Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #351: Wormholes & Quantum Breakthroughs: Unravelling Space-Time Secrets

Transcript

#351: Wormholes & Quantum Breakthroughs: Unravelling Space-Time Secrets · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Hi there, thanks for joining us on this the latest edition of Space Nuts Episode 351, which is
0:05
close to my heart because I used to be a Ford 351 fan back in the day when they raced around
0:11
bathest. On today's episode, we will be looking at experimenting with wormholes and other quantum
0:19
stuff that's way too hard for my brain to decipher and we'll be upgrading SLS rockets. They
0:26
asked Fred and I to do it and I brought a pen and that should help. Other than that, we'll be
0:33
answering some questions. Paul is a follow-up question from last week or is a follow-up answer
0:39
to Paul's question from last week about black holes. Buddy wants to know about dark energy and Dave
0:45
is looking at the huntsman, not the spider. My son found a big one in his bedroom the other day
0:52
about as big as your hand, huntsman's spider is a huge. No, this is the telescope. We'll talk about
0:57
that and much, much more today on Space Nuts. 15 seconds, guidance is internal. 10, 9, ignition sequence
1:07
5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Space Nuts. And joining me to unravel all of that stuff,
1:21
particularly wormholes is Professor Fred Watson, astronomer, Adla Jell-O, Fred. Hello, Andrew,
1:27
it's so good to see you today through this wormhole of... Yes, through the fiber optic system that is
1:35
the National Broadband Network. Yes, that's right. That's how we get together. I don't know what they call it
1:40
in other countries. They probably call it better, but anyway. Don't knock it. It's doing your case.
1:47
It's working very hard though. But yes, we've managed until now. I think the problem with NBN
1:57
services in Australia and probably other services around the world is they build them and then the
2:03
demand just gets too big for what they've built and they have to keep trying to expand it. And it's
2:07
just not that easy, which, yeah, I think create... There are limitations to how much bandwidth can fit
2:15
into the tube and that's always the struggle, isn't it? Indeed. Yes, what's going on in your life, Fred,
2:22
since I saw you last? It shouldn't take long to tell me. A lot of space, nothing.
2:31
A lot of putticking because of the forthcoming trip. Oh, yeah, yeah. But that's what happens.
2:38
And, Judy and I have got a forthcoming trip or a fifth coming trip. And we just never get the
2:44
weather right when we go away. Oh, they get it right. So, anyway, we were the manage. We think we
2:50
might not either because there's a cyclone. We're going, oh, yeah, well that'll do it. That'll do it.
2:57
Okay, let us get started and we're going to begin with something very complicated that you have
3:04
managed to decipher and solve. And you can write your paper and win a Nobel Prize. It's all about
3:09
experimenting with wormholes and quantum breakthroughs. It is. This is such an interesting piece of work.
3:20
That was pieces of work because there's quite a lot of research that's going on in this field,
3:25
which we haven't really talked about before. We've certainly talked about wormholes in space.
3:29
Well, we get questions about that. And we get questions about them because the beloved of science
3:33
fiction writers is a way of getting from one bit of the universe to the other without going to the
3:39
you know, the intervening. I used 64 miles in the year to my book Parallax.
3:43
I know you've been vlogging your book for the last five weeks. I thought I'd throw one in there.
3:49
Six weeks now, isn't it? No, no. Could be 70 if I mentioned it again. That's not Parallax. It's
3:57
the tyranny and enigma. Oh gosh, I got the wrong book. You're not the first person to do that. Got the
4:04
wrong book. Yeah, actually, there's a there's a, oh gosh, probably shouldn't go on about this, but
4:09
in the early history of the telescope, there's some, and I Jai Giovanni Battista Delaporte, his name
4:17
was he wrote a book in the middle of the 16th century. And later on when the telescope was invented,
4:25
somebody wrote to him and said, what do you think about this? So he said, oh, I wrote about that 20 years ago
4:29
in my book. And he gave the title of his book, but he actually got the wrong book. So it's not, it's
4:35
not just you that's not just you. Yeah. Well, you know, maybe both have got references to wormholes,
4:44
but the the tyranny and enigma is it's it's much more obvious. It's a very useful, I hope, in the
4:50
in the narrative and the plot. Oh, it was essential. Yes, it is. So, so what we've got, so wormholes are
5:00
a theoretical prediction of general relativity, the theory of gravity that Mr Einstein developed in
5:10
1915 and spent the rest of his life kind of thinking about and trying to reconcile with quantum mechanics,
5:17
which sort of emerged around about the same time as relativity a little bit later. But the two,
5:22
quantum mechanics says that weird things happen on very small scales, like things can be in two
5:27
places at once or in two different states at once. So two completely incompatible sets of
5:39
information and Einstein spent most of the rest of his life after 1915 he died in pools in 1955.
