Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Asteroids, Alien Signals & Icy Moons: #499 - Unpacking the Latest in Cosmic Discoveries

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Asteroids, Alien Signals & Icy Moons: #499 - Unpacking the Latest in Cosmic Discoveries · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: By there.
• 0:00
  Speaker 2: Welcome to another episode of Space Nats. I'm your host
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Andrew Dunkley. As always, it is great to have your company.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Hope you're well, and I hope you can stay with
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: us because we are going to give you yet another
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: asteroid update. Yes, it's still in the news. I was
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: reading stories online over the weekend and no, it's all
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: doom and gloom twenty twenty four y r four. It's
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: going to kill us all. Well, let's find out the truth.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: We're also going to answer a question. It's not the
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: definitive answer, but it's the answer. At this point in time,
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: are we alone? And the reason new data that's been
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: released SpaceX has got itself into the news again for
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: all the wrong reasons. And there might be another moon
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: in our solar system that harbors a liquid ocean.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: We'll tell you which one it is. On this episode of.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Space Nuts Channel ten nine.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Ignition, Space Nuts three two one, Space.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Nurse and I record it Nels good and he is
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: back for more. It is Johnny Horner, professor of astrophysics
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: at the University of Southern Queensland.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: Johnny, Hello, good afternoon, how are you going.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I am well, good to see you and Johnny warned
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: me that we might hear some dog interruption, not from
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: the dog star but from the dog dogs. Yes, when
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: the other half turns up, because they get very excited that.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: We've been really excited at people walking down the road.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: So well, yeah, that's maybe you can hear them. Maybe
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: you come, but I'm hearing.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: The filters might be stopping it from getting through to
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: the recording. Sometimes that happens. But yeah, well we've heard
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Jordie many many times on the podcast at at friend's house,
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: so yes, not unusual, and we don't mind. We've been
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: interrupted by all sorts of creatures on this show over
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: the years. Let's start off with yet another update on
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: our favorite asteroid might not be our favorite. If you
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: read the Popular Prayers twenty twenty four four.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: What's the latest, Well, the latest, long and short is
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: that catastrophe is averted. It is almost certainly not going
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: to hit it. And this has come around a little
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: bit quicker than I was expecting, actually, but I've seen
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: some beautiful visualizations released by both European Space Agency and
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: NASA over the last few days that have shown what's
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: going on. So I mentioned on the previous episodes that
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: we found this object back on the twenty seventh of December.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: They immediately found some old images that went back to
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: the twenty fifth of December when it was closest to
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: the Earth, and people have been observing it pretty full
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: on ever since. Those that could do, because it's quite small,
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: quite fent. As it receded from the Earth and end
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: of January, the odds of it hitting the Earth got
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: high enough in twenty thirty two, in eight years time,
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: that it was flagged up as been potentially threatening and
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: it got the second highest ever rating on the Plurmar scale.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: So basically, this thing is something to watch out for.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: We're not saying it's going to hit the Earth, but
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: we need more data. As time's gone on since then,
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: we've got more and more data, and for a while,
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: the probability of hitting us on that day, on the
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: twenty second of December twenty thirty two was increasing, and
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: that was exactly what you'd expect. So you get more observations,
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: which means our knowledge of where it will be on
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: that fateful day gets better, so the area of uncertainty
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: on where it will be get smaller, so you're shrinking
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: the volume of space where the asteroid could be and
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: if the Earth stays in that area, the Earth becomes
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: a bigger fraction of that total area, so it's more
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: likely to be hit.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: And what I said at the time was eventually we'd
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: get enough observations that the Earth could potentially fall outside
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: that area, so the area would shrink enough that the
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: Earth kind of popped out of it, fell out onto
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: the other side. And that's what's happened over the last
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: few days. Now the Earth is not totally and absolutely
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: out of the firing line, but it's almost as good
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: as and I'm sure within a day or two it
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: will drop to absolutely zero. So as of the time
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: where recording this, which is February the twenty fifth, the
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: latest probability of an impact is two point seven times
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: ten to the minus five, which means no point not
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: two seven percent, or one in thirty seven thousand. Now,
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: given the last week we were talking about one in
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: thirty three, that's a very dramatic change. And that's big. See,
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: area that the object is going to be in has
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: shrunk and shrunk and shrunk, and the Earth is essentially
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: popped out of the outside. And that's what these beautiful
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: visualizations that are popping up online are showing an interesting
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: part of this so is that while Earth is out
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: of the cross heads, the Moon is still in the crosshairs.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: So there remains a possibility that this thing could hit
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: the Moon, but the probability of an impact on the
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: Moon is still pretty low. So it isn't a case
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: of we're saying the Earth is spared. Watch out anybody
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: who's part of Project Tartemis, you know, walking around on
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: the Moon in eight years time, if that happens. Rather,
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: it's just that the Moon still hasn't fallen out of
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: that area yet, but bad anticipate it probably will do.
