred watsonn Astronomer at Large. Hello, Fred, Hi Andrew,
1:19
Speaker 1: how are you doing. I'm not I've noticed that in
1:25
Speaker 1: most of the recordings we do, I wear dark colors,
1:29
Speaker 1: so today I thought i'd wear a white shirt. It's
1:31
Speaker 1: actually one of my golf shirts, because I believe it
1:34
Speaker 1: or not. Before we recorded today, I went out and
1:37
Speaker 1: had nine holes and I was running so late because
1:41
Speaker 1: it was slow, I had to come straight in here
1:45
Speaker 1: to record. So I don't smell too good, and that
1:51
Speaker 1: has caused Judy to leave the building. So really, Wellucky,
1:55
Speaker 1: this isn't smell a vision.
1:57
Speaker 2: Yes it is, but it sort of harks back to
2:00
Speaker 2: what we're talking about a couple of weeks ago about
2:02
Speaker 2: maybe aliens will communicate by smell, so you might be
2:05
Speaker 2: sending out a signals to the alien world.
2:09
Speaker 1: Well, they'll never come here, that's the case. I won't
2:13
Speaker 1: want to come.
2:15
Speaker 2: It looks very smart, Andrew. And actually you've caught me
2:18
Speaker 2: off guard because I very nearly wore a light colored
2:21
Speaker 2: shirt today, and then I thought, I know Andrew will
2:24
Speaker 2: be dressed in something dark. I've just got the same
2:25
Speaker 2: little blue one.
2:26
Speaker 1: A well, look at that. You know. Unfortunately, golf shirts
2:30
Speaker 1: that are white tend to show a lot of dirt.
2:33
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's why I've got the collar up because
2:35
Speaker 1: all the dirts. It's horrible like that's here. Plus our
2:39
Speaker 1: golf course is a very dirty, dusty golf course compared
2:42
Speaker 1: to most as well known ones you see on television.
2:44
Speaker 1: So yeah, before we get onto the stories, fred I
2:49
Speaker 1: read something that I thought would interest you, given that
2:51
Speaker 1: we talk about this semi regularly. But the week just gone,
2:59
Speaker 1: Russia aid a record launch of satellites. They put fifty
3:03
Speaker 1: three satellites into orbit in one launch the other day,
3:07
Speaker 1: which is a record for Russia. But what interested me
3:11
Speaker 1: about it was the payload. Wasn't just Russian satellites. I mean,
3:14
Speaker 1: they've got satellites for their own purposes. I think most
3:17
Speaker 1: of them were, including their news agency tasks I think
3:21
Speaker 1: it's called. So there were Russian satellites, there were Chinese
3:26
Speaker 1: satellites on there, which probably shouldn't come as any surprise.
3:29
Speaker 1: This one might surprise people though. Iran a couple of
3:32
Speaker 1: satellites for Iran, and they launched a couple of SATs
3:36
Speaker 1: for Zimbabwe as well. Yeah, but that just adds more
3:41
Speaker 1: satellites to the growing numbers in orbit around the planet.
3:45
Speaker 2: The Russians still have because they were contracted to one WEB,
3:49
Speaker 2: which is one of the satellite consolation companies actually owned
3:55
Speaker 2: I think the principal shareholders a British but other countries
3:59
Speaker 2: as well, and one Web originally contracted to the Russian
4:04
Speaker 2: Federation for launches with their soyots launch vehicles. And when
4:10
Speaker 2: the invasion twenty twenty two invasion of Crimea took sorry
4:14
Speaker 2: of Ukraine took place, the I can't remember which way
4:21
Speaker 2: around it was, but essentially yes, because of the various
4:25
Speaker 2: boycotts and things of that sort, the Russians commandeered those
4:29
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one web spacecraft that they had already to go.
4:34
Speaker 2: They were going to launch twenty one Web satellites, but
4:37
Speaker 2: they've still got them, and one Web very quickly changed
4:41
Speaker 2: and went with SpaceX.
4:43
Speaker 1: In fact, yeah, gosh, yeah, I wouldn't like to be
4:48
Speaker 1: a lawyer riding up contracts for all this kind of work.
4:51
Speaker 2: Exactly.