5:46
Think that's correct, right? And spent most of the rest of his life trying to reconcile quantum
5:53
physics and and relativity. And that quest still goes on, but we now have a new tool in this game,
6:01
which is the still in its infancy, but it is the developing world of quantum computers.
6:10
And quantum computers, it seems, can come to the aid of people trying to undergo this reconciliation.
6:20
And in particular, they are looking at the relativistic phenomenon of the potential of wormholes.
6:31
We've never found a wormhole, by the way, in space. Tell us through the fabric of space time,
6:36
which relativity predicts, but we've never we've never found one. It's actually, it's 1935 that
6:44
Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen described the first idea of wormholes. Now, this
6:55
some work that came, had its origins by in two very, very well known enable physicists back in 2013,
7:05
worked on by one, the Maldivesena and Leonard Suskind, who published stuff that were
7:11
speculated that wormholes are equivalent to quantum entanglement. Now, we've talked about
7:21
entanglement many times as well, where you take to entangled particles, move a long way,
7:29
do something to one, something happens to the other one immediately. And that's, so in a sense,
7:35
you can see the link there because you're talking about things that can somehow bypass our normal
7:41
ideas of space and time. So this has been carried on. And we now have some work
7:51
done in Caltech, which actually, essentially, and I'm quoting here from our good friend Fizz.org,
8:01
this work explores the equivalence of wormholes with quantum teleportation.
8:11
And so a lot of this stuff comes from Caltech. There's also a British component to this research
8:19
to which I'll get to in a minute. But the theoretical framework of wormholes being equivalent to quantum
8:27
teleportation is the foundation of this work, let's say, laid down by Caltech, that actually
8:38
suggests that you could do experiments in quantum computers that might be equivalent to a wormhole,
8:47
if I could put it that way. And so that takes us now. This was work that was published, what I've just
8:54
described was published back in November last year. But there has been some more work produced
9:00
because of quantum, basically a quantum, I don't know what you call it, it's an experimental setup
9:08
has been carried out at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom in their,
9:16
they're in the quantum engineering technology labs. It's extraordinary, it's an extraordinary world
9:23
that the world of quantum computing, because there's so much happening. And it, you know, it clearly
9:29
impacts on our world of the big stuff in the universe when you start thinking about the equivalence of
9:39
pentanglement, sorry, let me get it right, entanglement and wormholes. And so the, I'm going to go back to
9:48
another Fist.org article. And once again, you can find these on the Fist.org website, which always
9:55
gives references to the original papers. I have to say I've looked several times at this stuff and
10:02
I'm not still not sure that I understand it, but the University of Bristol has actually,
10:09
although one of the physicists working there, Hattim Sally, who's an honorary research fellow at
10:15
that quantum engineering technology lab, has talked about counterportation. And it's a way of
10:25
building a quantum computer that essentially creates a wormhole that will actually bridge base.
10:34
So the, this is a remarkable stuff. This thing's basically a simulation of a wormhole
10:45
on a, on a, on a computer. That has been done before, but this takes you to step further,
10:54
because they are working to actually demonstrate that you can, within a quantum computer,
11:01
you can bypass space and time. In other words, you simulate a wormhole. And what they're saying about
11:08
this is not that it's ever going to take us to different bits of the universe because this is all
11:13
happening inside a computer. But what it might well do is, is actually allow us to on pick the,
11:24
that, that probably, and I think I mentioned this in last week's show, that the underlying reality
11:30
that is something more basic than quantum physics or, or general relativity, there, there is
11:38
a, there's some nice quotes, if I may, from, from Dr. Hattim, who actually is Dr. Sally,
11:48
Hattim Sally is his name, he says, not much. No, I'm, I'm looking for the bit I want to read.
11:59
Okay, this work, sorry, no, the goal in the near future, this is a bit of a tragedy, sorry, I'm
12:08
lifting all through the article, the goal in the near future is to physically build such a wormhole
12:14
in the lab, which can then be used as a test bed for rival physical theories, even ones of quantum
12:20
gravity. So the work is, we'll be in the spirit of the multibillion ventures that exist to witness
12:27
new physical phenomena like the laser into ferrolytic ground gravitational wave observatory,
12:32
LIGO, and the European organization for nuclear research, that's certain, with the large
12:37
Hadron collider, but the diffraction of the resources, in other words, we're doing it on the cheap,
12:42
a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. Our hope is to ultimately provide remote access to local
12:47
wormholes for physicists, physics hobbies and enthusiasts. Thank you very much. A coffee time?
