Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Expandable Space Stations, Martian Caves & Rogue Planet Revelations

Transcript

Expandable Space Stations, Martian Caves & Rogue Planet Revelations · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi there, and happy New Year. Welcome to a new
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: edition of Space Nuts. My name is Andrew Duncle your host.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Great to have your company. I hope you had a
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: great Christmas and New Year and looking forward to getting
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: your brain crammed full of stuff from astronomy and space
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: science over the next twelve months or so. Coming up
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: in this episode some really interesting stories. A proposal to
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: develop an expandable space station. This is one that you
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: launch and then you put it out into space and
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: then it just sort of blows up, you know, not catastrophically,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: but it expands and it'll be bigger than the International
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Space Station.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Apparently, strange new.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Caves on Mars will cast an eye on that. Oh yeah,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: that's you think about it. That's a good joke. And
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: observations of a rogue planet. We'll talk about all of
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: that on this new Year's edition of Space Nuts.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: Fantal ten nine Ignition Space Nuts or three two one
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Space Nurse.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: As when I reported Bill Good and he's back for
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: more in twenty twenty six. His name is Professor Fred
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Wat's an astronomer at large. Hello Fred, Happy Year, Andrew
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Year to you too, and Marney.
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: Yep, mine he's out at the moment, but I shall
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: pass on your greetings. I can't believe that we know
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: more than a quarter of the way through the century.
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: I know where did it go?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: It's just it's just flown and it.
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: And I can't keep up. Well, you're obviously managing, because
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: he's still here. I'm still here, Yes, and I must
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: be too because I'm still here.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes we are, and onward and upward. Did you
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: have a nice Christmas New Year or that getting nice preses?
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: It was great. Yes, it was a quiet festive season
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: because you know, we've been everywhere the two months before,
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: and so we've finally found us our feet again and
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: sort of more or less settle back into home life. Yeah.
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: I might mention the pressy that I've been really enjoying,
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: and that is it's almost like a dongle that plugs
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: into my old iPod. My how old is it? It's
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: eighteen years old now, my iPod still in perfect working order.
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: This is a good advert for Apple. But of course
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: it doesn't have Bluetooth, and all it has is a
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: little audio socket. Yeah, but the dongle you plug in
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: this small box into the audio socket, switch it on
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: and it's live on Bluetooth, and the sound quality is
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: unbelievable compared with a straightforward wire to your headphone.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't it good.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: It's good that they can come up with technology to
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: make old technology old technology, and iPod work in them
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: in the modern era.
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: It's really meant for people getting on aeroplanes, so you
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: can you can plug it into the audio socket on
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: your your seat back and listen on your Bluetooth headphones.
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: But for me, it's it's just a joy because the
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: old iPod has got far more music on it than
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: any other device that I've got.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I put all my music on my on my phone.
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it falls off your phone. Mine certainly does, so
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: we can talk about that later.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I've had the problem, but yes, we might look into that.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Interesting falls off. It's hard to know what my favorite
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: gift is, but I think it's or it might be
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: my rock box. You know how I steal rocks from
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: different parts of the world.
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: Yes, you do illegally.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Judy's got a display case for me, fabulous. Yeah, and
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: she brought me a labeler so I could put all
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: the names down. So it's sitting just over there. Next
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: time I show it. Yeah, some good gear in there,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: everything from a rock from Mount it and to shrapnel
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: from the Western Front.
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: I'll pick up anything.
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think you've got the odd meteor right
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: in there as well. I might have.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: You know, it's very hole.
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: Yes and.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's there's a few.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: I can't remember them all now TD mount t d oh.
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah. In shall we get.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Stuck into business because you know, we could talk about
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: our Christmas presents all day?
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: God are we pathetic? I do apologize to the audience.
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: This is what comes of being just adequate, really, isn't it.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: We've just been old and dodgy. That's that's what it is. Uh.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about this proposal to develop an expandable space station.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: This looks like something out of a science fiction movie
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: when you look at the images. Obviously they're artistic impressions
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: because they haven't actually launched this thing yet, but the
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: idea behind it, and they're talking about putting it up
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: sometime next year as a test case.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: But you take it on a rocket.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Let it out, and then it just expands out into
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: the space you want. You can do whatever you like
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: with it.
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: It's I think you know what we're seeing the future
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: here and at the same time we're looking into the
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: past because in the early two thousands, company called Bigelow Aerospace.