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: So the most likely outcome is that this thing will
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: come close, but it's not going to be that close.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, Now, what if it did hit the Moon, what
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: would be the effect. Would it just make a mighty
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: big crater? It'd make not even that mighty, not even
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: that big.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: A good rule of thumb on the Earth is that
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: if something solid makes it to the surface of the Earth,
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: the creater that thing will create is going to be
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: to first order, nineteen times bigger than the impact. Little
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: bit of wiggle room in there obviously a different material
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: for the impact would have an impact. A different speed
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: would have an impact, But first order, it's about a
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: rule of nineteen. I think that changes slightly from body
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: to body, but not hugely, because it's still the physics
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: of rock hitting rock or metal hitting rock. What that
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: means is, if this thing is the size of the
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: best estiments, which is about fifty five meters, then you're
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: looking at about a one kilometer crater, which I mean
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: is substantial. It's big enough for us to observe, but
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: it's nowhere near the biggest anywhere out there. It's probably
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: not big enough that a substantial amount of material will
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: be ejected from the Moon to reach us. But people
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: have tried to fearmonger that a little bit. I've seen
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: a few posts from people online saying if it hits
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: the Moon, the Earth will get hit by a load
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: of debris. Realistically, not much debris would reach the Earth,
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: so we might get a little bit burning up in
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: the atmosphere, but we wouldn't even probably notice, because it
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: seems fairly small. I've seen some studies arguing that you
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: need an impact or at least a kilometer across to
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: eject enough material from the Moon for us to rarely
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: pick it up and notice it from the point of
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: view of looking up.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, all right, well we've got how long to wait?
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: Just other great years, so we can revisit this in
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: the future when Fred is once again looking at Aurora
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: in Scandinavia.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Why not? All right?
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: So the good news is the odds have plummeted, and
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: despite what I read in I don't know how many
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: news outlets on Sunday, the story is very very different today.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a very fast moving story. And if you
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: can find these little animations online, they're worth looking at
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: because it shows you a line that is basically all
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: the possible places the astro coup, and it's that's the
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: result of lots of simulations with slightly different initial conditions
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: that all much within our uncertainty where the object is currently,
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: and you get this long stretch outline. And then with
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: every day of new observations, that line gets shorter and
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: shorter and shorter, and now the Earth is right on
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: the very end of it, barely touched by any of them.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: And I'm sure tomorrow the earthwallpers scott free.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's good news, very good news.
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: Space nuts.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Now to a question that we do get from time
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: to time from our audience asking about whether or not
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: we are alone in the universe. I suppose that is
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: one of the big questions yet to be answered as
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: far as the wider well humanity is concerned. That question
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: has got new data attached to it, which is very
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: interesting because of the way it's been collected. And the
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: downside is the result at this point in time, at
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: this point in time, But yes, are.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: We alone so far? I think that's the best answerment
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: it is.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: So there are two different ways that we'll look to
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: answer this question, and two different things we're looking for.