12:54
Yes, it's coffee time, and to explore fundamental questions about the universe, including,
13:00
here we go, the existence of high dimensions. So it's all about really poking into this hidden
13:06
world that we think unifies relativity and quantum physics, and about which, at the moment, we know
13:13
very little. It's fascinating science, because we've talked in the past about trying to reach
13:19
the speed of light to get somewhere in space faster than we're capable of now, but the energy required
13:26
makes that impossible. But if we were to perfect this kind of science and do it on a large scale,
13:36
do you foresee a day where we might be able to create wormholes to move across vast distances
13:43
in space instantly, like they do in science fiction? No. Okay, good answer. And the other thing,
13:52
the other thing I found interesting in this article was how they describe Google's involvement in
13:59
this. Google is heavily involved in quantum computer research. Now, the reason
14:06
I said no, Andrew, is that it may be the wrong answer. If you can do it with bits of information,
14:15
which is really what this is all about. It's about qubits, which are the information bits in a quantum
14:22
computer. It's about sending them from one place to another, because information is in many ways,
14:31
it is reality. And in fact, some physicists actually think that information really underlies it.
14:40
When we start really digging into the unifying links between relativity and quantum physics,
14:46
we might find that information is actually the common ground. So it's one thing to send qubits
14:52
through a wormhole. It's quite another to send a spacecraft full of people through one,
14:58
which certainly in rather tovistic terms needs you to walk space time to such an extent that you
15:05
need almost the total energy budget of the universe to do it. So still the same problem.
15:10
Yeah, it's the same problem. That's right. But what is it all this bit?
15:14
I was going to say the other problem is that it based on what I've read briefly,
15:19
what comes out the other end is a duplicate of what went in. So it's,
15:25
you send people through a wormhole in space, it's not going to be them coming out the other end,
15:28
it'll be their carbon copies. Yes, not quite as good either.
15:32
That's it will be a carbon copy, but I think in the process the original gets destroyed.
15:37
Yes, that's right. That's what I read. Yeah. So probably not a good plan.
15:41
No, that's right. No, I think information is fine. Humans maybe don't so fine.
15:48
No, definitely not. Yes, if you'd like to read up on that story,
15:52
most certainly go to the fiz.org website, PHYS. This is Space Nuts Andrew Duncley here with
16:00
Professor Fred Watson. Well, hi everybody. It's Steve from Down Under here.
16:05
I wanted to let you know that today's episode of Space Nuts is brought to you by Curiosity Stream,
16:11
the streaming service perfect for people who want to know more. With exclusive award-winning films
16:16
and shows Curiosity Stream has the deepest collection of top quality documentaries from around the
16:22
world. Now, Andrew and I can tell you that in our household growing up,
16:25
Mum and Dad didn't care what we were watching on TV, so long as we were watching documentaries,
16:32
and I wish we had Curiosity Stream back then. Now, whether you're interested in science,
16:36
history, nature, technology, travel or more, Curiosity Stream has something for you.
16:42
And with new content added every week, you'll never run out of things to watch.
16:46
It's a big favourite in our household, and I know it will be in yours too.
16:50
Curiosity Stream is available on all your favourite streaming devices, including
16:55
Roku, Xbox, Smart TVs, Apple TV, Amazon Fire and more. Plus, you can watch the it on the web
17:02
and on all your mobile devices, best of all, it's available worldwide,
17:06
so you can explore the world's top documentaries no matter where you are. So why wait?
17:11
Go to CuriosityStream.com/SpaceNuts for unlimited access to the world's top documentaries and
17:18
non-fiction series. And for our fans here at SpaceNuts, use the promo code SpaceNuts
17:24
and save 25% of your subscription, of course. There is really something for everyone on Curiosity Stream.
17:30
So, click the link in the show notes or go to CuriosityStream.com/SpaceNuts and save 25% right now.
17:39
Enjoy the world's best documentaries, just like Andrew and I did growing up with Curiosity Stream
17:45
these days. And now it's back to Andrew and Fred with SpaceNuts.
17:49
You're listening to SpaceNuts, the podcast about astronomy and space science with Andrew
17:59
Donkley and Professor Fred Watzis. It's good that we had a little NASA link there because
18:05
we are going to now talk about one of the most amazing pieces of hardware that NASA has
18:11
developed and that is the Space Launch System, the SLS Rockets, which have been around for a while,
18:18
but they're still proving to be incredible workhorses. And now they're looking at an upgrade.