4:51
Speaker 1: It sounds like it's a pretty amazing business the luks
4:55
Speaker 1: in it, yes, exactly. Yeah, But that satellite, of all
5:00
Speaker 1: those multiple satellite arrays that are starting to build up
5:03
Speaker 1: around the planet just get thicker and thicker, which, as
5:06
Speaker 1: we previously mentioned week or two or three back, not
5:10
Speaker 1: a good thing for the environment either. Not just people
5:14
Speaker 1: who want to look out into space. Speaking of looking
5:18
Speaker 1: out into space, well, this was actually a mission, the
5:21
Speaker 1: Higher Buss two mission to Reugu about four years ago,
5:26
Speaker 1: when it retrieved some samples from the asteroid and brought
5:29
Speaker 1: them back and they've been studying those and a few
5:31
Speaker 1: weeks ago we did talk about one of the things
5:35
Speaker 1: that Reugu has now revealed in terms of planetary formation
5:39
Speaker 1: and maybe how life evolved on this planet. Now it's
5:45
Speaker 1: revealing more data on the origin of our outer Solar System,
5:50
Speaker 1: and it sounds like it was all done with magnets
5:53
Speaker 1: or was a blue tack magnets.
5:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is an interesting worry. This is quite complex,
6:01
Speaker 2: but you're absolutely right. It's more data coming back from
6:06
Speaker 2: the samples of the asteroid Yugu, but brought back, as
6:10
Speaker 2: you said, by Hyabusa two in twenty twenty. And so
6:14
Speaker 2: what has happened. As well as the chemical analysis that
6:17
Speaker 2: you've just referred to that was done on the various
6:21
Speaker 2: grains of material from this mission, scientists have now done
6:28
Speaker 2: magnetic analyzes and basically these have been done with some
6:35
Speaker 2: tiny grains of dust from Riugua, only about a millimeter across,
6:41
Speaker 2: but they've been measured very accurately by device called a magnetometer, which,
6:47
Speaker 2: as you might guess, measures magnetic field strength. And so
6:51
Speaker 2: they've essentially stuck this thing in a laboratory with a magnetometer,
6:59
Speaker 2: and the tiny grains have had their magnetic fields sampled.
7:04
Speaker 2: And the interesting bit is there's no sign of a
7:11
Speaker 2: preserved magnetic field in these samples, which is a surprise.
7:16
Speaker 2: I'll tell you why in a minute. I'm looking at
7:20
Speaker 2: Fitz dot Oak, one of our favorite websites for this news,
7:23
Speaker 2: and I'm going to read a little paragraph from their
7:26
Speaker 2: article on this which explains it a lot more accurately
7:29
Speaker 2: than I could. The scientists determined that the samples held
7:34
Speaker 2: no clear sign of a preserved magnetic field. This suggests
7:38
Speaker 2: that either there was no nebula field present, and by
7:41
Speaker 2: that they mean the field of the magnetic field of
7:44
Speaker 2: the nebula from which the Solar system formed, and that
7:47
Speaker 2: was a cloud of gas and dust. It suggests that
7:50
Speaker 2: either there was no nebula field present in the outer
7:53
Speaker 2: Solar system where the asteroid first formed, or the field
7:56
Speaker 2: was so weak that it was not recorded in the
7:58
Speaker 2: asteroid's grain. If the latter is the case, the team
8:03
Speaker 2: estimates that such a weak field would have been no
8:06
Speaker 2: more than fifteen microtesla in intensity. Now I think, as
8:11
Speaker 2: I understand it, I really should check this, but I
8:13
Speaker 2: think that's about a quarter of the Earth's magnetic field.
8:17
Speaker 2: So there's a bit more to say though, So that
8:22
Speaker 2: the Riugu samples didn't really have any magnetic field, and
8:28
Speaker 2: that's a surprise because we believe that nebula probably would
8:31
Speaker 2: have had a magnetic field. So another paragraph, if I may.
8:37
Speaker 2: The researchers also re examined data from previously studied meteorites.