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  Speaker 3: One is just to look for any evidence of any
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: kind of life, and we're doing that within the Solar system,
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: and we're doing outside of the Solar system by looking
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: for subtle indications that there could be life in various
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: places and will probably amount to finding something that's out
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: of equilibrium that shouldn't be there. A good example being
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: the phosphene observations on Venus a few years ago that
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: reads a lot of excitement but are probably not actually
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: a life, but we don't know. It's finding something out
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: of place and inferring that life is the best explanation
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: that could exist for it, and that's where we're going
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: to be doing a lot of work in the coming
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: decade or two looking at planets around the starts. That
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: is a search for any life, particularly simple life, and
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: I think, you know, as a little bit of an aside,
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: I think we're more likely to find simple life before
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: we find complex life, just because of the amount of
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: available real estate and the amount of available time. So
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: if you look back at the history of the Earth,
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: it seems to be accepted that we've had life on
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: Earth for at least three and a half thousand million
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: years old. Its fossils are found in the Pilburg in
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: Western Australia. That's really kind of cool. We've only had
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: complex life on Earth for about five hundred million years,
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: so I think there are some studies this week I
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: saw that suggest it might have been around a bit
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: longer than that. So what that means is if you
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: could do something really bizarre and make a dice with
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: seven sides, which I've had somebody tell me is almost
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: impossible to do, but you know, get a seven sided
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: die instead of a six sided die and roll that die.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: You're looking at the Earth at some point in that
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: three and a half billion year period, and only if
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: you roll a seven would you see the Earth when
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: there was complex life. So six times out of seven
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: yard hitters when there's simple life. The other side of
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: it is if you look at the habitats that life
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: occupies on Earth, you know there are a far, far,
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: far far greater amount of habitats where simple life can
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: thrive than where complex life can thrive. You know, if
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: I took you up to forty thousand feet and let go,
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: you wouldn't so much fly as plummet in the immortal
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: words munty python, but we find bacteria up there. If
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: I drop you in, you know, one of the superheated
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: lakes in Yellowstone, you'd dissolve quicker than people could pull
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: you out, and that would be pleasant. But we find
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: bacteria there. So there are far there's a far wider
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: envelope of environments where you could find simple life than
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: where you'd find complex life. All of that is based
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: on the caveat that we're looking at life like Earth
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: life of God, and that's a very big caveat. Is
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: an assumption that is implicit in what most people discuss,
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: and I think it's important to make it explicit. You
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: watch Star Trek and you imagine multen metal men wandering
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: around on magma planets and things like this, and intelligent
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: hydrogen clouds. But when we're looking for things like life,
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: it makes more sense to look for something we know
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: can exist than for something that we could speculate might exist.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: And so we know of Earth life, so that forms
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: our first template, and that will inform our first search.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: Even though you'd admit that there could be other kinds
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: of life out there, and with Earth life as a template,
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: you'd argue that for most of the time there's been
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: life on Earth, we only have simple life. And in
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: most of the places and environments you can find life
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: on Earth, you can only find simple life. So that
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: suggests to me simple life will be more common than
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: complex life and the cosmos, and we're more likely to
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: find that. Of course, that Zafemer saying that the only
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: prediction you can make that is accurate is that all
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: predictions will be wrong. So when we do find life,
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: please don't shout at me. But that's kind of where
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: I take it. But the coming back to the story,
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: after I get derailed and go on a diversion, this
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: story is looking at the other way, we can search
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: for life, which is the one that has the potential
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: for greater reward and greater excitement, but a lower potential
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: for success, and that's a search for extraterrescural intelligence or
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: SETI or the associated search for extraterreassural technology. So this
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: is looking instead of looking for any life, it's looking
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: for life that has technology at least as advanced as ours,
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: that is in some way making itself known to the cosmos.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: Now in some degree, I've heard this described as searching
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: for a needle in a haystack when you don't know
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: what a haystack is and you've never seen a needle.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: It's trying to listen for something that another species that
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: has technology would create that we could identify as being
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: definitively caused by life. And because a bit like the
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: science fiction analogy earlier on, we can imagine a wide
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: variety of things, what this kind of work tends to
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: do is focus on the things that we as humanity
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: do that we could detect if we were elsewhere in
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: the cosmos with sufficiently advanced technology. And the one that
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: often gets a hat hung on it and said, this
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: is one we'll look at is a search for broadcasts.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: I guess like this podcast is. When it goes out
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: on ABC and it's broadcast on the radio bits of it,
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: then that's been broadcast in all directions with a certain
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: amount of power so that when somebody tunes in the
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: car they can listen to it. And that means that
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: this broadcast will be winging its way out into space,
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: and somebody with a sufficiently sensitive radio receiver pointed at
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: the Earth at just the right time could tune in
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: and tell me that I'm talking rubbish. Essentially, that's probably
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: what would happen, or the churn over and say, look,
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: please don't cancel neighbors. You know that needs to run
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: on and on and on. Now you make an assumption
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: that other technologically advanced species, if they exist, would follow