18:24
That's right. So it's the rocket motors themselves that we're talking about here.
18:29
We discussed this last year in November when Artemis I was being launched on the first
18:41
flight of the new SLS, the Space Launch System, NASA's SLS System. It's still the world's most
18:49
powerful rocket. It might not be for long, but it still is. And so the engines of the Space Launch
18:57
Systems Corps, if you remember, it's got a sort of standard rocket body core, but two huge boosters
19:05
bolted on the sides. And those boosters are effectively the, they're derived from the boosters that
19:14
used to be used with the Space Shuttle. They're chemical solid fuel rockets. You like the fuse
19:21
and off it goes. And in fact, on the launch, they provide, together they provide something like
19:29
80%. No, something like 75% of the thrust. The rest of it comes from these RS-25 engines,
19:40
which were developed for the Space Shuttle. These engines were first certified in 1979, Andrew.
19:48
So this is-- Wow. Excuse me, stuff that goes back a long way. Yes. Followed two years later by
19:54
the first Space Shuttle launch, which used them. So they are really quite incredible machines, half a
20:03
million pounds of thrust each. If I am reading my figures correctly, that's right. So half a million
20:12
pounds of, of maximum thrust each. And they are, of course, they're controllable, they're throttleable.
20:19
So you can, you can actually, once you've thrown off the boosters, which just, you like them,
20:24
and they just go, you can control what the spacecraft is doing. There were three of them in each
20:30
Space Shuttle. There are four of them on each Space Launch System core. There's some really
20:40
quite extraordinary facts. NASA have produced, as they do so well, some fact sheets about these engines.
20:53
So 135 launches in the, in the 30 years of Space Shuttle launches, a lot of adaptation work that's
21:02
gone on. And they've started off the space, sorry, the SLS, the Space Launch System, with 16 of
21:11
these RS-25 engines. So that would be enough for launches. Because unlike the Space Shuttle, which
21:19
came back to Earth at the end of every flight, the SLS gets dumped in the, in the Atlantic. So it
21:25
doesn't come back. But now what's happening is back in, I think, 2017, the company that built them,
21:33
which is Rocket Dine, effectively. It's actually Air-Ejet Rocket Dine now. They used to be
21:42
just Rocket Dine. Air-Ejet Rocket Dine, they started up again to build their new engines back in 2017,
21:50
and they've got a contract now to build 18 of them. So these engines are actually the new
21:57
shiny version of the RS-25 with the thrust upgraded, 111 percent more than it originally was in 1979.
22:06
Sorry, yes, but 10 percent, sorry, 11 percent more. It's quite an amazing thing. One fact that I
22:14
loved about these engines, Andrew, is that the gases that are coming out of the exhaust when it's
22:20
full thrust are traveling at 13 times the speed of sound. Wow, which is why you get that,
22:27
you know, it's a sonic boom that you're getting when you stand and watch a launch and sort of feel
22:33
the vibration, which I've never done. But yeah, quite extraordinary. I love the way they crackle
22:40
these engines. Yeah, they do, don't they? And that might be that might be it. That might be the
22:46
sonic boom's basically doing exactly those. I guess we're going to see these things in action
22:55
for some time to come. They recently announced the crew for the out of transmission that's going to
23:01
go around the moon with humans in it. Yep. And there's a lot of milestones being met there.
23:09
But these engines are just going to keep on keeping on until they can come up with something
23:14
better. And I guess time will be a factor in that. But they're just so powerful. Do we do we at this
23:22
stage need anything better, especially given these are being upgraded? So those are depends
23:31
what we're going to send up there. If we're going to need to put heavier payloads into space and
23:35
things like that, if we build a, if we got to build into stellar spacecraft, we'll probably need
23:40
some heavy lifting to be done. That's correct. We will.
23:46
So it kind of highlights the the difference in philosophy. If you think about the
23:59
space X is ventures in this game, the Starship Heavy, which is very near to having test launches.
24:07
And that works on the same philosophy as they've, as space X has used for their Falcon
24:15
rockets where you have a relatively small number of engines. If I remember rightly, they're the
24:21
Raptor engines. I think I'm right in saying that. You have smaller engines, but you put lots of them
24:27
in. So I can't remember how many rocket motors are Falcon 9 has. It may even be 9. It's quite a lot,
24:36
but it's many, many more in the in the Starship. You know, it's probably 20 or 30 of these things
24:43
all firing together. Yeah. Whereas the philosophy that's been adopted by NASA is, and it actually
24:51
highlights another conscious, really, I get to it in a minute, but it's to use bigger engines, which are
24:57
probably much more high tech. These are, I think, if I remember rightly, the, I think they're called
25:06
staged combustion engines. They're a particular type, which actually gives them this extraordinary power.
