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Cosmic Connections: The Search for Alien Life, Double Black Holes & Betelgeuse's Secrets · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Heidi Campo: Welcome back to another fun and exciting
0:02
episode of Space Nuts, the
0:05
podcast that is out of this world.
0:07
Voice Over Guy: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
0:10
10, 9. Ignition
0:12
sequence start. Space nuts. 5, 4, 3,
0:15
2. 1. 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4,
0:18
3, 2, 1. Space nuts astronauts
0:21
report it feels good.
0:23
Heidi Campo: And joining us today is Professor Fred Fred
0:26
Watson, astronomer at large.
0:29
How are you today, Fred?
0:31
Professor Fred Watson: Um, I'm very well. Probably a
0:34
bit better than you are, because I hear you
0:36
haven't been too well lately, and I hope
0:37
you're feeling a little bit better, a little.
0:39
Heidi Campo: Little under the weather, which is probably
0:41
why I forgot to introduce myself.
0:42
I am your. I am your.
0:45
Professor Fred Watson: I should.
0:47
Heidi Campo: I am the host of this episode. My, uh, name
0:49
is Heidi Campo. I am filling in for Andrew
0:52
Dunkley, who is our regular host, who is on a
0:55
cruise around the world right now, and he's
0:57
having just the time of his life. Um, you
1:00
know, yeah, I've been better. I've been
1:02
worse. Uh, I think this is just. I've
1:05
been battling a fever. But the good thing
1:08
about podcasting is we can do this at a
1:10
distance.
1:12
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, in fact, a distance almost equal to the
1:14
Earth's diameter. It's quite a long way that
1:17
separates us. Not quite, but getting
1:19
on that way.
1:20
Heidi Campo: Yeah, it's, uh, it's always my. My evenings,
1:23
your mornings, my summer, your winter. It's
1:25
opposite in so many ways.
1:27
Professor Fred Watson: All wrong.
1:28
Heidi Campo: But.
1:28
Professor Fred Watson: But, uh, we're on the same. We're on the same
1:30
page.
1:31
Heidi Campo: We are.
1:31
And. And one thing that I think everyone
1:34
around the world can be on the same page on
1:37
is everybody is always
1:39
fascinated with extraterrestrial life
1:42
and the search of it and the question of, is
1:44
there life outside of our little
1:47
blue marble that we live on? And it
1:50
looks like our first story today is kind of
1:52
talking about just that, um, they're
1:55
scanning the famous. The Earthrise
1:58
crater on a mission to find
2:01
alien life.
2:03
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, that's right.
2:04
Heidi Campo: Um.
2:05
Professor Fred Watson: Ah, I love this story because it links
2:07
two very different eras in
2:10
space flight. Um, it goes back
2:13
right to the beginning of human flight in
2:16
space, uh, when on
2:18
the 24th of December,
2:21
1968, uh, William
2:24
Anders, one of the three astronauts orbiting
2:26
the moon on the Apollo 8 mission. Apollo 8
2:29
was a mission that did not land on the moon,
2:31
but it was the first time humans had
2:32
circumnavigated the moon. Uh, he took
2:35
that amazing image of the
2:38
gibbous Earth, the Earth, uh, sort of partly
2:41
illuminated, rising above the limb of the
2:43
moon. And, um,
2:46
I, uh, remember that so clearly. Um, Heidi,
2:49
I know it's long before your time but it
2:52
was so exciting, Christmas Eve, really
2:55
special, uh, that we got this image
2:58
back with some very appropriate words as well
3:01
from the crew of Apollo 8. And it was, you
3:04
know, it was the dawn of human spaceflight
3:06
going to the moon. It was really. We thought,
3:10
um. We thought there would be no end to this,
3:12
that we'd be living on the moon by the
3:14
1980s. It was an amazing
3:17
time. Uh, so as I said, I remember it with
3:19
great excitement. You probably picked that up
3:21
