Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #414: Stellar Collisions & Invisible Invitations: Unveiling the Universe's Secrets
Transcript
- 0:00Hi there, thanks for joining us on this a Q and A episode of
- 0:03Space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here, good to have your company. On this
- 0:07episode, questions from James, Lloyd, Rennie, and Ron. James is
- 0:11asking about planet nine. Lloyd is asking about certain colliding objects in space.
- 0:19We talk about black holes knocking each other off, and neutron stars and black
- 0:22holes, but what about stars and stars or stars and stripes running into each
- 0:27other. I don't know. We'll find out electromagnetism and how visible are we
- 0:33to other civilizations. That's a really good question. We'll answer all of those
- 0:38and furnish you with a couple of comments from the audience as well. On
- 0:41this episode of Space Nuts. Fifteen said in Channel ten nine ignition quench Space
- 0:51Nuts NY four three two Space Nurse as An actually bought it. Bill's good.
- 1:00Let's get all the answers from his good self, Professor Fred. What's
- 1:03an astronomer at LA? Hello? Fred? Hello, Andrew. Can't guarantee
- 1:07to have all the answers, but well that's good. Now we're going to
- 1:15start with a couple of comments. These came in in the last week or
- 1:19so. The first one is directed at you, Hi, Andrew and Fred.
- 1:25Thanks for the shout out. Fred. We're Kate and Jeremy, the
- 1:27couple from the Central Coast who met you on the Canadian train. We ended
- 1:33up in Gander on the island of Newfoundland in Canada for the eclipse. We
- 1:38had clouds coming and going through the initial stages, and then right before totality,
- 1:42clouds came over and we never saw the sun again. Oh no,
- 1:48I still saw the surrounding effects. But now to see if we can get
- 1:53to Spain in twenty twenty six. Great to meet you and love listening to
- 1:56the podcast Kate and Jeremy and they can come to Dubo in twenty twenty eight
- 2:01and catch it here. We should have should have clease, guys, but
- 2:06you never know, do you. But you had the opposite. You had
- 2:08clouds and then they disappeared right at the last second for so that's right.
- 2:14And look, it was lovely to meet Kate and Jeremy. We were all
- 2:21in a very party mood at the time and I think they just joined it
- 2:24very briefly. But it was lovely to see them and just a quick plug.
- 2:30That was our Canadian tour that Kate and Jeremy's accepted on the Canadian train
- 2:38and we are going to do another one for the Spanish Eclipse twenty twenty six,
- 2:43so there'll be a tour there, so keep it touched, Kate and
- 2:46Jeremy. You never know. Yeah, fantastic with us. I think we're
- 2:49going to Gibraltar actually, which too. That place rocks. Okay, that
- 2:57was horrible and it was very quick though, Yeah, it was very quick.
- 3:01I should work in radio. Now I've got a comment directed to me.
- 3:07Just what to agree with Andrew. I'm trying to read The Three Body
- 3:12Problem. It's a book that's now been made into a TV series which I
- 3:16was intrigued by so much I had to get the book. Now. The
- 3:19book was written by a Chinese author and it had to be converted into English,
- 3:23and in doing so it sort of became a bit convoluted. I suppose
- 3:29it was a bit It's a bit of a tough read. And Ralph's messaged
- 3:34me to say, I agree with Andrew. I'm trying to read Three Body
- 3:38Problem, but I'm about to give up on it. No fun, Ralph.
- 3:43I have a solution for you. I've reached a chapter which is very
- 3:49highly technical and it's sort of explanatory notes about what they're trying to do at
- 3:54the research center that is the subject of the story. I have taught my
- 4:00iPad to read to me. Apparently you can change some settings in an iPad
- 4:04where it will read the book or read what's on the screen to you.
- 4:08So I'm getting through those chapters by having it read it to me, so
- 4:12I don't have to try and tangle with it myself. It works pretty well,
- 4:17So maybe you want to look into that. If you've got an iPad.
- 4:19I'm sure you can do it with Android devices as well. Don't well,
- 4:24I think you can do it with a kindle. They all come with
- 4:27spoken voice capability, I think. But that's how I got around it,
- 4:30Ralph, don't give up. The story is actually really good. The only
- 4:34problem I find is because all the characters have Chinese names, I keep forgetting
- 4:40who's who, which is a bit of a sad indictment on me culturally speaking.
- 4:45But I keep having the thing, now, who's that which one?
