Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / James Webb's First Light, Galactic Anomalies & Space Surprises: #486 - Holiday Special 6
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: With Fred and I taking a little bit of a break.
- 0:03Speaker 1: We thought it'd be great to dig into the archives
- 0:06Speaker 1: and see what sort of stories really captured the imaginations
- 0:09Speaker 1: of people around the world. Things like opening up moon
- 0:13Speaker 1: rocks fifty years after they were collected. Other things like
- 0:17Speaker 1: the first photographs taken by James Web or the first
- 0:21Speaker 1: image of Sagittary Say Star. Those are the kinds of
- 0:24Speaker 1: things we've been talking about over the years. So sit back, relax,
- 0:28Speaker 1: and enjoy archival episodes of Space Nuts.
- 0:32Speaker 2: Space Nuts.
- 0:33Speaker 1: Hi, there, thanks for joining us on another edition of
- 0:36Speaker 1: Space Nuts. My name is Andrew Dunkley, your host, and
- 0:40Speaker 1: today on the program, we are going to be talking
- 0:43Speaker 1: about the big news of the week, probably the big
- 0:46Speaker 1: news of the year, and that is the first image,
- 0:50Speaker 1: official image from the James Web space Telescope. It's only
- 0:55Speaker 1: been announced in the last hour or two since we
- 0:58Speaker 1: started recording, so it's fresh off the press or off
- 1:02Speaker 1: the President's desk, whichever way you want to look at it.
- 1:05Speaker 1: And Alex from New South Wales is apparently going to
- 1:08Speaker 1: ask a question about the size of galaxies. That's all
- 1:12Speaker 1: to come on this edition of Space Nuts.
- 1:15Speaker 2: Fifteen second guidance is internal ten nine ignition squench space
- 1:22Speaker 2: nuts or three two one space notes as.
- 1:29Speaker 1: When actually bought it. Bill's good and joining us as
- 1:33Speaker 1: always is Professor Fred. What's an astronomer at large? Hello? Fred?
- 1:37Speaker 1: How are you very well?
- 1:39Speaker 2: Thanks? Very excited with all that's going on?
- 1:41Speaker 1: Oh man, it's just crazy town at the moment. It
- 1:45Speaker 1: is the astronomy world.
- 1:47Speaker 2: Is agog a dog? That's right, It's not a word
- 1:51Speaker 2: I get to use very often. Yeah, I like a gog.
- 1:55Speaker 2: I think it's it's got to ring to it. Yeah.
- 2:00Speaker 1: That we'll get to that in a moment. Of course.
- 2:02Speaker 1: We have plenty to talk about and some audience questions,
- 2:06Speaker 1: as I mentioned, And you've got a studio guest, Fred,
- 2:11Speaker 1: are you able to share this with our viewing audience?
- 2:15Speaker 1: If you're watching this on YouTube, you get ready for
- 2:18Speaker 1: a surprise.
- 2:20Speaker 2: To let everybody know that he still exists. There's Muskats
- 2:24Speaker 2: musk our family cart who normally doesn't come into the
- 2:28Speaker 2: study here because it leaves copious quantities of hair wherever
- 2:32Speaker 2: he goes. But he's been asleep there in the chair
- 2:35Speaker 2: all morning and all most of the afternoon, so he's here.
- 2:39Speaker 1: He's doing so much. He's doing his hats proud, because
- 2:42Speaker 1: that's what cats do best. No, it's good to have
- 2:47Speaker 1: Muskat in the studio, right. Let us get down to business,
- 2:53Speaker 1: and first on the agenda is this amazing image that
- 2:58Speaker 1: has been delivered by the James web Space Telescope. Spent
- 3:02Speaker 1: a lot of anticipation about what the first image would be,
- 3:05Speaker 1: a lot of anticipation about how far reaching the James
- 3:11Speaker 1: Webb Space Telescope will be in its capacity to provide
- 3:17Speaker 1: deep field imagery from far, far back in the universe,
- 3:22Speaker 1: and it has not disappointed.