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: Thank you for reminding me of that name ten minutes ago,
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: because I couldn't remember it. Bigelow Aerospace, which actually is
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: the same company on the chain of hotels and motels
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: I think in the USA. But they pioneered the idea
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: of inflatable spacecraft, and I've forgot what the name of
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: the spacecraft were. They had two which were both launched,
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: and one of them had it was full of photographs
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: of people who'd sent their photographs to be put inside
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: this inflatable module, and so they were floating around in weightlessness.
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: They had a camera looking at everybody's picture going past.
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: Yours might have been one of them.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Actually, I can't remember if it was that one or
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: something else.
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: It was something like Merlin or Hermes or something that
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: I can't remember what it was anyway, but there were
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: two of them, and they demonstrated pretty successfully that an
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: inflatable spacecraft is a viable proposition. And you know, you
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: might think, oh my god, what happens when you get
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: a micro meteorite, But it turns out that you can put,
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: you know, various fabrics, the sort of stuff that you
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: put in bulletproof vests. You can actually layer the fabrics
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: that use in the inflatable module so that it will
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: be moderately resistant to micrometeorites. And that I think might
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: have been what sparked this new idea. I'm not sure
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: whether the new proposal owes anything to bigger Ow Aerospace,
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: And it might be the same company with a different name,
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: a company, sorry, go ahead now, it could be I
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: was just a company company called mac Space, And basically
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: they've unveiled something a proposal which is called the Thunderbird
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: Station Love the name which has been announced with in
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: the last week or so, and it's it's a large
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: inflatable habitat that's got much more internal volume than your
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: typical thing that you launch that is rigid. In fact,
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: I think it's it's I can't remember the exact dimensions,
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: but it's it's something like three times the volume of
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: a standard ISS module, one of the the modules that
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: goes to build up the International Space Station. So the
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: main factor it's launched in a compact form, but it
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: expands to twenty times it's launch volume once it's in
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: orbit and you don't need to assemble it. You press
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: a button and there's a hiss, I guess, and there
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: it goes. You've got your inflatable module. And so there
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: is a flight being planned on a SpaceX right shair mission,
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: as you said, next year, in which we might see
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: a test version of one of these they're so called
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: Mission Evolution flight to validate the on orbit deployment of
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: the module and actually test it's you know, how resilient
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: it is to micrometeoroid impact. So interesting stuff, Yeah, it.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Is, And this is probably just the beginning of a
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: potential new way of dealing with space tourism. Because at
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the moment you can go up and do a little
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: bit of floating around and then come back down again.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: You don't get a heck of a long time up there.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, but this could take it to a
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: whole new level.
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: And I think that was the motivation behind Bigelow's ventures
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: earlier in the earlier in the century. So yeah, but
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: it clearly, you know, it clearly has merit. If you
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: can make it with the right degree of protection, you
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: are finding a cheap way of getting large volumes into
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: space of course, the downside of that for astronomers is
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: that these things, being big, are going to be much
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: more reflective than your average spacecraft.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: I've got a scenario in my head. Look, I think
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: I found planet.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Not what's that?
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: That's thunderbird got in a way, Yeah, that's exactly it
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: that you've got. You know, you've got satellite trails basically
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: interrupting your observations. We're already seeing it with Starlink in
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: a big way, with something like I think it's eight
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: thousand now, but they're operational, and that's going to go
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: up to twelve thousand, probably by the end of the decade,
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: and maybe more in the next decade. What I guess
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: the macspace project has in its favor is that these
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: won't be launched twenty at a time like the Starlink
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: satellites are, because you won't need that many of them,
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: So they'll be probably more like in terms of space rarity,
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: more akin to the International Space Station, although I'm sure
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: the plan is to have many of them, but perhaps
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: not hundreds or thousands enough to satisfy the needs of
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: people wanting to put experiments into micro gravity.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: And as I understand that that original idea from bigger
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: lower aerospace was looking at commercial space stations and smaller
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: stations for other purposes, and I think I found some
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: of the names they had. One named Nautilus, okay, there
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: was Space Complex Alpha, Space Complex Bravo, and another one
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: called Skywalker.