already. Uh, now, um, in the foreground of
3:23
that image is a large crater. Um,
3:26
it's about 40 kilometers or 25 miles
3:29
across. Uh, it was known as
3:31
Pasteur T, Named after Louis
3:34
Pasteur, uh, Pasteur T. Not, uh,
3:37
quite sure what the T was. I think it was
3:39
because there's probably a different one with
3:40
a different letter as well. Um,
3:43
um. But, uh, following
3:46
the image and the fame and the iconic
3:49
nature that that image, uh, taken by Apollo 8
3:52
astronauts, um, produced, uh,
3:55
that, uh, crater was renamed,
3:58
uh, Anders Earthrise, named after William
4:00
Anders, who is the astronaut who took the
4:03
photo. And I've just checked and I'm sorry to
4:06
say William Anders is no longer with us. He
4:08
passed away just over a year ago in June
4:11
2024. But an
4:14
exciting life he led. Uh, and so
4:16
here we have this, uh, wonderful crater, well
4:19
known, perhaps the best known of all lunar
4:21
craters, even though it's not one of the
4:23
biggest by any means. Uh, but what has
4:26
happened now, uh, to link it with
4:28
spaceflight today and to link it with your
4:30
intro, uh, which, uh, is
4:33
all related to astrobiology and the hunt
4:36
for evidence of living
4:38
organisms beyond our own planet. Uh, and one
4:41
of the space missions that has that,
4:44
uh, very much in mind is a European one.
4:47
It's not a NASA mission. It's a European
4:49
Space Agency mission. It's called juice.
4:52
Juice, um, is an acronym for the Jupiter Icy
4:55
Moons Explorer. Not quite sure what happened
4:57
to the M in that, uh, in that acronym, but
5:00
never mind. JUICE is a good name. Launched,
5:03
uh, back in, uh, 2023, uh,
5:06
and on its way to Jupiter with a few, um,
5:09
slingshot maneuvers. Uh, it's, uh, going
5:11
to reach Jupiter orbit in
5:14
2031. Uh, and,
5:16
um, why are we talking about that in relation
5:19
to the moon? Because, um,
5:22
the spacecraft, uh, it's actually almost a
5:25
year ago now, actually, um, flew past the
5:28
moon, uh, and used that,
5:31
uh, encounter of JUICE
5:34
with the moon to test one of the
5:37
primary pieces of equipment on board the
5:39
spacecraft. And it's something called rime,
5:41
another acronym, uh, not R H Y
5:44
M E. That Would have been too complicated.
5:45
Complicated. It's Rime, um, uh, the
5:48
radar for icy moon exploration.
5:52
And rime is a device that uh,
5:54
will, we hope, uh, when the spacecraft is in
5:57
orbit around Jupiter, uh, it
6:00
will test the level of
6:04
um. It will basically examine the
6:06
structure beneath the icy surface of
6:09
moons like Europa. Um, it won't be in orbit
6:12
around Europa, it'll be in orbit around
6:13
Jupiter. But it will make many flybys of
6:15
Europa. And in doing that, it will use the
6:18
RHYME instrument to probe
6:21
what's underneath the ice of uh,
6:25
ice, um, moons like Europa, probably some of
6:27
the other ones as well. Uh, Ganymede
6:30
and uh, Callisto are both also thought to be
6:32
ice moons of this kind. A moon with an
6:35
icy surface overlaying a global ocean
6:38
which overlays a rocky body, the sort of moon
6:41
itself. Now in order to test
6:44
the RIME device, this radar for icy moon
6:46
exploration, you need radio, uh,
6:49
silence because it's very, very sensitive. So
6:52
uh, what they did was uh, the
6:55
mission controllers, they switched off all
6:57
the other instruments on board, uh,
6:59
Juice to test rime and
7:02
tested it on. Yes, you've guessed it.
7:05
Uh, the Anders Crater, the
7:08
Anders Earthrise Crater. Uh, so that
7:11
was the zone on the moon that they tested
7:14
the radar with. Uh, and as far as
7:17
I understand it came out absolutely
7:19
perfectly. Um,
7:22
the performance of the instrument was uh,
7:25
as expected. And it looks as though
7:28
we will find, um,
7:31
uh, when Juice gets to Jupiter in
7:34
2031, that it's going to work for.