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: a similar technology route to us, then that suggests that
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: there'll be a period of time when those species too,
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: broadcast to the cosmos. Now, the analogy I use a
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: little bit here is a bit like a toddler in
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: a cave screaming its lungs out. Eventually they'll learn to
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: control themselves. So we're already finding on Earth that we
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: are throwing less signal into space, and we used to
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: because it's more efficient to broadcast point to point are
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: through cables. So a lot of people will listen to
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: this through their wired Internet that comes through cables or
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: through Heaven for fens, through stalink where it's point to points,
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: so there's not much wasted and so eventually people are
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: predicting the Earth will go radio acquired again. But this
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: is one way that we know we as a society
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: are making ourselves obvious to aliens that are out there,
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: if they exist and if they've got the technology to
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: listen in So that has inspired a lot of people
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: to turn the telescope skyward with radio telescopes and listen
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: to see if we can get alien signals. And that's
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: been fundamentally what set he is. It's been really useful
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: to us in the Australian astronomy community. Exit's the many
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: reason that the Parks Radio Telescope is still operating. Curtsey
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: of the breakthrough a listening initiative. But people have been
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: listening and they've tried listening at all sorts of different frequencies.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: They've done targeted searchers looking at a few stars like
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: the Sun. They've also piggybacked off other surveys where people
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: are getting radio observations for a totally different reason, and
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: the SETI people get hold of those observations and check
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: them just to see to see whether there's a TV
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: broadcast buried in that essentially. But the challenge of doing
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: this historically is that it's very labor intensive because there's
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: a lot of different radio sources out there that are
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: natural and you need to rule them out. You find
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: a signal, it looks weird, but if it's natural, it's
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: not aliens, so you've got to rule that out. You've
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: then got a whole heap of you know, human generated
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: signals that you've got to rule out, and they can
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: be harder because it could be Spice satellites gone through
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: and nobody's going to set to you will actually know
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: you've called us. That was my spiceack, like we were
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: trying to watch them filming neighbors. I don't know why
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: I've got NIBBs on the man, given that I've never
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: watched the thing, but there you go. I think that's
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: what it is. I saw that story and given them
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: my joke about, you know, searching for aliens. Is that
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: they'll come and tell us to turn it off and
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: stop it. It seems ironic, but anyway, you know, it
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: could be a spicack like looking down. It could be
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: as simple as a microwave in the next building that
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: somebody was warming their dinner up. And that has actually
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: happened before. People has detected microwaves in other buildings. So
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: it's really really complicated. And what that means is that
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: a lot of these efforts to look for alien technology
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: and alien signals have been limited by the human resources
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: available to them, which brings us finally to this new survey.
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: And I know I've gone in a very long roundabout
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: route there there's this incredible radio facility called the Very
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: Large Array over in the US that the square kilometer
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: Array is going to be bigger and better, and we're
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: going to have that in Australia, so we can wear
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: a flag and say, well who but the Very Large
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: Arrays been doing incredible observations for a very long time.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: If I remember correctly, those who like the movie Contact,
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: which is based on the Calsagen book, some of the
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: scenes were shot at the veryl Argirae if I remember right.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: So if I'm wrong again, please don't shout too loudly,
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: but my memory is that that's the vertyl Argerira that
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: featured in that film.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: Anyway, the Vinyl Largirae has spent a huge amount of
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: time scanning, particularly the Northern Hemisphere sky because it's a
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: Northern Hemisphere facility, doing all sorts of radio astronomy observations
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: of all sorts of things. A team has developed something
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: that they call Cosmic. Now I'm just finding the acronym here.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: Cosmic is a commensal open source multimode interferometric cluster, which
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: is a mouthful, which is why they call it cosmic.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: It's a very large computer and software setup that essentially
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: attempts to automate that complex process that I described where
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: you've got to rule out all of the posts signals.
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: It's been heavily built and coded so that every single
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: observation that they get, they can run through this pipeline
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: and it will say, does it have anything in it
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: that could look like it's of an alien origin? Filter
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: it down heavily. If it passes that first test, then
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: you run another test that said, could any astronomical phenomenon
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: explain this? If it fails that test, it gets thrown out.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: Next it says, could it be anything that we know
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: of that is of human origin, and if it fails
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: that test, it's thrown out. So it filters it down
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: to give the people who do the checking a tiny
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: shortlist rather than an incredible long list. Now doing that,
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: they've been able to take nine hundred and twenty thousand
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: different observational pointings from the very large array. That's nine
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: hundred and twenty thousand different radio observations of different parts
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: of the night sky and analyze them one after another
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: looking for any signal of aliens. And this does clever things.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: It looks for a signal that is localized on the sky,
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: so it looks like it's coming from one particular star.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: It even looks to check for the red shift and
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: the blue shift of that signal, because if it's on
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: a planet going around that star, the frequency will change
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: a little bit as a result of the planet's movement
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: around the star. So it digs into a whole heap
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: of things to do these filters and allows them to
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: throw a lot of things away. So this has served
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: eighty two percent of the entire northern hemispherre nite sky,
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: like actually nine hundred and fifty thousand pointings of the telescope,
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: and what they've found was they've flagged a few interesting signals.