- 3:24Speaker 2: For it, not at all. That's right. So what we're seeing,
- 3:28Speaker 2: and I would guess most of our listeners will have
- 3:31Speaker 2: seen this because I think it's going to be the
- 3:33Speaker 2: cover picture on the podcast for today. It really is
- 3:38Speaker 2: a beautiful image of a cluster of galaxies which has
- 3:44Speaker 2: always has a gobbledegook name. It is SMACs zero seven
- 3:49Speaker 2: twenty three. SMAC stands for Streaming Motions in Abell clusters
- 3:59Speaker 2: and a Bell clusters are clusters that were cataloged by
- 4:03Speaker 2: Georgia Bell, who I knew when he worked in Edinburgh
- 4:05Speaker 2: for a while. So cluster is a cluster of galaxies,
- 4:09Speaker 2: but of course, like so many of these giant clusters.
- 4:12Speaker 2: Its mass acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying and distorting
- 4:17Speaker 2: the images of galaxies in the far distance behind it.
- 4:21Speaker 2: And so this particular cluster shows up beautifully in you know,
- 4:28Speaker 2: the kind of colors that you would expect to As
- 4:31Speaker 2: you know, the gems Web telescope is an infrared telescope,
- 4:34Speaker 2: excuse me. So it can look at the image in
- 4:37Speaker 2: various infrared wavebands, and what you can do is sort
- 4:42Speaker 2: of equate those to visible light wavebands, so that things
- 4:46Speaker 2: that are in the far infrared show up as red
- 4:50Speaker 2: in the visible things that are you know, in the
- 4:53Speaker 2: mid infrared shop as white. Things that are in the
- 4:58Speaker 2: near infrared, in other words, not much redder than red,
- 5:00Speaker 2: they'll show up probably as blue. I'm not quite sure
- 5:02Speaker 2: how they did the color balancing in this image, but
- 5:05Speaker 2: they've got it absolutely right, because the nearby stars are blue,
- 5:09Speaker 2: the relatively nearby cluster of galaxies is white, and the
- 5:12Speaker 2: distant ones, as you might expect it, because they're highly
- 5:15Speaker 2: red shifted, they look orange in color and again distorted.
- 5:20Speaker 2: So we're looking back here, you know, it will be well,
- 5:25Speaker 2: the nearby cluster is four point six billion light years away.
- 5:29Speaker 2: The one beyond. It could be double that. I haven't
- 5:32Speaker 2: seen the results of that, but it's a long way off.
- 5:35Speaker 2: And what I think is most telling about this image.
- 5:39Speaker 2: So this is being called Web's first deep field image,
- 5:44Speaker 2: and you probably remember because we've talked about it before.
- 5:48Speaker 2: The Hubble telescope produced a number of deep field images,
- 5:51Speaker 2: deep being how far into the universe you're looking, how
- 5:55Speaker 2: far into the past you're looking. And there was the
- 5:59Speaker 2: deep field the Hubble I can't remember what the ultra
- 6:04Speaker 2: deep field I think was the last one. There were
- 6:05Speaker 2: a number in between as well, but they took weeks
- 6:10Speaker 2: of time on the Hubble Space Telescope to build up
- 6:14Speaker 2: the imagery. I remember the first one. They chose the
- 6:17Speaker 2: part of sky because there was nothing visible in it,
- 6:20Speaker 2: and so they observed it for several nights or several
- 6:24Speaker 2: days because it doesn't matter in the space telescope and
- 6:29Speaker 2: finally got these deep fields, but it took up to
- 6:32Speaker 2: weeks to get them. James web first deep field was
- 6:38Speaker 2: obtained in twelve hours. So that's telling you that, you know,
- 6:45Speaker 2: we now have a tool that can beat the pants
- 6:49Speaker 2: off the Hubble Space telescope, and that is no small achievement.
- 6:54Speaker 2: And of course that comes about because it's a much
- 6:55Speaker 2: bigger telescope. The hubble is two point three meters tell uscoop,
- 7:02Speaker 2: this is a six point five meter tell Us gun.