7:36
Probing the suburbace region of uh,
7:39
of Europa's ice fields.
7:43
Heidi Campo: Well that is just fantastic. So we're
7:46
not quite sure yet, but that information
7:49
is coming. What do you think?
7:52
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, um. You mean
7:56
what do you think they're going to find when
7:57
the spacecraft gets to Jupiter? What's it
7:58
going to find? What do you think I think it's
8:00
going to find? Well, the first thing it'll
8:02
find is layers in the ice.
8:04
It will probably show
8:07
a stratified ice formation.
8:11
Um, what would be brilliant would be. And I
8:14
don't know whether it's capable of doing this
8:16
if it could probe down to the
8:19
lowest layer of the ice where there's an
8:22
interface between the underneath of the ice
8:24
crust and the top of the briny
8:27
ocean, uh, uh, on which the
8:30
ice crust flows and it's liquid too. And it's
8:32
kept that way because of the pressure of the
8:34
ice on top and probably the tidal
8:37
heating. Um, all of Jupiter's moons,
8:40
especially IO, the volcanic one, they're all
8:42
subject to being squashed and squeezed by the
8:44
huge gravity of Jupiter itself. And so,
8:47
um, that warms up the core and keeps the
8:50
ocean liquid. Whether we'll see fish swimming
8:53
in the ocean, uh, I think that might be
8:56
a step too far. But what it might reveal
8:59
is what the depth of the ice is.
9:02
It might tell us what we would need to do to
9:04
go and sample that water directly, how much
9:07
ice we'd need to drill through. It may even
9:09
tell us about the constituents of the
9:11
ocean itself, give us some indication of just
9:14
how briny it is. I
9:17
think it would be, again, a step too far to
9:20
find it penetrating down to the rocky
9:23
seabed of that ocean, because
9:26
that's where we expect to find
9:28
hydrothermal vents. And they are thought to
9:31
have been the cradle of life on Earth. Maybe
9:34
they are the cradle of life on Europa,
9:36
Callisto and Ganymede as well. So lots to
9:40
imagine, uh, in the time between now and
9:43
2031. Uh, I hope Space
9:45
Nuts is still going strong in
9:48
2031. And I hope you feel better by then,
9:50
Heidi.
9:51
Heidi Campo: I hope I feel better by then too.
9:58
Professor Fred Watson: Space Nuts.
10:00
Heidi Campo: Well, our next story is one, uh, that I think
10:03
everybody's going to be really excited about
10:05
because everyone here on Space Nuts is, seems
10:07
to be obsessed with the same thing
10:10
and that is black holes. And
10:13
this is not just any
10:16
black hole. This is a
10:18
exotic. And then it's called a
10:21
blazar. And it's an extreme
10:24
double black hole. What? I didn't even know
10:27
that you could have like a double black hole
10:29
situation going on. But it's a good thing
10:31
that we have you, an astronomer, to
10:34
explain that to us.
10:37
Professor Fred Watson: No, well, I'll do my best. Um,
10:40
uh, so once again, going back to,
10:44
I'm not going quite back as far as, um, the
10:46
Apollo 8 mission, but, um,
10:50
uh, the blazar is
10:53
a fairly new term, uh, that
10:57
has been coined probably within the last 20
10:59
or 30 years. Um, when I was a young
11:02
astronomer at the Royal Observatory in
11:03
Edinburgh, uh, they were a big time topic
11:06
because nobody knew what they were. We had no
11:08
idea that they were black holes back then.
11:10
Uh, um, we called them Bl Lac objects.
11:13
And Bl Lac is an abbreviation for Bl
11:16
Lakerti, uh, which is a
11:19
name for a variable star because that's what
11:22
they were classified as, an extreme variable
11:24
star, a star that varied in its brightness.