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: Apparently none of whichering any bells.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: No, didn't remind me of anything either. But this is
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: probably a step towards better ways of putting hardware into space.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: But I don't doubt that the day will come, Fred
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: where you'll be able to launch a purpose built space
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: station which will rotate and give you gravity, and you'll
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: be able to spend a couple of weeks up there
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: just giving the rest of the planet the bird or
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: whatever it is you do when you go up. I
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: don't know what you do when you get out there.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: You know you float, and.
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: I'm sure you do yes at the moment. So I
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: think I saw I seeing so many headlines over the
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: holiday break, but I think I saw one. Was it
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: a Chinese or be a Russian mission being planned which
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: would have an artificial gravity system, So something that will
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: rotate about an access to give you artificial gravity, which
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: we know will work, and as I've mentioned before Tom Spilker,
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: who is married to Linda Spilker, the great Cassini mission
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: scientist and Saturn scientists. She's I think she's still working
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: on some of the missions designed to go and look
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: at Titan or Enceladus, those moons of Saturn. Her husband
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: is somebody who specializes in designing artificial gravity systems for orbit,
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: and I think he's worked with NASA, and so we
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: might see something popping up out of their media pages
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: sometime down the track as well.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: That would be interesting. Yeah, it's generally a matter of
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: time before we we get there, And yeah, this sounds
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: amazing and it reminds me of those pop up caravans.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: You know, they were invented a long time ago. But
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: you go and park your caravan, push a button and
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: the whole thing opens up and there you are. You've
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: suddenly got more space. And that's more or less what
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: this is about. And you can configure it to whatever
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: needs arise. So it doesn't it's a one size fits all,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: but what you do on the inside's up to you.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: By the sound of it.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right, Yes, so that's kind of what you want.
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: It's just like a you know an office block where
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: you rent out the space and your clients take whatever
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: they need to do their work. Yeah, laboratories or engineering
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: centers or offices whatever. Yeah.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: So we will look forward to that test flight in
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: early twenty twenty seven from max Space. If you want
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: to read all about it, you can do so on
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: space connect online dot com dot au. This is Space
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson. Let's take
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: a break from the.
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: Show to tell you about our sponsor, anti Gravity A one.
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: Have you ever wished you could actually feel what it's
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: like to fly, not just control a drone from the ground,
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: but truly experience the air around you. Well that future
• 14:13
  Speaker 5: has just arrived, introducing the Anti Gravity A one, the
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: world's first all in one eight K three point sixty drone,
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: and it's officially available. Now this isn't just another drone,
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: It's an entirely new category. It's the most intuitive flight
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: system ever created, easy for beginners but still offering full
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: FPV controls for seasoned pilots, and the whole drone weighs
• 14:40
  Speaker 5: in at just two hundred and forty nine grams. That
• 14:43
  Speaker 5: means travel ready, regulation friendly, and it fits in the
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: palm of your hand. Plus Anti Gravity A one is
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: packed with smart tools Skypath which lets you design and
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: automate flight routes, sky Genie which performs complex flight moves
• 14:59
  Speaker 5: with tap, and deep Track which locks onto subjects with
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: amazing precision, and even virtual cockpit where you can fly
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: maybe alongside a dragon if you like. Yep, it's repairrable,
• 15:13
  Speaker 5: thoughtfully designed and built for creators, and it's already won
• 15:17
  Speaker 5: major awards from Red Dot, Time, Good Design, and cees.
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: The Anti Gravity A one is now available in three
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: bundles at the Addigravity Store, Best Buy, and authorized retailers worldwide.
• 15:30
  Speaker 5: So if you ever wanted to rethink what a drone
• 15:32
  Speaker 5: can be or what flight can feel like, check out
• 15:36
  Speaker 5: the Anti Gravity A one. Just tap on the link
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: in the show notes.
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: Okay, we've tacked a space nuts.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Now, Fred, More and more news keeps coming out of Mars,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: and this is quite an incredible discovery. They have found
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: caves unlike any found on the planet before, and we've
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: got the kinds of caves on Earth. That's correct.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: I thought you'd like this story because Mars are Mars tragic.
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: So the scientific paper which is published this week, I
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: think in the Astrophysical journal Letters, which is one of
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: the major astronomy journals and space science journals in the world,
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: and the paper which is by I think entirely Chinese authors.