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: None of them turn out to be aliens. So after
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: all this work, after all this waffle, after all my diversions,
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: the result is we've found nothing. But that's the risky run,
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: because at the end of the day, if technologically advanced
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: life is out there, there's no guarantee it will broadcast
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: this way. As I said earlier on, we're probably going
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: to be radio quiet again within just a few decades,
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: even if we don't wipe ourselves out, so we'll stop broke.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: So then there'll be a single little shell of radio
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: emissions about one hundred light years wide, expanding into specially
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: on the Sun. And if you're in that one hundred
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: year window, you'll be able to tune in and listen
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: to us. If you're too early or too late. You
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: want here now. One hundred years it's a long time
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: to me and you, and I'd love to think how
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: last one hundred years on this planet. But in the
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: scale of the cosmos, our Earth has had life on
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: it for three and a half thousand million years, and
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: only for one hundred years of that has the Earth
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: had a signal. So that's a one in thirty five
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: million chance of looking at Earth while it's have life
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: and hearing our radio broadcasts. And that's the lower odds
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: than the asteroid hitting it is.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also lower odds are winning payable anyway.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Interesting story in that.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, they've found a new way, but they haven't
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: found anything yet, and they have had a lot of targets.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean it's not out there somewhere. It's
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: not saying there isn't intelligent life. But I do agree
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: with you that finding microbial life or single cell.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Life of some kind.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: Is in the foreseeable future, and we've got missions headed
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: out in.
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: A very near future to try and find just that
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: we do. We might even talk about those in the
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: Q and A episode later on.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: We might do that.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: But the probability of finding life in our own solar
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: system is pretty reasonable. I wouldn't like to put a
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: number on it, but I think that the odds are
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: pretty good. Fred also feels the same way. So even
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: that would be one of the greatest discoveries in human history,
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: because so far we only know one place where there
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: is life, and that's us. So time will tell. But
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: when they the super kella fregilistic array up and running,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: that might.
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: Get and people will be applying these same kind of
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: techniques to the square kilometer or I want it something now,
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: because it's the obvious way to do things, especially when
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: you've got good computing power. But I think the other
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: thing this highlights, which I think astronomy in general does
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: really really well, is the importance of reporting no results
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: or negative results. Now, once upon a time of the
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: distant past that dated a biologist, and there was a
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: real problem in her field that when people did an
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: experiment and they found nothing, they couldn't really get it published.
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: Either the company that was sponsoring it wasn't very keen
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: on them publishing it, or the journal said, well, look,
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: you've not found anything, so we're not going to report it. Now,
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: Let's say you do an experiment that isn't going to
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: find anything, but it's not that accurate, so there's a
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: small uncertainty in your results. You find nothing, you don't
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: publish it. So someone else goes away and does the
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: same experiment. They find nothing. But eventually, due to the
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: where statistics worth. Someone might get a signal that looks
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: interesting and they'll publish it, and you get a almost
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: misleading idea of whether this thing happens or not, whether
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: this thing works or not. And this was something that
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: she was concerned with. She ended up leaving the field.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: And it's a real challenge that you're facing a lot
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: of disciplines is that it is much much easier to
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: publish a result that is explicitly, we found something, we
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: observe something. There is a signal here, we found it.
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: But publishing the opposite of that, which is we looked
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: and found nothing, is very hard. And Astronomy has done
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: and continues to do a really good job of people
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: being able to publish the results when they find nothing.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: And we find this in the extra planet again, we
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: observe a style. We don't find any planets, but will
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: include it in a paper and we'll publish the data
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: to say we watch the STAF for a decade and
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: nothing happened. And the beauty is that makes that there
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: to public It means that other people with similar levels
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: of equipment towards don't waste their time, but it also
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: means that you've got that data there, so somebody with
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: higher resolution observations in future can use your dicta as
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: well as part of their analysis. And it's a really
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: critical part of science to be able to report what
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: you didn't find. And I think it doesn't occur to
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: me that often, but there's a certain amount of pride,
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: I think in the fact that astronomy remains a discipline
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: where you can try to look for something and fail
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: and still get your work published and still progress your
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: career because you've still advanced our knowledge because you've lowered
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: the possibilities or you've lowered the fair space of what
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: could be by ruling out what can't be.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: And there's also the fact that what we're witnessing now
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: is new studies and new papers being published based on
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: historical data, historical gathering of information, and they hadn't been
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: able to analyze it the way they can now because
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: the technology has improved, So they've been able to do
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: studies now based on information that was published twenty thirty
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: years ago when the technolog he was far inferior.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: So you can you know, you can.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Use those those papers for.
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's the probably we wilcome back to with
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: our final story in this, I think so. I also
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: see that Fred has returned.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Hello Fred Watson, here he is.
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: Hello, how are you, gentlemen?
