Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #449: 20,000 Black Holes, Polaris Dawn's Spacewalk & New Horizons' Deep Dive

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#449: 20,000 Black Holes, Polaris Dawn's Spacewalk & New Horizons' Deep Dive · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello again, thanks for joining us on a new episode
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: of space That's My name is Andrew Dunkley, your host,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: and it's good to have your company. And coming up
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: on this episode, we've got some fascinating stories as always,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and one is about a possible swarm of black holes
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: that might have been discovered in a rather well known
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: region of space too. I might add they thought there
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: was one, now they think there might be twenty thousand.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: I'm not exaggerating. We're also going to look at the
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Polaris Dawn mission. Now, by the time this podcast is released,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: it may well have happened, but it might not, just
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: depends on technical issues. They're sitting on the platform at
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: the moment playing scrabble, waiting for things to get fixed
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: and the pufu valves to be unvalved and all that
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: sort of thing.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: We also look at the New Horizons mission.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: It's eighteen years long now and nine years since it
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: did its I buy Pluto, but it's still working. What's
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: it working on?
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Darkness?
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: That's all coming up on this episode of Space Nuts.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: Fifteen seconds in Channel ten nine ignition.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Squench Space Nuts or three.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: Two red ones Space Notes as then report it feels
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: good and joining us again to unravel all of that
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: and much much more is Professor Fred.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: What's an hello thread?
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: Hello Andrew. Unraveling is our business. We're pretty good at
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: raveling as well, especially when it comes to things like
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: headphone leads and things of that sort.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, I've got one of those stretchy ones.
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: There you go it.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: It does a good job, except it keeps getting in
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the wrong place and it's a bit annoying.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: But it can't go wireless.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: You can't go bluetooth through this panel I've got because
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: of the time delay. Just to make things difficult, So
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: you'll talk to me and I wan't hear it for
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: a second and a half, which is.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Not you know, that's the deal.
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: It might be going via the moon, could be from
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: you from your desktop to your headphones via the moon.
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: That would be more like two and a half seconds.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Well, when I bought them, it said if you if
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: you choose to go bluetooth, you may discover that it
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: doesn't work the way you want it to. And that's
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: exactly what happens.
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: Interesting, So it's not all bells and whistles, not all perfect.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Tell you what else is in perfect? Well, the weather's
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: been perfect lately, but so's the hay fever.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: It's Jean ripping through.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Us at the moment. My word, Yeah, yep, I'm a
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: terrible sufferer. And I thought it was just because of
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: where we lived. So when we went to England many
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: years ago and got off the plane, I wasn't even
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: off the Gangway or the skybridge or whatever call it,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: and I was sneezing. I thought, oh no, I thought
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I escaped all this by coming to the exact opposite
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: side of the planet. But no, it just got me.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: So now I know it doesn't matter where I am.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get hay for you if there's pollen
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: in the air. Quite so, I'd like someone to do
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: a study on why it develops later in life because
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: I never had it as a kid.
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: No, I did, neither. Neither did Jeordie.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: As you know he loves to contribute, does Jeordie, Yes
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: he does.
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: So, Yeah, the same thing happened to me, but mine
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: was a bit more obvious because I grew up in
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: the North of England and studied in Scotland and kind
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: of hung around the North of England for the first
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: twenty odd years of my life. And then moved to
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: the south where which is verdant and green and grassy,
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: and immediately got terrible hay fever. Yeah, which I now
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: know is an allergy to rye grass.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: What it will be for me too. There's a lot
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: of rye grass out here. Yeah.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: So I haven't had it. I haven't been tested, but
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: I I'm making that assumption. Also allergic to cats. There
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: you go, grew up with a cat, never had a problem.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Now I can't, you know, I can no longer rub
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: my face in there, for which is so disappointing, So disappointing.
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: Let's try rubbing your face in muscats fur it te
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: your eyes out.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the other problem. That is the other problem
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: that may explain the itchy. Now let's get down to business.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: This story is interesting because it really changes the way
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: we're looking at one particular piece of space. And it's
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: an area where we thought there was an intermediate mass
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: black hole?
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Was it? Now they think it's not. It's not a
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: black hole.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: It's a multi faceted number of black holes in possibly
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: the tens of thousands. This is quite extraordinary.