8:41
Speaker 2: They specifically looked at ungrouped car carbonaceous chondrites, which are
8:47
Speaker 2: meteors meteorites that have properties that are characteristic of having
8:51
Speaker 2: formed in the outer Solar System. Scientists had estimated the
8:55
Speaker 2: samples were not old enough to have formed before the
8:58
Speaker 2: Solar nebula disappeared. Now, the solar nebula is the cocoon
9:02
Speaker 2: in which the Solar System was born, and it was
9:04
Speaker 2: eventually blown away by winds from the Sun when it
9:07
Speaker 2: went through a windy phase. So it says any magnetic
9:11
Speaker 2: field recorded a record that the samples contained then would
9:15
Speaker 2: not reflect the nebula field. But the team decided to
9:19
Speaker 2: take a close So look, we reanalyzed the ages of
9:23
Speaker 2: these samples and found they are closer to the start
9:26
Speaker 2: of the Solar System than previously thought. We think these
9:29
Speaker 2: samples formed in this distant outer region, and one of
9:32
Speaker 2: those samples actually does have a positive field detection of
9:35
Speaker 2: about five microtesla, which is consistent with that upper limit
9:39
Speaker 2: of fifteen microtesla they they spoke about before. So what
9:43
Speaker 2: they're suggesting is that the outer Solar system, way beyond
9:47
Speaker 2: the orbit of Jupiter, probably beyond the orbit of Neptune,
9:52
Speaker 2: had a very weak magnetic field, but were still strong
9:56
Speaker 2: enough that material from the very limits of the soule
10:03
Speaker 2: and nebula were pulled in and perhaps formed things like
10:10
Speaker 2: Uranus Neptune, some of the you know, the smaller bodies,
10:15
Speaker 2: the trans Neptunian objects. And a comment from one of
10:19
Speaker 2: the authors of this paper and really credited who they are,
10:22
Speaker 2: but they are a group of scientists in a number
10:26
Speaker 2: of different universities, led actually by a postdoctoral researcher at
10:32
Speaker 2: Cambridge University in the UK. So they go on to say,
10:38
Speaker 2: when you when you're further from the Sun, a weak
10:42
Speaker 2: magnetic field goes a long way. It was predicted that
10:45
Speaker 2: it doesn't need to be that strong out there, and
10:48
Speaker 2: that's what we're seeing. But still it's a real thing
10:51
Speaker 2: that the magnetic field is real, but it was predicted
10:55
Speaker 2: to be weak, and that's what they're seeing with the
10:57
Speaker 2: evidence that they're getting from these Yugur samples and some
11:02
Speaker 2: earlier meteorites that have been delivered to us from space,
11:05
Speaker 2: probably by an asteroid in a few million years ago.
11:09
Speaker 1: So fifteen micro tesla, which is only thirty percent of
11:14
Speaker 1: our own magnetic field, he is today, which is which
11:17
Speaker 1: is fifteen micro tesla. So so that's not that's not
11:21
Speaker 1: a big number from what you say.
11:23
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, it's it's not a big number. I mean,
11:27
Speaker 2: I've always thought the US magnetic field was quite healthy,
11:29
Speaker 2: but it's you know, it's when you compare it with
11:33
Speaker 2: some of the magnetism that's used in industry or in
11:36
Speaker 2: scientific research, it's pretty weak.
11:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, there's a bootknote. You have to recharge a
11:41
Speaker 1: tesla halfway to Sydney.
11:45
Speaker 2: Especially if it's a micro tesla. So one footnote to
11:50
Speaker 2: this story is that the same team they're going to
11:54
Speaker 2: look at samples from the asteroid Benu, which was which
12:01
Speaker 2: is also had samples returned to Earth, this time by
12:05
Speaker 2: NASA's cyrus Rex, not a Cyrus rocks, but the cyrus
12:10
Speaker 2: Rex space grab came back to Earth in September last year.
12:14
Speaker 2: So it would be really interesting to see what results
12:18
Speaker 2: they get from that if they do get their hold
12:19
Speaker 2: on get a hold on some of these samples from Benue. Indeed,
12:25
Speaker 2: you did.
12:25
Speaker 1: Say something that I picked up on and I thought
12:28
Speaker 1: it was worth revisiting. You said, the nebula that created
12:33
Speaker 1: our solar system was ultimately blown away by the Sun
12:38
Speaker 1: or the Sun's solar winds, whatever. So even at the
12:44
Speaker 1: very beginning, we were destroying our creator by the said, yes,
12:48
Speaker 1: that's right, blowing it away.
