Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #417: Solar Flares & Speedy Spacecraft: Revolutionizing Our Cosmic Commute

Transcript

#417: Solar Flares & Speedy Spacecraft: Revolutionizing Our Cosmic Commute · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Hi there, Thanks for joining us on this the latest episode of Space Nuts.
0:04
My name is Andrew Dunkley. It's great to have your company. Coming
0:07
up. On this episode, we're going to be talking massive solar flares.
0:11
We're going to be talking one thousand days on Mars. For perseverance, NASA's
0:16
got a fabulous idea to move around faster in space. It's called a plasma
0:21
rocket and the biggest ever proto planetary disc pile of junk stuff that makes planets
0:26
ever seen. We'll talk about all of that and more on this episode of
0:31
Space Nuts. Fifteen seconds in Channal ten nine ignition Space Nuts NI or three
0:41
two Space Nuts as when I re bought it Bills Goods and he's here again
0:49
because he's got nothing better to do. Fred, what's an astronomer of large?
0:53
Hello? Fred? Yes, that might be true. Soon you never
0:57
do taking dogs to and cleaning up dogs. That's right. And I'm being
1:04
reviewed, of course by the Prime Minister. Now maybe not that high.
1:10
He's not quite put his ore into it yet, but you never know.
1:15
He's been too busy with the budget. I think the budget. Just tell
1:19
me why you're being reviewed? There might be Yes, that's why it might
1:22
be everything else. Okay with that friend, I saw budgets and reviews and
1:29
stuff dog stuff. Yes, that's the dog is suffering from a gastric episode
1:36
that let he wound up at the vets very very early this morning at the
1:40
emergency VAT. But he seems to be okay, so hopefully it's not anything
1:44
that's life threatening. We were a bit worried for a little while though,
1:48
after say, yeah, that's the thing with pets. They tend to rack
1:52
up VET bills that are raided knots sometimes. Yeah, that wasn't why we
1:56
were worried. We're worried in case we didn't, I know, I know.
2:00
Yeah, it's through costly. My son had to take one of his
2:04
cats to the couple of weeks ago, twelve hundred dollars worth of dental work.
2:09
Yeah, very very scary. We don't have any pets anymore. We're
2:15
just early money. Well that's probably the reason. But yeah, I think
2:22
we've had our fair share of cats and dogs and fish and everything else.
2:29
That's not what we're here to talk about. I did want to start off
2:31
Fred by having a chat about this latest activity from the sun, which has
2:38
resulted in some massive activity. It's sort of reaching the peak of its eleven
2:45
year cycle as far as I understand it. According to Noah anyway, but
2:49
the biggest solar flare in nearly a decade has just passed over the Earth,
2:53
and some of the photographs of the aurora north and south have been extraordinary.
3:00
It's really having quite a spectacular thing, notwithstanding, obviously, the potential side
3:05
effects of such an event. Yes, that's right, I think it was.
3:08
I think it was actually a coronal mass ejection. Okay, rather flair.
3:15
Yeah, but I might be using the the using the description soul of
3:20
flair in some media outlets, but that might be a bit of a fative
3:23
license. My the stuff I read, and it's a few days ago now,
3:28
it was a G four G four coronal mass ejection. G five is
3:32
the biggest, and so yeah, I mean, whatever it was, it
3:38
a whole lot of plasma and subatomic particles and magnetic fields at the Earth from
3:46
the direction of the Sun and we bathed in the aurora. That's absolutely right.
3:53
My friends and relatives all over the world have been sending marvelous pictures of
4:00
auroral displays, even as far as the south of England. Friends, there
4:04
sent pictures and I think probably even further south than that. Here in Australia,
4:12
there was a report of Rory being seen. This was I think Friday
4:16
night or maybe early Saturday morning, the weekend that's just passed at Siding Spring
4:21
Observatory, where the Australian telescope is. That's one hundred odd kilometers further north
4:29
than you are, which means it's a long long way from the polar region.