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure, maybe maybe there are other nationalities in there,
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: but principally Chinese authors. It's called water driven Accessible Potential
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: Castic Caves in Hebrus Valets Mars, and the subtitle is
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: implications for subsurface habitability. In other words, could living organisms
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: be found in these in these caves or evidence of
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: their having been living organisms? So what what these scientists
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: have done is and you know this again is a
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: beautiful illustration of the fact that we've got so much
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: archival data now, not just on the universe at large,
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: but on the planets as well. What they've done is
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: they've basically surveyed space borne photographs as Mars by using
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: data from various spacecraft. I'm sure they've used, you know,
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: the high rise camera on the one of the Mars
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: orbiters Mars Global Surveyor is an Alder orbitter that they
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: used data from. So these spacecraft have got a huge
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: wealth of information about the planet's surface which has not
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: all been trolled through. Yeah, you know, we're still seeing
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: images that have probably not really been examined before. And
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: what they've done with these data is looked at a
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: region called Hebrus Valleys, the Hebrews Valley, I guess you'd
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: translate it as which is in Mars's northwest. So it's
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: very much in the region of Mars that is less mountainous.
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: The southern hemisphere of Mars, as we've talked about many
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: times before, is mountainous. It's many covered in craters. The
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: northern hemisphere is much flatter, many fewer craters, and at
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: a lower level it think it's about three kilometers on
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: average lower than the lower than the southern hemisphere. That's
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: something called the Martian dichotomy, by the way. So what
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: they've done is they've looked at what looked like pits
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: in the in the in the landscape. And that's not
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: that unusual to find things like that, because we know
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: of many features that sort of speak of as being
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: I mean the speak but they you know, what you
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: see tells you that they are probably lava tubes. They're
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: probably you know, places which we have here on Earth
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: as well. I think you and I have both walked
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: through lava tubes in Hawaii, which are like long caves
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: where the lava was flowing and gradually dried out and
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: you're left with a you're left with a long cave.
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: So these are quite different. The newly discovered ones are
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: what are called skylights, So that tells you that they
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: are openings in the roof of caverns. But the structure
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: of them and the sort of features around them and
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: the landscape that they're in suggests that these are not
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: lava tubes because that sedimentary rock that they're in, it's
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: not it's not volcanic rock. So there's some of the
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: data that they've looked at shows in the surrounding rock
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: around these caves carbonates and sulfates uh. And so that's
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: basically a water you know, a water driven rock or
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: a water formed rock uh. And there's they're suggesting that
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: what you're seeing is caves that have formed by water
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: underneath the surface flowing and dissolving the bedrock. And that's
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: what we on Earth call cast topography. Hence casting your
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: mind forward or backwards whatever you said at the beginning, Andrew.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: So it's a you know that that gives you a
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: landscape that's punctuated often by giant sinkholes, which is a
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: bit a bit topical at the moment because they've just
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: got one in Melbourne. That's probably to do with tunnels
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: being dug. It's a big sinkhole in a sports oval
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: that has not become popular. It's eight meters across. I
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: don't think that's anything to do with water soluble rock,
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: but probably more like might be tunnel. I don't know anyway.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: Cast scenery generally on Earth is this limestone within limestone regions,
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: and there are places like that in the United Kingdom,
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: not very far from where I grew up in Mexico. Mexico, indeed,
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: Slovenia has the most wonderful system of cast caves, which
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: I had the pleasure to go and explore with a
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: colleague from the University of Lubliana a few years ago.
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: Sensational stuff. If we find the same thing on Mars,
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: that is going to be remarkable. But the point that
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: the authors of this paper are making is that that
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: might provide a suitable habitat, suitable environment for microorganisms because
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: you're protected from the radiation of the from the sun,
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: the particle and ultra violet radiation and you know, it
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: could be that living organisms have found a place where
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: they could evolve and develop. So there might be evidence
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: of microbial life there, which suggests that this part of
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: Mars's surface might be a good place to send a rover. Yeah,
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: and I think that's the bottom line of the article.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've thought of a name for it. If they
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: want to send it rover down, they could call it spilunka.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Call it what spilunk Isn't it called spelunking when you
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: go down caves and.
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: Might oh well because of spileology. Yeah, yeah, it's splunking.
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: They could call it spilunka. I like that, Yes, yes, sorry,
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: that went over my head.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Actually I learned that word when we visited Hawaii and
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: they told us how people go traveling down lava tubes,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: not the tourist ones with electric lights in them, but actual,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: you know, uncharted ones or ones that they know about that,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: and they're just like, it's like mountain climbing, but the opposite.
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, you can get into all kinds of trouble.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes, you can, especially.