12:50
Speaker 2: That's right. So we know that stars forming gas clouds,
12:57
Speaker 2: clouds of gas and dust. We see it. You know,
12:59
Speaker 2: when you look at the pillars of creation, that's what
13:01
Speaker 2: you're actually seeing, pillars of dust with stole formation taking
13:04
Speaker 2: place at the middle. And we know that very early
13:08
Speaker 2: on in the life history of a star it goes
13:10
Speaker 2: through a phase which is known as the t Tory phase.
13:13
Speaker 2: T Toy is the name of a variable star and
13:16
Speaker 2: it's the sort of you know, basically the prototype of
13:21
Speaker 2: this type of activity. And when they're going through the
13:24
Speaker 2: t tourist phase. They're sort of blowing away the rest
13:27
Speaker 2: of the debris. And we see that too the Pliodes,
13:31
Speaker 2: the PLI d Es star cluster, which we see as
13:34
Speaker 2: the seventh Sisters in the sky in our summer sky
13:39
Speaker 2: here in Australia. They are when you look at them
13:45
Speaker 2: with a big telescope or even with a small telescope
13:48
Speaker 2: these days, with the modern detectors that we have, you
13:50
Speaker 2: can see they're surrounded by a sort of blue shell.
13:53
Speaker 2: There's a lot of blue material in them, and that
13:55
Speaker 2: blue is the reflection of light from dust. It's actually
13:59
Speaker 2: why smoke. It's the same thing that makes smoke look
14:02
Speaker 2: blue when sunlight falls, and it's a process called rarely scattering,
14:06
Speaker 2: which scatters the blue light preferentially. And so we see
14:09
Speaker 2: all this blue dusty stuff which is surrounding the Pliodies.
14:13
Speaker 2: Now we think the Pliodes are only about ten million
14:15
Speaker 2: years old. They're a young star cluster. So those stars
14:18
Speaker 2: have just gone through their te tory phase. And what
14:22
Speaker 2: we see is, you know, the last remnants of that
14:24
Speaker 2: dust cloud, the cloud of gas and dust in which
14:27
Speaker 2: they were born. So it's blown all the debry away
14:30
Speaker 2: and the Sun must have done the same thing as well,
14:32
Speaker 2: probably not long after its formation four point six billion
14:35
Speaker 2: years ago.
14:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just gone, hey, I'm here now, get wreck off.
14:41
Speaker 1: So just sweeping up, sweeping up the debris really yeah, yeah,
14:45
Speaker 1: cleaning up after itself. Maybe, yes. And yeah, it's exciting
14:52
Speaker 1: that we're getting so much data from such a small
14:54
Speaker 1: sample from her Reugu asteroid. And there'll be more to come,
14:59
Speaker 1: I do not doubt. If you'd like to read up
15:01
Speaker 1: on that story fizz dot org, as Fred said, or
15:04
Speaker 1: you can read the whole thing lock stock and barrel
15:07
Speaker 1: with the five million people who signed the report in
15:11
Speaker 1: the journal A gu Advances. There's a space nuts Andrew
15:15
Speaker 1: Dunkley here with Professor Fred. What's an Okay, we've tacked
15:21
Speaker 1: all space nuts now to a story that we have
15:28
Speaker 1: done a couple of times, and that was the demise
15:32
Speaker 1: of the Aricibo in Racibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. I
15:39
Speaker 1: know it's one of those, yeah, I knew it was
15:41
Speaker 1: one of the ricos Puerto Rico. This was a really
15:44
Speaker 1: sad one because this is a famous one for all
15:47
Speaker 1: sorts of reasons. It's the one that sort of nestled
15:49
Speaker 1: into a mountaintop, and they've used it in movies. It
15:53
Speaker 1: was used in the Jodie Foster film Contact, and it's
15:57
Speaker 1: just it's a very used to be a very favorite
16:01
Speaker 1: place of cinematographers but also astronomers, and it achieved a
16:04
Speaker 1: lot in its time, the Aracibo Observatory, but then a
16:09
Speaker 1: few years ago it collapsed rather dramatically, and they have
16:14
Speaker 1: been looking into the reasons why, and now it appears
16:17
Speaker 1: they have discovered the cause and effect. And it's a
16:22
Speaker 1: bit of a sad miss by the sound of it.