4:32
But there have been reports that people have seen them from Dubbo, which
4:39
is in central New South Wales, which is usually way too far north to
4:42
see anything like that, but the weather was so bad here last weekend I
4:47
didn't even bother to try. Same in Sydney. Sydney has been under cloud
4:53
and rain for about two weeks. It's sort of cleared away now, but
4:57
not before it blocked any views at all of the biggest solar event for twenty
5:03
years, the best of Rory for twenty years, so we missed out on
5:08
them, which is a shame. I think the ones twenty years ago two
5:11
thousand and three was the last big display of this kind, and I am
5:15
pretty sure that's one that I saw from the central of Adibra City center.
5:19
I could see the Amaura was quite extraordinary. Of course. The big worry
5:24
is the impact these things have on electronics, and that's constantly being monitored and
5:30
warnings are issued whenever there are potential blackout zones, and there have been some
5:35
have been many in recent years. It just depends on what part of the
5:41
planet the thing here. So direct hit though, could be catastrophic in some
5:45
circumstances. Was I haven't heard of anything too negative happening. Yeah, the
5:51
Carrington event when the telegraph was Yeah, it was eighteen fifty nine. I
5:57
think eighteen fifty nine. I think the current to the event. We've not
6:00
seen anything as strong as that since then, but something like that could happen.
6:06
There's no guarantee that the Sun will send out a gigantic burp, and
6:12
at the time when that's likely to happen, of course, is when we
6:15
have sol the maximum where the maximum of the Sun's activity, which is kind
6:20
of where we are now at the moment. Yeah. Yeah, it's reaching
6:24
into eleven year peak, and then it will start declining and then it'll go
6:27
to sleep for a while, and then it'll all happen over again. Yeah,
6:30
I think it's fascinating. I know they study the Sun and they've got
6:34
observatories sort of taking long, hard looks at it all the time to learn
6:40
as much as we can. But these kinds of events are well, they're
6:45
spectacular to the observer, but they could be catastrophic for satellites. I do
6:49
believe they actually did have to shut down some satellites to try and preserve them
6:54
because of this event. Okay, let's move on, Fred. And this
6:59
is to do with Mars, which is the subject of much study as well.
7:04
And Perseverance is now passed one thousand days on the Red planet. Now,
7:10
I just need to clarify it. Is it a thousand earth days or
7:13
a thousand solts? Yeah, it's a thousand days. And you're right.
7:18
One soul, which is a Martian day, is twenty four hours and forty
7:23
minutes just about. It's much the same. It's quite extraordinary, a bit
7:27
of a coincidence that the Martian day and our days should be so similar.
7:31
Likewise, another coincidence in that the axial tilt of the two planets is very
7:35
similar as well. We're at twenty three and a half degrees tilted over Mars
7:40
is about twenty five degrees and that's quite I think remarkable that it is.
7:45
This should be so similar, Yes, amazing. Anyway, So it was
7:53
July twenty twenty when the Perseverance vehicle was launched from Earth launch from Cape Canaveral.
8:01
That would have been something to watch. I'm sorry I wasn't there to
8:03
see that. And then landed at Jesuo Crater in February twenty twenty one after
8:09
seven month journey. And that area was chosen because it believed that it is
8:18
a crater, but that it was once an ancient lake bed, and the
8:22
evidence for that is a delta. There's evidence of the river that flowed into
8:28
the crater and another one that flowed out actually, and where the entry point
8:33
was there is a large amount of debris covering a wide area, which is
8:41
a delta, is where the river has brought down sediment from further upstream and
8:46
dumped it on the bed of the lake. It's a bit like the Nile
8:50
Delta, the Lune delta in France. So a place that was well chosen
8:58
to be representative of where you might find remnants of living organisms, and by
9:05
that I mean fossilized remnants because there may have been microbes in that debris that
9:11
was washed down and then dumped on the floor of Chesura Crater. So sorry,
9:20
I thought you were going to ask a question, but I'll wait for
9:24
that. Who are these two? They're not very professional, are they?