25:16
And they, you know, each one of these engines is about the size of two cars, one pile,
25:21
on top of the other. They're huge. They're massive. And you've got four of them on the space shuttle.
25:27
And so, sorry, on the space launch system. So, yeah, it's a different philosophy. What I was going to
25:32
say was it highlights back to the 1960s, Andrew, when, yes, Saturn V had engines, which were very
25:41
similar to these, and five of them on the first stage. Yeah. I stood under one at that, that
25:50
can have a, that must be quite, oh, it's, I think that's rough. You know, you see it on TV and you
25:55
think that is enormous. And then you go and, and you know, TV makes things look bigger. Yes.
26:00
The Saturn V is an exception. It's even bigger. When you see it, you go, I was going to swear,
26:09
holy cow. Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah. It is, it is staggeringly huge. They've got it hanging
26:15
from the roof in a Saturn V exhibition center, and NASA. And it fills the whole place up. And they've
26:23
got the stages broken up. So you start, I started at the back and moved forward, but you could stand
26:30
inside one of those exhausts. And you wouldn't, you still wouldn't be able to reach up and touch the top.
26:37
It's fungus. Yeah. Very, very exciting to have been able to do that a lot of
26:43
years ago. And how, but yeah, if you're ever at Round Cape Canaveral Florida, do it. You've got to
26:49
do it. It's just so brilliant. Hopefully I'll be doing it next year, because we're only, we're
26:55
in the tour there. Oh, exciting. Yes. But what I was going to say, so the five big engines of the
27:02
Saturn V, contrast with the Soviet Union's equivalent at that time, which you and I spoke about before,
27:09
because they were building their own version of a Saturn V quite different in shape and structure.
27:15
That was the N1, it was called the Soviet Union's N1 rocket, which had I think 32
27:21
smaller rocket motors. Yeah. And finally, didn't they blow up a lot? They'd never managed to get one
27:29
to fly successfully. And it certainly never, nobody ever got him one. I think there were four test launches
27:35
and they were all, none of them really succeeded. And one of the problems I think that they found was,
27:40
you know, when you've got lots and lots of smaller engines, you've got the sort of interplay of
27:50
vibrations between them. It's not just the, you know, the vibration of one engine or a small number
27:56
of engines shuddering through the rocket. It's all these things competing with one another in
28:02
vibrations. And if you get resonances, you know, things where vibrations build up,
28:06
and then disturbance. Exactly. That's right. The sort of the same thing that happens with sound.
28:11
To Koma Rapids Bridge. Yes. Exactly. And harmonic disturbance. Yeah. That's right. So that's the sort
28:18
of thing that would destroy a rocket. And maybe one reason is one reason why the Soviet
28:24
unions and one was never successful. Well, that was also the demise of the
28:29
comet aircraft. I think it was the comet passenger plane, which threatened bowing for many years
28:39
until they had a few inexplicable crashes. It turned out to be a metal fatigue caused by
28:46
those vibrations. No, it was, it was, it was, no, it was the square windows square windows.
28:54
I remember, I remember all this really well. Wow. So, it's a doggo about it. Yeah. Well, I saw it.
29:00
Wow. Yeah. So, you're absolutely right. It was the world's first turbojet aircraft, a passenger
29:08
aircraft. And did threatened to give Boeing a wrong for its money. The word design differences,
29:16
the comet had four engines, which were partially built into the wings. And of course,
29:22
Boeing went the other way, had them slung under the wings, which turns out to be a much, much better idea
29:27
or an old kind of different counts. But what, what essentially scuppered the comet, they had,
29:33
I think, three, as you may be four accidents, where the aircraft was lost. It was traced to be due
29:41
to sudden decompression of the fuselage, right? And it was because of metal fatigue in the corners
29:47
of the square windows. Yeah. The windows were square. And you metal fatigue came into
29:51
it somewhere. Yeah. So, you were right there. I mean, it may be vibration had an impact, but it was,
29:56
it was the fact that the square corners of these windows were a critical point of failure. And
30:03
that's where the metal fatigue sat in. And in fact, it led to rapid depressurization and many,
30:10
many lives were lost. And of course, it scuppered the British aircraft industry. They were built by
30:15
the Havilland, which was one of many, many British aviation companies post-war, all of which wound up
30:25
being part of British aerospace. And which is now, you know, nothing like Boeing in terms of scale.
30:31
Well, that explains why all aircraft windows are essentially round now. They're all round corners.