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: With underground systems and things of that sort. It doesn't
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: float my boat, have to say, the idea of climbing
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: into a cave with a with a not a snorkel,
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: but you know, basically breathing apparatus.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: It's been a couple of famous cases over the years
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: of people who didn't come back because they got themselves
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: into difficult situations and it is a really dangerous.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Thing to do.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: But what's another interesting thing about these caves is there
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: they're enormous.
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: Yes, that's right, they're not They're not small, they're and
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: you know, they they've it's I guess again it to
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: use a metaphor, it speaks loudly of the of the
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: volumes of water that must have have basically flowed down
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: them in the in the millennia ago when they were
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: being formed, because I guess we're you know, we're we're
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: seeing evidence of water driven ocean and we know that
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: perhaps three and a half to four billion years ago
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: Mars was wet, but isn't now, so we're looking at
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: very ancient water flows. But yes, it says that there
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: must have been a lot of water there. It is.
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: It's a remarkable piece of work. I hadn't looked at
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: the original paper in great detail, but will do because
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: it's such an interesting topic and They've done a lot
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: of very careful work on this. Yeah.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Some of these cave openings are over seven hundred meters wide, Yeah,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: which is extraordinary. Three hundred and fifty seems to be
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: a common number. Some of them are around almost double that.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: It's double that.
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah. It sort of makes you wonder why we're really
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: seeing these things before. I suspect what has allowed these
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: authors to make the deductions that they have is because
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: they've used many spacecraft high rise, as I mentioned, the
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: high resolution camera and Males of Reconnaissance orbitter and the
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: Mass Global surveyor. These these spacecraft are basically giving giving
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: you different angles on the same features on the surface
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: and seeing the surface under different lighting conditions. So when
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: you when you take all that information together, that's when
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: you can start looking effectively at three dimensional views of
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: what these what these dark splodges on the surface mean.
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: They're dark because you're looking down into a into a cave.
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: And yes, you're absolutely right with the things that are,
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: you know, hundreds of meters across, they're not small.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Here's a question, how would they go as potential future
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: human habitat?
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: I think that would be very much on the agenda too.
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: Just because you you really want to find if you
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: can a region of Mars's surface that protects you from
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: the environment which is very, very inhospitable, not just because
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: the atmospheres are on zero point six percent of the
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: Earth's atmospheric pressure, but simply because of the radiation, the
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: fact that there's no magnetic field on Mars to protect
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: you from that, and that's sort of that sort of thing,
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: the UV radiation from the Sun. So people have certainly
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: suggested the lava tubes as future human habitats, but these
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: might be even more appropriate, being as we say, they're
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: very large and probably you know, environments that would lend
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: themselves to perhaps building a structure inside that would allow
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: you to work in normal atmospheric pressure.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: I suppose the question becomes one of whether or not
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: that's a part of Mars where we know there's an
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: advantage being there. I mean, it might be a great
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: cave to put a dwelling in, but you if you know,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: we need anywhere you need to be.
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: But if it's also a place where there may have
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: been a microbial life there, it is going to be
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: a place of interest, and that of course you want
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: to make sure that you're not building your your underground
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: dwelling on some poor animals habitats, even if the animal
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: itself is long gone. Again, that comes back to some
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: of the ethical considerations in regard to the exploration of Mars.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, well maybe we should talk to Elon Musk
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: about habitats on Mars and human ethics.
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: I'm I'm not going to buy into that one.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get you one day. Yes, it's a
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: great story. If you want to read about it, you
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: can do that at the Daily Galaxy dot com website,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: or you can read the paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: This is Space.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: That's Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson. Let's take
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: a break from the show to tell you about our sponsor,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: nor VPN, and we're very proud to have partnered with
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: NordVPN so that we can get you more secure online
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: no matter what you do, where you are, or how
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: you do it. Now, if you sign up using the
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: code word Space nuts, you'll receive four extra months absolutely
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: free top tier VPN protection at a fraction of the cost.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: With NordVPN, what you get is access to over seven
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: seven hundred servers worldwide, ultra fast connections, advanced features like
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: threat protection pro and mesh Net, and secure usage for
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: up to ten devices simultaneously, so you pretty well covered.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: You have to admit now, this is a great opportunity,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: and if you'd like to take advantage of it, visit
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: NordVPN dot com slash space nuts to claim your exclusive
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: offer today and remember, with nordvpn's thirty day money back guarantee,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: it's risk free. It's a great investment, a small price
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: to pay for your online security and privacy. Stay secure,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: stay connected, and keep exploring the cosmos with confidence. NordVPN
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: dot com slash space nuts nord vpn dot com slash
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: space nuts and don't forget the code words space nuts
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: at the checkout rogue space nuts. Our final story, Fred
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: takes us to another planet, which is a little unusual.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: We've spoken about rogue planets before, but now we've got
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: I believe, observations of a rogue planet. Now, these things
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: are hard to spot because they don't orbit a star.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: They're just floating out there like a space station and
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: turning up who knows where. But apparently they've they've observed.