9:31
So? As you know, because we've discussed it many times before, of
9:37
course, that that mission has been characterized in a stunningly effective way by the
9:43
fact that Perseverance also had a little friend called Ingenuity, the helicopter, which
9:50
did marvelous things in terms of imagery and detecting where you could go and where
9:54
you can't go with a rover Broker rota on its seventy third mission, after
10:01
an expected lifetime of five flights, I think it got to it's either seventy
10:07
two or seventy three. I think it was seventy three. And the evidence
10:09
is there. There's an image that's been well circulated that shows poor little Perseverance
10:15
with its sorry Ingenuity, with its broken Rota and the bit that's broken off
10:20
is you know, fifteen meters away or something like that. So yeah,
10:26
but so effective and such a stunning success in terms of aerodynamic design for aerial
10:35
vehicles on Mars and the other thing it's done is because its mission is to
10:39
look for signs of past life. Now there's a limit as to how much
10:43
you can do of that with a robotic laboratory on six wheels, which is
10:48
what Perseverance is. But in order to make better sense of it all,
10:56
as you know, there have been little caches of material, basically in small
11:03
metal canisters, basically rock samples, soil samples have been put into I think
11:09
it's twenty three so far of these canisters and then deposited on the surface for
11:15
later collection by a robotic machine that is currently still in planning, if not
11:22
necessarily in development. I don't think it's going to be before the end of
11:24
the decade that that mission takes place, but it will be fantastic what it
11:28
does to bring those samples back and analyze them in earthly laboratories and maybe find
11:33
evidence of fossilized microbes. Yes, that would be siting. I think one
11:39
of the most interesting samples they collected was one they believe contains silica fine grained
11:46
silica YEP, which is known on Earth to have preserved fossils in it.
11:52
So that's one sample that'll probably be very very keen to get their hands on
11:56
indeed, that's right, and another of them has phosphates in it, and
12:01
again phosphates on Earth are associated with biology, basically with biological processes, so
12:09
those are going to be really interesting samples to bring back. There is an
12:16
instrument on board which is called pixel PixL. It is the Planetary Instrument for
12:24
X ray lithochemistry, and that is a way of well using X rays to
12:33
see if there is any kind of you know, fossil remnants, anything that
12:39
looks like a fossil, any chemical changes that might have been the result of
12:45
microbial activity. So there is an equipment on board that can detect that.
12:52
But so far nothing has been seen that could could be attributed to signs of
12:58
life. So far, no Martians, but it's still a good future for
13:05
those, certainly for those samples that have been left behind on Mars, which
13:09
we were one day to be able to talk about on space notes when they
13:11
come back to an earthly laboratory. Yeah. The one day thing is I
13:16
think the most frustrating element of this because that they didn't have a retrieval plan
13:22
proper. They just said we'll get to it one day. Yeah, it
13:26
was worse than that, really because they did have one, but NASA's decided
13:31
it's too expensive because the estimate was seven to I think it was seven to
13:35
thirteen billion dollars. So no, eight to thirteen billion dollars was the estimate,
13:39
and they're being told to revamp everything so it doesn't cost any more than
13:45
seven billion dollars, which is still pretty expensive for something like that. You
13:48
should just donate the annual interest from your bank account. That'll cover it.
13:52
Oh, that will cover it. Yeah, I guess I could do that,
13:54
couldn't I? Yeah, from all your book from all your book royalties,
13:58
the royalties. Yeah, now you're talking. I once I once installed
14:05
central eating in our attic on the strength of a book royalty. That's the
14:11
kind of level that you get. Yes, yeah. I think my first
14:16
book, which was an audiobook, the royalties there covered a holiday. I
14:20
think, well it's pretty good, but in the central eating sorry conditioning,
14:24
not central eating. Well that let me qualify it. It was a really
14:28
crap holiday. Now it was crap conditioning as well. No, that's quite
14:37
a while ago. That's a decade ago now that that that book was published.
14:41
That was the one about my grandfather in World War On. Yes,
14:43
I remember it. Yeah, I have since discovered which I didn't know,
14:48
and this I attribute to Taylor Swift. But the way that deal was set
14:54
up, the ABC owns the rights to the distribution, et cetera of the
15:00
book. But if I do what Taylor Swift did and release Andrew's version,
15:09
I can re release the audio again under my distribution right as you go.
15:13
Sure Australian law would let you do that. Well, I'm still checking.
15:20
I know, yeah, because there's a similar I'm not betraying any confidences here,
15:26
but I work with a very well known composer. He's a good friend.