11:27
Uh, but once we realized that these are
11:29
actually black holes squirting out jets
11:31
of material that, uh,
11:34
aligns with the Earth and so looks
11:37
very bright, then they were
11:39
renamed blazars. Uh,
11:42
and it's quite nice because The BL is still
11:44
part of BL lac blt. Okay,
11:47
so this particular one has uh, the
11:49
wonderful name of OJ287,
11:52
which is perhaps notable only for its
11:54
brevity, uh, but it's a good name.
11:57
Uh, and it's. It's got, um,
12:00
the uh. Basically the
12:03
object has the distinction
12:06
of producing a jet of material
12:09
which is not quite aligned with our
12:11
own planet, very nearly aligned with it,
12:15
but it's crooked. Uh,
12:17
it's a jet of material that looks like a
12:20
corkscrew. Uh, it's got
12:23
kinks in it basically. And the
12:26
uh, deductions that have been made
12:29
because of the crooked jet of material
12:32
coming from this blazar is
12:35
that it is, um,
12:38
actually not one black hole that is doing
12:41
all the activity. It's two.
12:44
And just to recap, uh, when a black
12:46
hole is in, um, the center of a
12:49
galaxy, a supermassive black hole, uh, it
12:52
has an accretion disk around it, a disk of M
12:55
material that's swirling around the black
12:56
hole that gets very energetic, can emit X
12:59
rays, radio waves. But some of that material
13:02
doesn't get sucked into the black hole. Some
13:04
of it basically gets focused into one of,
13:07
uh, well, a pair of jets going, uh,
13:09
vertically perpendicular to the accretion
13:11
disk, um, which are focused by magnetic
13:13
forces. Now, um, the normal name
13:16
for one of those is a quasar, uh,
13:19
which is an acronym for a quasi
13:22
stellar source. Um,
13:25
uh, and a quasar, uh,
13:28
is basically a single black hole emitting a
13:30
jet of material which, uh, we see very
13:33
brightly, uh, from our vantage point
13:36
on Earth. So, um,
13:39
uh, basically a blazar
13:42
is one of those, but seen head on. So it's
13:44
directly. The material is directly
13:47
being aimed at, uh, the Earth. It's a special
13:49
kind of, uh, quasar.
13:51
Now the, uh, crooked jet tells you
13:54
that there's something else going on. And
13:57
the observers who have done this research,
14:01
uh, and really looked at
14:04
the hypothesis for what's happening
14:07
is that it's not one black hole, but
14:10
two. Uh, one of them
14:13
has, um,
14:15
basically a huge mass,
14:17
18.35 billion
14:20
solar masses. So 18.35
14:23
billion times the mass of the Sun. It dwarfs
14:25
the one at the center of our own galaxy,
14:27
which is about 4 million times the mass of
14:30
the Sun. But this 18,
14:32
uh,.35 billion solar mass black, uh,
14:35
hole is at the center of
14:38
activity there. And that's what's shooting
14:40
out the jet. But, um, it has another
14:43
one going around it which is probably less
14:45
massive. I don't know that there's an
14:47
estimate for the mass of the second one. And
14:49
it's in a very elongated orbit around the
14:52
main black hole. And every 12 years it
14:55
actually, uh, gets close enough to the main
14:57
black hole to sort of
15:00
steam through the accretion disk of the big
15:02
black hole and essentially grab some
15:05
of the material from that disk and
15:07
basically produces its own jet of
15:10
material, uh, and becomes a double
15:13
quasar for a short time. Uh, and
15:16
then, um, it fades away.
15:19
And, you know, observations of, um, this
15:21
object, OJ287, have been a
15:24
mystery until now. Um, back in
15:27
2021, there was a huge increase in
15:29
brightness that only took 12 hours. Uh,
15:32
that's quite extraordinary, uh, you know, in
15:35
something as compact as that. Uh, so
15:38
we've got a, uh, theory that, um. And I
15:41
might just add that it's very nicely
15:43
expounded, uh, on thespace.com
15:46
website by, uh, Keith Cooper, who's written
15:48
an article on this. Uh, and I
15:51
think, uh, the bottom
15:54
line is that this object will continue to be
15:56
observed. We'll find out more about black
15:58
holes. We'll discover more about double black
16:00
holes like this one. Um, my question,
16:03
uh, to the astronomers who've made this, uh,
16:06
research would be, is there any chance of the
16:09
two merging? Because we do know that black
16:11
holes merge. We see their gravitational wave
16:13
signals. Uh, and maybe that would
16:16
be something that, down the track might
16:17
happen. We might get a merger between
16:19
OJ287 and its companion black hole.