- 4:48Because when you separate names like Fred Watson and Andrew Dunkley and all, that's
- 4:53easy for us from a Western hemisphere, but the Eastern names I tend to
- 5:00I lose track of who's doing what anyway, that's just that's my suggestion to
- 5:05you, Ralph, get the book to read it to you rather than you
- 5:09struggling through it. Of course, if you've got a paper copy, nothing
- 5:12I can do for you, bless somebody else to read it to you.
- 5:18Maybe maybe now, Fred, they're all text questions today because I had a
- 5:24computer meltdown, not just in recording these episodes today, but last weekend when
- 5:30I was getting prepared, and so I lost all my audio questions, which
- 5:32I'm going to regather. So we're going text all away today. Planet nine.
- 5:39Should such a thing be discovered, does it have a name that's just
- 5:43waiting for the body to be discovered, or would the individual who makes the
- 5:46discovery be allowed to name their discovery following whatever naming guidelines exist. Thanks for
- 5:51putting a smile on my face. Fellow's name and then that comes from James.
- 5:58Now a couple of things. It's about planet nine. You actually spoke
- 6:00to someone on your recent tour who has a thought about the planet. But
- 6:06well we might get to that in a minute. The name, let's say
- 6:10they find it. Yeah, there's the Astronomical International Astrotomical Union is charged with
- 6:16the responsibility of naming it. But does did the does discoverer get us say
- 6:20in it? I'm sure they would. So the convention with planets is they're
- 6:29named after principally Roman gods, because that's how it all started, you know,
- 6:35with Mars, Mars, Mercury, Venus, and that was continued when
- 6:44planets started being discovered, of which the first one was yeah, the one
- 6:53that's upside down Neptune. Yeah, that's the other one. Sorry. Yeah,
- 7:00So until seventeen eighty one, when William Herschel discovered the object that became
- 7:09known as Uranus, no planet had ever been discovered because they were just known
- 7:15before that. That's where you yeah, okay, that's what through me.
- 7:19I was thinking, well, surely it was one of the inner planets that
- 7:23was found first, but no, they've just always been in our awareness and
- 7:27yes, that's right from you know truly edentry times, as soon as people
- 7:32started looking at the sky and you know, first nations people here in Australia
- 7:36would have known about them as well, but they gradually got associated with Roman
- 7:44names Mars, the god of war and this other thing, and so that
- 7:49would continue with the discovery of another planet. If it was classified as a
- 7:57planet. Now we have a glitch in that, because Pluto was classified as
- 8:03a planet when it was discovered in nineteen thirty. It was named, as
- 8:07you and I have spoken about before, by an eleven year old, a
- 8:13girl in Oxford in England, whose name was Venicia Bernie. She basically suggested
- 8:18the name Pluto to her grandfather, who was a mate of Herbert Hall Turner,
- 8:24who was the professor of astronomy in Oxford, and he telegraphed it to
- 8:28the discoverers of the Loyal Observatory in Arizona, and Pluto was agreed. But
- 8:33it was perfect because it was the Roman god of the underworld, and so
- 8:37that's a great name. Venicia was interested not just in astronomy, but also
- 8:41in mythology, Greek and Roman mythology, so it would have to follow that
- 8:48guideline. Unlike the objects that are discovered, like and these are important in
- 8:58this story because these are the one that suggest that planet nine might be there.
- 9:01The transit Neptunian objects objects in the outer regions of the Solar System,
- 9:05which now include Pluto. They are traditionally named now and again it's a convention
- 9:11imposed by the International astronomical union. But again it probably has, you know,
- 9:16the guidance of the people who made the discovery. They're named after deities
- 9:22in the First Nations culture of wherever they were discovered, So that, for
- 9:28example, is why and it's not a Kuiper Belt object, it's an interstellar
- 9:31object. But it's why Umua has a Hawaiian name because it was discovered on
- 9:35the island of Maui with the pan star's two telescope and Hawaiian word meaning first
- 9:43messenger from Afar. And so you know, when you look at the list
- 9:48of names of particularly the trans Neptunian objects, I'm thinking of Senna and thinking
- 9:54of Mahe mahe. I'm sorry, it's Maki Maki. These are names that
- 10:01come from the culture of whatever tradition it was in which they were discovered.