15:31
He writes music, I write the words. This is classical music and
15:37
it's very Manilow, very Manilow. But there was a similar issue with getting
15:43
back copyright from some of his earlier works because he wasn't happy with the publishing
15:48
company and it was a legal nightmare to do it. Absolutely, it absolutely
15:54
is. And I did approach the ABC to buy back my rights and they
15:58
said, well, how many going to sell and then we'll work out the
16:00
price. And I went, yeah, how do I forecast that? Yeah?
16:04
So I just said, look, don't worry about it. It really
16:10
doesn't matter that much. Have we finished with perseverance. There will be a
16:15
book about that one day. I'm sorry we have we have wandered off the
16:19
topic here, but yeah, I think we've finished with perseverance. It will
16:25
be marvelous when that sample return mission does come back to Earth with its samples,
16:30
and there will be great excitement, especially if something you know, pointing
16:33
towards the possibility of ancient life on Mars is discovered. That will be the
16:37
discovery of the century. Probably, Yes, absolutely totally agree. And let's
16:41
hope so. And you can chase up that story about Perseverance at Universe today
16:48
dot com. This is Space Nuts Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson.
16:53
Now let's take a little break from the show to tell you about our sponsor,
16:57
nord VPN. Now, not so long ago, I did a bit
17:00
of a speed test just add hop speed test. Didn't plan it, just
17:06
went ahead and did it on the spot, to prove that you do not
17:08
lose very much speed using NordVPN on your desktop computer or your laptop for that
17:15
matter. I thought i'd tested on my mobile device, which I haven't done
17:21
in recent times. So I've got my phone here, I've got the speed
17:26
test icon going, so I'll do a speed test without using NordVPN. So
17:33
here we go and it is connecting and doing what it does. Boom,
17:38
Okay, there's a well, it peaked at one hundred and thirty five,
17:42
but it's hanging around the one point fifteen one sixteen mark. Well, now
17:47
it's jumped up to one hundred and forty. That's well above what I pay
17:51
for, but that's okay. The download, yeah, is one hundred and
17:56
forty megabits per second and is uploading it around four megabits per second, which
18:04
is not really great, but that's the mobile network that's available to me,
18:11
so I can't do much about it. By the way, I've only got
18:12
two bars on a five gen network, so I'm going to close that they
18:18
are I'm going to connect NordVPN to my phone. It will figure out what
18:25
it wants to do. It wants me to configure everything on the phone.
18:27
Done, okay. It is now connected to a server in Central Australia,
18:33
probably Alice Springs. That's what it chose. So let's do another speed test
18:40
and we are ready to go via NordVPN this time, and I'll hit go
18:45
and we'll see what happens. So this is going via Central Australia and I'm
18:52
still achieving speeds of about seventy to eighty megabits per section per second. I
19:00
am losing a bit, but it's not a lot. That's still really good
19:03
speeds on a mobile network. The upload speed is actually faster. My upload
19:10
speed is pushing up towards ten megabits per second now it's just hitting eleven.
19:15
So with NordVPN, I lose a bit on the download, but I gain
19:19
almost double on the upload, which is extraordinary. Now they've been our sponsor
19:25
for quite some time. I use all their products I've signed up. There's
19:29
a special URL if you're interested in looking at NordVPN as a space nuts listener,
19:34
which starts with a thirty day money back guarantee. They back their product
19:40
one hundred percent. And if you go to the url NordVPN dot com slash
19:45
space nuts that's NordVPN dot com slash space nuts and click on get the deal,
19:52
you can see all the different options available to you, and the longer
19:56
you sign up for them, the lower it costs a month by month basis,
20:00
but you can pay for it in one head. If you prefer and
20:03
with every deal and extra four months is what you get from NordVPN as a
20:10
space Nuts listener and extra four months. And they backed their products not just
20:15
the high speed VPN, but the malware protection, the tracker ad blocker,
20:18
cross platform password manager, that's my favorite thing in the world, the data
20:22
bridge scanner, and a terabyte of cloud storage. Depending on which plan you
20:26
get, you can combine all those things. So NordVPN dot com slash space
20:33
Nuts is where you go and check out the deal today. You won't regret
20:37
signing up with nord VP. And now back to the show, Space Buds
20:45
Now, Fred, this is a story that kind of tickled my fancy in
20:48
the last week because we and in our next episode there's a question that sort
20:56
of references a situation like this, and that is how fast you can travel
21:02
through space. At the moment, we are limited by certain technologies, but
21:07
NASA and other organizations are working on better faster ways of traveling through space and
21:14
that is very excited by this one. It's a proposed plasma rocket which would
21:19
cut the travel time to Mars from nine months to two months. This is
21:25
not science fiction. This is something that they're actually putting money into it sounds
21:29
very exciting. Yes, that's right. It comes from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts
21:36
Program, which is, you know, it's kind of blue sky research on
21:40
things that they want day to come to fruition and actually make a difference.