- 7:06Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's really part of the reason why people
- 7:11Speaker 1: have become so excited in anticipation of what it is
- 7:15Speaker 1: capable of. And it's already showing it's true colors. Boomboom.
- 7:21Speaker 1: You know the part that really blew my mind when
- 7:24Speaker 1: I looked at the image and read the description from NASA.
- 7:26Speaker 1: I'm sure you'll know what I'm talking about here. NASA says,
- 7:30Speaker 1: this image covers a patch of sky approximately the size
- 7:33Speaker 1: of a grain of sand held at arm's length by
- 7:36Speaker 1: someone on the ground, and reveals thousands of galaxies in
- 7:41Speaker 1: a tiny sliver of vast space. I know we always
- 7:46Speaker 1: talk about the vastness of the universe, but here we
- 7:49Speaker 1: are looking at a distance of maybe four to eight
- 7:52Speaker 1: billion light years and we're looking at something that only
- 7:57Speaker 1: takes up space the size of the grain of sand
- 8:00Speaker 1: held at arm's length. I mean, my word, it just
- 8:05Speaker 1: it is awe inspiring, it really is.
- 8:08Speaker 2: Yeah. It blew the president away as well. I don't
- 8:10Speaker 2: know whether you saw. They're not a broadcast when this
- 8:13Speaker 2: was released. But President Biden, he could tell he was
- 8:17Speaker 2: absolutely captivated by all this. It's fantastic to see such enthusiasm.
- 8:24Speaker 2: And of course, Andrew, this is only the first of many.
- 8:27Speaker 2: By the time our listeners are watching and listening to this,
- 8:32Speaker 2: if they watch on YouTube, we expect another tranch of
- 8:36Speaker 2: images to have been released. The kinds of things that
- 8:42Speaker 2: we're expecting to see. In fact, I think we've got
- 8:44Speaker 2: a fairly good list here. We'll see WASP ninety six B.
- 8:50Speaker 2: Now that is a planet, that's an extra solar planet,
- 8:53Speaker 2: WASP ninety six B, So it's going to be really
- 8:56Speaker 2: interesting to see how that shows up. We're going to
- 8:59Speaker 2: see the Southern Ring nebula. That's a planetary nebula. We'll see,
- 9:03Speaker 2: no doubt, a lot of detail in that. We're going
- 9:05Speaker 2: to see a cluster of galaxies, a very compact cluster
- 9:09Speaker 2: of galaxies called Stephan's quintet, very well known, very beloved
- 9:13Speaker 2: of galactic astronomers or extra galactic astronomers, people who study
- 9:17Speaker 2: the wider universe. These galaxies are physically close together and
- 9:21Speaker 2: all interacting with one another. And of course, an object
- 9:25Speaker 2: in our deep southern sky, the Karina Nebula the Eater
- 9:28Speaker 2: Karina Nebula one of the most active regions of space
- 9:32Speaker 2: in our local neighborhood, so it be really interesting to
- 9:34Speaker 2: see what's going on in that too.
- 9:36Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and who knows, we might actually be focusing
- 9:41Speaker 1: our cameras on alien civilizations out there somewhere and we
- 9:45Speaker 1: don't even know it.
- 9:46Speaker 2: We do it.
- 9:47Speaker 1: That dovetails beautifully into our next story. So all I'll say,
- 9:52Speaker 1: just to finish up with the James Thorpe Space Telescope
- 9:55Speaker 1: is watch this space as we as we've said, because
- 9:59Speaker 1: there's some exciting things to come. It's really I think
- 10:03Speaker 1: it's fantastic that they've done so well that it got
- 10:05Speaker 1: in place. Yes, it's had a couple of problems that
- 10:07Speaker 1: they've managed to overcome without any adverse effect, and now
- 10:11Speaker 1: it's ready to do its job. And yeah, who knows
- 10:15Speaker 1: what we're going to learn, Fred, who knows absolutely the
- 10:19Speaker 1: stuff you're listening to and in some places watching Space
- 10:23Speaker 1: Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson.
- 10:29Speaker 2: Road Pace Nuts.