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: It is it's a story that I mean, we've been
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: following the intermediate mass black called story for quite some time,
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: and just to fill in the details for anybody new
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: to the issue, we find we commonly find what we
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: call stellar mass black holes, black holes with the massive
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: you know, up to twenty stars, up to twenty sons,
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: and we commonly find super massive black holes, which are
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: sometimes twenty billion times the mass of the song. But
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: there doesn't seem to be anything in between. The intermediate
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: mass black holes have been elusive, and one place we
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: think we might find them is in the center of
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: these really spectacular gigantic star clusters that we call globular
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: clusters because they're globular in shape. That name was given
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: to them by William Hershall a couple hundred years ago
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: or more. And we have by we, I mean the
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: world of astronomy has basically been hunting for intermediate black
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: holes in the centers of some globular clusters, and with
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: sort of varying degrees of success in the sense that
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: some of these findings are more certain than others. But
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: one that we covered recently was a finding that yeah,
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: we were pretty sure about for a while, and that
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: is the globular cluster Omiga centaury it's the biggest of them.
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: Our Milky Way Galaxi's retinue of globular clusters one hundred
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: and sixty or two hundred of them, and this one
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: is the biggest of them. Distance of seventeen thousand light
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: years as the crow flies in the constellation of Centaurus,
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: which is why it's called Umiga Centaury, and visible just
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: about to the naked eye. In fact, it's this time
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: of the year where we start seeing it quite well
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: from here in the southern hemisphere. It's a deep south
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: object invisible from the southern hemisphere. So what's the story. Well, scientists,
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: in fact European scientists who were using i think something
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: like twenty years worth of images from the Hubble Space
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: telescope which allowed them to plot the motions of stars
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: within Omega Centaury, and in particular they let them map
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: the motions of stars near its center, which seem to
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: have quite high velocities and which are symptomatic of something
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: massive around which they're orbiting. So you've got stars with
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: high velocities. In particular, the kind of velocities that were
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: being talked about. I think they're in the region of
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: three four, five, six kilometers per second thereabouts, if I
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: remember rightly, those velocities. If there wasn't something massive of
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: the middle would be enough to catapult them out of
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: the globular cluster and they belong gone, they'd be interstellar,
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: you know, the interstellar stars if I put it that way,
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: stars between the stars, but more there will be within
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: the halo of our galaxy, which is where the globular
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: clusters lie, the halo being that sort of spherical shell
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: of all stars and globular clusters. So that was the
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: story as we reported it. The evidence that there's possibly
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: something like a twenty thousand solar mass black hole the
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: middle of Omega centaury.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we were really.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Excited by that because I think we'd only just sort
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: of concluded that there aren't any and then we've found one.
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: Yes, that's right, And then now we haven't. We've unfound it.
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: We've an't found it because another group of scientists, using
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: similar data I think they've basically analyzed the same data set,
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: have suggested that the motions of the stars do not
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: tie down that central mass as being a single object.
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: They're what they're saying is that it's like it could
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: equally and that's perhaps the best way to phrase it. It
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: could equally be a large cluster of much smaller objects.
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: It's there's still black holes because you can't see anything
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: of them. There's no there's nothing massive visible there in
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: any of the wavelengths. But we can tell by the
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: motions of the stars that there is something there. And
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: so what they are suggesting is that it's not a
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: single lots a single intermediate black intermediate mass black hole.
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: It's not that it is more likely or as likely,
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: if I can put it that way, to be something
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: between ten or twenty thousand stellar mass black holes. In
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: other words, the smaller variety, right, And you know, that's
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: the bottom line. And the group that's suggesting this, one
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: of the team members of Francesca Calori from the French
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: National Center for Scientific Research, says, the possibility of an
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: intermediate mass black hole in Obena Centaury still exists. Our
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: analysis does not rule out an intermediate mass black hole,
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: but rather sets a limit on its mass, predicting an
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: upper limit of six thousand solar masses, which is less
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: than what the earlier team estimated. And so they, yes,
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: they're trying to work out what that discrepancy is but yes,
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: the you know that the later paper, the new research
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: Calori etel. Is saying it might not be a single object.