21:45
And certainly if you can get to Mars in two months, that's a lot
21:48
better than nine months six months, is there is you know, six to
21:53
nine months is what we expect it to take to get to Mars with current
21:56
technology, and dropping that by a third or more would be really significant.
22:03
So it is basically well, it's called a pulse plasma propulsion system pulse plasma
22:12
propulsion there you go three p's, and in fact is built or developed from
22:19
an older version back in twenty eighteen that was something with the delightful name of
22:27
puff PUFF, which is kind of what it does at the back end,
22:33
I guess puff to drive the thing along. Puff is a sort of acronym
22:37
for pulsed fission fusion, and it's actually a development of something that's used in
22:45
the laboratory, something that compresses plasmas in the laboratory to very high pressures for
22:52
short times. So the idea behind PUFF was that you utilize that sort of
22:59
technology, but you also provide an exhaust pipe, so you get this high
23:03
pressure, but then you blasted out and it produces thrust. The new version
23:08
is apparently smaller and simpler than that, and apparently also more affordable. But
23:15
the main thing is it's it's got very very high efficiency. That's the trick,
23:22
and it has a very high what's called a specific impulse, which is
23:27
a term that rocket engineers used to measure the effectiveness of a rocket. And
23:33
I think with conventional technology and sort of pulling things from the back of my
23:36
brain now, I think the highest specific impulse conventional rocket would be hydrogen and
23:42
oxygen. I think I'm right in saying that, which is what they used
23:47
on the Space Shuttle main engines, and in fact we'll use also on Artemis
23:52
on the on the SLS is a space launch system that's being used for Artemis.
24:00
So that high efficiency is well surpassed by the idea of this propulsion system.
24:10
We've got a figure here from an article that's saying on Gizmodo, actually
24:18
with some quite nice details in it. One one hundred thousand newtons of force
24:23
Newton being the the you know, that the international recognized unit of force.
24:32
It's in pounds twenty two four hundred and eighty one pounds. That's pretty impressive.
24:38
That is actually ten tons, So that's you know, that's I mean,
24:45
it's it's a I guess they're talking about a specific size of pulse plasma
24:53
propulsion system when they quote those figures, because not all drive systems are the
25:00
same. But that is pretty impressive for something that has such high fuel efficiency.
25:06
So that might be the way that we are going to Mars in a
25:08
few decades, taking two months rather than nine months. Absolutely, and that
25:15
could be a huge game changer. Yeah, huge game changer, that's right.
25:21
I mean two months, you know, nine months with your colleagues in
25:25
a space capsule, even if they're protected from the radiation and all the rest
25:29
of it, you're going to be a bit sick of them after nine months.
25:32
After two months, you might only still be getting on quite well with
25:36
your colleagues. I don't know. When we have to drive to Queensland,
25:40
you sort of get out of town and you're excited about the trip and then
25:42
you know you've traveled one hundred k's and gone, oh, when is this
25:45
going to end? I just I just don't see. I don't know how
25:51
they're going to do two months, let alone, you know, potentially six
25:53
to nine months and the body oider. Let's not go there. Who's was
26:00
it was Aldrin who suggested you should be sending all married couples out to Mars
26:04
because they've they've done all their bickering and they you know, they've they've arrived
26:11
at a place where they're not likely to fall out with each other. In
26:15
the other big advantages that they're capable of not talking to each other for long
26:19
periods of time. Yeah, that's right. There's all sorts of benefits to
26:26
sending a married couple to Mars. Yeah, yeah, that's right. It
26:30
could also end up in the first ever divorce on Mars. So there's all
26:33
sorts of things, all sorts of first achievable. Yeah. The quicker the
26:38
trip, the better, I suppose. I think that's right. That's the
26:41
bottom. I'm not sure they'll have this developed in time for the first human
26:45
mission to Mars, but we've still got probably at least a decade, maybe
26:51
more, probably more. I reckon, Yeah, I reckon, it's going
26:55
to be more. That's right. Yeah, I know they were talking twenty
27:00
was it twenty thirty five or something? Yeah, thirty five. It's one
27:03
of the one of the windows because remember, we've got to have miles in
27:07
the Earth in the right place, which happens every two years and two months.