- 10:07But planets are given Greek or Greek or Roman names of underworld. Oh sorry,
- 10:16got of deities basically their deities. Yeah, well, I you know,
- 10:20something sparked in my brain when you started talking about the discovery and naming
- 10:24of Uranus, and I was right because I just looked it up. Herschel
- 10:30didn't name it Uranus. He named it Georgie of Sidis, which is named
- 10:35after King George the Third. Now we to call it George. Yeah,
- 10:39that's right, but they weren't. You weren't allowed to keep that it was.
- 10:45Actually, it's really interesting. There were there were three names. So
- 10:48he discovered it on the thirteenth of March seventeen eighty one Urinus Day, internationally
- 10:52Urinas Day, and so over the next twenty years there were basically different names
- 11:01given to this object. He was, as you said, he wanted to
- 11:05call it Georgimsidus, which means the Georgian star, named after the King George
- 11:09the Third, who already was showing signs of being a bit loopy, and
- 11:15that's why that was not a popular name. On the certainly incontinental Europe.
- 11:20There was a body of opinion that wanted to call it Herschel, after the
- 11:24discoverer, and that would be the case if it was a comet. By
- 11:30modern convention, we'd call a comet after the discoverer. But people didn't like
- 11:37that either, And it was actually Johannes Border, who was a very well
- 11:41known astronomer in Germany, who suggested the name Uranus is the I think the
- 11:50parent of Saturn in mythology, so it kind of you know, it works
- 11:54quite well. Of course he would have called it Urganness because he was of
- 12:00it. Than that's yeah, quite an innocent name compared with what we call
- 12:03it. Indeed, so the answer to the question is that the discoverer may
- 12:11have a say in it, but the International Astronomical Union will basically rub a
- 12:18stamp it and it will probably take the name of some kind of Roman Goddish
- 12:22person deity, King Queens. That's my explanation. All right, thank you
- 12:33for the question, James Hope, that helped. This is space Nuts Andrew
- 12:37Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson. Okay, we take a space nuts.
- 12:48Next question, very interesting the episode about the neutron star collisions. You've spoken
- 12:54many times about black hole collisions and neutron star collisions. But do just normal
- 12:58everyday stars like our sun ever collide and what do they create? Thanks to
- 13:05the show Lloyd from Cans that's in North Queensland on the east coast of Australia
- 13:09for those who've never heard of Cans and it's not spelt c Ans now see
- 13:15A I. R. S. Kenes. Now, well the answer would
- 13:20be yes, I mean just about anything and everything could collide with something of
- 13:24its own making or something else, couldn't it. Yes, that's absolutely right,
- 13:31And you know the collisions are. It's not usually something smashing directly into
- 13:37something else. It's usually usually a dance. It's a dunce, that's right.
- 13:43Yes, very spectacular one where things basically circulate around one another. So
- 13:50if you yes, So if you brought two stars together, say about you
- 14:00know, one to two solar masses each, and then merge, then you're
- 14:05going to create something of order four solar masses, supposing there were two solar
- 14:11masses each, which is more than the limit imposed by the gravitational physics.
- 14:24I'm just trying to run this through in my head because it's something thought before,
- 14:28which is terrible, isn't it. So you might get super over explosion.
- 14:35Two big ones merged, they couldn't hold. That's right. You've got
- 14:41something that's that's unstable, so you might get a super and over explosion.
- 14:46I mean we see many instances. In fact, probably half the stars in
- 14:50our galaxy are in pairs which are orbiting around one another. We call them
- 14:54binary systems, and some of them are very close. Some of them are
- 14:58close closely enough to stort the you know, to distort the physical body of
- 15:03the star. There's something if you get it's something called the rocial limit.
- 15:09If you get within the rocial limit, then you're going to distort the body
- 15:11of the star and you probably pull one of these objects to pieces. So
- 15:16there will be tidal forces. That's the trick that tidal forces which actually tend
- 15:22to destroy the envelope of these stars. Anyway, really interesting thinking. I
- 15:28mean, we do know that planets can be goggled up by their stars,
- 15:33because we can see the evidence for that. We see planet type chemicals in
- 15:37the atmosphere of some stars. And so it's not that big a leap of
- 15:43the imagination that if you've got a binary system where they're very close and ones
- 15:48inside the rocial limit of the other, then you'll get a combination of the
- 15:52two and it might be something relatively gentle, or it could be super over
- 15:56I mean if it was gentle. By that, I mean what would happen
- 15:58something like a plan industry and nebula, which is what will happen to us
- 16:02some it will shed its half to layers and make a beautiful shape nebula.