16:23
Heidi Campo: I mean, the images are truly incredible. If
16:25
you guys are able to, um, look
16:28
this up, I really encourage you because it
16:31
really. I can't quite describe it, but
16:34
it almost looks like, um, like you. Can
16:36
you. I can't describe it. It looks like they
16:39
are connected though. Like you can see like
16:41
there's this spiraling energy between them.
16:43
It's really interesting.
16:47
Professor Fred Watson: Okay, we checked all four systems, and.
16:49
Heidi Campo: Being with a go Space nets, I also wanted to
16:51
ask you, were you really thirsty when you
16:53
were looking at, um, the articles today?
16:55
Because I realized juice is in all of them.
16:58
With the first one, um, juice, the
17:00
acronym. And then this one's OJ 2,
17:03
8 7. And then the very
17:06
last OJ orange juice. And the very
17:09
last article we have is, uh,
17:12
some people pronounce it Beetlejuice,
17:16
but Beetle. Guys, um, we were
17:19
talking about this before we logged on,
17:21
um, and you told me the
17:24
French way of pronouncing beetle.
17:27
Geist.
17:27
Professor Fred Watson: Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse.
17:30
Heidi Campo: And then what was the German?
17:32
Professor Fred Watson: Well, I don't know whether the Germans say
17:34
it, but it would be Bettel Goiser, I guess,
17:36
in German, but we often call it
17:39
Betelgeuse because that's the easiest way to
17:42
do it. But, uh, what a lovely comment to
17:44
make, Heidi. I hadn't spotted. I had not
17:47
spotted that link between the three stories.
17:49
That's brilliant.
17:50
Heidi Campo: Well, I'm just sitting here listening to you.
17:52
I'm like, wait a second. Every article today
17:54
mentions juice.
17:55
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. So it's a very juicy episode of
17:58
Space Nuts today.
18:01
So, um, and that's a lovely segue to the
18:02
final story as well, which is about
18:04
Betelgeuse or Betelgeuse or whatever you want
18:06
to say. Uh, I copy. Um, Patrick
18:09
Moore, that great science communicator, uh,
18:12
in the United Kingdom, sadly no longer with
18:14
us. But he encouraged many, many people to
18:17
take up astronomy as a hobby and
18:20
another large number to take up astronomy as
18:22
a career. Including the person talking to you
18:25
now. Uh, he pronounced it Betelgeuse. He
18:28
made it French. Um, but Betelgeuse is as good
18:30
as any. And why is it in the news? Because
18:33
for a long time, this star, I should
18:36
say it's the reddish star, uh, on
18:39
Orion's shoulder. And that's the
18:41
constellation of Orion, which is very
18:43
familiar to all of you people in the Northern
18:45
Hemisphere. Uh, and so it's
18:48
the star on his right shoulder, a red
18:51
giant star, very gigantic star, probably
18:53
pretty unstable. Maybe we'll turn it into a
18:56
supernova within the next 10,000 years or so.