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: We are, well, it's nice to see you.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: When you you were going to drop in, we thought
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: we'd just surprise everyone. We didn't pre empt it because
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: I also considered the possibility you might forgot.
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: Yes, I considered that as well. Jetlag does funny things
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: to your brain.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Indeed it does.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: You came in right at the end of this story.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: And if you'd like to read up on that search
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: for extraterrestrials, the new way of doing it that has
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: found nothing yet, you can do that at space dot com.
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: Okay, we tacked.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Spaces all right, Fred, you gonna sort of why don't
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: we Why don't we throw to you now that you're
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: back and you can tell us a little bit about
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: your trip because you've been away for it feels like
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: four or five years.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: No offense, Joddy, that was just one answer from me.
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, well I want to go there. But the yes,
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: the trip was pretty hard work actually, because we were
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: many and I were leading one of her tour, actually
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: three of her tours, three separate ones, which were all
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: back to back. We started off in Sweden, went to
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: far northern Sweden, far northern Norway for the first time.
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: I got to the North Cape, a latitude of seventy
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: one degrees, so farthest north I've.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: Ever been, I think.
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: Then we went down back down to Oslo, flew across
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: to Requivic and had a really wet and snowy ten
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: days I think it was eleven days in Iceland again
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: going to bits of Iceland that I'd never seen, the
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: Northwest in particular, some quite extraordinary places there, including one
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: of the highlights was the place where astronauts used to
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: go to train in the Apollo era to train in geology,
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: and there's a little museum there. It's basically a small
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: town at the end of the road, almost not very
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: much to recommend it under normal circumstances, but this amazing
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: museum and they get visits very frequently from past and
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: present astronauts, which is fabulous. It was a great experience.
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: And then we went from Reki Victor Nook in Greenland,
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: where we spent the last eleven days of our tour.
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: Greenland is a totally fascinating place in every possible way.
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: It is stunning physically, you have an ice sheet which
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: we stood right at the edge of a few coastal
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: towns and wait for this, no roads between them, not
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: at all. All trans transport between towns in Greenland is
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: either by boat or by air, and we did it
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: by air. So yeah, some amazing stuff. What drove the trip,
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: of course, were the chance to see sites like the
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: Northern Lights, chance to walk on glaciers in Iceland and
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: stand beside active volcanoes. And the thing that blew my
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: mind in Greenland were the icebergs. Just astonishing, these, you know,
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: half kilometer long lumps of ice floating past our hotel
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: window as they carved off the theluly Sat was the
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: name of the.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Town where we were at that time.
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: At the end of the ill, I can't say the
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: word iluli Sat Fjord. Right at the other end of
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: it is the Greenland ice sheet, and it carves off
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: all these icebergs as you see them go past the
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: I guess. The other highlight was, particularly in northern Norway
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: and Sweden, and also again in Greenland, some fabulous sightings
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: of the Aurora borealis. We had some great times with that,
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: wonderful images taken by our whole group and I got
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: quite a few as well, using sad to say one
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: of these, it's just believable.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: They did take amazing pictures. I saw a couple that
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: you posted early in your car.
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: Oh good, Yeah, yeah, forgotten I've done that. It's five
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: and a half weeks and so it's been a long time.
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: It's been hard work looking after these wonderful customers that
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: we have, some of whom might be listening to this
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: because a lot of our clients sort of came to
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: us through Space Notes. They're all fabulous people. We've enjoyed
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: their company throughout three different groups, one or two people
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: in common throughout both of them, and had a great time.
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: The one who listened during my absence was telling me
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: how great they thought John t is. So that was
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: good news because that's why we asked him to do
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: the gig.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the checks in the past, Fred, thank you.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: So hard work but very enjoyable, and I have to
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: say many and I are sort of now recovering and
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: facing the next big thing, which is a Dark Sky
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: conference in Melbourne in about two weeks time. So there's
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: twenty people coming to that and we'll be talking about
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: all that kind of thing.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Judy and I will be in Greenland and Iceland
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: later this year, so we're really looking forward to it.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: We're actually doing in an Iceberg tour.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and on I don't know what kind of bird
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: it is, probably one that'll get me wet, but yeah,
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: really looking really looking forward to that.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: See, I think you should set the next trip or
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: one of the future trips for that to coincide with
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: Germinid Maximum as well. So Germanids are obviously the highlight
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: of the year for everything, and being in December, that's
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: perfect dark skytime so you could sit out under the
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: northern light, sancy natural fireworks as well.