- 16:06For anybody else who has to be looking at it from the outside. So
- 16:11yeah, a really interesting speculation. I think the answer is yes, two
- 16:18small stars could combine to make one slightly larger star. Is that realistic?
- 16:22Yep? Ye, two large stars just they just go Yeah, all right,
- 16:29very good. Thanks for the question. Lloyd was Lloyd? I should
- 16:36really format my list of questions better because I keep losing the names. But
- 16:38Lloyd and Hope all those wells from kings Yeah up in Queensland. Probably a
- 16:45Cowboys follower. This is Space Nuts Andrew Dunkley with Professor Fred Watson spacebuts okay.
- 16:55The next question, Fred, is about electromagnetism. Can you explain it
- 16:59as far as how it forms, how it behaves, how common it is
- 17:03on other planets? Do galaxies as a whole have electromagnetism and what happens to
- 17:07a planet that doesn't have it? Love the show. That's from Rennie Traub,
- 17:11who used to send in audio questions but has taken to the mighty pen
- 17:18or keyboard these days. Thanks for the question. Really nice to hear from
- 17:22you. Yeah, we talked about electromagneism magnetism. I think it was last
- 17:26week, wasn't It was very recent? Yeah, we it's the stock in
- 17:32trade of astrophysics, so we talk about it a lot. So yeah,
- 17:38so you know, we we can think about electromagnism in two ways. We
- 17:45can think of it as waves traveling through space, which is what gives us
- 17:52the phenomenon of electromagnetic radiation like radio waves, gamma rays, X rays,
- 18:00infrared all of them are infrared radio. Sorry, all of them are electromagnetic
- 18:04radiation, which are a different wavelengths or different frequencies, which is the same
- 18:10thing but turned upside down frequency being how how quickly they wobble wavelengthies O along
- 18:15the waves are so. But the other way to think of it as is
- 18:22and to some extent that you know, Ready's question is easier to answer this
- 18:26in this scenario. We can also think of it as photons because photons are
- 18:34the particles that carry electromagnetic radiation. They're subatomic particles. We know they exist.
- 18:41We were talking last week about whether the human eye is sensitive enough to
- 18:47detect single photons. We have the conclusion that we've seen research recently that said,
- 18:52yes, it is possible for the human eye to detect single photons.
- 18:56But yeah, so they're subatomic particles and they interact with other subatomic particles,
- 19:02the particles of matter. And so that's a great way of understanding how electromagnetic
- 19:14radiation is formed, because if you have you know to put it in the
- 19:18old fashion nuclear scenario. Got electrons orbiting their parent atom centers. Those electrons
- 19:30are in orbits. This is an old fashioned way of looking at it,
- 19:33because it's a lot woolier than that under quantum theory. But this is the
- 19:36really meant quantum theory. Those orbits can be at higher or lower levels.
- 19:41And so if a photon hits an atom, it boosts an electron up to
- 19:47oh maybe maybe put it a different way, if another particle hits an atom,
- 19:51it can boost an electron up to a higher energy level, a higher
- 19:55orbit. When it falls back, it admits a photon that emits the electromagnetic
- 20:00radiation. And so that's how that's one mechanism by which they are four.
- 20:10How does it behave? Well, it travels in straight lines normally in a
- 20:14gravitational field, it might bend because we know that space bends light as the
- 20:19space is distorted. How common is it on other planets? Well, other
- 20:25planets are probably bathed in the electromagnetic radiation from their parents stars. So are
- 20:32we as are we? That's right, we see it all around us.
- 20:34I'm watching it at the moment. A few clouds in the way, but
- 20:37there's electromagnetic radiation coming from the Sun. Do galaxies as a whole have electromagnetism,
- 20:45Yes, they do. We now have the wherewithal with sensitive detectors.