27:11
But there's a window in twenty thirty five, and that was commonly being
27:14
touted as when we might go with I suspect it's likely to be later in
27:18
the decade indeed, But if you want to read about this, this concept,
27:22
the the plasma rocket with the what did they what did they call?
27:26
It? Had a funny name, the puff puff Ya. Yeah, there's
27:30
z Peters the right the process to produce the thrust off For you Americans,
27:37
Z pinch just in case you didn't understand what I was talking about, but
27:41
yeah, tongue in check, z pinch. Z pinch is the is the
27:45
process for creating bursts of thrust on this and this particular engine that they're developing.
27:52
Gizmoto is the website if you want to take a look at that.
27:56
Finally, Fred, we're going to look at planet formation, and this one
28:03
is exciting because they've found the biggest pile of junk yet seen in the form
28:07
of a planet. Planet creating environment. That's right, haven't It's not necessarily
28:17
junk. It's just the raw material planets. But I don't know if you're
28:21
seen a house before they build it, that's aland junk. Yes, that's
28:25
certainly true. And bits of hours are like that. Now with these renovations
28:29
that are still in progress after seven months and eight months now, yeah,
28:34
who I worry for the future, Fred, When when archaeologists start digging down
28:40
and finding our houses and going, oh, look they built elaborate houses.
28:42
And then they dig deeper and go, oh my gosh, these builders were
28:47
filthy, disgusting. Look at this food, look at these Yeah, actually
28:52
our building can inside my wall. Oh there you go. I'm not surprised
28:56
to hear that cook comes get everywhere inside your wall. I like that.
29:02
Just make doing what were you doing inside your wall? A piece fell off?
29:07
It was actually a now it was a retaining wall. I should clarify
29:10
a retaining wall. Yeah. Still anyway, notwithstanding all that, this has
29:18
been a very digressive sort of podcast, and so we apologize to all you
29:22
listeners there. If you want some astronomy of space sides, you might be
29:26
have to go and look at another one. Anyway, it's like we have
29:29
the head against a brick wall. Really in case you find a coked and
29:33
insight. The story here is about had the Yeah, I've got the I've
29:41
actually got the original paper here in front of it entitled high Resolution pan Stars
29:45
and SMA Observations of Iras two three zero seven seven plus six seven zero one
29:51
a giant hedge on protoplanetry disc. And that last bid is the important bit
29:56
because what we're seeing is a star which has a sort of cloud of debris
30:02
nebulosity around it, which basically has a dark line through it. It looks
30:08
I guess it's a bit like a Burgher scene edge on, you know,
30:14
with the buns being bright and the dark whenever's in the middle being dark.
30:18
And what that dark stuff is is a disc of material which is swirling around
30:25
a young planet basically, you know, a newborn planet, probably only a
30:32
few tens of millions of years old. It's a star that's been observed before,
30:37
it was spotted in the infrared. That's why it's got an IRIS number.
30:40
The Infrared Astronomy Satellite. I think it was a very venerable machine that
30:45
did a lot for infrared astronomy it was spotted back in twenty sixteen. It's
30:52
about a thousand light years away as the crow flies. It has. New
30:56
observations though, that have been made demonstrates that this protoplanetary disc, which we
31:02
only see as kind of a silhouette sideways on, is something like three thousand,
31:10
three hundred times the well three thousand, three hundred astronomical unit astronomical units.