- 10:32Speaker 1: Now we'll go to Alex who's from a lovely it's
- 10:37Speaker 1: actually a sordid, nasty, horrible little place called Bellingen, and
- 10:42Speaker 1: you said, come on in. It's actually a glorious part
- 10:47Speaker 1: of the world. It's still Yeah, Alex is asking about galaxies.
- 10:52Speaker 1: This is really good too.
- 10:53Speaker 3: Hi Fred and Andrew. It's Alex from Bellingen. Congratulations on
- 10:57Speaker 3: your three hundred shows. May there be many more? Okay,
- 11:00Speaker 3: straight into my question. It's about the apparent size as galaxies.
- 11:05Speaker 3: It's common understanding that the further away an object is,
- 11:08Speaker 3: the smaller it appears to our eyes. I guess you
- 11:11Speaker 3: could say the object's angular size reduces with distance. Just
- 11:15Speaker 3: look down a long straight road lined with power poles,
- 11:19Speaker 3: and the poles appear smaller the further away they are.
- 11:22Speaker 3: But I've heard this seemingly obvious relationship between distance and
- 11:26Speaker 3: the parent size does not apply to galaxies. Well, it
- 11:30Speaker 3: does to a point, But at some distance away from us,
- 11:33Speaker 3: the apparent size of galaxies stops getting smaller and then
- 11:37Speaker 3: begins to increase the further from us they are. Have
- 11:41Speaker 3: I heard that right? And if so, how the heck
- 11:43Speaker 3: does that work? Thanks and keep up the good work
- 11:47Speaker 3: all the best.
- 11:48Speaker 1: Oh boy, you tell us Alex.
- 11:50Speaker 2: That sounds bizarre, right, It does, doesn't it It's an
- 11:54Speaker 2: extraordinary thing, but it is actually true and it's it's
- 12:01Speaker 2: a real illustration of the fact that we live in
- 12:07Speaker 2: a universe that has peculiar properties. And it's basically the
- 12:16Speaker 2: fact that we live in an expanding universe that causes
- 12:19Speaker 2: this phenomenon to happen. Because if you go through the mathematics,
- 12:25Speaker 2: and actually there are places on the web wait and
- 12:28Speaker 2: find some nice diagrams that show how this works. The
- 12:32Speaker 2: further away you look, you get to a certain point
- 12:36Speaker 2: beyond which things don't look any smaller, because because the
- 12:43Speaker 2: universe is expanding. That's the best way to put it.
- 12:48Speaker 2: So if you imagine, think about, you know, our Andromeda galaxy,
- 12:57Speaker 2: our nearest neighbor, which is altogether something like two degrees
- 13:01Speaker 2: on the sky at its distance of about two and
- 13:05Speaker 2: a half million light years away. So if you started
- 13:11Speaker 2: we envisit Andromeda, we know what it's like. We've all
- 13:14Speaker 2: seen pictures of the Andromeda galaxy, beautiful elongated spiral because
- 13:19Speaker 2: it's tilted over towards US two and a half million
- 13:23Speaker 2: light years away. If you took that galaxy further and
- 13:27Speaker 2: further away, of course, it would start looking smaller and
- 13:32Speaker 2: smaller because it's getting further away. The laws of physics
- 13:35Speaker 2: work pretty normally over small distances. But once you gets
- 13:41Speaker 2: to a distance which is actually it's the distance varies
- 13:49Speaker 2: because it depends on your model of the universe, but
- 13:53Speaker 2: I can give you the technical answer. It's at a
- 13:55Speaker 2: red shift of about one point five and that's sort
- 13:59Speaker 2: of a distance that's measured in billions of light years.
- 14:02Speaker 2: We're probably talking about something like eight to nine billion
- 14:05Speaker 2: light years. Once it gets to that distance, it hits
- 14:09Speaker 2: a minimum size, which is about a thousandth of a degree.
- 14:12Speaker 2: Remember it's two degrees at its present distance, but it
- 14:16Speaker 2: gets down to this one thousandth of a degree mark,
- 14:20Speaker 2: and even though then you know, keep on moving it away,
- 14:24Speaker 2: it doesn't actually get any smaller. In fact, it starts
- 14:27Speaker 2: getting a bit bigger. And that is totally bizarre, but
- 14:30Speaker 2: it's just about the way light behaves in an expanding universe.