16:26
Speaker 2: It is. That's right, you're quite right, Andrew. It's got
16:30
Speaker 2: a very very distinguished history of this instrument. Built in
16:33
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty three, it was originally for what's called imospheric research,
16:40
Speaker 2: kind of looking up at the atmosphere and measuring the
16:42
Speaker 2: radio radiation from it. But it was taken over in
16:47
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven by the National Science Foundation for the
16:53
Speaker 2: astronomy community and did all kinds of really interesting things
16:58
Speaker 2: and actually shared the cost of maintenance and upgrades and
17:03
Speaker 2: things of that sort. Lots of discoveries, don't really have
17:07
Speaker 2: time to talk about them now, but one of them
17:09
Speaker 2: was a Nobel Prize winning discovery. The binary pulse are
17:13
Speaker 2: discovered in nineteen seventy four. So the you know, the issue,
17:21
Speaker 2: I guess took most of us in the astronomical community
17:25
Speaker 2: by surprise when the demolition happened, But it sort of
17:35
Speaker 2: was an accident, not quite an accident waiting to happen,
17:38
Speaker 2: But there had been weakening of the structure over a
17:41
Speaker 2: period before that. It was twenty twenty when the thing
17:44
Speaker 2: finally collapsed, but apparently the failure of the structure actually
17:50
Speaker 2: began three years before that. In twenty seventeen, there was
17:55
Speaker 2: a hurrican Hurricane Maria, which went through Puerto Eco on
18:01
Speaker 2: September the twentieth, twenty seventeen, and you know, that bombarded
18:07
Speaker 2: the area with winds that were in the region of
18:11
Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty one hundred and seventy maybe a
18:14
Speaker 2: bit more kilometers per hour rather more than one hundred kilometers,
18:19
Speaker 2: rather more than one hundred miles per hour, and that
18:22
Speaker 2: was you know, that was something that hammered, the hammered
18:27
Speaker 2: the structure. But the review that was carried out after that,
18:33
Speaker 2: there were inspections that were done in detail, and the
18:39
Speaker 2: conclusion of those inspections was that no significant damage had
18:43
Speaker 2: jeopardized the Racibo's telescopes structural integrity, some of the issues
18:50
Speaker 2: were suggested to need repairs, but there were other things
18:56
Speaker 2: that caused those repairs to be delayed. And even so
19:00
Speaker 2: so they thought that this was you know, this was
19:03
Speaker 2: not going to be an issue. And actually the components
19:10
Speaker 2: that were going to be repaired weren't the ones that
19:14
Speaker 2: failed when the collapse actually happened.
19:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a pretty significant point. Even though they didn't
19:21
Speaker 1: fix certain things. Even if they had.
19:25
Speaker 2: It would still have they weren't.
19:27
Speaker 1: They weren't the problem.
19:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, that's right. And then in August and November
19:35
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, there were two cables that failed, and that
19:42
Speaker 2: basically was the thing that said, look, we've got a
19:46
Speaker 2: problem here. We think that the telescope is not recoverable
19:51
Speaker 2: from these cable failures, and they were going to decommission
19:56
Speaker 2: the telescope and then have what they called a country
20:00
Speaker 2: demolition to avoid the catastrophe. So that was all sort
20:06
Speaker 2: of in train towards the end of well in November
20:12
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. That was August and November when those two
20:16
Speaker 2: cables failed. But then on the first of December there
20:23
Speaker 2: was a failure of more of these cables, and that's
20:26
Speaker 2: when the catstrophe happened. The instrument platform collapsed into the dish,
20:30
Speaker 2: took off the tops of the support towers, and damaged
20:33
Speaker 2: some of the observatori's other buildings. It was really a
20:39
Speaker 2: catastrophic end that probably people had in the back of
20:42
Speaker 2: their mind already but when they were working towards trying
20:46
Speaker 2: to avoid it. And it seems that some of the
20:50
Speaker 2: fractures were called caused by zinc decay in the sockets
20:55
Speaker 2: that held these cables what are called the spelter sockets.
21:00
Speaker 2: Zinc decay in those sockets that really led to the
21:02
Speaker 2: fracturing that wasn't that wasn't identified as an issue after
21:07
Speaker 2: the hurricane inspection, So there would as you've just said,
21:12
Speaker 2: they would never have picked out what was going to
21:14
Speaker 2: eventually cause the collapse.
21:16
Speaker 1: So yeah, from what I read the the capacity to
21:20
Speaker 1: actually identify the problem was nearly impossible. It was an
21:25
Speaker 1: invisible issue.