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: One yes in a new way and that's because I
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: think that these things are relatively commonplace in terms of
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: being found on particularly on so is looking at what's
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: called gravitational microlensing, because that's really the only way to
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: find them, because exactly as you've said, they are not
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: illuminated by a parent star. I always think road planet
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: is a slightly you know, it's a non complementary name.
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: I think orphan planet is a nicer one because we
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: think some of these are orphans in the sense that
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: they've been booted out of their parent Solar System by
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: gravitational interactions. But as you say, they are dark, they're
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: not illuminated by their parents star. They do have very
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: low levels of infrared radiation because there are as with
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: the Earth and the planets of the Solar System, there
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: are sort of low level nuclear processes going on inside.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: That means the planet is radiating its own heat to
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: some extent. I think, if I remember rightly, Jupiter radiates
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: one point eight times as much energy as it receives
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: from the Sun. I think that's the figure because of
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: the nuclear processes in it. So that would be true
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: of a road planet as well. So if you've got
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: really sensitive infrared equipment In fact, things like the James
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: Web Space telescope will do the trick. Then you can
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: find it. But the sort of standard method of finding
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: these things is by, as I said, gravitational microlensing. What
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: does that mean. It means that you take repeated images
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: of a patch of sky that has stars in it,
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: and most of the sky has stars in it when
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: you look through big telescopes, So you take repeated images
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: of the same patch of sky and look for changes
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: in the brightness of the stars. Now, sometimes those changes
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: are because the stars themselves are variable, they vary in
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: their light output. Sometimes there are changes because it's not
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: a star, it's actually an asteroid, so it means it's
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: moving in your field of view. But one of the
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: potential changes and you can spot it because what we
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: call the light curve, the way the light behaves with
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: time a very characteristic shape. That is, when you get
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: something dark or less bright than the star behind it,
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: it passes in front of a star, and because of
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: Einstein's general theory of relativity, we know the gravity of
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: that dark object will warp the space around it and
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: behave like a lens, and the effect of this lens
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: passing in front of the star is to give you
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: this light curve which has got a really strong peak
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: and side lobes. The shape is very characteristic, so various
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: planetary systems have been discovered that way. You see a
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: star going past and that has a different shape, and
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: then a planet goes past and that's got this little
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: pointy light curve shape, and you know you've found a
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: planet around a star. But if you just get the
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: point like curve, the small one, then that's a planet
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: on its own basically, which is when we call it
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: a row planet. So this observation is of a road planet,
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: and it's been made in exactly that way by gravitational
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: micro lensing, but it's been observed from both Earth and space.
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: That's the thing. These are simultaneous Earth and space measurements
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: and that allows you to check the timing very accurately
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: of the gravitational microlensing. The space telescope was the Gaya
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: Space telescope, which has been surveying stars for the last
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: fifteen years or so. I think. Because you've got two
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: observations from places that are separated in space, that allows
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: you to say a little bit more about the objects.
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: Because the trick with these things is you only see
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: this thing once you see a gravitational micro lensing peak,
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: and then it's gone and all your information is in
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: the shape of that light curve. But if you got two,
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: like from two different vantage points, you can get a
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: little bit more. And so what the scientists who did
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: this work have said is that that enabled them for
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: the first time to work out the mass of the
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: microlensing planet, which is about twenty two times the mass
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: of Jupiter, and to say where it is, and it's
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: something like ten thousand light years from the center of
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: our galaxy.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: I calculated nine seven hundred and eighty, but that's okay,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: just round it up.
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: Ten thousand. Yeah, it's near enough. Seven hundred and eighty,
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: well done.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, three thousand pass six, Yes, from the center of
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: the Milky Way galaxy. And people are saying, well, how
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: close does that put it to us? Well, what we're
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: about eight thousand.