- 14:35Speaker 1: Wow. And is this something that would be able to
- 14:38Speaker 1: be demonstrated by the James Webspace exactly?
- 14:41Speaker 2: So I think we'll see, you know, we'll see physical
- 14:45Speaker 2: proof of this happening with the Games web Space Telescope,
- 14:48Speaker 2: when they find that there are galaxies that don't seem
- 14:51Speaker 2: to get any smaller even though you're looking at them,
- 14:53Speaker 2: further and further away.
- 14:55Speaker 1: Quite incredible. That's the same effect I have when I
- 15:00Speaker 1: hit a golf ball. It doesn't get smaller or smaller,
- 15:03Speaker 1: it stays about the same size. Yes, she suggests, I'm
- 15:07Speaker 1: not really hitting it very far at all.
- 15:11Speaker 2: Never mind, if you hit it things older, Ilex, we'll
- 15:13Speaker 2: start getting bigger. Is coming back to you?
- 15:17Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, thanks Alex, and hopeful as well in belligin,
- 15:21Speaker 1: I know you've been getting rained upon cats and dogs
- 15:25Speaker 1: and camels and who knows what else in recent times,
- 15:27Speaker 1: so hopefully it'll start to dry out soon.
- 15:32Speaker 4: Space Nuts, Hello again, Space Nutters. This is Anna from
- 15:35Speaker 4: Astronomy Daily, the podcast, stopping by again with a couple
- 15:39Speaker 4: of the important stories we've been following over the past week.
- 15:42Speaker 4: Astronomers may have finally cracked a long standing cosmic mystery
- 15:46Speaker 4: about one of our galaxy's most intriguing features, the gd
- 15:49Speaker 4: one stellar stream. This ribbon like structure of stars which
- 15:53Speaker 4: stretches across our galaxies halo, has puzzled scientists for years
- 15:57Speaker 4: due to its unusual patterns of gaps and spurs that
- 16:00Speaker 4: seem to defy conventional explanations. A team led by researchers
- 16:04Speaker 4: at the University of California Riverside has proposed an exciting
- 16:08Speaker 4: solution involving dark matter, but not just any dark matter.
- 16:12Speaker 4: Their research suggests these distinctive features were created by what's
- 16:15Speaker 4: called a self interacting dark matter subhlo, a dense concentration
- 16:20Speaker 4: of dark matter that behaves differently than the traditional cold
- 16:23Speaker 4: dark matter model we're familiar with. What makes this discovery
- 16:27Speaker 4: particularly fascinating is that the density needed to create these
- 16:31Speaker 4: unusual patterns in GD one is much higher than what
- 16:35Speaker 4: we'd expect from conventional dark matter theories. The research team
- 16:39Speaker 4: found that only a collapsing subhilo of self interacting dark
- 16:42Speaker 4: matter could achieve the necessary density to produce these distinctive features.
- 16:47Speaker 4: We observe this isn't just about solving one mysterious structure
- 16:51Speaker 4: in our galaxy. If confirmed, these findings could fundamentally change
- 16:55Speaker 4: our understanding of dark matter itself. Remember, dark matter makes
- 16:59Speaker 4: up at eighty five percent of all matter in the universe,
- 17:03Speaker 4: yet we still know remarkably little about its true nature.