21:26
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that's correct. So you can't that's that's right.
21:30
Speaker 2: You can't really blame the engineers they there were the
21:34
Speaker 2: failures were in uh, you know, parts of the structure
21:37
Speaker 2: that weren't available for inspection, like the innods of it
21:42
Speaker 2: and things that really you would you would expect to
21:46
Speaker 2: last forever, but they didn't.
21:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very sad and such a such an iconic
21:53
Speaker 1: piece of infrastructure, which I'm sure most people would recognize
21:58
Speaker 1: as soon as I saw a photo of Aciboy. It's
22:01
Speaker 1: so it was so popular just because of the way
22:05
Speaker 1: it was built and the way it was used, and
22:08
Speaker 1: it's some some of its great achievements, as you mentioned, Fred,
22:13
Speaker 1: but it was a bit of a slow death. I mean,
22:15
Speaker 1: it was really probably beyond salvage before they identified that
22:20
Speaker 1: there was a problem by the sound of it.
22:24
Speaker 2: I think that's correct. That's a comment analysis. Yeah, And
22:27
Speaker 2: of course, now we have the Chinese Fast telescope, the
22:30
Speaker 2: five hundred meter apertures Phyico telescope. That's the sort of
22:35
Speaker 2: dwarfs are a Siba actually Raceba was three hundred and
22:37
Speaker 2: five meters in down the two it was one thousand feet.
22:41
Speaker 2: The Fast is half a kilometer in diameter. That's a
22:43
Speaker 2: very very big dish. Indeed, it's a similar sort of structure. Though.
22:49
Speaker 1: Indeed, yes, and and if people are interested, they did
22:54
Speaker 1: actually film that final collapse. It was they just happened
22:58
Speaker 1: to have a drone flying over Arasibo at the time,
23:03
Speaker 1: and they got footage of the collapse, so you can
23:06
Speaker 1: actually see it on YouTube if you're if you're interested,
23:08
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty sad to watch, to be honest, I
23:12
Speaker 1: have seen it myself. It's yeah, such a such a
23:15
Speaker 1: wonderful piece of kit as Fred would say. But yeah,
23:20
Speaker 1: all gone. Now are they going? Who I suppose they're
23:23
Speaker 1: gonna have to clean it up? Or they've already probably
23:26
Speaker 1: done that or starting to do that.
23:28
Speaker 2: That's a work that's right, that's a work in progress.
23:30
Speaker 2: But we do believe from statements made by the National
23:34
Speaker 2: Science Foundation that it will be turned into an education
23:37
Speaker 2: center specifically to carry on, you know, as a research
23:44
Speaker 2: center for stem How can you best teach science, technology, engineering,
23:50
Speaker 2: and mathematics. How can you teach that to young students?
23:53
Speaker 2: This will be what it will be doing, so it
23:57
Speaker 2: will have an enduring legacy, as Universe Today describes it.
24:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hardly surprising when you look at Hurricane Maria,
24:06
Speaker 1: because in our language, winds of up to two hundred
24:09
Speaker 1: kilometers an hour. You know, most large structures would struggle
24:13
Speaker 1: with that, and especially something that was built in the
24:18
Speaker 1: sixties when they didn't have the kind of technology to
24:21
Speaker 1: reinforce big structures like they do today. So yeah, very
24:26
Speaker 1: very sad. Indeed, that's a story also on fizz dot org.
24:34
Speaker 2: Fife Space Nuts.
24:38
Speaker 1: Fred to our final story today and we head to Venus,
24:42
Speaker 1: one of the more mysterious planets in our Solar System,
24:44
Speaker 1: simply because we can't see it beyond its atmosphere, but
24:48
Speaker 1: we can use radar to map its surface, which has
24:52
Speaker 1: been done very effectively. One of the things that's fascinating
24:55
Speaker 1: about Venus is that its craters are much smaller, much
25:00
Speaker 1: younger than most of the creators found elsewhere in the
25:03
Speaker 1: Solar System. But now they think they've found one that's
25:06
Speaker 1: probably the oldest and most definitely the biggest to be
25:10
Speaker 1: discovered at this point in time. But what's really weird
25:13
Speaker 1: about it is that it resembles impact craters on ice
25:17
Speaker 1: moons further out in the Solar System, which I guess
25:21
Speaker 1: got people scratching their heads and they've tried to figure
25:25
Speaker 1: out why, and it looks like they might have.
25:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. It is a fascinating story, and it's
25:32
Speaker 2: almost one of these accidental discoveries astrophysics is so full of,
25:41
Speaker 2: so it's radar data that you're always looking at when
25:45
Speaker 2: you're talking about the surface of Venus. I remember the
25:50
Speaker 2: Magellan spacecraft. I think it was I think I'm giving
25:53
Speaker 2: it the right name, was the one that gave us
25:56
Speaker 2: the best radar maps of the surface of Venus and
26:03
Speaker 2: the some of the features that came from those radar
26:06
Speaker 2: maps are similar to what we find on Earth. There's mountains,
26:13
Speaker 2: there's things that look as though they're definitely volcanic, you know,
26:16
Speaker 2: volcanic cones. But they're also what we call longitudinal structures,
26:22
Speaker 2: which are called tesserai. And these I suppose, you know,
26:27
Speaker 2: we use the word tessellated, meaning things that are rectangular
26:30
Speaker 2: in shape, and these tesserai are basically, if you imagine
26:36
Speaker 2: a radar map, they're more or less straight lines on
26:39
Speaker 2: the radar map, all going in the same direction, and
26:41
Speaker 2: they're caused by highly high levels of disruption geologically in
26:48
Speaker 2: the surface. And then they're thought to be at least
26:52
Speaker 2: one and a half billion years old, so they go
26:55
Speaker 2: for a long way. They cover hundreds to thousands of kilometers,
26:59
Speaker 2: and probably up to ten percent of the planet is
27:02
Speaker 2: actually covered with these things. However, there's a group of
27:05
Speaker 2: scientists who were looking at these testa in detail, and
27:11
Speaker 2: they noticed that some of them were going the other
27:14
Speaker 2: way and they were sort of at right angles to
27:18
Speaker 2: the main ones. And when they looked more closely, they
27:22
Speaker 2: found that actually they weren't straight lines at right angles
27:25
Speaker 2: to the testrie. They were forming a curved shape. They
27:29
Speaker 2: had a curvature to them, and they were concentric. They're
27:33
Speaker 2: described as beautiful, concentric structures that were very different from
27:37
Speaker 2: the rest of the test ARide. That's one of the researchers.
27:40
Speaker 2: And a lovely quote here. When nature gives you patterns
27:43
Speaker 2: like that which are so obvious, you know they have
27:45
Speaker 2: a story to tell. I like that very much. So
27:50
Speaker 2: that's say it suggesting when you've got something that's circular,
27:55
Speaker 2: and these stripes are circular, it's not a complete circle,
27:59
Speaker 2: but and their concentric. That's to say they have a
28:03
Speaker 2: distinctive center. What you're thinking about is an impact crater.
28:08
Speaker 2: And so this is a quote from one of the
28:15
Speaker 2: scientists working on this. Some of them are from Spanish University.
28:22
Speaker 2: The Yes if the structure. Actually I'm not quoting here.
28:28
Speaker 2: I think I'm quoting from the Sky of Telescope magazine,
28:31
Speaker 2: which is where this article is if the structure was
28:34
Speaker 2: an impact crater, then it will be more than five
28:37
Speaker 2: times the size of the next largest one known on Venus.
28:41
Speaker 2: The size that fits well with massive impact ours flying
28:44
Speaker 2: around the Young Solar System. But it's different, that's the thing.
28:50
Speaker 2: It's quite different from the normal impact structures that we see.
28:54
Speaker 2: It's got these concentric rings, and there's nothing like that
28:59
Speaker 2: on the Moon. There's nothing like that on Mercury, there's
29:03
Speaker 2: nothing like that on Mars. But as you said, they
29:06
Speaker 2: did find exactly similar structures on two very different worlds.
29:13
Speaker 2: One is Callisto, it's one of Jupiter's moons, and the
29:17
Speaker 2: other is Europa, one of the other moons of Jupiter.
29:20
Speaker 2: And these are ice worlds, exactly as you've said. There
29:22
Speaker 2: are worlds with an icy covering overlaying a global ocean,
29:29
Speaker 2: which itself overlays a rocky core. And that's really weird
29:34
Speaker 2: because Venus is not an ice world. It's quite the opposite.