- 20:49In fact, I know one of the astronomers who's built one of these sensitive
- 20:56detectors sensitive to one part in a million. Andrew. It's extraordinary. He
- 21:02works at the University of himself Wales. You speak calling good mind at the
- 21:04end Australian observa treature, I mean Bailey. So he builds what are called
- 21:10polarimeters, and a polarimitter is something that takes light but can sense how it's
- 21:17polarized. And most of us are familiar with polarized light, with the polarizing
- 21:21sunglasses and things of that sort. His polarimeter is, as I said,
- 21:29it's kind of like a pair of polarizing sunglasses. Stif it parts in a
- 21:33million, which is quite incredible. And what that looks at is the way,
- 21:38for example, the way light interacts with dust particles in a distant galaxy,
- 21:45for example, and those dust grains are often aligned by magnetism. So
- 21:51if you've got a galaxy that's got a magnetic field, it will actually show
- 21:56up a polar emitter will show up the magnetic field around it by the way
- 22:00way that the light from it is interacting with dust grains surrounding the the you
- 22:04know, the galaxy itself. So we we've mapped the magnetism of galaxies really
- 22:08quite accurately. By we, I mean the astronomical community. What happens to
- 22:12a planet that doesn't have it. Well, our planet's magnetic because it's got
- 22:18an iron core, and we think that Mars might well have an iron core,
- 22:26but it's kind of static. It's just not hot and swishy like ours
- 22:30is. So Mars doesn't have a magnetic field, so you don't have the
- 22:34protection from radiation from the Sun because you don't have a you know, a
- 22:38magnetic field that actually deflects that radiation. So that they're very quick and glib
- 22:45answers to that list of questions you sent, really and I hope they help
- 22:49because electromagnetism is everywhere. It's one of the fundamental forces of the universe,
- 22:56and we probably couldn't do without it, certainly not here on Earth, because
- 23:00it would be well douarded by radiation from the cell that would not be doing
- 23:03us any at all. No, not really, Probably impossible for life to
- 23:08develop in an environment like that, I would imagine, maybe, so yes,
- 23:12yeah, yeah, all right, Thanks Rennie. And our final question
- 23:15today comes from Ron. I like this one. I didn't like any of
- 23:19the others. No, of course I did. If scientists in a distant
- 23:26solar system were searching for exoplanets using the same technology that we are using,
- 23:30and if they were to observe our planet, would they be able to tell
- 23:34with any degree of certainty that there was life here? Or conversely, if
- 23:41we were to observe an exoplanet that's exactly like Earth, teeming with carbon based
- 23:45life, and perhaps with an advanced civilization modifying their atmosphere, could we tell
- 23:51that there was life there? Thanks Ron. We've had variations of questions like
- 23:57this, but I always like revisiting it because let's say somebody out the squidions
- 24:03of miles away put points a telescope at us, you know, the John
- 24:11Webster space telescope, let's call it. Would they be able to tell that
- 24:17there is life here. The answer is yes, yeah, I thought it
- 24:22would be yeah, and with and that's because of the you know, the
- 24:27signature of living organisms in the atmosphere, and in the case of Earth,
- 24:34that we call these biomarkers. So the biomarker would be oxygen, which is
- 24:41sort of out of balance with carbon dioxide, and I think methane comes into
- 24:48the equation as well. How to balance with methane, So that the only
- 24:52way that you could get this mixture in the atmosphere is by the fact that
- 24:59we've got life pro this is going on. If you had purely chemical reactions
- 25:03taking place, then you wouldn't get these you know, these mismatches of some
- 25:10of the chemicals that we have in the atmosphere. Not only do we think
- 25:15that's the case, we know it's the case because it's been tested and this
- 25:19is an experiment that's been done many times. You know, the phenomenon that
- 25:26we call earth shine Andrew, what you see when you've got a crescent,
- 25:32really thin crescent moon, you can actually see the rest of the moon dimly
- 25:36illuminated. Yes, yes, yes, yes, not so long ago.