18:59
Something to look forward to. Um, but, um,
19:02
now we see Betelgeuse, uh, in a different
19:05
place because our view of Orion is upside
19:08
down. Uh, and, um, people tend to notice more
19:10
the three stars of Orion's belt, which we
19:12
call the base of the saucepan. It's very
19:14
confusing, Heidi. Um, um, but, um,
19:18
it doesn't matter where it is. The main thing
19:20
is, if I remember rightly, it's about 500
19:22
light years away. I can't remember the exact
19:24
figure, but it's something like that. Uh, and
19:26
it's thought there's been a suspicion
19:29
for many decades that it has a companion
19:32
star. Now, companion stars are not at all
19:35
uncommon. Uh, in fact, probably more
19:37
stars in the galaxy are double stars. So they
19:40
have a companion. They're a binary object,
19:42
uh, than single ones. Um, our sun
19:45
is a bit unusual in that respect because it's
19:47
definitely a single star, at least to the
19:50
best of our knowledge so far. Um,
19:53
this, however, is a putative,
19:56
uh, discovery. Sorry, a discovery of a
19:58
putative satellite. Uh, star
20:01
of Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse Uh,
20:04
which has been detected with the Gemini North
20:07
Telescope in Hawaii, one of the eight meter
20:10
class telescopes. That is at the summit of
20:12
Mauna Kea, the mountain on the Big island
20:14
there. Um, and uh, the
20:17
thing that interests me about it, um, because
20:19
we don't really know much about what's
20:21
discovered except there's a faint blob
20:23
showing up next to Betelgeuse, which is
20:25
thought to be the companion M. But the method
20:28
used was something we call speckle imaging,
20:30
um, which is a way of trying to tease
20:33
out detailed information in an image
20:36
in spite of the turbulence of the atmosphere,
20:39
um, sort of blurring the image out,
20:42
uh, as the, as the light comes through it. If
20:45
you can take very, very short exposures, you
20:48
know, perhaps a thousandth of a second,
20:51
take an image lasting that long, you'll
20:53
freeze the turbulence of the atmosphere. And
20:56
by doing that, it's possible to tease out
20:59
much, uh, more detail. This technique called
21:01
speckle imaging. And that's how this object
21:03
has been found. The reason there is
21:06
still some doubt about whether it's a real
21:09
companion or not is because as I understand
21:13
it, over the time that this object has been
21:15
observed, um, Betelgeuse and
21:18
its companion, there's been no apparent
21:20
movement of the companion. Uh,
21:23
and if you've got something in orbit around
21:25
another star, uh, this close as it seems
21:28
to be, you would expect to see some motion of
21:31
the image of the object. We see that with one
21:33
or two of the exoplanets that have been
21:36
discovered. Of the 7,000 odd
21:38
exoplanets that we know, there's only a
21:41
handful that have been seen by direct
21:42
imaging. Most of them, uh, it's by
21:45
deducing their presence from other evidence.
21:48
But one or two have been shown, uh, by direct
21:51
imaging and you can see their motion around
21:53
the parent star. That's why we know those
21:55
planets are real. Now you would expect the
21:57
same thing to happen with a star and a
21:59
companion star like we're talking about now.
22:02
But, um, so far, as far as I know, no
22:05
motion has been detected. And
22:08
once again, if you want to read about that,
22:09
there's a great article on the sky and
22:11
Telescope website.
22:13
Heidi Campo: Well, and I'm looking at this one too. I
22:15
realize now that I probably say this about a
22:17
lot of our articles, but this is also such a
22:19
beautiful image. Um, and the one here.
22:22
So this, this photo is, that's the technique
22:25
they used is the really short,
22:28
um, that is just stunning because
22:31
you, it's.
22:32
Professor Fred Watson: So what, what they do is they, they take
22:34
really short exposures and then they kind of
22:36
stack the good ones, the ones that are
22:38
showing what they expect to show. They stack
22:40
them up to build up what we call the signal
22:42
to noise ratio in the image to make it, uh,
22:45
an image that's got some credibility to
22:48
it rather than just, you know, just noise.
22:50
But yes, you're right. It's a stunning image.
22:52
Heidi Campo: Yeah. Usually you don't, um. I
22:55
don't know what it is about it. There's just
22:57
so much detail in it. It almost looks,
23:00
I don't. Just different from a lot of the
23:02
space images that you see. And it's really,
23:04
really beautiful to me.
23:06
But I also had another thought, um,
23:08
when you introduced this to how you mentioned
23:10
how Orion's upside down for you. And it made
23:13
me remember, um, I think this was
23:16
episodes quite a ways back where we talked
23:19
about how different cultures refer to the
23:22
Moon and different genders. So like, I've
23:24
always. People, people in the US we always.
23:27
I hear the Moon referred to in the female.