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: It could be you know, lots of lots of smaller objects.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's been backed up by another gentleman at
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Leiden Observatory I think, who agrees, even though he wasn't
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: part of the study, agrees it's probably a multitude of
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: stellar mass black holes rather than an intermediate mess black hole.
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: That's correct. And actually there's an old friend of mine
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: who was also commenting on this, Jerry Gilmore, who I've
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: known now for forty years. He's a very big name
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: in the University of Cambridge. He is a key. We
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: actually came to the UK to work at the Role
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: Observatory in Edinburgh, where I was working. We became good
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: friends and still are. Jerry, he wasn't involved with the
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: study either, and he thinks that stellar mass black holes
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: are likely to be common in comparison with intermediate mass
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: black call. So I think he's a favor. He's favoring
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: the idea that the latest research, the idea that this
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: is perhaps a whole lot of smaller black holes rather
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: than one big one, and as you say, there's there's
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: comments from Leiden Observatory Simon Porte Year's art if I'm pronouncing.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: That right, you know you did better than I would have.
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: Finds the potential discovery of an intermediate blass glass black
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: hole super exciting, but suggests that the evidence isn't quite
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: there yet. So I think the opinion of the astronomical
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: community is let's wait and see what future measurements bring out.
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: It doesn't look as though we've nailed down the Omiga
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: centaury intermediate black mass black hole yet, and it may
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: not be there at all.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: That's it though.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: How unusual is it to find between ten and twenty
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: thousand stellar mass black holes in a globular cluster.
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that in itself I think is interesting. If you could,
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: you know, if you could independently verify that these are
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: singular objects rather than one big object, I think you
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: have another new discovery on your hands. So what you're
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: talking about here is going to be the remnants of
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: dead stars, And what you're talking about with an intermediate
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: mass black hole is the remnant of what might have
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: become a super massive black hole if that globular cluster
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: had not been torn to shreds by getting mixed up
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: with our Milky Way galaxy the gravitational pull. Because we
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: think the globular clusters are the central nuclears of galaxies
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: that have been basically demolished by gravitational interaction with our own.
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: And so that's why people are looking for intermediate mass
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: black holes inside globular clusters. Because the thinking is, if
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: you've got something that you know, under normal circumstances would
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: eventually grow into a super massive black hole by the
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: time the universe is thirty point eight billion years old,
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: which is its current age, if you have that structure,
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: but then you stop the evolution process because you tear
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: the galaxy to pieces because it interacts, it gets basically
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: sucked into the Milky Way galaxy. What you're going to
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: be left is is something you know, it's like a
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: wanna be supermassive black hole, which is why it's a
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: good place to look for intermediate mass black holes, ones
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: that didn't quite make it.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: So if it turns out it's not an intermediate mess
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: black hole, does that mean we still haven't found any
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: or were there are other candidates?
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: There are other candidates. As I recall, I would like
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: to pin down without looking them up as to what
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: they are. But there are other candidates, so it isn't
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: just this one, but this one, you know, Omega Centauri
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: is the biggest and most spectacular lobby of the cluster
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: in the sky. As I said, it's visible to the
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: naked eye. It looks terrific. Even with a pair of binoculars.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: It looks good.
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: You can tell it's something different from the stars around it.
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: Through a larger telescope, it looks sensational because you can
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: see all the individual stars resolved in it.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: This is a new problem, Fred, what's that? Well, if
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: it is.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Stellamass black holes they've found, and there are ten to
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: twenty thousand of them, which is what they're suggesting, the
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: world will have to come up with a collective noun
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: for black holes because there isn't one. It will, ah, right,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: there isn't one. Surprised, Yeah, I was too, But I've
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: found a couple of articles which state, no, there isn't.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: There's a collective noun for asteroids, it's a belt of asteroids, which, yeah,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: it's a good one, but there is no collective noun
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: that I'm.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Aware of for black holes.
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: Maybe a space, not of black holes like that. Yeah,
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: I was going to say nothingness.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Yes, there isn't. There isn't nothingness. There isn't. It's a
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: little bit of a problem, but it's not the biggest
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: problem with fights. But yeah, I was surprised there wasn't one.
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: Me too, Yeah, IM surprised. Also.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Anyway, the jury is still out. Could be one, could
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: be the others.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: We're not sure. We're not sure yet.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: But if you want to read up on that, it's
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: a great article in Sky and Telescope dot org. This
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: is Space Nuts Andrew Dunkley with Professor Fred.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: What's a.