29:40
Speaker 2: But what it suggests is that there may have been
29:43
Speaker 2: a time in Venus's past when it had a similar
29:47
Speaker 2: structure to the ice world. So, as I said, ice
29:50
Speaker 2: worlds are a layer of ice with water underneath. If
29:53
Speaker 2: you think of let me, guess, go for it.
29:57
Speaker 1: The floor is lava.
30:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, so if you imagine a lava crust, a thin
30:05
Speaker 2: lava crust overlaying molten lava, then you've got a similar structure,
30:11
Speaker 2: a solid layer on top of a liquid and so
30:14
Speaker 2: this is yeah, that's exactly the same effect. This is
30:20
Speaker 2: basically what led this team of researchers to model what
30:25
Speaker 2: would happen if you had an object hitting a solid
30:29
Speaker 2: crust covering lava lava, either a lava ocean or lava pools.
30:36
Speaker 2: And apparently what they found, and this is again caught
30:40
Speaker 2: in from SCYN telescope, the team founded a single large
30:43
Speaker 2: object hitting a hard six kilometer thin crust could melt
30:47
Speaker 2: the underlying layer, splashing chunks of solidified scum to make
30:52
Speaker 2: the tessra, but a single impact couldn't simultaneously make the
30:57
Speaker 2: ring structure. And so they now postulating basically an initial
31:04
Speaker 2: impact that produced that straight line crinkling that I mentioned
31:08
Speaker 2: the tesserai, but then another one. So what that leaves
31:14
Speaker 2: is a thin crust over a pool or an ocean
31:17
Speaker 2: of hot lava, and then the next one, a next
31:21
Speaker 2: impact while that pond is still fluid, another object hits
31:25
Speaker 2: shatters the crust again, and that's when you get the
31:29
Speaker 2: curved impact structure, the stuff that we see similarly on
31:33
Speaker 2: Europa and Galistem So really quite an extraordinary bit of research.
31:38
Speaker 2: But it may well be that they've pinpointed exactly what
31:42
Speaker 2: happened to the early Venus, because we know that in
31:45
Speaker 2: the early history of the Solar System it was you know,
31:48
Speaker 2: it was a palish place. There was debris charging around
31:52
Speaker 2: all over the place, bits of unbuilt planets and asteroids
31:55
Speaker 2: and all the rest of it. So impacts were very high,
31:58
Speaker 2: what we call the late heavy bombar.
32:00
Speaker 1: Indeed, and and I suppose now, Fred, if it's confirmed
32:05
Speaker 1: that this is a major impact crater, they'll have to
32:09
Speaker 1: give it a name. The one on Callisto has got
32:11
Speaker 1: a great name. It's called Valhalla Crater. Yes, well they
32:16
Speaker 1: would surely have to name this, wouldn't they.
32:19
Speaker 2: I think it will get a name. Yes, that's right.
32:21
Speaker 2: Once again, the names of everything have to be ratified
32:24
Speaker 2: by the International Astronomical Union. But I think the suggestion
32:30
Speaker 2: would come from the authors of this paper as to
32:34
Speaker 2: what it might be. I think the lead author is
32:38
Speaker 2: Vicky Hansen from the Planetary Science Institute so I'm probably
32:43
Speaker 2: thinking now about what this could be called.
32:46
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it's quite a discovery and great technology given
32:51
Speaker 1: we can't see the surface with the naked eye.
32:53
Speaker 2: Yes, that pickup.
32:55
Speaker 1: Indeed you can read that story Fred mentioned at skuy
32:59
Speaker 1: and telloscope dot org. We're all done. Thank you for
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Speaker 1: seventy to go. Yeah, that sounds me that number of episodes,
33:35
Speaker 1: it does. I know we've started doubling up not long ago,
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Speaker 1: but yeah, it's still good numbers. Thank you, Fred. As always,
33:42
Speaker 1: you are a delight to speak with, so I'm told.
33:50
Speaker 2: Thanks Andrews, so are you so uncle?
33:54
Speaker 1: Speak to you soon? Thanks again? All right? So, yeah,
33:57
Speaker 1: Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large and someone else who's a
34:01
Speaker 1: delight to talk to whenever it turns up and it wasn't.
34:03
Speaker 1: Today is here in the studio and from me Andrew Dunkley.
34:06
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Speaker 1: next episode of Space Nuts. Bye Byeuts.
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