- 17:06Speaker 4: This research suggests that dark matter particles might interact with
- 17:10Speaker 4: each other through a new kind of force, rather than
- 17:12Speaker 4: being completely invisible to one another as previously thought. The
- 17:17Speaker 4: team used sophisticated computer simulations to model how this self
- 17:20Speaker 4: interacting dark matter would behave, and the results matched perfectly
- 17:24Speaker 4: with the observed features in the GD one stream. It's
- 17:28Speaker 4: like finding the missing piece of a puzzle that's been
- 17:30Speaker 4: sitting on the table for years, suddenly revealing a whole
- 17:33Speaker 4: new picture of how our galaxy works. What's particularly exciting
- 17:37Speaker 4: about this discovery is that it opens up new ways
- 17:40Speaker 4: to study dark matter. By looking at stellar streams like
- 17:44Speaker 4: GD one, we might be able to better understand not
- 17:47Speaker 4: just where dark matter is, but how it behaves and
- 17:50Speaker 4: interacts with itself, something that could revolutionize our understanding of
- 17:54Speaker 4: the universe's fundamental structure. Next, a little mystery from China
- 18:00Speaker 4: that has set the space community buzzing. In a remarkable
- 18:03Speaker 4: display of technological advancement, China's space program has taken a
- 18:07Speaker 4: significant leap forward, conducting tests of five different rocket engines
- 18:11Speaker 4: all in a single day. The China Aerospace Science and
- 18:14Speaker 4: Technology Corporation or CASSE, carried out these tests at two
- 18:18Speaker 4: separate locations, Beijing and Laiwan County in Hebei Province. One
- 18:23Speaker 4: of the most notable tests involved a new hydrogen oxygen
- 18:26Speaker 4: engine designed for upper stage rockets. During its one hundred
- 18:30Speaker 4: second test firing, engineers gathered crucial performance data that could
- 18:34Speaker 4: pave the way for future missions. This wasn't just any
- 18:37Speaker 4: routine test. It's believed to be connected to China's ambitious
- 18:41Speaker 4: plans for crude lunar missions, specifically their Long March tenth
- 18:45Speaker 4: launcher program. But that's not all that was tested that
- 18:48Speaker 4: day In Beijing, engineers put three different engines through their paces,
- 18:53Speaker 4: a main engine, an upper stage engine, and a reaction
- 18:56Speaker 4: in orbit control engine. While specific details about which r
- 19:00Speaker 4: rockets these engines are destined for remain under wraps, it's
- 19:03Speaker 4: clear that China is developing multiple launch capabilities simultaneously. Perhaps
- 19:09Speaker 4: most intriguingly, the testing day included a methane liquid oxygen
- 19:13Speaker 4: engine at the Laiwan facility. This type of engine represents
- 19:17Speaker 4: the cutting edge of rocket technology, with several Chinese companies
- 19:20Speaker 4: already developing similar systems. It's worth noting that Cassie is
- 19:24Speaker 4: working on a particularly powerful version for their Long March
- 19:28Speaker 4: ninth Mega rocket project. These tests signal China's commitment to
- 19:32Speaker 4: developing a diverse range of rocket technologies, from deep space
- 19:36Speaker 4: exploration vehicles to heavy lift rockets. According to KSC engineers,
- 19:41Speaker 4: this is just the beginning. They're planning to conduct even
- 19:43Speaker 4: more research and testing of various engine types for China's
- 19:46Speaker 4: major space projects, suggesting we might see several new Chinese
- 19:50Speaker 4: rockets debut in the coming year. This coordinated testing effort
- 19:54Speaker 4: demonstrates China's growing capabilities in space technology and their determination
- 19:59Speaker 4: to become a major your player in space exploration. With
- 20:02Speaker 4: these successful tests, they're laying the groundwork for increasingly ambitious missions,
- 20:07Speaker 4: from lunar exploration to potential Mars voyages. And that's it
- 20:11Speaker 4: from me for this episode of Space Nuts. I'm anna
- 20:15Speaker 4: don't forget to visit Astronomy Daily dot io for your
- 20:17Speaker 4: daily fix of space and astronomy news updates. We're constantly
- 20:21Speaker 4: updating the site with the latest discoveries, mission updates, and
- 20:24Speaker 4: cosmic wonders until our next adventure through the Cosmos. Keep
- 20:28Speaker 4: looking up and stay curious about the mysteries that surround
- 20:31Speaker 4: us in space.
- 20:32Speaker 1: Space Nuts, you'll listen to the Spice Nuts podcast available
- 20:38Speaker 1: at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, oh your favorite podcast player.
- 20:44Speaker 1: You can also stream on demand at bides dot com.
- 20:47Speaker 1: This has been another quantity podcast production from nuts dot com.