31:17
An astronomical unit is the distance between the Earth and the Sun, so
31:19
it's it's big is three thousand, three hundred times. The diameter is three
31:25
thousand, three hundred times a distance from the Earth to the Sun. That
31:27
means there's plenty of debris there from which planets will form. So you know,
31:34
when things settle down in maybe fifteen ten or fifteen million years or so,
31:41
we might have some of the biggest planets that have been observed, and
31:44
perhaps many of them because it is so it's so prolific, so replete with
31:51
planetary material. Ten fifteen billion years, not million million. No, we
31:57
don't. We don't have to wait that long after Okay, I'm going to
32:00
set my arm. Yeah, yeah, that's it's like that. The only
32:07
joke astronomers ever tell about. I think we've just blown it though, about
32:13
two astronomers talking on a bus and one saying, oh, you do know
32:17
that, you know in two and a half million years, we're going to
32:22
smash into the Andromeda Galaxy. No, that's that's not the answer. I've
32:29
spoiled the joke. You do know that in two and a half billion years,
32:32
two and a half billion years, we're going to smash into the Andromeda
32:35
Galaxy. And there's a somebody sitting behind taps them on the shoulder and say,
32:39
what did you say? I said in two and a half billion years
32:42
we'll smash into the Andromeda Galaxy. And the person behind says, oh,
32:45
thank god for that. I thought you said two and a half million years.
32:52
It's still pretty good. Yeah, it's yeah, it's a rubbish joke.
32:55
But anyway, so you phil, when we come back in a different
33:01
universe, we might be able to talk about this thing with its planets rather
33:06
than just protoplanetary disc although it has to be said, and this is a
33:09
footnote to the fist dot org piece that's sold the Web about this issue,
33:16
that both Hubble and Web would possibly be capable of detecting whether there are planets
33:24
actually already forming in the protoplanetary disc, and that would be a sensational observation.
33:30
It would be let's assume for a moment that we're going to go back
33:35
there and find a planet like Earth with intelligent beings. How much far beyond
33:39
the planet formation point would we have to add? I don't know what.
33:46
I don't know what that question means. So all right, okay, you're
33:51
saying that it's ten to fifteen billion years to form a planet. Maybe,
33:54
well actually no, no, no, it's a million years, billion million,
34:00
I keep doing that, Yeah, okay, million, But then how
34:04
much longer before before life might be able to Okay, all right, well
34:08
so our life started, we believe, on our planet about three point eight
34:14
billion years ago, and that's you know, so that's nine hundred million years
34:19
after the formation of the planet. Okay, so a bit longer. Yeah,
34:23
it's a bit longer, that's right. I mean it's got to settle
34:27
down. You know, young planets are pretty terrifying places. You've got lava
34:31
worlds, and it's quite hard for microbes to breathe breeding in lover that's at
34:37
temperatures, you know, more than a thousand degrees and for a while the
34:43
Earth was a snowball as well, it was completely frozen. So our planet
34:46
has gone through some extraordinary periods and yet there is still lunch on it.
34:52
There is indeed, yes, all right, if you would like to read
34:54
that story, you can get it, as Fred mentioned, on the fiz
34:59
dot or website. Just search for the title Astronomers find the biggest known batch
35:02
of planet ingredients swelling around the young Start. Did I say that, Slana?
35:07
But that's where you'll find it. Fred. That wraps it up.
35:13
Don't forget. If you would like to follow up anything, you can do
35:16
that on the show notes. If you're following us on YouTube, don't forget
35:20
to hit the subscribe button below, visit the shop while they're at our website
35:24
space nuts podcast dot com or spacenuts dot io, and you can send us
35:30
your questions via the website as well. Thank you, Fred. Has always
35:32
it's been a great pleasure. It's other It's moment, hasn't it. It's
35:37
always good to talk about all this stuff. An interview Andrew for keeping the
35:44
company and we'll talk again soom we will, and we'll see on the next
35:49
episode of Space Nuts. And thanks to Hu in the studio for sending me
35:52
so many notes. I couldn't read any of them while we were recording,
35:55
so I'll catch up with that in a minute. And from me Andrew Dunkley,
36:00
it's good to have your company. See you on the next episode of
36:01
Space Nuts by Byets. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at
36:09
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player. You can
36:15
also stream on demand at bites dot com. This has been another quality podcast
36:21
production from nights dot com.