30:38
That's right. Absolutely right. And to answer one final point, there are 27 engines on the Famicom Heavy.
30:46
There you go. Okay. That wasn't far off. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, but that's really interesting. But
30:52
quite exciting to watch the future of rockets and rocket science with the RS-25s continued development.
31:03
This is Space Nuts Andrew Duncan here with Professor Fred Watson.
31:07
Space Nuts. Okay, Fred, let's go to our Q&A section. And we've got a follow-up from last week.
31:18
Paul messaged us. Paul's from Melbourne, Victoria. I'll repeat his question because you've
31:25
done a bit of research on this. There's been talk recently about the energy that causes the
31:29
universe to expand coming from black holes. If this is so, then wouldn't we see the time space around
31:36
or near a black hole expanding at a faster rate than that further away from black holes, for example,
31:42
between galaxies or that in between in spaces between filaments of the cosmic web? Wouldn't the
31:50
filaments of the cosmic web be expanding faster? And we tried to answer, but we thought we thought
31:58
it deserved a little bit more homework. Yeah, I couldn't remember the the the link that had been made
32:06
between black holes and dark energy. Yeah. And what it is and there's a very nice article on space.com
32:13
entitled Black holes, maybe the source of mysterious dark energy by Stephanie Woldek.
32:22
And it kind of explains where this research is going, but unless you sort of into the mathematics
32:32
of the original research, you probably still feel like as I do, there are questions remaining. So,
32:42
by the way, this research was published in the astrophysical journal letters on February 15th.
32:50
I think you mentioned last week when we were talking about it, Andrew. So the research in question
32:58
has looked at the mass of supermassive black holes through the history of the universe. So,
33:07
remember that we think all galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their center. Yep.
33:14
You can by using the trick of look back time, you can investigate these black holes as you look backwards
33:22
in time. And it turns out and this was the work is actually led by the university scientists at the
33:29
university of Hawaii at Manoa in Oulu. It's they've they've looked back over time. And what they found
33:39
is that the black holes, sort of early in the universe, they are more massive than they ought to be
33:54
if all they're doing is a creating stars. That's how we think black supermassive black holes grow
34:01
by gobbling up stars and another dayberry gas stars that matter probably. That makes them acquire
34:10
mass. But the this imbalance in the mass of black holes that suggests that they're more
34:20
massive than they should be if all they're doing is is chewing up matter has led these
34:27
scientists to believe that the the sort of missing, if I can put it this way, the missing mass in the
34:37
black holes is actually dark energy. So let me read as I often do a quote from one of the authors of
34:46
this study and and actually that that's space.com page that I mentioned has got a couple of very
34:52
nice videos about about this stuff. But Duncan Farah who's at the university of Hawaii he says
35:00
we're really saying two things at once that is evidence that the typical black hole solutions
35:08
and by that means that what the theory of relativity tells you will work for you on a long long
35:15
time scale and we have the first proposed astrophysical source for dark energy. In other words
35:23
they think that black holes have something to do with dark energy. Now I think what I said a few
35:31
minutes ago I think I said it the wrong way around because I think I said the younger galaxies have
35:40
more than they should have but it's actually the other way around it's the older galaxies.
35:44
They're bigger than they should be right if all they've got is stars that they're gobbling up
35:51
and so now the the link between that they're sort of kind of dark energy component within black holes
36:01
and the dark energy in the universe is the one that I am still struggling with
36:07
because I'm not actually sure how you get from one to the other and the reason is the black
36:14
holes are discrete objects there are objects in space dark energy as according to our best
36:21
understanding is the same everywhere it's not in blobs and that was the thrust I think of Paul's
36:27
question. You know why don't we see distortion of space around black holes where we do but why
36:33
don't we see more than we should with this dark energy if dark energy is something to do with
36:39
black holes and I don't really see the link I think it comes out in the mathematics and I probably
36:46
ought to have another look at that paper which is right in front of me now and it is entitled
36:56
observational evidence for cosmological coupling of black holes and its implication for
37:02
astrophysical source of dark energy right and it's got a lot of big words in it and some big
37:12
equations actually it's not too bad for equations it's not as bad as I remembered
37:17
yeah so interesting paper I will read it again it's the sort of thing you really have to dedicate a day
37:25
to to sit down there's a large list of authors don't confire is the lead author from the university
37:32
for why but yeah if you have a mathematical bent addressing now I'll listen to it I know you don't
37:40
and true but that's a paper's the read of a look so the the basic answer to Paul's inquiry is that
37:48