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: Where, Yes, something like twenty five thousand light years away,
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: So yes, you're right, two and a half times further away.
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: So yeah, set of observations is a nice piece of
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: research because and I guess a lot of it is serendipitous.
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: They're fortunate that Geya happened to be looking at the
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: same bit of sky at the same time. I'm not
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: sure whether this was intentional, whether this work was can
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: you give us time on the Geya spacecraft to look
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: at a particular patch of sky because we're going to
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: look at it at the same time with a ground
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: based telescope, or whether it was a serendipitous observation. I
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: need to follow up on that tool.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, but it's very interesting discovery. The fact that
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: it came from two sources, yeah and so yeah, and
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: there'll be more of these to be found, and with
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: all the new telescopes that are getting ready to be
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: commissioned also, there's probably so much more ready to be discovered.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: It's just lurking out there waiting for the right equipment
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: to point at it.
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: Yep, that's quite right, stuff that we didn't even know
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: existed until yeah, that long ago.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I suppose that's that's a question for your Fred.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: We might as well ask you know, in recent years,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: have we seen a real escalation in the number of
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: new discoveries because of technology that's improved.
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, You've only to think of the web telescope itself.
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: You know, we've got almost one story every day coming
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: out from that of real significance. So yes, obviously, the
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: technology absolutely progressively as revolutionized astronomy. It's been the same
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: for centuries really, And the one I'm thinking of that
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: perhaps did more than any other in terms of the
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: giant leap that it made was photography. When photography could
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: be applied to astronomy towards the end of the nineteenth century,
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: and you were suddenly in a regime where you could
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: actually make qualitative measurements of things that people have only
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: really been able to look at my eye, and you
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: could also see things that were much much fainter than
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: the eye would reveal. So that was one of the
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: biggest leaps. Then one hundred years later, effectively we did
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: the same thing but electronically with the charge couple devices
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: and things like that that maybe twenty times more sensitive
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: than a photographic plate. So you suddenly got another leap
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: and bigger and bigger telescopes. Yeah, it's a theme that
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: has been close to my heart because my career is
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: now so long that I've seen a lot of these
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: things firsthand. You know, I was using photographic plates when
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: I started. That was the state of the art. The technology.
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: I remember when I was at school reading about some
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: I was going to say eccentric. Maybe that's the word
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: French astronomer who was trying to make electronic images of
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: the sky, and I thought, that's fantastic, that is super
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: I want to do that kind of thing. But it
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: was still very experimental. Now just you know, press a button, though.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: It is although you're still using photographic plates. You really
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: need to move on for it.
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: There are some people who do. I know, it's not me.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Actually, retro is in at the moment.
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: People.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: My daughter in law got a record player. Oh good
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: one Christmas.
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: So yeah, well my turn turbles right there.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got one too. It's in a box in
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: a cupboard in a I don't know where it is.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: It's somewhere around.
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: Here that.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: I can plug it into a computer so I can
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: digitize anything.
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: Very good.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's amazing.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: So if you would like to read up on the
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: rogue Planet story and how they discovered it, you can
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: do that at Space Daily dot com.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: Fred.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: That brings us to the end of our first program
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: back for the year.
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: Well that's gone quickly, isn't it Sure has its flashing
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: through them. Yeah, no, that's great and welcome to twenty
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: twenty six. Who knows what we're going to see in
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: twenty twenty six, Lots of events. We might talk about
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: that in the next episode. What's coming up for twenty
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: twenty six? You can find plenty of websites where it'll
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: tell you. But I think we're in for an exciting
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: year with the you know, the verr C Rubin telescope
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: coming online and various other pieces of kit which were
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: gonna find results from. It's it going to be very exciting,
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: absolutely all right.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Thanks Fred, we'll catch you next time, I hope so.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large joining us on Space Nuts.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: And thanks to Hugh in the studio, who couldn't be
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: with us today because well he indulged in way too
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: much Christmas cake.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: And nuts and you know the stuff.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Anyway, apparently seeing someone named Jenny Craig about it, and
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: from me andrewd.
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: Unkley, thanks for your company.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: We'll see you again soon on the very next episode
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: of Space Nuts.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: Bye bye Nuts to the Space Nuts podcast well at
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player.
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: You can also stream on demand at bites dot com.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: This has been another quality podcast production from Knights dot com.