23:30
Then you're like, oh. And then I think you
23:31
mentioned, um, Aboriginals mentioned it in
23:34
the masculine. And then it made me really
23:37
think. I'm like, wait a second. Are there
23:38
totally. There's probably totally different
23:40
constellations in every other culture? And
23:43
this would probably be a whole other episode
23:44
and a whole other tangent. But how did we
23:47
come up with the universal
23:49
constellations that astronomers worldwide
23:52
use?
23:55
Professor Fred Watson: Um, yeah, the short answer is they're derived
23:57
from, I, uh, think ancient Babylonian
24:00
constellations. They go back a very, very
24:02
long time, uh, and were
24:05
adopted by the Greeks and Romans. And I think
24:07
it was Ptolemy who basically produced the
24:10
first map that recorded them. That's 2,000
24:12
years ago. And so that's, uh, in what
24:15
you might call Western culture that was
24:17
rooted to existence very early on. And
24:20
those constellations that we're all familiar
24:21
with in the world of astronomy, uh, uh,
24:24
um, they're basically taken from that
24:27
era. But you're absolutely right. Uh, other
24:30
cultures have their own
24:32
constellations. Here in Australia, um, there
24:35
are something like 450 different nation
24:38
groups within Australia. So individual
24:41
groups of Aboriginal people, uh, are,
24:44
uh. And they have their own constellation.
24:46
They have different languages as well. Uh,
24:49
these first nations people in Australia are a
24:52
very diverse and,
24:55
um, interesting set of cultures.
24:58
So constellations vary from one part of
25:01
Australia to another. The traditional first
25:03
nations constellations, they're quite
25:04
different, uh, and have different stories.
25:07
Um, one of them I could just mention in the
25:10
context of Orion. Um, I can't remember where
25:12
this comes from, but it's one of the language
25:14
groups. It may be uh, in Northern Victoria,
25:17
which is one of our states in Australia. But
25:20
they see Orion as a canoe
25:23
with three brothers in it, uh, which are the
25:26
three stars of the belt sitting right in the
25:29
middle. And, um, what we know as the
25:32
Orion Nebula, that faint patch which
25:35
in the northern tradition is Orion's sword.
25:38
Um, they see that as a fish that these three
25:40
brothers have, of course.
25:41
Heidi Campo: Oh, that's so cute.
25:42
Professor Fred Watson: You know. Yeah. Uh, and there are other style
25:45
groups that don't relate to ours. Um,
25:48
uh, I might just mention why I studied this
25:51
and it goes back 20 years. Um, I
25:54
work sometimes with a very well known
25:56
classical music composer in Australia, Russ
25:58
Edwards, who's produced some fabulous music
26:01
in his career. Um, but he and I
26:04
collaborated on his fourth Symphony, which is
26:06
a choral work. So it's got actually two
26:08
choirs singing. And what I did for the words
26:11
was to take a journey right through the sky
26:14
from the far northern horizon here in
26:16
Australia, down to the south polar star,
26:18
which is called Sigma Octantis. Um, and,
26:22
um, in doing that, um, I tried
26:24
to pull together the western star names and
26:27
constellations with their first nations
26:30
equivalent. And it was quite a difficult job
26:32
because there are so many different cultures
26:34
in the aboriginal population of Australia.
26:37
But we did it. Uh, and, um, it actually won
26:40
a major award. The CD that was made won a
26:42
major award.
26:43
Heidi Campo: So beautiful.
26:45
We're gonna maybe. Maybe we'll see if Huw can
26:49
find that symphony and we can have that be
26:51
our exit music for this episode.
26:54
Professor Fred Watson: Well, you never know. He might.
26:55
Heidi Campo: He might.
26:56
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, yeah. ABC cd.
26:57
Heidi Campo: He's pretty incredible. But this was a great
26:59
episode. Thank you so much for joining us.
27:02
And we will catch you, you
27:05
guys, later with our next
27:07
episode, which will be a Q and A episode.
27:10
Until then, see you guys next time.
27:12
Andrew Dunkley: Hello, Fred. Hello, Heidi. Hello, Huw in the
27:15
studio. Andrew, again.