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: There's always a special reason for watching the Germanids, John
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: t which you might not be aware of, but they
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: peak on my birthday, so it's it's a natural it's
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: a natural birthday prison.
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they've just got met and beter and better
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: as well, because I mean, I know when I was
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: watching them in the nineties they were very, very good,
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: and they're still getting better on a decadal basis because
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: see media streams gradually talking round and we're still what's
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: seeing the best of them, so they're still improving.
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there you go. So just one final comment
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: from me, if I may, Andrew, and that is thanks
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: to both of you for holding the floor so well
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: and especially john Ty for jumping into the hot seat.
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: It was.
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: It's been absolutely, absolutely terrific you, you know, being being
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: our favorite depth and stand by and we look forward
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: to welcoming you back in them.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: Glad you had a good break. That sounds it was.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: It's been great. It's been cope with Johnny.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: It's all right, okay, well you down all slope the
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: nice and at seven o'clock in the morning.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: He's been terrific, he really has, despite the bad poetry
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: I throw it. I throwed him from time to time. Yes,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: you know, stick around or you got to go.
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: If I may, I'll stick around. But it's john Ty's gig.
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: I'm just going to sit in the background and enjoy it.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: That's all right, Yeah, all right, Well we're going to
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: do We're talking now about Johnny's favorite punching bag and
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: that is Spacex' what's the latest with them?
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I always, and I say this quite often, I
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: try and take felly even handed side of things when
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: I talk about Elon Musk and SpaceX and what they
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: do because I think it's like all good characters in books.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: The best characters are not evil or good, but they're
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: somewhere in between, and they do good things and bad things.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: But this week I think we're talking more about the
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: things that haven't quite worked right. So earlier on I
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: think possibly the first episode I was substituting in, we
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: talked about the starship launch that went wrong and everything
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: went boom and fragments fell over the Turks and Caicos islands.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: And interestingly, there is a link to a pretty lengthy
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: and quite startling article on CNN which we might be
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: able to put out with the podcasts. From the thirtieth
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: of January. I'd not really followed up on it, but
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: people in the Turks and Caicos were complaining about the
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: lack of engagement from SpaceX, the fact that they're finding
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: debris all over the place. A car was damaged by
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: some of it, and loads of it floating and washing
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: up on the beaches, and nobody's made any efforts to
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: contact them or collect any or do the cleanup. Now
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: that may have changed. SpaceX has historically been reasonably good
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: at cleaning up its mess, but I was quite solid
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: reading that article through the level to which there was
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: a bit of upset there, and that the photographs of
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: all this debris washing up on the beaches was quite startling,
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: when in the days after that it was just said,
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: oh it fell in the Atlantic, it went over the
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: and kcos but it was out in open ocean, so
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: that was quite sobering. But I only came across that
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: because see there was another high profile SpaceX. Things didn't
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: work as expected. That's made a lot of the news
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: over the last week, particularly on the BBC website, but
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: also on space dot com fabulous images again all over
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: the app formly known as Twitter, and all over Blue
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: Sky and things like this. Because one of SpaceX's falk
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: and nine rockets, the upper stages of those are not reusable.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: These are the bits that go so high they can't
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: just bring them back and land them, and typically they
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: bring them back in a controlled re entry. So they say,
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: this thing is going to come back to worth, but
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: we're going to force it to the orbit at a time.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: We want it to in a place where it's going
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: to be far from land, keeping it as safe as possible.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: But this one in particular failed to come back in
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: at the start of February and had gone out of control.
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: So everybody knew it was going to come back in
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: at some point at some time in some place, but
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: nobody was really sure why. So it's like your typical
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: failed attempt at being menacing. You know, at some time,
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: at some place in the indeterminate future, something bad might
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: possibly happen, maybe, and then it did. So there's all
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: this footage from northern Europe, starting from kind of Lincolnshire
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: in the UK of yet another one of these space
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: Debruy re entry events. Spectacular, incredible scenes that people have shot,
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: but the actually made it to the ground in fairly
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: substantial chunks over Poland and potentially also over the Ukraine.
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: Now I've not actually seen any reports showing debris on
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: the ground in the Ukraine because obviously it's hard to
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: get images out and given all the other problems they're
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: facing at the minute. Although to be fair, this is
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: the last thing that they need is additional bits of
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: metal dropping on their country. But there are lots of
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: bits that fell over Poland, including one bit that was
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: found that is one and a half meters by one
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: meter that damaged some lights and stuff around a warehouse.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: So this isn't just a bit of debris burning of
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: palmusle in the atmosphere. This again is stuff making it
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: to the ground intact, which is where people get worried.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: And it ties in quite nicely with some of the
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: things that were being reported back with the Starship launch.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: Some statistics that was worked out based on the frequency
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: things were coming back in twenty twenty three an hour
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: use of airspace, saying that there was a twenty six
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: per cent chance in any given year of a major
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: space debrus re entry event over popular highly used air space.