dark energy is even throughout the universe therefore the effects he's describing wouldn't occur
37:56
that's correct okay that's a beautiful summary I wish I said that did that without an equation
38:03
for us there is an equation that links all this together that's the equals mc squared because
38:10
of course that tells you the energy and muscle equivalent yeah yeah thank you Paul again and
38:16
I'm glad we could follow that up and fill in some of the blanks let's now go to Oregon it's our good
38:24
friend buddy hello space miss buddy from Ontario Oregon hey uh since they think dark energy is
38:30
coming from black holes why aren't they losing their mass if they're losing their energy is being
38:36
redistributed out into the universe are they I don't get it could that possibly be just let's
38:43
push in our solar system back our galaxy back together keeping it from flying apart is the
38:48
illusion energy in the local area and it's being redistributed over the entire universe and so we're
38:54
only getting a little piece of that energy back in our piece of the universe so it's kind of pushing in
38:59
just thought guys hopefully Fred can get my head straight on this one give him a good work
39:06
it kind of relates to Paul's question it's yeah yeah it does I just thought it was a good question
39:15
because it is the one that's got a lot of people scratching their heads at the moment me included
39:20
yeah so no but what buddy says is exactly right um but the in fact the observation is the opposite
39:31
of what he said he said well they're losing mass the observation is that they're they're you know
39:36
they're fatter than they ought to be they've got more mass which is being interpreted as dark energy
39:43
but it's the trick of getting that stuff out of the black hole and into the wider universe that is
39:51
the missing link in my understanding of this issue so buddy you and Paul together are challenge
39:57
you know raising questions that are basically the same as the ones I've got I will once again
40:02
have a look at this paper in the astrophysical journal letters and if I can see the breakthrough
40:08
I'll I'll I'll we'll raise it again because it is such an interesting topic oh he's you know especially
40:14
if he does solve the problem and I'm sure there must be other scientists working on this
40:22
that paper was published back in February I'm not sufficiently close to the gossip
40:27
within the cosmology community to know what the story is but in fact my one of my links into
40:37
that world is currently on sabbatically in Oxford so I can't ask him very easily so yes we'll we we
40:46
will see as time goes on and no doubt this will crop up again in space now so why is this based
40:51
the best that can do thanks again buddy and Paul for your questions yes and I suppose when you're
40:58
talking about relatively new science it's always going to spawn questions and at the moment we
41:03
don't have an absolute definitive answer we're still trying to figure it out and that's where
41:11
you know people send us questions and say well you know what's a white hole well we don't know
41:17
we've never seen one don't even know if there exists so it's the same with dark energy dark matter
41:23
we know they exist we don't know very much at all about dark energy we've got a bit more of an
41:28
idea about dark matter but again they are still puzzles to to be solved I would venture to say
41:35
thank you buddy thank you Paul sorry go on no I'm just I'm reading through the abstract of that paper
41:41
again yeah so there's a crucial sentence in here which says the continuity equation then requires
41:51
that black holes contribute cosmology as a vacuum energy so there you go all right I understood that
42:01
yeah it's yes yeah fair enough thanks buddy thanks Paul one final question before we wrap up this episode
42:09
comes from Dave in Colorado high Andrew and Fred I found your podcast about a year ago and I've
42:15
gone back and listened to every episode are you still married I love the podcast and can't wait
42:23
for the next one to come out each week the question I have is about the Huntsman telescope
42:27
at Siding Springs Observatory I was watching an Instagram short about it and I saw Professor Fred's name
42:33
on a plaque on the outside of the dome it resides in I was wondering if you could explain what science
42:39
the telescope is doing since it's such a unique telescope or a group of telescopes technically I've
42:46
tried to find out what it does and can't seem to find out much about it thanks for your work thanks
42:52
for the work you do and keep this podcast going and growing Dave it's called the Huntsman telescope
42:59
because it doesn't do very much but it's really good at killing Huntsman spiders yeah probably
43:05
bring them over they had with it if you do that yeah you would it's quite heavy so it's so it is
43:10
unique Dave's right it's a telescope that uses a 10 commercially available telephoto lenses they're
43:20
they're very high-end telephoto lenses their Canon lenses made for principally for sports photography
43:29
so you know when you when you watch a football game or something like that see these guys with
43:33
these long lenses on sometimes on tripods sitting by the sitting by the the ground they're the ones
43:40
that they're using that kind of lens and but it turns out this is work that was probably kicked off
43:48
I think by a colleague of mine at McQuarrie University here in Sydney Dr. Lee Spittler in fact I think
43:54
he's I think he's associate Professor Lee Spittler and I'll show him a bright thing which is very
43:59