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: Okay? We take all forces of being with.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Their Space Nuts now Fred to the Polaris Dawn mission.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: And this is a very exciting mission. It may well
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: have lifted off since the release of this particular podcast,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: because we're working a bit ahead at the moment, because
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: I've got to take a trip and we need to
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: get a whole bunch of episodes in the can. So
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: they say so, yes, this particular mission may well have
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: lifted up at the moment.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: As we speak.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: They have some technical issues and they're stuck on the
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: ground and they're all getting pretty tired of scrabble, but
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: could be monopoly, could be monopoly, could just be who
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: know who knows or drafts. Yes, oh gosh, getting desperate.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: But this is an exciting mission for several reasons. There'll
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: be some major firsts that will be achieved. And yeah,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: they're doing things a little bit differently, and they're planning
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: a space walk, which will be the first private space
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: walk I believe, privately conducted. There's so much that it's
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: exciting about this mission, Fred.
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there is, and you're right. It's partly technical issues,
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: partly the weather in fact that's been holding them up
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: the splash down, So yes, exactly, it's not so much about.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Getting off but getting back on the planet.
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: Indeed, what's exciting about it, Well, it is going to be.
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: It may even be the first crude mission that is
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: going into a polar orbit around the Earth.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: I think that is correct. So it's an orbital direction
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: that hasn't been explored before with crewed space launches. It's
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: also not going anywhere. It is not going to the
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: International Space Station, as you wouldn't be able to if
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: you were in a port polar orbit because you need
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: an orbit very similar to the International Space Station if
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: that's where you're going. And that means that the time
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: that the crew will be on board, and I'm actually
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: not sure how long it is planned to be, but
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: they are that they're going to be in the spacecraft
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: for the whole time, except when they make the first
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: privately operated extra vehicular activity, because what they have to
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: do then is climb out of the SpaceX crew Dragon capsule.
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: Two of the members of the crew. There are before
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: people in the crew of Polarist Polarist doorm two of
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: each gender, and they will two of them will climb
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: out of the capsule for the first private space walk.
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: And what that means is you've got to let this.
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: You've got to let space into your capsule. You've got
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: to vent all the air out of it. So everybody
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: has to wear their spacesuit.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Super scary. It's super scary opening the front door because
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: they have airlocks in other spacecraft and the International Space Station.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: This one, you open the lid and space. You're in
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: space before you even get out.
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: Yes, that's right.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: So you've got to vent, haveaven you and then space
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: it first. And then I mean, I'm sure there will
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: be a very you know, it will be a pretty.
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: Careful venting, just to make sure everything's solding together before
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: you let all the air out.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not like the fish tank, that's.
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: For sure, although if you find fish floating around it,
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: you might be anyway. It's yes, So it really is interesting.
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: And the fact that they're not visiting this space station
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: or going anywhere near it means they have to be
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: pretty secure in their plans for this mission because all
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: the supplies for the crew, food, water, oxygen, everything that
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: all has to ride with them in their crew dragon capsule.
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: And so it's a very very demanding, you know, highly
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: demanding scenario. It's five days the mission.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Just too Yes, add to what I was saying, I
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: just looked at up myself.
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: And the other thing that they'll do is they'll go
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: further from Earth than any human since Apollo seventeen back
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: in nineteen ten, because their orbits is very elliptical. It's
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: you know, an elongated orbit which will be close to
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: Earth and it's Perry g the closest point, but a
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: long way off at Apergee. I am not sure what
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: the target Apogee is, but it is more than we've
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: ever done before in terms of you know, a mission
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: of this kind.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: So what's holding it up?
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: Well, as I mentioned earlier, the weather, and as you said, yes,
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: it's the weather at the landing site, but also the
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: fact that within the last forty eight hours, certainly if
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: not twenty four hours as we are recording, Falcon nine
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: has been grounded. The Falcon nine launch vehicle that will
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: they will use has been grounded by the Federal Aviation
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: Authority due to a failed booster landing attempt, I think
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: on Wednesday this past week. So it's you know, this
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: is basically a risk minimization procedure. As soon as anything
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: goes wrong that booster, the Falcon nine, the whole Falcon
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: nine fleet is grounded until you know what the problem was. Yeah,
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: I think one of the interesting things I think I
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: read a little while ago that booster that failed. I
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: think it was its twenty third mission, so it'd been
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: used twenty three times. Now, originally they said they'd only
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: reused them ten times, then it went to twenty times.