27:16
And since I spoke to you last, we have, uh,
27:20
been sort of halfway around the UK
27:23
from Ireland, uh, in
27:26
Cob, Uh, near County Cork.
27:28
Uh, from there we went across to Liverpool
27:32
and then, uh. No, Edinburgh. Edinburgh.
27:35
Sorry, Fred, I nearly left out Edinburgh. My
27:37
goodness. And then, uh, we went down to
27:39
Liverpool and then around to Dover, then
27:42
across to Norway, which is where we
27:44
spent today in Bergen. And it's been
27:47
a fabulous trip. Uh, unfortunately, Fred did
27:50
not get to go to the Royal Observatory
27:53
in Edinburgh, but, um, did
27:56
see a heck of a lot of the place. That castle
27:58
is remarkable. I mean,
28:01
it stands out like a sore thumb, but, uh,
28:03
a very good sore thumb, if I can put it to
28:06
you that way. But, uh, I can see why. Ah,
28:09
so Many people love Edinburgh, Fred. Uh, I
28:11
know you spent a, uh, great many years
28:14
there and uh, I think you were
28:17
educated in that um, part of the world or I
28:20
know you worked at the Royal Observatory.
28:22
Um, yeah, fabulous.
28:25
Um, uh, Cove was brilliant in Ireland
28:28
and we, we uh, did a lot of uh, things
28:30
connected with the Titanic because the last
28:32
passengers uh, to board the
28:35
Titanic did that, uh, in um,
28:38
in Cove. And most of them were
28:41
Irish, um, immigrants headed for the
28:44
United States and none of them made it.
28:47
Professor Fred Watson: It.
28:47
Andrew Dunkley: Well, not most of them didn't make it, which
28:50
is a very sad tale that most people are very
28:53
much aware of. Then to Liverpool where we um,
28:55
visited the Beatles quite literally. We went
28:58
to all of their houses and uh, did
29:01
quite, quite a bit. We actually did a taxi
29:04
tour of Liverpool visiting the major
29:06
beetle sites and I highly recommend that.
29:09
It was just fabulous. Strawberry Fields.
29:12
Um, gosh, all their houses, their
29:15
schools, uh, Penny Lane, uh, you
29:18
name it, we saw it. And um, that was just
29:21
a terrific day. Uh, one of my
29:24
highlights. And then, uh,
29:26
uh, in Dover we went to the castle and went
29:29
through all the siege tunnels and the World
29:31
War I and World War II tunnels. I didn't
29:34
know. I thought I knew everything, but I
29:35
didn't know that they coordinated the
29:38
evacuation from Dunkirk from the tunnels
29:41
underneath Dover Castle. So there you are.
29:44
And then today we're in Bergen and we
29:46
went uh, looking at fjords
29:49
and waterfalls and I must say
29:52
Norway has got to be one of the most
29:55
picturesque countries I've ever seen.
29:57
It is just dotted with beautiful little homes
30:00
on the sides of mountains overlooking fjords.
30:03
Uh, and these things are enormous. I think
30:05
their biggest ones. 179 kilometers long and
30:08
900 meters deep. And we had a quick
30:11
look at it today. Uh, yeah, beautiful
30:13
harbour, Bergen. And we continue uh,
30:16
our trek, uh, up the coast, uh, to
30:19
Shalden tomorrow. And then we're going to
30:21
cross into the Arctic Circle in a
30:24
few days and visit North Cape, the
30:26
northernmost point of Europe,
30:29
mainland Europe. So looking forward to that.
30:32
Uh, still quite a few stops to go. A uh,
30:34
couple of two or three more weeks on board. I
30:37
think probably three. Uh, but hope all is
30:39
well with everybody. Uh, we've got, got our
30:42
fingers crossed for the northern lights, but
30:44
it's not a good time of year and the
30:46
forecasts uh, at best are 50, 50,
30:49
but mainly May, may be
30:51
opportunistic in Greenland. So
30:54
I'll keep you posted. All right, until next
30:56
time. Take care. See you soon.
30:59
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