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: And that's exactly what this was. The report a few
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: years ago that said the likelihood of somebody dying from
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: space every in the next decade could be as high
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: as one in ten. And this is the sobering reminder
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: of that, because at the end of the day, for
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: a bit of a SpaceX rocket, there's one meter buy
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: one and a half meter lands on your head that's
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: going to put a sizeable dent in your day. And
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: there is fabulous footage about this, and I think the
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: thing that offsets this is that SpaceX are trying to
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: do things right. To give them the credit, they're bringing
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: things back in as much as they can in a
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: controlled fashion. We talked about this with a stylent sapllite
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: the other week and on the whole they're trying to
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: do that right now. There are other concerns, things like
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: the pollution side of it. But this is a big
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: reminder that space is difficult. Things go wrong and when
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: we continue to put this many rockets up there, from
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: time to time, some of them will come back in
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: an uncontrolled fashion. And this is the second time, just
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: in this calendar year, where significant trunks of debris have
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: fallen over popular today space, bits of either lundered or
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: washed up on pluss where people live. You know, somebod
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: this car was damaged in one event, some of this
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: warehouse damaged in another. It's not all planned selling. I
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: guess it's a tack on from this. And there's a
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: lot of fabulous coverage of it all over if you
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: do a bit of browsing around.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And some of the pictures are incredible and
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: the footage, this video footage and photographic material that shows
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: and over a wide area, over a very wide area
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: from England right through to Poland. These images have been
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: published and yeah, I mean there's spectacular look at. But
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: the fact that big chunks are hitting the ground and
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: doing damage that is scary stuff. And read you and
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: I have talked about in the past not only the
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: threat or the potential threat to life as a consequence
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: of this human being killed or injured under these circumstances,
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: but also what the impact might be in the insurance
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: industry because people may have to ensure against this kind
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: of thing.
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: Sorry, John Ty, we've got stalin age.
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: Sorry.
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: Starship as coming up this week, is that right? The
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: launch of the next So.
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's come around quicker than anticipated, and it's because
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: SpaceX are very transparent in their efforts to understand what
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: went wrong, so they've been able to escalate the approvals
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: through may or may not have anything also to do
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: with the prominence of their owner at the minute and
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: his strong connections. But yeah, I'm surprised that they're launching
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: again so quickly after that went wrong. But they are
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: very enthusiastic on testing things by destruction. They are quite
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: rightly of the opinion that when things go wrong, that's
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: when you learn the most, and that's when you can
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: viccings and improve them. And they've done a fabulous job
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: that's how their whole business model has worked all the
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: way through. But it still feels a little bit too soon.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Well, they're talking about the twenty eighth of February actually, yes,
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: as the next mega rocket launch.
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: So and most of these things are streamed live, of course,
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: aren't they. So you will be able to watch along
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: with that if you're interested in that kind of thing.
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: And I think that's another really positive that's come out
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: of this. When I was a kid, launchers were not
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: as common, but you only ever heard about the month
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: of news when something went wrong. And I remember as
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: a kid challenger, I remember the other Shuttle disaster during
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: my PhD, but other than that, you couldn't watch it.
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: It's not like it was live and televised. And yet
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: now you can tune in, you can watch these things
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: as they happen, both NASSA launchers but SpaceX launchers. It's fabulous.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: It's a great time to be lying.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh well, it's reach to point where people go
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: to watch these things like they do go to watch
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: Nest car races and you only go for the crash.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: So it's that's kind of where it's sort of and
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: SpaceX hasn't appointed very they've had several successful failures, so yes,
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: it's a bit of a scheduled disassemblies. Is that what
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: you disassembly is another one?
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Anyway, Friday, apparently the Starship Bait launch is scheduled for
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: so we'll see how that pans out.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: It'd be interesting to see if anybody flying to Johannesburg
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: with Quantas gets de layed with that one, because that
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: was another problem with the previous one, because they are
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: where they look to bring in the upper stedge of
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: Starship if it goes well, it's directly on the flight
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: path from Sydney to Hammersburg, and so Quantus flights kept
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: being delayed at short notice. When SpaceX said we're going
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: to launch, actually no we're not. Oh no, we're going
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: to launch now. No we're not, because you can't fly
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: through the space where a rocket might hit your plane,
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: even though the odds are vanishingly small,