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: Suspect now it's aimed at thirty times, but maybe twenty
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: three is as far as it goes.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll stop at fifteen, just to be safe, by
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: the sad that's right.
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, certainly if it was a human space flight, I
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: think you would want to make sure that you were
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: using a pretty new, pretty new booster orcket to get
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: you up there.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Indeed, and I believed, I'll be doing about forty experiments
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: you might have already said that, which will all test
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: everything from human spaceflight research to micro gravity.
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: And I'll be using brand new space.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Suits to do the spacewalk and do and they'll be
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: I guess they'll be testing those, and let's hope they go, oh,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: hang on, this thing doesn't.
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: Work before they've been the spacecraft.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: I'll be taking that back to Low's.
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: Ye.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Sorry for your overseas listeners, that's a mental store so
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: that you know, automatically becomes sexist because half the crew
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: is female.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: Sorry about that.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Keep on keep on digging, Andrew, You'll be Yeah, I
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: can't see I can't see out of the hole anymore.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: It's a black hole, very deep one. It's a stellar
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: mass black hole.
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: Stellar mass black hole.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: That's right at the moment, fast approaching intermediate mass.
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: Yes. Also that swear that.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: That's where it is right below me and above me
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: and around me. Yeah, but let's hope all goes well,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: and by the time people hear this, they're up and
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: around the planet in an elongated polar orbit and doing
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: some wonderful work.
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: We'll see how it all transpires. Fingers crossed.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: This is the Space and That's Podcast with Andrew Dunkley
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: and Professor Fred Watson.
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: Broad Piacemuts.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Now Fred to our final story, and this one takes
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: us a long, long way out of the Solar System.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: This is our story.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: We've been following well since it's exciting flyby of Pluto.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: It's the New Horizons spacecraft. But since it successfully executed
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: its primary mission, it's been sent off to do a
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: few other things, and one of those things was to
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: examine darkness. This sounds this sounds sinister, This sounds like
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: the plot of horror movie.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: But it's not.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: It's a very interesting question which they think they might
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: have answered.
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: Yes, that's right, and I think you and I have
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: been talking about New Horizons since its launch eighteen years
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: ago because we used to talk on ABC Radio, didn't
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: we did? All the Space That's program came into being,
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: So New Horizons, yes, fly by Pluto in was it
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: July I think twenty fifteen? Fly by our It used
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: to be called Ultimate Tully, and it's now called Arakoth,
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: a small kayper belt object which it flew by probably
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: about three or four years ago. Now it's quite a
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: while ago. In fact, it's longer than that, because the
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: fly by was at Christmas and this object looked like
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: a snowman until we realized it's actually two pancakes joined
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: together rather than two balls joined together. Anyway, it is
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: now seven point three billion kilometers from Earth, a long
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: way away, not as far as our old friend Voyager one,
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: but still still a long way out. The difference though,
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: between New Horizons and Voyager one is that New Horizons
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: has telescopes on board. Yeah, of course we used to
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: scan Pluto and care on Pluto's main moon and some
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: of the other moons as well. But what they've been
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: able to do, though, is to make measurements of the
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: blackness of the night sky. And hear you saying, wait
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: a minute, black is black? Well, it's not really, and
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: why should you want to do that from seven point
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: three billion kilometers away from Earth. The answer is that
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: the Solar system is very dusty, and that dust concentrates
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: towards the center of the Solar system, so you know
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: what we see as meteors. Shooting stars are a measure
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: of the dust that is around us in the vicinity.
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: That dust scatters light, and we can actually see that
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: in the form of the what's called the zodiacal light,
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: which is a glow on the horizon eastern and western
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: horizon after sunset and before sunrise. What you're seeing there
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: is light scattered from dust in the inner Solar system.