well deserved they they have used these lenses to oh well the the thing that makes these lenses special
44:11
is that they've got very low scattering characteristics in other words you send light through a normal
44:17
mirror lens which is probably what you'd want to use and you got not just the reflection but you
44:23
get light scattering and what that does is if you form an image on a very sensitive electronic
44:28
detector you spreading scattered light all over the image and that means that the very faintest
44:35
objects that you might want to look at including sort of wispy tendrils of stars in distant galaxies
44:41
yeah they're swamped by the scattered light from the brighter bits of those distant galaxies so what
44:47
you want is a you know a lens that will have very minimal scattering characteristics in fact it the
44:57
I know that Lee took his idea for this telescope from something I think in the US called a dragonfly
45:02
telephoto array and Huntsman is a telephoto array it uses ten of these lenses and the the sorts of
45:10
research that it's involved with is stuff that needs to you to look at very faint extended objects
45:17
and by an extended object I mean something different from a point source now Andrew you might
45:24
be surprised as I was decades and decades ago to know that the sensitivity of a telescope to an
45:33
extended object something like a nebula rather than a point source doesn't depend on the dimer
45:39
of the telescope it's actually a function of the focal ratio which is something well known to
45:45
photographers the faster the focal ratio in other words the smaller the f number if I can put it
45:50
that way yeah the more sensitive you are to extended objects it doesn't matter how big your lenses
45:56
which is kind of counterintuitive but that of course explains why astrophotographers your hobby
46:03
astrophotographers these days can produce images of the universe that rival the ones David
46:08
Maling was producing with the Anglo-Strilean telescope 30 years ago it's because of the focal ratio
46:14
dependence of extended objects it's a fabulous stuff and it's great science so anything so
46:20
huntsman is really good but things where you've got very faint extended objects and I'm reading now
46:25
from the huntsman website the sorts of questions that it will help to answer about galaxy formation
46:35
and evolution including star disk formation galaxy growth through the coming together of satellite
46:41
galaxies understanding gas turbulence in the galactic interstellar medium understanding the
46:48
relationship between star gas assembly and cold neutral hydrogen gas assembly and it's also got
46:56
a role in long period in looking for exoplanets as well the number of long period exoplanets around
47:03
test stellar systems is another of their declared interests it's a great telescope and I was very
47:10
able to be asked to open it last year that hence the plaque Dave hence the plaque yeah thank you Dave
47:17
and I hope that helps you understand a bit more about what the huntsman's guy to do the only
47:23
major inaccuracy you said it had Ted cameras 10 lenses 10 yes it's yeah a huntsman spider only has
47:32
eight eyes it does I know this this one has 10 eyes so it's a super huntsman it's a super huntsman and
47:39
one of it's one of its other advantages that by strapping on more lenses you can make it into a super
47:44
duper huntsman yeah and I think there are plans of foot to try and increase the number but yes it's
47:49
10 lenses at the moment awesome thank you Dave thank you everyone who's sending questions keep them
47:54
coming because we love to hear from you you can do that via our website space nads podcast dot com
47:59
or space nads dot i o that's for younger people and just click on the links there's a link called AMA
48:07
we can send audio and text questions or just hit the tab on the right hand side of the home page
48:12
send us your voice message you've got a device with a microphone that's all you need tell us who you
48:16
are where you're from and ask your question and we will do our best to put it in there we get a lot
48:20
of questions that are almost the same so we tend to not run them all but well we did today with
48:27
Paul and buddy they were basically talking about the same thing but they fit it in with the discussion
48:32
but yeah please send us your questions by all means and if you thought about it and never got
48:37
around to it well yeah we'd love to hear from you especially if you're a newbie we haven't had
48:41
too many newbies lately but we get them occasionally and that's nice we'd love to hear from everybody
48:48
all over the world and while you're on the website don't forget to check out the shop because Fred's
48:54
got books in there which I'm not gonna mention at all and this the astronomy daily newsletter and if
49:04
you want to find out about how to support space nuts there's a little little link there as well if
49:08
you're interested okay Fred that wraps it up for another week thank you so very much it's always
49:14
a pleasure Andrew and we'll talk a danceoo we will indeed professor Fred what's an astronomer at
49:20
large and back to you in the studio yep the usual response and from me Andrew thank you for your
49:27
company catch you on the very next episode of space nuts bye bye
49:31
thanks you'll be this to the space nuts podcast available at apple podcasts google podcasts spotify i hat
49:42
radio or your favorite podcast player you can also stream on demand at bites.com this has been another
49:49
quantity podcast production from sites.com
49:53
[BLANK_AUDIO]