- 25:40Yeah, you would probably see every month because if you're looking at the right
- 25:45time. Yes, that's right. It was Slenado who da Vinci who sust
- 25:52out what was going on there, that what you're seeing is the light from
- 25:56the Sun hitting Earth and then being reflected back to the Moon's surface and then
- 26:03reflect it back to us. Yes, so what you're seeing is second ancel
- 26:07lies, but it's passed through Theth's atmosphere. And so if you with a
- 26:11spectroscope, one of these devices that lets you see the barcode that's imprinted on
- 26:17light by these different chemicals. If with a spectroscope you look at earth shine,
- 26:21you can see the signature of Earth's atmosphere on it, and sure enough
- 26:26you would be able to detect that there is life there, because that signature
- 26:30is revealed by earthshine tells you exactly what we've just been talking about. Are
- 26:34these chemicals imbalance, in imbalance with one another? In balanced? Moreover,
- 26:42as Ron suggests, if you've got an advanced civilization modifying their atmosphere, which
- 26:48we've certainly done, could we tell that there was life there? You could
- 26:52probably tell that there was technology there. One of the signatures which are sometimes
- 26:59to techno markers to look for in the atmosphere of a planet is something like
- 27:03the CFCs, the chlorofluoro carbons, which are created by industrial processes and do
- 27:10end up in the atmosphere. We try to get rid of them, what
- 27:14they call it. One of the other things I think you and I talked
- 27:18about once about detectability was the capacity. I think we've developed technology that would
- 27:23be able to detect radar signals on another world. Was that something we talked
- 27:29about. Yes, that's right. Well, indeed that's true because, for
- 27:36example, the square kilometer array radio astronomy colleagues tell me would be sensitive to
- 27:44airport radar a distance of fifty light years. Wow. You know, assuming
- 27:49that the airports we're using the sense of of radar as we use here on
- 27:52Earth, and that's likely that they might and nearly worlded develop the same way
- 27:57as we have. So the is a resounding yes to that question. And
- 28:02it's one of the principal tools that sorry astrobiologists are using to explore the details
- 28:08of exo planets. And indeed, the gems Web telescope has actually I think
- 28:15probably half a dozen cases, maybe even more, managed to sense the chemical
- 28:22elements in some of the exoplanets that transit across the face of their parent star
- 28:29because some of the light that's coming you know, that's that's coming past the
- 28:34planet, that's transiting across its parents style in other words, that's between the
- 28:38parents style and ourselves. Some of that line is going through its atmosphere,
- 28:41and so you can pick up what the what these chemicals are, and there's
- 28:45various different chemicals that have been detected. Carbon dioxide's world water is another.
- 28:52You know, they are detectable. It's a technology that's still in its infancy
- 29:00because our technology is limited. But once the ELT has come along the extremely
- 29:04large telescopes, which the probably the first one will be the European one,
- 29:08the ELT itself, the European Extremely Large Telescope. Once that comes on stream,
- 29:15then we're likely to see more of this kind of discovery chemical elements in
- 29:18the atmospheres of other star planet which may eventually lead to the detection of an
- 29:26unambiguous biomarker which says, yes, there's life somewhere else. Wouldn't that be
- 29:30amazing? I think it will just as an after postcript there. The unambiguity
- 29:37is the difficult bit because often you can find just purely chemical processes that might
- 29:44create the same thing. So These imbalances are what people look for rather than
- 29:48just saying, oh there's oxygen, there, there must be life. It's
- 29:52got to be in a state of, you know, imbalance with other chemicals,
- 29:57which tells you that it's basically been constantly creating. Something else is going
- 30:03on. Somebody pushed the button, all right. Of course, Just as
- 30:10a side note, the famous Stephen Hawking has always said that we shouldn't reveal
- 30:15our presence in any way or form. He's not He was never confident that
- 30:19alien species would be kind to us. And I throw back to the three
- 30:26body problem, which is exactly what that story is about an advanced civilization that
- 30:30contacts Earth and decides they're going to come here because their planet sucks. And
- 30:34so the basis of the story is they're interrupting our scientific development so that we
- 30:41don't jump ahead of them in the four hundred years it's going to take for
- 30:44them to arrive. Really interesting story, really interesting story. That's why I'm
- 30:49persisting with it. I want to know what happens. It's a trilogy,
- 30:55it's a three book story. So yeah, thank you, Ron, that's
- 31:00it's a great question. Always a good discussion point that one, And thanks
- 31:03for every to everyone who sent questions in, and of course don't forget to
- 31:07send us your questions via our website Space Nuts podcast dot com, space nuts
- 31:10dot io. You can click on the AMA tab up the top where you
- 31:14can send us text and audio questions, or the right hand side of the
- 31:18homepage send us your questions. It's audio only. As long as you've got
- 31:21a device with a microphone, you're all set. And don't forget to tell
- 31:25us who you are and where you're from. But we'll take both country and
- 31:29Western questions. Text or audio not a problem. Thanks Freda both. Thanks
- 31:37fred as always great pleasure. Andrew, good to talk. Thanks to all
- 31:42our listeners who have sent stuff in. It's always it's always inspiring and stimulating
- 31:48to look at those questions. It is indeed, fred Wat's an astronomer at
- 31:52large. And Hugh in the studio, thanks for not asking us anything because
- 31:56we don't know anything that you want to know. And from me Andrew Dunkley,
- 32:00thanks for your company again. We'll catch you on the next episode of
- 32:01Space Nuts. Bye bye. Thanks. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts
- 32:07podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player.
- 32:15You can also stream on demand at bites dot com. This has been
- 32:20another quality podcast production from nights dot com.