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: It's an olor of light quite spectacularly. You need a
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: dark sky to see it. I've seen it many times
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: from our dark sky sights here in Australia, but I
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: only ever saw it once in the UK, and that
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: was in a particularly dark part of the UK. It
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: was quite see a long time ago as well. Anyway,
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: So the Inner Solar system is very dusty. That dust
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: scatters light, and that means that if you want to
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: make a measurement of just how bright, how intrinsically bright,
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: the night sky is, you've got to get away from
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: the inner Solar system, and that's where New Horizons is.
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: So what they've done is they've measured what they're calling
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: the cosmic optic called background. We talk a lot on
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: space Nuts about the cosmic microwave background radiation, and this
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: is the background to the night sky in microwaves, which
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: we recognize as having been caused by the Big Bank.
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: We're still seeing the flash of the Big Bang. The
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: cosmic optical background, though, is basically a background haze of
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: light that comes from all the galaxies that have ever
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: existed over the lifetime of the universe.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: And so this light is the light of galaxies. Turns
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: out to be just the right brightness. I mean, it's
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: been measured. The blackness of the night sky has been
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: measured by New Horizons. The answer they get is exactly
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: what you predict from what we assume is the known
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: number of galaxies in the universe, which is in the
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: region of two trillion if I remember ran So really
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: quite a nice piece of work complemented on by New
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern and an no friend of
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: this program. He says, this newly published work is an
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: important contribution to fundamental cosmology and really something that could
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: only be done with the far away spacecraft like New Horizons.
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: And it shows that our current extended mission is making
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: important scientific contributions far beyond the original intent of this
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: planetary mission designed to make the first close spacecraft explorations
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: of Pluto and Copper Belt objects. So there you go.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: It's got the impromato of the Boss of New Horizons,
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: Alan Stern. And it's a really interesting result that, you know,
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: the amount of light in the universe adds up with
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: the number of galaxies that we think it.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: And yet and yet we shouldn't be surprised because where
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: else could the light have come from?
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: Well that's right, except that the one of the scientists
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: who's involved with this work has basically raised that question,
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: could it come from something we haven't thought of yet?
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: And so the fact that it it, you know, everything
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: adds up suggests that there isn't anything that we haven't
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: thought of yet, although you can bet your life that
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: one day we'll be surprised that there's something else going on.
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: But yeah, you know, it's at the moment we think
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: these that these all add up the amount of light
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: that's exactly what you'd expect from the number of galaxies
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: we assume the universe contains from galaxy counts.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: In fact, I know one source they haven't considered the
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: laser beams shooting from my wife's eyes.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: When she is angry with me.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: That's that's one light source that hasn't been factored in.
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: You're dead keen on getting into halls today. I'm not
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: going to go there at all, I think.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: No, I wish I hadn't.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: That pretty exciting stuff for new Horizons will continue on
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: its journey doing more scientific studies, imaging the Kuiper Belt
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: and the outer heliosphere and making observations from a vantage
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: point that.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: No, it's unique.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: It's the only spacecraft in the position to be able
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: to do anything like this. Even James Webb and Hubble
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: can't do the kinds of things that you Horizons is achieving.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: So that's, uh, we'll be talking about again, I think, Fred.
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, sure, it might.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: Take a while, has still got a long way to go.
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: Yes, that's right. It's it's one of the five space
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: craft leaving the Solar System. Yeah, but I think it's
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: the best equipped to do to make observations like this.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Indeed, all right, that story available at fizz dot org
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: phy s dot org if you want to check it
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: all out. And that brings us to the end of
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: the show. Just a reminder too, if you would like
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: to visit our website, you can do that at Space
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Nuts podcast dot com or space space Nuts dot io.
• 32:27
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• 32:32
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• 32:35
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• 32:40
  Speaker 1: Here you are and yeah, there's all sorts of things
• 32:44
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• 32:48
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• 32:50
  Speaker 2: And if you're a.
• 32:51
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• 32:54
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• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Thank you as always, Fred, it's been a great pleasure.
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: Yes, it's been a pleasure for me too. And that's
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: long long mate, continue. Not many people say that to me.
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: Thank you, especially today. Thank you Fred, don't worries see
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: you soon, see yea Professor Fred Wartson, a storm at large.
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: And thanks to Hue in the studio and from me
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your company. We'll catch you soon
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: on another episode of Space Nuts.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: Bye bye.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or your favorite podcast player.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: You can also stream on demand at bytes dot com.
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: This has been another quality podcast production from Nights dot
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: com